DEKAD OF WASP-STHVGS. 
367 
that fine timber for building, which, on the north-west coast 
of America, on mountains where the thermometer falls in 
winter to 20° cent, below zero, we find in the family of the 
conifers. Such, in every zone, and in all the families of 
American plants, is the prodigious force of vegetation, that, 
the latitude of fifty-seven degrees north, on the same 
isothermal line with St. Petersburgli and the Orkneys, the 
Pinus canadensis displays trunks one hundred and fifty feet 
high, and six feet in diameter.* Towards night we arrived 
at a small farm, in the puerto or landing place of Pimichin. 
We were shown a cross near the road, which marked the 
spot “ where a poor capuchin missionary had been killed by 
^asps.” I state this on the authority of the monks of Ja* 
v ita and the Indians. They talk much in these countries of 
""■asps and venomous ants, but we saw neither one nor the 
other of these insects. It is well known that in the torrid 
sone slight stings often cause fits of fever almost as violent 
as those that with us accompany severe organic injuries. The 
death of this poor monk was probably the effect of fatigue 
and damp, rather than of the venom contained in the stings 
of wasps, which the Indians dread extremely. We must not 
confound the wasps of Javita with the melipones bee3, called 
by the Spaniards angelitos (little angels) which covered our 
faces and hands on the summit of the Silla do Caracas. 
The landing place of Pimichin is surrounded by a small 
Plantation of caaco-trees ; they are very vigorous, and here, 
as on the banks of the Atabapo and the Guainia, they are 
loaded with flowers and fruits at all seasons. They begin 
*0 bear from the fourth year ; on the coast of Caracas they 
do not bear till the sixth or eighth year. The soil of these 
countries is sandy, wherever it is not marshy ; but the light 
ari ds of the Tuamini and Pimichin are extremely produc- 
u Vet. Around the conucos of Pimichin grows, in its wild 
* Langsdorf informs us that the inhabitants of Norfolk Sound make 
°ats of a single trunk, fifty feet long, four feet and a half broad, and 
hree high at the sides. They contain thirty persons. These boats remind 
J 13 of the canoes of the Rio Chagrcs in the isthmus of Panama, in the 
otrid zone. The Pop ulus balsaraifera also attains an immense height, on 
e fountains that border Norfolk Sound. 
1' At Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with Jatropba 
J^nihot (yucca) yields in two years, in the worst soil, a harvest of six 
0r taif of cassava : the same extent on a middling soil yields in fourteen 
