The mauritia, the chief ornament of the park-like savannah, and no less useful than the date-tree of the African oasis, provides the Indian with almost every necessary, and fully deserves the name of ‘tree of life,’ bestowed upon it by the poetical fancy of the Jesuit Gumilla. Rising to the height of a hundred feet, its slender trunk is surmounted by a magnificent tuft of large, fan-shaped fronds, of a brilliant green, under whose canopy the scaly fruits, resembling pine cones, hang in large clusters. Like the banana, they afford a food differing in taste according to the stages of ripeness in which they are plucked; and before the blossoms of the male palm have expanded, its trunk contains a nutritious pith like sago, which, dried in thin slices, forms one of the chief articles of the Indian’s bill of fare. Like his brethren of the Eastern world, he also knows how to prepare an intoxicating ‘toddy’ from the juice of the flower-spathes; the leaves serve to cover his hut; out of the fibres of their petioles he manufactures twine and cordage; and the sheaths at their base afford him material for his sandals. At the mouth of the Orinoco the very existence of the yet unsubdued Guaranas depends on the mauritia, which gives them both food and liberty. Formerly, when this tribe was more numerous than at the present day, they raised their huts on floorings stretched from trunk to trunk, and formed of the leaf-stalks of their tutelary palm. Thus, like the monkeys and parrots of their native wilds, they lived in the trees during the inundations of the Delta in the rainy season. These platforms were partly covered with moist clay, on which fire was made for household purposes; and the flames afforded a strange sight to travellers sailing on the river at night. Even now the light-footed Guaranas owe their independence to the marshy nature of their territory, and to their arboreal life. The fruits of the mauritia, besides affording food to the Indian, are eagerly devoured by monkeys and parrots. On approaching a group of palms at the time when the fruits are ripening, the profound silence which within the tropics chiefly characterises the noon, is interrupted by a scream of warning, and soon after a numerous troop of birds wheels screeching about the grove.