And, in addition to the familiar products, in many places the slopes of the mountains between twelve and fifteen thousand feet are clothed with a shrub peculiar to the high altitudes of the Andes, called _chuquiragua_, the twigs of which are used for fuel and the yellow buds as a febrifuge. In the valleys between the cordilleras a very useful and valuable, as well as the most ordinary, plant is the American aloe, or century plant, which under cultivation, however, blooms oftener than once in a hundred years. It is the largest of all the herbs, and, with its tall stem rising from a cluster of long, thick, gracefully curved leaves, looks like a great chandelier. Most of the roads are fenced with hedges of them. Nearly every part is said to serve some practical purpose. The broad leaves are used for thatching huts and by the poorer classes as a substitute for paper in writing; a sirup flows from them when tapped; as they contain much alkali, a soap that lathers in salt water as well as fresh is manufactured from them; the fiber of the leaves and roots is woven into sandals and sacks; the flowers make excellent pickles, the stock is used in building, the pith of the stem is used by barbers for sharpening razors and the spines as needles. A species of _yucca_, resembling the aloe, yields the hemp of Ecuador. In the lowlands, cacao and sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, rice, cotton, and bananas and other tropical fruits are grown. The forests contain rubber and numerous species of useful trees, among them the tree that yields what is known as the _taque_ nut, or vegetable ivory, from which buttons are made, the grasses and _toquilla_ palm used in the manufacture of the coarser grades of Panamá hats, the _chincona_ from the bark of which quinine is obtained, the mangrove cultivated for tanning purposes as well as its fruit, and the silk-cotton tree that yields the valuable commercial product known as _kapok_. A considerable portion of the Oriente is verdured with a part of that immense forest which extends in an unbroken mass from the grassy _llanos_ of Venezuela to the _pampas_ of Argentina. In other sections of the country are gold, silver, copper, iron, coal, petroleum, asphalt and other minerals, though since the colonial régime there has been little activity in mining. Only a few years ago work was resumed in the famous mines of Zaruma, formerly the source of much revenue to the Spaniards.