Among the shrubs which people the marshy tracts of this same region, I must point out the Sassafras, a kind of laurel with deciduous leaves, yellow flowers, which precede the foliage, and small dark-blue fruit. It is found from Canada to Florida; a mere bush in the north, but a tree fifty feet high in the south. The wood is soft, light, of a coarse fibre, with a pungent aromatic taste, and a strong agreeable odour. The wood is brought to market in the shape of chips, but for medicinal purposes the thick spongy bark of the root is prepared, and it is found extremely valuable as a powerful stimulant, sodorific, and diuretic. The mucilaginous leaves are employed in thickening soup. An infusion of the bark or wood makes a pleasant beverage, formerly known as Saloop; and the wood also yields an oil which is used medicinally.
But it is in the state of Texas, and especially near San Antonio de Bejar, that those immense desert spaces commence which occupy all the northern region of Mexico. The southern districts of Texas offer in their prevailing landscapes a mixture of beautiful prairies and shady woods. Among the plants peculiar to humid and turfy localities, I may particularize the Sarracenias, a group of remarkable exogens, whose leaves are hollowed out into tubes or pitchers, open at the upper end, and streaked with bands of different colours; the Eriocaulons, a kind of rush, carrying their small flowers in spherical capitals on the summits of their tall branching stems; and the Nelumbios (Nelumbium calophyllum), aquatic plants of unusual beauty, American congeners of the celebrated Lotus, the “insane root which takes the reason prisoner.” The nuts are wholesome and edible, and the root-stocks are also occasionally eaten. These plants are likewise found, in analogous habitats, in Mississippi and Louisiana, accompanied by the light-green Magnolia, the Dog-berry tree of Florida, several Wax-berries, and the Sassafras laurel, now acclimatized in Europe, and whose bark is employed as I have said, medicinally, while its wood and roots are made use of by turners and toy-manufacturers.
| 1. Nelumbium calophyllum. | 3. Eriocaulon flavidulum. |
| 2. Sarracenia purpurea. | 4. Laurus sassafras. |
Prairies abound in Texas, wide rolling sweeps of grassy sward, with an apparently interminable horizon, unbroken by rock, or wood, or river—leagues upon leagues of rank thick grass where countless herds are depastured, and where the hunter still finds game worthy of his deadly rifle. Among those which skirt the Bay of Matagorda, and extend in the vicinity of Victoria, Gonzalès, and Seguin, M. Trécul discovered an ample variety of Compositæ; of Gramineæ, more especially those belonging to the generæ Poa, Spartina, Dactyloctenium; Cyperaceæ, Euphorbias, Cucumbers, and Gourds. From the Texan Prairies our European gardeners have of late years received a Graminea of the genus Panicum, the Black Mosquito Grass, which by its long creeping rhizomes may be employed with undoubted success to arrest the inland movement of the Dunes and shifting sandy shores. The yellow water-lily (Nuphar lutea) spreads its fine leaves on the surface of the Texan streams, in beautiful companionship with the Nuphar advena and the Nymphæa odorata. In the same localities vegetates a weak variety of our European Sagittaria, and the Pistia spatulata spreads itself upon the water, like our English Duckweed, both being members of the family Pistaceæ.
As far as New Braunfels, the Prairies are occasionally relieved by clumps of fine old trees; but below that point the traveller only encounters, and that at rare intervals, a few scarce coppices and scanty thickets. Growing more common at San Antonio de Bejar, they abound in the region of Castroville, and spread over nearly the entire country to the very borders of Mexico.
These bushes or coppices mainly consist of the Prosapis glandulosa, the Guaiacum angustifolium, the Xanthoxylum inerme and a few Acacias.
The Guaiacum[113] is noticeable for its hard and heavy wood, generally known as Lignum Vitæ, sometimes as Guaiacum wood, and occasionally as Brazil wood. It also yields a peculiar resinous product, which is medicinally employed, in powder, pill, and tincture, for the relief of chronic rheumatism and chronic skin diseases. It is of a greenish-brown colour, and though it has scarcely any taste, leaves a hot arid sensation in the mouth.
The Xantoxyton type, of the order Xanthoxylaceæ, derives its name from the yellowness of its timber. Its fruits have a pungent aromatic taste, like pepper. The popular name of “toothache tree” is applied to some of the American species, from the relief their bark and fruits are supposed to give in cases of that distressing affliction.