232 



This use of the caoutchouc appeared to us 

 the more worthy notice, as we had been often 

 embarrassed by the want of the corks of Eu- 

 rope. The great utility of cork is felt only in 

 countries, where trade has not supplied this 

 bark in plenty. Equinoctial America no where 

 produces, not even on the back of the Andes, an 

 oak resembling the quercus suber ; and neither 

 the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma *, 

 and other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis 

 of maize, of which the natives make use, can 

 well supply the place of our corks. The mis- 

 sionary showed us, before the Casa de los SoU 

 teros (the house where the young unmarried 

 men reside), a drum, which was a hollow cy- 

 linder of wood, two feet long, and eighteen 

 inches thick. This drum was beaten with great 

 masses of dapicho, which served as drum-sticks ; 

 it had openings which could be stopped by the 

 hand at will, to vary the sounds, and was fixed 

 on two light supports. Savage nations love 

 noisy music ; the drum, and the botutos, or 

 trumpets of baked earth, in which a tube of 

 three or four feet long communicates with several 

 swellings, are indispensable instruments among 

 the Indians for their grand pieces of music. 



April 30th. The night was sufficiently fine 

 for observing the meridian heights of a of the 



* Palo de Valza. 



