Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 465 of 777 - First - Home
The
Practice Of Rearing Parrots, Birds Of A Family So Different From The
Gallinaceous Tribes, Was Remarked By Columbus.
When he discovered
America he saw macaws, or large parrots, which served as food to the
natives of the Caribbee Islands, instead of fowls.
A majestic tree, more than sixty feet high, which the planters call
fruta de burro, grows in the vicinity of the little village of
Maypures. It is a new species of the unona, and has the stateliness of
the Uvaria zeylanica of Aublet. Its branches are straight, and rise in
a pyramid, nearly like the poplar of the Mississippi, erroneously
called the Lombardy poplar. The tree is celebrated for its aromatic
fruit, the infusion of which is a powerful febrifuge. The poor
missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted with tertian fevers
during a great part of the year, seldom travel without a little bag
filled with frutas de burro. I have already observed that between the
tropics, the use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the
Croton cascarilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xylopioides, is
generally preferred to that of the astringent bark of cinchona, or of
Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura bark. The people of
America have the most inveterate prejudice against the employment of
different kinds of cinchona; and in the very countries where this
valuable remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut off
the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemonade prepared
with sugar and the small wild lime, the rind of which is equally oily
and aromatic.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 465 of 777
Words from 126245 to 126508
of 211397
