246 TlMEHRl. 
then the stately stem alone stands, the decaying monu- 
ment of a once noble plant. 
It is, as has been said, the most useful of all our palms ; 
and, indeed, its real usefulness to man is so marvellously 
great as to have been exaggerated till it has lent the plant 
a certain historical interest. Father Gumilla began 
the exaggeration when he ecstatically called the Mauritia 
1 the tree of life.' And HUMBOLDT, just for once 
making an unscientific use of his imagination, carried on 
the tale, and wrote : — 
" In the season of inundations these clumps of Mauritia, with their 
leaves in the form of a fan, have the appearance of a forest rising from 
the bosom of the waters. The navigator, in proceeding along the 
channels of the delta of the Orinoco at night, sees with surprise the 
summit of the palm-trees illumined by large fires. These are the 
habitations of the Guarons (Warraus), which are suspended 
from the trunks of trees. These tribes hang up mats in the air, which 
they fill with earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the fire 
necessary for their household wants. They have owed their liberty and 
their political independence for ages to the quaking and swampy soil, 
which they pass over in the time of drought, and on which they alone 
know how to walk in security to their solitude in the delta of the 
Orinoco, to their abode on the trees." 
The fact on which all this is founded is that the 
Warraus dwelt, and still to some extent dwell, not on 
living palms, but among these ; and these palms are not 
the Mauritia, which seldom, if ever, grows naturally on 
the banks of large rivers where it would be visible to 
passing navigators, but the troolie (Manicaria sacci- 
fera, Gaertn :), which grows in the ooze at the river- 
side, almost as far as the edge of the sea. The main 
homes of the Warraus were probably, as they certainly 
now are, on some of the many small and isolated, but 
comparatively high, hills which occur, on the banks of 
