31G Plants, characteristic of Different Nations. 



mense afflux of sap, which is daily tapped during several 

 months. This juice is allowed to ferment, when it is convert- 

 ed into a beverage (Pulque) of a pleasant acid taste, but a 

 very disagreeable, putrid, smell. In other respects also this 

 plant is important to the Mexicans, who from the fibres of 

 the leaves, know how to prepare an excellent substitute for 

 hemp. At an elevation greater than that of the Agave in 

 Mexico, and in Peru and Chili beyond the limit of rye and 

 barley, another characteristic plant appears — the Quinoa 

 (Chenopodium quinoa) the small, but numerous and very fa- 

 rinaceous seeds of which, afford an article of food which is 

 much in vise either boiled into the consistence of a thin por- 

 ridge, or toasted (the chocolate of the high-land.) 



The greatest number qf the American aborigines, how- 

 ever, (particularly in the lower countries) were, and are still, 

 ignorant of agriculture, and occupy a low step of intellectual 

 culture ; generally speaking, these tribes possess no charac- 

 teristic plants. And yet among them, there is an instance 

 of a nation, whose existence is closely connected with a single 

 wild-growing plant. The country of the Guaraun-Indians, 

 on the lower part of the Oronoco river, is annually inundated 

 during the rainy season, at which period this tribe lives 

 in trees, (the Mauritius palm,) the petiole of which the na- 

 tives convert into hammocks, which they sling between the 

 stems. In this manner they live, make fires, eat the plenti- 

 ful fruit of the palms, make a kind of palm wine from the 

 sap, and bread of the sago-like marrow. 



If we turn our attention to Africa, we find in its northern 

 part, as in the north of Arabia, the large desert-zone, so very 

 poor in plants, where the nomadic Arabs received a valuable 

 heir-loom in the date-palm, the numerous fruit of which pro- 

 vide not only the people themselves, but also their camels and 

 horses with food ; the stems yield wood, the petioles and the 

 leaves afford materials for cordage. 



In the southern part of Arabia the coffee appears as the 



