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Look for you require to look more than once, sometimes more than twice here, up the stem of that Cocorite, or as much of it as you can see in the thicket. It is all jagged with the brown butts of its old fallen leaves; and among the butts perch broad-leaved ferns, and fleshy Orchids, and above them, just below the plume of mighty fronds, the yellow fox's brush, which is its spathe of flower.
What a contrast again, the huge feathery fronds of the Cocorite palms which stretch right away hither over our heads, twenty and thirty feet in length. And what is that spot of crimson flame hanging in the darkest spot of all from an under-bough of that low weeping tree?
Here also are numerous graceful palms, the cocorite, from which the Indians form their poisoned arrows; the troali, with broad and long leaves, used for thatching their huts. The graceful manicol, rising to a great height, bends, like the weeping willow, its slender stem over the stream; and, with several other species of palm, it affords the succulent cabbage.
Under the Mombins the undergrowth is, for the most part, huge fans of Cocorite palm, thirty or forty feet high, their short rugged trunks, as usual, loaded with creepers, orchids, birds'-nests, and huge round black lumps, which are the nests of ants; all lodged among the butts of old leaves and the spathes of old flowers.
Beyond it rose a double forest of Moriche fan-palms; and to the right of them high wood with giant Mombins and undergrowth of Cocorite a paradise on the other side of the Stygian pool. We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, and found it perfectly hard.
Beyond it rose a noble forest of Moriche fan-palms; and to the right of them high wood with giant Mombins and undergrowth of Cocorite a paradise on the other side of the Stygian pool. We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, and found it perfectly hard.
Under his guidance we stopped at one point, silent with delight and awe. Through an arch of Cocorite boughs ah that English painters would go to paint such pictures, set in such natural frames we saw, nearly a thousand feet below us, the little bay of Fillette.
Here, as at Chaguanas, grand Cerimans and Seguines scrambled twenty feet up the Cocorite trunks, delighting us by the luscious life in the fat stem and fat leaves, and the brilliant, yet tender green, which literally shone in the darkness of the Cocorite bower; and all, it may be, the growth of the last six months; for, as was plain from the charred stems of many Cocorites and Moriches, the fire had swept through the wood last summer, destroying all that would burn.
It encloses, as in most palms, a branched spadix covered with innumerable round buds, most like a head of millet, two feet and a half long: but the spathe, instead of splitting and forming a hood over the flowers, as in the Cocorite and most palms, remains entire, and slips off like the finger of a glove.
Meanwhile, I saw the wise mule led up into the bush; and, on asking its owner why, was told that she was to be fed on what, I could not see. But, much to my amusement, he cut down a quantity of the young leaves of the Cocorite palm; and she began to eat them greedily, as did my police-horse.
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