Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/140

 *[Footnote: dreams, too, of native boys, who, with a cord fastened to their two feet, are to climb up the highest trees at his bidding. But, alas! very few of these fancies are ever realised; the great height of the blossoms renders the poles useless; and in the missions established on the banks of the rivers of Guiana, the traveller finds himself among Indians whose poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state, renders them so rich, and so free from wants of every kind, that neither money nor other presents that can be made to them will induce them to turn three steps out of their path. This insurmountable apathy is the more provoking to a European, because he sees the same people climb with inconceivable agility wherever their own fancies lead them; for example, when they wish to catch a parrot, or an iguana, or a monkey, which having been wounded by their arrows saves himself from falling by holding on to the branches with his prehensile tail. Even at the Havannah we met with a similar disappointment. We were there in the month of January, and saw all the trees of the Palma Real (our Oreodoxa Regia), in the immediate vicinity of the city and on the public walks, adorned with snow-white blossoms. For several days we offered the negro boys whom we met in the streets of Regla and Guanavacoa two piastres for a single bunch of the blossoms which we wanted, but in vain! Between the tropics men are indisposed to laborious exertion, unless compelled by constraint or by extreme destitution. The botanists and artists of the Royal Spanish Commission for researches in Natural History, under the direction of Count Jaruco y Mopor (Estevez, Boldo, Guio,]*