Numerous tribes of the aborigines, driven back by the whites, exist in the remoter districts. They are generally of a dark copper colour, while some are of a lighter hue; and though building huts, most of them go almost naked. They exist on plantains, yucca, batatas, and the sugar-cane—which they rudely cultivate; and the fish, as well as the manatees and alligators, which swarm in their waters.
The neighbourhood of the Caraccas is described as a terrestrial paradise, where spring perpetually reigns. In this favoured region, all the fruits of the tropics come to the greatest perfection. The delicious chirimoya takes the first place. It is likened to lumps of flavoured cream, ready to be frozen, suspended from the branches of some fairy tree, amidst an overpowering perfume of flowers—for it is in bearing all the year round. “He who has not tasted the chirimoya fruit, has yet to learn what fruit is,” says Markham.
Here, too, the grandilla, in shape like a water-melon, hangs from its delicate tendrils. When cut open, it is found filled with a juice-like nectar, having the flavour of the strawberry and peach. A species, of cactus—the nopal—produces the tuna or Indian fig.
It is on the fleshy, downy stems of the cactus that the cochineal insect is reared, producing the valuable crimson dyes which outshine the vaunted productions of Tyre; and from the same family of plants rises the magnificent pitahaya,—“those flowers known for size and effulgence, which begin to open as the sun declines, and bloom during the night, shedding a delicious fragrance, and offering their brimful goblets, filled with nectareous juice, to thousands of moths and other crepuscular and nocturnal insects,” as Gosse describes it.
The splendid mammey apple-tree (Mammea Americana), which bears numbers of round and heavy fruits, brown outside, and of a golden yellow within, valued for the marmalades and other delicacies formed from them.
Of the same family as the chirimoya is the guanabana (Anona muricata), or sour sop, an unattractive name for so delicious a fruit. From it a cooling drink is made, and ices of fine flavour.
A near relative is the custard apple, filled with a ruddy compounded substance, which no cook can surpass. As also the riñon (Anona squamosa), a kidney-like fruit in form, with a custard-like interior.
The superb alligator-pear, more properly called percia gratissima; its first name given probably from its being indigenous to a country abounding in saurian reptiles, otherwise it is difficult to account for its inappropriate designation. It resembles in shape a large pear; but the interior of its rind is lined with a marrow-like substance of a yellowish colour, somewhat like butter, and used at the breakfast-table.
Among other products is the tamarind, unrivalled either as regards beauty of foliage, brilliancy of blossoms, or the delicacy of its acidulous pulpy pods. In blossom the tree is a lovely object. Amid its feathery dark green foliage issue, in vast numbers, golden yellow branches with delicate flowers dazzling to the eye; while its fruits in a green state form a candied sweetmeat, or when ripe, and made into a decoction, a refreshing drink for fever-stricken patients.
The inaja-palm, of various species, produces pellucid pods, from one to two feet in length, containing a row of beans—enveloped in white cottony pulp—grateful to the taste.