The plains, the valleys, and the lower mountains, are covered with beautiful trees, and with an herbage so high that it conceals the sheep which graze in it, and 3000 species of non-descript plants were collected by an able naturalist, who has enumerated the properties of some of them; of these the most singular are, a large strawberry, which is cultivated for the table, and also grows wild; the madi yielding a fine oil; relbun, a species of madder; panke, which gives a good black dye; the cachan-lahuen, a balsam equal to that of Peru; and the viravira, useful in intermittent fevers. Various kinds of creeping plants, whose flowers afford the most beautiful decorations to the gardens and forests; and the puya, whose bark is used for the same purposes as cork. Ninety-seven kinds of trees are found in the Chilian forests, of which thirteen only shed their leaves; so that an everlasting verdure presents itself; of those resembling the European, the cypress, pine, oak, laurel and cedar, are varieties of the same kinds. The other most curious ones are the theige or Chili willow, which yields a great quantity of manna; the floripondio, whose flowers diffuse so great a fragrance that one is sufficient to perfume a garden; the Chilian orange, whose wood is esteemed by turners, on account of its fine yellow colour; the boighe, or white cinnamon, resembling the cinnamon of Ceylon, and esteemed a sacred tree by the Araucanians, who always present a branch of it to the embassadors, on concluding a peace. The luma, a myrtle which grows to the height of forty feet, and whose trunk affords the best wood for the coachmakers of Peru; the quillia, from whose bark a soap is manufactured; the palma Chilensis, or Chilian cocoa nut, whose fruit, though resembling that of the tropic nut, is not larger than an apple; the gevuin, which is a sort of walnut tree, and the pihuen, a sort of fir or pine, which is the most beautiful tree in Chili. Its trunk is generally eighty feet in height, and eight in girth; the limbs which branch from it begin at half its height, and leave it alternately by fours, decreasing in length as they approach the top. The fruit, like that of the pine, is very large, and has two kernels, which in taste nearly resembles the chestnut; a gum, used as frankincense, exudes from the bark; and its timber is highly useful.