Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/486



456 AT AND ABOUT ASUNCION.

cedro_, though young, by its hard fruit ; and saw a tree which much resembled the ibirapitanga, or true Brazilian dye- wood. Mr. Mulhall (p. 99) mentions " a tree called by a Guarani name, signifying ' red wood.' " The napinday, a prickly mimosa, which closes its leaves at sunset and before showers, was pointed out to me. The palms were the coquito, with the usual raceme, and the fan-leaved carandai, that useful ceroxylon, which is cut for house-roofs only when the moon wanes. Here and there a Persian lilac, "margoso,'^ or Nini tree grew well, whilst the Brazilian araucaria did not thrive. The myrtle and papaw, the ara9a and caju, flourished wild in the bush; and there was an abundance of the banana, whose fruit before the war was looked upon as "basura"' or sweepings. The orange tree is here fifty- five feet tall, far exceeding that of the Brazil, and even of Corrientes ; till thirty years old, it is half- grown, and when arrived at full age it averages per annum 500 fruits. I have heard of its producing thousands. These aristocrates du regne vegetal are intolerant of neighbours as the European conifers. Every traveller remarks how clear of grass is the ground which they shadow ; but none explain whether the soil becomes barren by imbibing the acid juice of the fallen fruit, or whether it results from some deleterious emanation.

The shrubs were the fedegoso, so well known in the Brazilian interior ; arrowroot ; wild indigo, now seeding ; the verbena ; the white oleander, here a stranger ; the wild prickly solanum, or " Devil's tomatoes â€¢" the castor-oil plant; the lantana; the pinhao bravo, which gives croton oil ; wild tobacco ; the broca, or burr ; and the vidreira from the Gran Chaco, a juniper-like plant, whose ashes reduced to a calx are used by the glass-maker. There are not less than seven species of cactus, chiefly the cylindrical and the quadrangular. The wild flowers are the familiar vincas.