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Rum is made from the molasses, which being mixed with about five times as much water, is put into a still. There are three sorts of cotton-trees. One creeps on the earth like a vine; another is a bushy dwarf tree; and the third is as high as an oak.
The vale of Arica is about a league wide next the sea, all barren ground except where the old town stood, which is divided into small fields of clover, some small plantations of sugar-canes, with olive-trees and cotton-trees intermixed, and several intervening marshes, full of the sedges of which they build their houses.
To the fine sand for the triangle formed by the junction of the two rivers was inundated during part of the year succeeded deep ruts, and then dry beds of streams, hollowed out by the torrents in the rainy season. Instead of the narrow border of willows and cotton-trees which shaded the deserted banks, green oaks rose up, and the landscape terminated in the line of the foggy mountains.
Pimento-trees are plenty here, and we saw some of sixty feet high and about two yards thick; and cotton-trees higher, and near four fathoms round in the stock. The climate is so good that the trees and grass are verdant all the year round. The winter lasts no longer than June and July, and is not then severe, there being only a small frost, and a little hail: but sometimes great rains.
There were giant ceiba trees, with trunks as smooth as if they had been polished by human hands, tremendous cotton-trees, their branches bowed down with air plants, palms, to which clung clusters of wild nuts, thick, bulbous trees, taller trees with buttressed roots, as if Nature knew the strain that was to be placed upon them and braced them up accordingly, trees with bark like mirrors, and trees with six-inch spike growing from the bark.
The idea was so excellent, that we accordingly at once went down the hill to obtain a tall and straight tree for the purpose. A little way down the hill were some beautiful cotton-trees. Although the trunk of the largest was not more than twelve inches in diameter, it rose to a height of thirty feet, which we thought would be sufficient for our purpose.
Of the several kinds of trees that are here I shall give an account of some, as I had it partly from an inhabitant of Bahia, and partly from my knowledge of them otherwise, namely sapiera, vermiatico, comesserie, guitteba, serrie, as they were pronounced to me, three sorts of mangrove, speckled wood, fustick, cotton-trees of 3 sorts, etc., together with fruit trees of divers sorts that grow wild, beside such as are planted.
A cascade fell noisily from an adjacent hill into a deep gulf below, and in front of the rock a row of willows and cotton-trees indicated the neighbourhood of a stream. Such were the striking points of the landscape which opened before the travellers. Soon the blue light of morning replaced the darkness, and the summits of the hills one by one became visible.
Besides the pimento-trees, some of which were sixty feet high, and some large cotton-trees, the only trees of value were some bearing black plums, which, however, growing among the mountains and rocks, were difficult to get at. The trees and grass were verdant all the year round, and it was evident that the soil was fertile in the extreme.
Here and there stood tremendous cotton-trees, their limbs so burdened with air-plants as to form a series of aerial gardens, their twigs bearing pods filled with down. Beside them palm-trees raised their heads, heavy with clusters of nuts resembling dates in size and form, but fit only for wild pigs.
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