ROYAL WATER-LILY. 35 



delicious fragrance. I hastened to load my pirogue 

 with leaves, flowers, and fruits. Each leaf, itself as 

 heavy as a man could carry, floats on the water by 

 means of the air-cells contained in its thick project- 

 ing innumerable nerves, and is beset, like the flower- 

 stalks and fruit, with long spines. The ripe fruit is 

 full of roundish black seeds, white and mealy within. 

 When I reached Corrientes, I hastened to make a 

 drawing of this lovely Water-Lily, and to show my 

 prize to the inhabitants; and they informed me that 

 the seed is a valuable article of food, which, being 

 eaten roasted like maize, has caused the plant to be 

 called Water-maize (Ma'is del Agua). I afterwards 

 heard from an intimate friend of M. Bonpland, the 

 companion and fellow-labourer of the famous Hum- 

 boldt, that having visited accidentally, eight years 

 previously to my visit, a place near the little river 

 called Riochuelo, he had seen from a distance this 

 superb plant, and had well-nigh precipitated himself 

 off the raft into the river, in his desire to secure 

 specimens, and that M. Bonpland had been able to 

 speak of little else for a whole month. I was so for- 

 tunate as to get dried leaves, flowers, and fruits, and 

 also to put other specimens in spirits; and about the 

 end of 1827, I had the delight of sending them, with 

 my other botanical and zoological collections, to the 

 Museum of Natural History at Paris. Five years 

 afterwards, when travelling in Central America, in 

 the country of the wild Guarayos, a tribe of Gua- 



