United States or Sweden ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Mauritias stopped short at the edge of the swamp; and around us towered the smooth stems of giant Mombins, which the English West Indians call hog-plums, according to the unfortunate habit of the early settlers of discarding the sonorous and graceful Indian and Spanish names of plants, and replacing them by names English, or corruptions of the original, always ugly, and often silly and vulgar.
In a short time the thorny bushes of the delicate and feathery-foliaged mimosas are loaded with masses of canary-coloured blossoms, from their summits down to the lowest branches, sending forth an almost overpowering perfume; while the fronds of the beautiful mauritias the palm of the Llanos rising to the height of one hundred feet above the plain, sprout forth in rich luxuriance.
The cattle, which had reposed during the night along the pools, or beneath clumps of mauritias and rhopalas, were now collected in herds; and these solitudes became peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that live here free, rather than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining the care and protection of man.
Word Of The Day