Amongst the medicinal plants is noted sarsaparilla, ipecacuhana, jalap, butua, purging cassia, quassia, aristoloquia, or hart-wort, cahinana, Jesuit’s bark of the country, ginger, capeba, commonly called herb of St. Luzia, from its great virtue on application to diseases of the eyes. It is said that a surgeon of Rio de Janeiro, in the year 1784, by only using the juice of this plant, in the course of three months, restored the eye of a soldier to its former state, which had been injured by the point of a bayonet. Marvellous cures are related of this vegetable, which is said to regenerate the sight; experiments have been made by perforating the eye of a cock with sharp instruments, and on applying the juice or even the milk of this herb it is asserted that the eye has been cured in a few hours, and the sight restored. The curucu, whose juice, when drunk with water, is an efficacious stiptic for a bleeding at the mouth. There is also betony, ground-ivy, but very different from that of Europe, with a leaf resembling the rosemary, and a small white flower in a species of artichoke; the herva ferro (iron herb); the herbs mercury, eurucucu, and mallows; orelha d’onça, (ear of the ounce,) generally two feet in height, the leaf like a heart, flat, and hairy on both sides, of a pearl colour, and as flexible when dried as when green; the plant called hervachumbo; and many others.
Sapucaya is a high tree of good timber, with a leaf similar to that of the peach; the bark, softened, produces a tow for caulking vessels. Its produces a very large spherical nut, full of long almonds. For their extraction nature has formed an orifice at the extremity four inches in diameter, covered with a lid of the same size, which has over it an outer rind similar to that of the whole nut, and of which it is necessary to strip it in order to find the entrance. The monkeys, by instinct, shake off this species of cocoa-nut when ripe, and with a stone, or hard piece of wood displace the lid and eat the almonds.
St. Caetano is a delicate plant, resembling that of a water-melon; its fruit is a species of small cucumber and thorny; it opens in three portions when ripe, exhibiting some small seed similar to those of the pomegranite. It is the sustenance of birds, who, carrying its seed, propagate it in all parts. This plant is applied to various domestic purposes, and augments the properties of soap in its ordinary use; on this account it was transplanted from the coast of Guinea, where it is called Nheziken, and being planted near a chapel of St. Caetano, took the name of that saint.
Tababuya is a tree remarkable for the lightness of its wood, of which scarcely any thing is made besides corks and floats for fishing-nets; it resists all instruments except such as are used for cork¬cutting.
Taruman is a shrub with lancet leaves of unequal size; the tea of these leaves have a diluent effect upon stones in the bladder.
Theu is a delicate sipo or plant of long and flexible shoots, scarcely exceeding the thickness of a hen’s quil, but of extraordinary growth, always winding round other larger plants and trees. I have seen them so firmly entwined round orange-trees that the prosperity and fructification of the tree was impeded by them; its leaf is exceedingly small, resembling that of the broom; the root is nearly two yards in length, having a strong smell, and operating as an emetic, and is an approved remedy against the venom of snakes.
A great diversity of piratical trees or plants are observed in the Brazil, fixed to the bark or body of others, and nourished alone by their substance. In some parts there are divers species of climbers which rise to the top of the highest trees, sometimes unaccompanied, at other times twisted spirally with another of the same, or of a different species. Occasionally these prodigiously long cords have four, six, or more legs, or shoots.
Tinguy is a small tree with the branches and leaves alternate; the latter are small and lancet. The bark and leaves well pounded, and put into lakes, &c. cause the fish to die, from becoming soon intoxicated with it.
The Urucu does not in general exceed the size of a large shrub; the leaves are in the form of a heart, and the flowers in bunches with fine petals a little purpled, a pistil, and a great number of capillaments; the fruit is a capsule, a little flat and pointed, of the size of a large chestnut, and of a green colour, composed of two valves or folds, covered with fine soft thorns, and lined with a membrane that encircles a large quantity of small seed, having over them a green substance which, when diluted in water, affords a precious dye. The Indians are not ignorant of this, and use it to paint their bodies.
Vinhatico is a high and straight tree of yellow wood, and fructifies in pods with beans.