J 32 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



dreams, too, of native boys, who, with a cord fastened to 

 their two feet, are to climb up the highest trees at his 

 bidding. But, alas ! very few of these fancies are ever 

 realised ; the great height of the blossoms renders the poles 

 useless; and in the missions established on the banks of 

 the rivers of Guiana, the traveller finds himself among Indians 

 whose poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state, renders 

 them so rich, and so free from wants of every kind, that 

 neither money nor other presents that can be made to them 

 will induce them to turn three steps out of their path. 

 This insurmountable apathy is the more provoking to a 

 European, because he sees the same people climb with incon- 

 ceivable agility wherever their own fancies lead them ; for 

 example, when they wish to catch a parrot, or an iguana, 

 or a monkey, which having been wounded by their arrows 

 saves himself from falling by holding on to the branches 

 with his prehensile tail. Even at the Havannah we met 

 with a similar disappointment. We were there in the 

 month of January, and saw all the trees of the Palma Real 

 (our Oreodoxa Regia), in the immediate vicinity of the 

 city and on the public walks, adorned with snow-white 

 blossoms. For several days we offered the negro boys whom 

 we met in the streets of Regia and Guanavacoa two piastres 

 for a single bunch of the blossoms which we wanted, but in 

 vain ! Between the tropics men are indisposed to laborious 

 exertion, unless compelled by constraint or by extreme 

 destitution. The botanists and artists of the Royal Spanish 

 Commission for researches in Natural History, under the 

 direction of Count Jaruco y Mopor (Estevez, Boldo, Guio. 



