336 AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. [November, 
A TROPICAL SCENE—THE MATA PALO TREE OP CENTRAL AMERICA. 
Drawn from Nature for the American Agriculturist , by A. O. Moose. 
Jottings in Central America.* 
BY A. O. MOORE. 
Just at break of day, mounted behind tlie flap¬ 
ping ears of a mule, I emerged from between two 
rows of palm thatched huts, coming upon the 
smooth sand of the beach, surf-beaten and hard 
even beneath the narrow hoofs which bore the 
burden of myself and baggage. 
I was now aroused by a feeling of sudden sur¬ 
prise, to the consciousness that I was really in a 
foreign land, that these sands were the shores of 
the Pacific, these trees formed a tropical forest, 
and that these people of another language and 
strange customs were indeed the Central Amer¬ 
icans, in exploring whose country I proposed to 
spend a few months. 
The bay of Nicoya lay at my right, at the left 
a tangled mass of trees covered with vines, be 
hind me the village of Punta Arenas, before me 
the long white line of the beach on which the 
curling waves were lazily rolling, and the rud¬ 
dy glow of the Eastern sky gave to the whole 
scene a beauty beyond description. 
Onward jogged the mule till the solitude was 
at length broken by overtaking a person afoot, a 
boy about seventeen, with a cocoanut under each 
arm and a long knife in the girdle at his back. 
He politely gave me a salutation, and quicken- 
*[Our friend, A. O. Moore, Esq., whose pencil has con 
tributed to beautify our former volumes, recently returned 
from a sojourn in Central America, whence he brought 
many beautiful sketches of the vegetation, modes of cul¬ 
tivation, and appearance of the people, in that tropical 
clime. Some of theso will doubtless greatly interest the 
readers of the Agriculturist. The sketch given in the 
present number, not only illustrates a very curious speci¬ 
men of vegetable growth—one quite common there—but 
also gives some insight into the habits of the people. — E d.] 
ed his pace to keep up with the jog trot of my 
mule, so I asked “where are you going?” 
“ What is your name ?” and such other ques¬ 
tions as a rather limited knowledge of Span¬ 
ish enabled me to address to him. He showed 
himself very sociably inclined,saying many more 
things than I could understand. I learned how¬ 
ever, that his name was Diego, and that he was 
going part-way on my route. 
Two leagues of my journey were now behind 
me, and the road entered the forest. Quite an 
agreeable change, I thought, as my eye glanced 
along the serpentine track which led into the 
dark archways of the woods; for the sun from 
the moment of its first peep above the horizon, 
shone with an ardor almost equal to our North¬ 
ern mid-day. Now for the first time I stood 
within a tropical forest. Every tree, shrub and 
vine, every leaf were new to me, of a new type 
and manner of growth; but the first overwhelm¬ 
ing sensation of awe precluded all study of de¬ 
tails. I made an impatient gesture to Diego to 
silence his chattering, and gazed upward and 
around among the gigantic forms, towering, 
wide-reaching, fantastically twining, densely 
matted, all on a scale of grandeur beyond any¬ 
thing I had ever seen or imagined. It was as 
if a new planet had received me; one grander, 
brighter, nearer the sun, and nearer Heaven 
than the cold grey orb on which I was born. 
The very voices of the birds added to the 
strangeness; one single note loud and clear, as 
if from an organ pipe broke upon the stillness 
at long intervals. It may have issued from 
overhead or half a mile distant, it seemed to fill 
the whole forest, and was a perfect expression 
of mournful solitude. The “ carjnnlero ” or car¬ 
penter bird, might call to mind our woodpeck¬ 
er, but with a slower more ponderous stroke did 
he make the woods reverberate. At another 
moment some of the parrot tribe would dis¬ 
perse every idea of solitude and silence, filling 
the air with tones of perpetual quarrel; even 
their brilliant blue and crimson plumage could 
not long restrain the wish that they would ri(J 
us of their company. 
While I was gazing abstractedly into the 
green dome above, Diego had visited a field be¬ 
yond the edge of the forest, and now returned 
with Ins hands full of nuts and fruits, among 
which were the juicy Maraiion, a singular apple¬ 
shaped fruit, with its seed or nut shaped like a 
Lima bean, growing entirely outside of the fruit; 
the Mango, of beautiful color and luscious taste, 
being perhaps the most common fruit in Central 
America, but it is said to produce the “Calentura” 
or fever. Upon these and one of Diego’s cocoa- 
nuts we made a lunch, and then started onward. 
We soon reached a mountain stream which 
flowed swift and clear over its rocky bed; look 
mg a little down the stream, one of the most in 
teresting objects met the view. “ Como se llama 
aquel arbol grande (What do you call that large 
tree) Diego?” I asked. “Mata Palo , Senor,” 
he replied. We turned aside to get a nearer 
view of the tree. A group of “ Caretcros ” with 
their carts, oxen and families had sought this 
shady retreat for their midday rest; some were 
sleeping upon the ground, others feeding to their 
weary oxen juicy stalks of the sugar cane; but 
the tree absorbed my attention, first by its size, 
but more especially by its curious appearance. 
For a higlit of forty feet it seemed to be com¬ 
posed of six or eight trunks, which had started 
from the ground, independently of each other, 
in a circle of twenty feet or more in diameter 
