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The lake is in general well stocked with fish; though it furnishes only three kinds, the flesh of which is soft and insipid, the guavina, the vagre, and the sardina. The two last descend into the lake with the streams that flow into it. The guavina, of which I made a drawing on the spot, is 20 inches long and 3.5 broad. It is perhaps a new species of the genus erythrina of Gronovius.
After some difficulty I found the remains of a broad path that divided into two; one of them led to a second ruined temple, fully a mile off, and the other I followed to a grove, in which was a gigantic chait; it was a beautiful lane throughout, bordered with bamboo, brambles, gay-flowered Melastomaceae like hedge-roses, and scarlet Erythrina: there were many old mendongs and chaits on the way, which I was always careful to leave on the right hand in passing, such being the rule among Boodhists, the same which ordains that the praying-cylinder or "Mani" be made to revolve in a direction against the sun's motion.
Such species as Erythrina, which are perennial and only sown on a small scale, should not be expected to show varieties very soon. Annual species, which are cultivated yearly in thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individuals, have a much better chance. Perhaps the observed differences are largely due to this cause. Monstrosities have, from time to time, given rise to cultivated races.
The poorest man eats papelon, as in Europe he eats cheese. It is believed to have nutritive qualities. Fermented with water it yields the guarapo, the favourite beverage of the people. In the province of Caracas subcarbonate of potash is used, instead of lime, to purify the juice of the sugar-cane. The ashes of the bucare, which is the Erythrina corallodendrum, are preferred.
Our latitude was 24 degrees 43 minutes. Dec. 13. We travelled along the spur at the west and south-west side of Erythrina creek, at which we had been encamped; and, after having headed the whole system of its gullies keeping to the right along the main range for about three miles, we came to the spur on which I and Charley had ascended on our return, and which had a general direction to the north-west.
But my mind was so absorbed that the waiter or dealer who brought me what I had ordered startled me as if from sleep. My eye saw Mara wandering in the park, resting at the fountain, sitting beside me on the bench under the erythrina, transparent, like a figure formed of water, in a rain of drops of fire; and my heart was filled with a longing to which I had willed it should not yield.
After proceeding with great difficulty about three miles, we found that the gullies opened into a broad flat valley; in which fields of fat-hen, the Croton shrub, the native Tobacco, Erythrina, fine specimens of flooded-gum, Tristania, and the Moreton Bay ash, were growing in great abundance.
In the fat-hen flats, over which we travelled in following the watercourse to Zamia creek, I was surprised to find Erythrina, which I had been accustomed to meet with only on the creeks, and at the outskirts of mountain brushes, near the sea-coast.
The fig-tree with a rough leaf, had plenty of fruit, but not yet ripe. Erythrina was both in blossom and in seed. Sending Brown back to conduct our party to the water-holes we had found, and leaving the creek, which turned to the eastward, I continued my ride to the northward.
A small trailing Capparis, also with oblong eatable fruit, was first observed on a hill near Ruined Castle Creek, in lat. 25 degrees 10 minutes: we met with it frequently afterwards. We were encamped in the shade of a fine Erythrina; and the Corypha-palm, Tristania, the flooded-gum, the silver-leaved Ironbark, Tripetelus, and a species of Croton, grew around us.
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