Our first occupation on arriving at the Mata was to set up a hasty ranch for the protection of our accoutrements and baggage, a structure which required little labor or expense, the graceful palms affording the best kind of thatch for the roof, and the surrounding woods sufficient posts and rafters for the framework. A convenient apartment was provided in it for the hammocks of our Leader and worthy Surgeon, while the rest of us were compelled to seek accommodations among the trunks and branches of the trees.
These arrangements completed, the necessary timber was next cut for the corrals to be erected for enclosing the coming herds, a work to which the hunters devoted themselves, while I found greater attractions in my daily explorations through the tangled forest. The beautiful palms there claimed my most particular attention. Apart from the splendor of their growth and other peculiarities to which I have already alluded in a former chapter, they are sufficient in themselves to supply many of the domestic and economic wants of man in a primitive state.
I also observed here many useful species of the extensive family of leguminous plants, such as the cañafistula, (Cathartocarpus,) of which there were several varieties, all of them beautiful timber trees, whose pods, two feet long, were filled with a black gummy substance possessing very medicinal properties. In a natural form it affords one of the mildest and most agreeable cathartics. Belonging to the same family, the caro, masaguaro, and saman acacias can scarcely be rivalled in durability by any other production of the vegetable world. Their pods also contain a large proportion of a similar gummy substance which cattle devour greedily, and which fattens them better than any other kind of fodder.
The malagueta pepper, or donkey-bean, (Uvaria febrifuga,) an excellent febrifuge and antispasmodic, also grows here in the greatest abundance. Its aromatic seeds are carefully preserved in the tobacco bladder of every Llanero, along with the tubers of the snake root, (Aristolochia bulbosa,) a plant possessing the same virtues, and withal the best antidote against the bite of serpents.
Several other medicinal plants, such as the stately mora, the wild sour-sop, and the mapurite, are also met with here; the last owes its name to the peculiar odor, not unlike that of the skunk, which pervades the whole plant, rendering it any thing but acceptable in the neighborhood of an encampment.
Of wild fruits there was also a fine array, and among them the most delicious of all, in my opinion, is the manirito, (Anona muricata,) a fruit scarcely known to horticulture, and still less to the listless inhabitant of the country where it grows in wild luxuriance; as no one there has yet thought of bringing it under cultivation. This plant, which belongs to the same family as do several of the most celebrated fruit trees of the tropics—the various kinds of custard apples and the delicious cherimoyer—attains a height of ten feet, and at the season of maturity, actually bends to the ground beneath its sweet load. Unfortunately it all ripens at once, so that in a few days the whole crop disappears. This fruit, like its congener the sour-sop, is covered with soft prickles. The inside, a sweet and highly aromatic pulp, is filled with small seeds, which, when the fruit is eaten in large quantities, as is generally the case, are apt to produce dangerous strictures. The whole plant is exceedingly fragrant; and by rubbing the leaves between the hands, they emit a delightful aroma, not unlike that of new mown hay.
Another pleasant fruit, that I here met also for the first time, was the wild madroña of the size of a lemon, which it also resembles in shape and color. It is filled with a most agreeable sub-acid pulp; this envelops three or four large nuts, not unlike cacao-beans, and tastes very much like strawberries. The tree producing this delicious fruit attains a height of twenty feet. The foliage is very dense, with coriaceous leaves ten inches long, of a brilliant green. A thick yellow resin, resembling gamboge, exudes from every part of the tree when wounded; but whether it has been found useful for any particular purpose, I was unable to ascertain.
Somewhat similar to the latter, although growing upon a plant of an entirely different nature, is the cacaita, or monkey cacao-bean, a soft and rather insipid fruit, the production of a vine, which monkeys devour greedily.
By far the largest proportion of the trees were several species of guamos (Inga lucida) and others of the same order of leguminous plants, bearing pods eight or ten inches long; these are filled with a row of black beans, enveloped in a snowy white and sweetish pulp, most agreeable to the taste. The ripening season of this mild and wholesome fruit was just commencing, and every day we gathered and consumed quantities of it.
Another pod-bearing tree of great utility proper to that region is the algarrobo, (Hymenea curbaril,) the locust tree of the New World, which bears a thick ligneous pod containing several hard, brown, and rounded beans. These are surrounded by a sweet farinaceous substance, possessing great alimentary properties. A fragrant resin exudes from the pericarp of the pods, which, on being burned, yields a perfume similar to the odor of frankincense combined with that of balsam of Tolú.