The vaynilla, a sweet name to those who love chocolate, is a creeping plant which grows in moist places, and entwines itself with certain palm trees, which serve it for a prop. It bears large leaves about a hand long, and small white flowers. Like pulse, for fruit it bears little hulls, or sheaths, a quarter of an ell long, triangular, and when ripe dark on the surface, and of a bright colour; they have a most delicious odour, and are full of very small seeds, like figs. Of these seeds the Indian women make rosaries to adorn their necks with: the savages formerly knew no other use of the vaynilla, which however birds and apes eagerly devour. The little bag or sheath, in which the fruit is inclosed, occasioned the Spaniards to give it the name of vaynilla. The description of this plant, which became extremely profitable to the Americans after the discovery of the use of chocolate, I owe to Father Joseph Sanchez, who had travelled over the land of the Chiquitos, where that fruit grows, as well as in Peru and elsewhere. For this plant grows in no other part of Paraguay that I am acquainted with, which must be attributed to the inhabitants, not to the climate, as it doubtless would grow in the northern parts of Paraguay, were it cultivated there. THE CACAÒ. With the vaynilla we must speak of the cacaò, which is produced by a tree resembling an orange tree in its leaves, but larger, and having a kind of crown on the top. It bears a fruit like large melons, containing oily kernels, as big as almonds, and separated from one another by a white and very sweet skin, as by a kind of fence. The Peruvian Indians, throwing away the kernels which they did not then know how to use in preparing chocolate, were accustomed to chew and suck the little skin only, which is sweeter than honey. These trees in their native woods grow to a great size, and cover the melons which they bear so entirely with their immense leaves, that you cannot see them without standing close by. They never grow so large when planted in any other soil. In Peru, amongst the Mojos Indians, in Mexico, and other countries of America, the woods abound in this most profitable fruit: both the tree and the kernel, however, vary in different countries. THE TAMARIND. Tamarinds, which are very well known in European druggists' shops, are a species of plum, with a dark rind, rather acid, of an agreeable taste, and full of a number of beautiful kernels. Taken inwardly, after being steeped for some time in cold water, they conduce much to allay the most burning thirst, and gently to purge the bowels. They grow upon trees which resemble palms, and have boughs and leaves long enough to cover a number of men, and with their dark shade protect them from the heat of the sun. Tamarinds, which botanists call _dactyli acidi_, grow in the territories of the Chiquitos, and elsewhere, but are unknown to the other parts of Paraguay.