The Forest That Covers The Steep Flank Of The Mountain Of Santa Maria, Is One Of The Thickest I Ever Saw.

The trees are of stupendous height and size.

Under their bushy, deep green foliage, there reigns continually a kind of dim daylight, a peculiar sort of obscurity, of which our forests of pines, oaks, and beech-trees, convey no idea. Notwithstanding its elevated temperature, it is difficult to believe that the air can dissolve the quantity of water exhaled from the surface of the soil, the foliage of the trees, and their trunks: the latter are covered with a drapery of orchideae, peperomia, and other succulent plants. With the aromatic odour of the flowers, the fruit, and even the wood, is mingled that which we perceive in autumn in misty weather. Here, as in the forests of the Orinoco, fixing our eyes on the top of the trees, we discerned streams of vapour, whenever a solar ray penetrated, and traversed the dense atmosphere. Our guides pointed out to us among those majestic trees, the height of which exceeded 120 or 130 feet, the curucay of Terecen. It yields a whitish liquid, and very odoriferous resin, which was formerly employed by the Cumanagoto and Tagiri Indians, to perfume their idols. The young branches have an agreeable taste, though somewhat astringent. Next to the curucay and enormous trunks of hymenaea, (the diameter of which was more than nine or ten feet), the trees which most excited our attention were the dragon's blood (Croton sanguifluum), the purple-brown juice of which flows down a whitish bark; the calahuala fern, different from that of Peru, but almost equally medicinal;* (* The calahuala of Caripe is the Polypodium crassifolium; that of Peru, the use of which has been so much extended by Messrs. Ruiz and Pavon, comes from the Aspidium coriaceum, Willd. (Tectaria calahuala, Cav.) In commerce the diaphoretic roots of the Polypodium crassifolium, and of the Acrostichum huascaro, are mixed with those of the calahuala or Aspidium coriaceum.) and the palm-trees, irasse, macanilla, corozo, and praga.* (* Aiphanes praga.) The last yields a very savoury palm-cabbage, which we had sometimes eaten at the convent of Caripe. These palms with pinnated and thorny leaves formed a pleasing contrast to the fern-trees. One of the latter, the Cyathea speciosa,* grows to the height of more than thirty-five feet, a prodigious size for plants of this family. (* Possibly a hemitelia of Robert Brown. The trunk alone is from 22 to 24 feet long. This and the Cyathea excelsa of the Mauritius, are the most majestic of all the fern-trees described by botanists. The total number of these gigantic cryptogamous plants amounts at present to 25 species, that of the palm-trees to 80. With the cyathea grow, on the mountain of Santa Maria, Rhexia juniperina, Chiococca racemosa, and Commelina spicata.) We discovered here, and in the valley of Caripe, five new kinds of arborescent ferns.* (* Meniscium arborescens, Aspidium caducum, A. rostratum, Cyathea villosa, and C. speciosa.) In the time of Linnaeus, botanists knew no more than four on both continents.

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