75 



composition. A clayey soil mixed with spangles 

 of mica covered the rock, to the thickness of 

 three feet. Travellers suffer from the dust in 

 winter, while in the rainy season the place is 

 changed into a slough. On descending the 

 table-land of Buenavista, about fifty toises to- 

 ward the South-East, an abundant spring, gush- 

 ing from the gneiss, forms several cascades sur- 

 rounded with the thickest vegetation. The path 

 leading to the spring is so steep, that we could 

 touch with our hands the tops of the arborescent 

 ferns, the trunks of which reach a height of 

 more than twenty-five feet. The surrounding 

 rocks are covered with jungermannias and 

 hypnoid mosses. The torrent, formed by the 

 spring, and shaded with heliconias *, uncovers, 

 as it falls, the roots of the plumerias-f-, cu- 



* Mr. Bredemeyer, who has in his possession valuable 

 manuscripts on the plants of Caraccas, has described a musa- 

 ceous plant under the name of heliconia cassupa. It grows 

 only in very temperate or cold places. We know not whe- 

 ther it be the species of the Silla (see chap, xiii, vol. iii, p. 

 501), for Messrs. Bredemeyer and Bose did not reach the 

 summit of that mountain, or see the befarias of so elevated a 

 region. 



t The red jessamine-tree, frangipanier of the French West 

 India islands. The plumeria, so common in the gardens of 

 the Indians, has been very seldom found in a wild state. It 

 is mixed here with the piper flagellare, the spadix of which 

 sometimes reaches three feet long. With the new kind of 

 fig-tree, which wc have called ficus gigantea (Nov. Genera, 



