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They belonged to the genus Corypha; some of them were very thick and high. The mornings and evenings were very beautiful, and are surpassed by no climate that I have ever lived in.
From time to time this is scraped up and placed in baskets where it is kept until needed. The flour, while rather tasteless, is nutritious and in years of drought is the chief source of food supply. Corypha umbraculifera.
The great palm called "Gubbong" by the natives, a species of Corypha, is the most striking feature of the plains, where it grows by thousands and appears in three different states in leaf, in flower and fruit, or dead.
At the junction of the creek, a great number of small Corypha palms were growing, and my companions observed the dead stems of some very high ones, whose tops had been cut off by the natives, probably to obtain the young shoot. We passed hills of baked sandstone, before reaching the creek, and afterwards crossed a fine sandy flat, with poplar-gum.
We crossed the plain to find water, but the approaches of the river were formed by tea-tree hollows, and by thick vine brush, at the outside of which noble bouquets of Bamboo and stately Corypha palms attracted our attention. Here the noise of clouds of water-fowl, probably rising at the approach of some natives, betrayed to us the presence of water.
A dense scrub, which had driven us back to the river, obliged me to reconnoitre to the north-west, in which I was very successful; for, after having crossed the scrub, I came into an open country, furnished with some fine sheets of water, and a creek with Corypha palms, growing to the height of 25 or 30 feet.
It is collected, however, in the Indian Archipelago, as an article of trade, from the trunks of the Cycas revoluta, the Phoenix farinifera, the Corypha umbraculifera, and the Caryota urens. Mr.
I called the brook "Beames's Brook," in acknowledgment of the liberal support I received from Walter Beames, Esq. of Sydney. We again enjoyed here the young shoots of the Corypha palm. August 20.
The corypha spreads through the Llanos of Caracas from Mesa de Peja as far as Guayaval; farther north and north-west, near Guanare and San Carlos, its place is taken by another species of the same genus, with leaves alike palmate but larger. It is the sago-tree of America, furnishing flour, wine, thread for weaving hammocks, baskets, nets, and clothing.
We cannot attribute this difference to the shelter afforded by the palm-trees, in preventing the solar rays from drying and burning up the soil. We were surprised to see that almost all these trunks of the corypha were nearly of the same size, namely, from twenty to twenty-four feet high, and from eight to ten inches diameter at the foot.
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