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The ground became undulating, and I hastened forward, thinking to meet with what we wished for, when a glade, which enabled us to catch a glimpse of the sun, enlivened us a little. Here there was some grass, and a few shrubs and creepers. I called Lucien to show him what to us was a new plant, the Bromelia pinguin of botanists.
"In the line of fibre plants, other than the cotton crop before mentioned; we have grown enough hemp and flax, to supply the needs of our rope and twine works. In 'bromelia fibrista, a new fibre plant, we find a product that bids fair to rival silk in producing a fabric of fine, smooth, beautiful texture.
Large pine-apples are there found of a delicious flavour; that species of bromelia always grows solitary among the gramina, like our Colchicum autumnale, while the B. karatas, another species of the same genus, is a social plant, like our whortleberries and heaths. The pine-apples of Esmeralda are cultivated throughout Guiana.
We glided along shadowy aisles, and amidst huge black trunks that rose like columns supporting a canopy of close-woven fronds. From this vegetable root hung the mournful bromelia, sometimes drooping down to the very surface of the water, so as to sweep our faces and shoulders as we passed under it. We were not the only living things. Even this hideous place had its denizens.
It is covered by a plant allied, I believe, to Bromelia, and called by the inhabitants Chepones. In scrambling through the beds, our hands were very much scratched. I was amused by observing the precaution our Indian guide took, in turning up his trousers, thinking that they were more delicate than his own hard skin.
Forests clothed the shore on every side, and the shelving beach met the wood in a bank of wild Bromelia, most brilliant in color. Not only were excellent collections made on this beach, but the shore was strewn with large accumulations of erratics.
The pine-apple; Bromelia Ananas. This fruit, which is here called Nanas, grows very large, and in such plenty that they may sometimes be bought at the first hand for a farthing a-piece; and at the common fruit-shops we got three of them for two-pence half-penny.
They had lived exactly a month on the island had found water, and had subsisted on the roots and tender flower-stalks of a species of Bromelia, on shell-fish and on a few turtles' eggs. Having swum to the island, they had only a pair of trousers and a shirt between them, but had made a hut of palm-leaves, and had altogether got on very well.
This form of Bromelia, closely allied to the Pinguin of which hedges are made, bears a straggling plume of prickly leaves, six or eight feet long each, close to the ground. The forester looks for a plant in which the leaves droop outwards a sign that the fruit is ripe. With lips somewhat less parched, we rode away again to see the sight of the day; and a right pleasant sight it was.
Amongst them were the different kinds of Bromelia, or pineapple plants, with their long, rigid, sword-shaped leaves, in some species jagged or toothed along their edges. Then there was the bread-fruit tree an importation, it is true; but remarkable from its large, glossy, dark green, strongly digitated foliage, and its interesting history.
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