THE VAYNILLA.
The vaynilla, a sweet name to those who love chocolate, is a creeping plant which grows in moist places, and entwines itself with certain palm trees, which serve it for a prop. It bears large leaves about a hand long, and small white flowers. Like pulse, for fruit it bears little hulls, or sheaths, a quarter of an ell long, triangular, and when ripe dark on the surface, and of a bright colour; they have a most delicious odour, and are full of very small seeds, like figs. Of these seeds the Indian women make rosaries to adorn their necks with: the savages formerly knew no other use of the vaynilla, which however birds and apes eagerly devour. The little bag or sheath, in which the fruit is inclosed, occasioned the Spaniards to give it the name of vaynilla. The description of this plant, which became extremely profitable to the Americans after the discovery of the use of chocolate, I owe to Father Joseph Sanchez, who had travelled over the land of the Chiquitos, where that fruit grows, as well as in Peru and elsewhere. For this plant grows in no other part of Paraguay that I am acquainted with, which must be attributed to the inhabitants, not to the climate, as it doubtless would grow in the northern parts of Paraguay, were it cultivated there.