I may add that the coffee of Venezuela is of various qualities, according to whether it is raised in Tierra Caliente or Tierra Fria, id est, coffee of the low, warm valleys, or coffee of mountainous districts; this last is superior to the former, and bears in consequence the highest price in the market. Again, café trillado, and café descerezado, which means coffee dried in the berry as it is gathered, and husked afterwards by a tread-mill composed of a heavy wooden wheel revolving in a circular trough of masonry; and coffee deprived at once of its pulpy covering by machinery as soon as it is picked, dried afterwards in the sun upon extensive platforms of masonry called patios, and passed through different sets of machinery to deprive the grain or bean of the adhering shell and pellicle. The coffee thus prepared is superior in quality to that which is trillado for want of means on the part of the planter to put up the expensive works required for this operation, and therefore bears a higher price.
Interspersed with these plantations are others of no less importance to the industry of these valleys, such as indigo, cotton, indian-corn, wheat and tobacco, all of them requiring the same share of careful cultivation and intelligent management. “The road we were following,” continues Sullivan, “was so well kept and so well wooded, and the hedges so neatly clipped, that I could hardly sometimes help fancying myself riding down some country lanes in England. We followed one lime hedge, which enclosed a coffee plantation, for upwards of two miles. It was the most perfectly kept hedge I had seen in any country; it was four or five feet high and about three feet thick, and throughout its whole length, I don’t believe there was a single flaw through which a dog could have forced its way. Several slaves were employed in trimming it. In fact, in this climate, where the growth of all inanimate nature is unceasing, and so rapid, it must employ several hands continually to keep it in such beautiful order. The scent of the lime as we approached it from some parched country we had been crossing previously, was most delicious.”
As there is nothing to interest us in the towns along this route, we will pass by San Mateo, La Victoria and Turmero, all of them pleasantly surrounded by plantations until we reach Maracay, the point of our destination. On our way thither, we come up with that giant of the vegetable world, the Saman de Güere, so well described by Humboldt in his Travels, and subsequently by Sullivan. As their statements are corroborative of the facts given elsewhere by me respecting these enormous but most graceful mimosas, I will here use the language of the last mentioned traveller about that of the hacienda de Güere.
“Soon after leaving Turmero we caught sight of the far-famed Saman de Güere, and in about an hour’s time arrived at the hamlet of Güere, from whence it takes its name. It is supposed to be the oldest tree in the world, for so great was the reverence of the Indians for it on account of its age at the time of the Spanish conquest, that the Government issued a decree for its protection from all injury, and it has ever since been public property. It shows no sign whatever of decay, but it is as fresh and green as it was most probably a thousand years ago. The trunk of this magnificent tree is only sixty feet high by thirty feet in circumference, so that it is not so much the enormous size of the Saman de Güere that constitutes its great attraction, as the wonderful spread of its magnificent branches, and the perfect dome-like shape of its head, which is so exact and regular, that one could almost fancy some extinct race of giants had been exercising their topiarian art upon it. The circumference of this dome is said to be nearly six hundred feet, and the measure of its semicircular head very nearly as great. The saman is a species of mimosa, and what is curious and adds greatly to its beauty and softness is, that the leaves of this giant of nature are as small and delicate as those of the silver willow, and are equally as sensitive to every passing breeze.”
And now for the most picturesque of all the towns on our long ride, Maracay, not on account of any architectural display about its buildings, for it has no pretensions of this kind, but for its many gardens, each house being literally embowered in the choicest productions of the tropics in the way of fruits, such as orange, lime and lemon trees, both sweet and sour; caimito or star-apple, a creamy and luscious fruit growing upon one of the most beautiful trees with which I am acquainted; the same might be said of two other fruit-trees cultivated in these gardens, the mamon and cotopriz; both bearing great bunches of an oval fruit the size of a pigeon’s egg, olive-green in the former, and bright yellow in the latter, containing a kernel enveloped in a sweet, sub-acid pulp; bread-fruit trees of two kinds and accordingly distinguished as fruta de pan and pan de palo, bread-fruit and bread-tree—the former being a large pulpy and greenish fruit very like an Osage orange but larger, containing great numbers of chestnut-like seeds, which roasted or boiled taste very much like bread, and the latter a fruit precisely like its congener in appearance, but destitute of seeds, which assimilates it still more to the “staff of life” when boiled or baked, for it is beautifully white and compact inside.
In addition to the foregoing, these gardens offer you a fine display of other tropical trees no less esteemed for their grateful shade and their delicious fruits, such as sapotes and sapodillas, both elegant in form as well as in bearing; and so is also the splendid mamey apple-tree (mamea Americana) bearing great quantities of large, round and heavy fruits, brown outside, and golden-yellow within, from which marmalades and other delicacies are made by the charming Maracayeras.
The family to which the famous chirimoya belongs (anonaciæ) have also three other representatives hardly inferior to that “master-piece of nature,” viz.; the guanábana (anona muricata) or sour-sop—an ugly name in English for such fine fruit—from which a most cooling drink is made, and still finer ices; the custard-apple, which needs no further explanation than its name to recommend it; and the riñon, (anona squamosa) also a custardy kindney-like fruit, hence its name.
Butter being expensive, and difficult to keep in this climate, nature has provided a substitute for it in the fruit of the fine tree (Persea gratissima), consecrated, as the name implies, to Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danaë; thus showing the wisdom of the botanist over the less cultivated English settlers of the Caribean islands, who call it alligator-pear, I presume, from the fact of its being indigenous to a country abounding in saurian reptiles, although I am of opinion that a creature of this sort would rather prefer a more substantial morsel in the shape of a fat Briton, to a fruit which is well adapted to the taste of demigods. In shape it resembles a large pear, but the interior of its rind is lined with a marrow-like substance of a yellowish color, which assimilates very nearly to butter, the place of which it supplies at the breakfast-table. It is, in fact, vegetable-butter, and many prefer it to the ordinary kind.
The extensive family of leguminous or pod-bearing trees also grace these gardens with three additional members remarkable for fine foliage and useful products, such as the algarroba, with hard-shelled pods, containing a number of brown, round seeds or beans—also very hard, enveloped in a farinaceous and very nutricious fecula; a fine aromatic resin, good for varnishes, exudes from the trunk and branches of this tree, and a still finer one can be extracted from its horny pericarp by infusion in alcohol or other extractive medium; guamos (Inga) of various kinds, with pellucid pods one and two feet in length, containing a row of beans enveloped in white, cottony pulp, most grateful to the taste; and the unrivalled tamarind, either as regards beauty of foliage, brilliancy of blossoms, or the delicacy of its acidulous pulpy pods; these are candied either in a green state or when fully ripe, affording in the latter case a most refreshing drink to the fever-stricken in this climate, when made into a decoction. In blossom, the tamarind-tree is one of the most charming objects to behold, for amid its feathery, dark-green foliage, somewhat similar to that of the hemlock, issues a profusion of golden-yellow branches of delicate flowers, almost dazzling to the eyes.
The coco-palm, although far away from the sea-coast, its native habitat, also flourishes in great perfection, contributing not a little to the splendor of the vegetation in these truly tropical gardens, with its glorious crown of monster leaves. And last, though not least, the plantain and banana claim here the supremacy which everyone accords them over all productions of the tropics. A few plants of each only are sufficient to supply a whole family with bread, vegetables, fruit, and preserves of various kinds. “We might be surprised,” observes Humboldt, “at the small extent of these cultivated spots, if we did not recollect that an acre planted with plantains produces nearly twenty times as much food as the same space sown with corn. In Europe, our wheat, barley, and rye cover vast spaces of ground; and in general the arable lands touch each other whenever the inhabitants live upon corn. It is different under the torrid zone, where man obtains food from plants which yield more abundant and earlier harvests. In those favored climates the fertility of the soil is proportioned to the heat and humidity of the atmosphere. An immense population finds abundant nourishment within a narrow space covered with plantains, casava, yams, and maize.”[16]