invariable practice is, to roll the thread on the bare thigh,
and sometimes this labour is carried on so unceasingly as to
Spindles such as have been described were found in the
tombs of the Incas, and several of them came into my posses-
sion, together with pieces of the fabrics made from the
threads spun by them.
The species which is so largely cultivated for commerce is
Gossypium tricuspidatum.
COTTON-TREE, (Bombax ceiba).—This magnificent tree, some-
times called the Silk-Cotton, is among the many wonders of
the West Indies, and is admirably described by C. Kingsley
in his joyous book At Last:
"These latter (the Ceibas) are useless as timber; and their
roots are, of course, hurtful to the sugar-canes.
But the negro
is shy of felling the Ceiba. It is a magic tree, haunted by
spirits. There are 'too much jumbies in him,' the negro says;
and of those who dare to cut him down some one will die, or
come to harm, within the year.
"In Jamaica,' says my friend Mr. Gosse, they believe
that if a person throws a stone at the trunk, he will be visited
with sickness, or other misfortune. When they intend to cut
one down, they first pour rum at the root as a propitiatory
offering.' The Jamaica negro, however, fells them for canoes,
the wood being soft, and easily hollowed.
"But here, as in Demerara, the trees are left standing about
in cane-pieces and pastures to decay into awful and fantastic
shapes, with prickly spurs and board-walls of roots, high
enough to make a house among them simply by roofing them
in; and a flat crown of boughs, some seventy or eighty feet
above the ground, each bough as big as an average English
tree, from which dangles a whole world of lianas, matapolos,
orchids, wild pines with long air-roots or grey beards; and
last, but not least, that strange and lovely parasite the
Rhipsalis cassytha, which you mistake first for a plume of
green sea-weed, or a tress of mermaid's hair which has got up
there by mischance, and then for some delicate kind of pen-
dent mistletoe; till you are told, to your astonishment, that it
is an abnormal form of cactus-a family which it resembles,
save in its tiny flowers and fruit, no more than it resembles
the Ceiba-tree on which it grows; and told, too, that, strangely
enough, it has been discovered in Angola-the only species of
the cactus tribe in the Old World."
The Cotton-tree was a never-failing wonder to Kingsley,
who again writes of it in the same work :-
"If you are all safe, your next steps probably, as you
struggle through the bush, between tree-trunks of every
possible size, will bring you face to face with huge upright
walls of seeming boards, whose rounded edges slope upward,
till, as your eye follows them, you find them enter an enormous
stem, perhaps round, like one of the Norman pillars of
Durham nave, and just as huge; perhaps fluted, like one of
William of Wykeham's columns at Winchester.
"There is the stem, but where is the tree? Above the
green cloud. You struggle up to it, between two of the
board walls, but find it not so easy to reach. Between you
and it, are half a dozen tough strings which you had not
noticed at first-the eye cannot focus itself rapidly enough in
the confusion of distances-which have to be cut through ere
you can pass. Some of them are rooted in the ground,
straight and tense; some of them dangle and wave in the
wind at every height.
Air-roots of wild pines (tillandsia),
or of matapolos, or of figs, or of seguines (philodendron,
anthurium, &c.) or of some other parasite? Probably but
you cannot see. All you can see is, as you put your chin
close against the trunk of the tree and look up, as if you
were looking up against the side of a great ship set on end;
that some sixty or eighty feet up in the green cloud, arms as
big as English forest trees branch off; and that out of their
forks a whole green garden of vegetation has tumbled down
twenty or thirty feet, and half climbed up again. You
scramble round the tree to find whence the aerial garden has
sprung: you cannot tell. The tree-trunk is smooth and free
from climbers; and that mass of verdure may belong possibly
to the very cables which you met ascending into the green
cloud twenty or thirty yards back, or to that impenetrable
tangle, a dozen yards on, which has climbed a small tree, and
then a taller one again, and then a taller still, till it has
climbed out of sight, and possibly into the lower branches of
the big tree. And what are their species? What are their
families? Who knows? Not even the most experienced
woodman or botanist can tell you the names of plants of
which he sees only the stems."
From this tree is procured the Wild Cotton which has
already been mentioned on page 134. I believe that yet no use
has been found for this delicate and short yellow fibre, except
as stuffing for pillows and couches. The native never troubles
himself to remove the seeds, which are hard, spherical, nearly
black, and about as large as peas.
COUANACOUCHI (Lachesis mutus). Popularly called Bush-
master, a name originally given to it by the Dutch. Some-
times it is called Curucuru. When living, it is as beautiful
as it is deadly, but the lovely prismatic colours which play
over the body during life are extinguished in death, and not
even Waterton could restore to the skin the beauty of the
living serpent. It is found both in trees and on the ground.
COUCOURITE-PALM.-There are several species of this palm,
all belonging to the genus Maximiliana.
of them is the species mentioned by Waterton, and appro-
priately named Maximiliana regia. "In this plant," writes
Kingsley, "the pinnæ are set on all at the same distance
apart, and all in the same planes in opposite sides of the
stalk, giving to the whole foliage a grand simplicity; and
producing, when the curving leaf-points toss in the breeze,
that curious appearance which I mentioned in an earlier chapter, of green glass wheels with rapidly revolving spokes."
The leaves are sometimes twenty-five feet or more in length, and their stems are triangular. When dried, they are wonderfully light, strong and elastic, and are often cut into lengths and imported to England as walking-sticks. When young, the tree has scarcely any stem, the leaves springing almost directly from the ground. These trees flourish best on sand or gravel.
Stedman describes the young leaves as diverging from each other like the flaming fuse of a shell.
1 COUGUAR (Leopardus concolor).-It is sometimes misnamed the American lion, and sometimes the panther, just as the jaguar goes by the name of tiger. In some places it is called the deer-tiger. Mr. C. B. Brown had a curious adventure
with one of these animals :
"One morning, whilst returning to camp along the portage path that we were cutting at Wonobobo falls, I walked faster than the men, and got some two hundred yards in advance. As I rose the slope of an uneven piece of ground, I saw a large puma (Felis concolor) advancing along the other side of the rise towards me, with its nose down on the ground. The moment I saw it I stopped; and at the same instant it tossed up its head and seeing me also came to a stand. With its body half crouched, its head erect, and its eyes round and black, from its pupils having expanded in the dusky light, it looked at once a noble and an appalling sight. I glanced back along our wide path to see if any of my men were coming, as at the moment I felt that it was not well to be alone without some weapon of defence, and I knew that one of them had a gun; but nothing could I see. As long as I did not move the puma remained motionless also, and thus we stood, some fifteen yards apart, eying one another curiously. I had heard that the human voice is potent in scaring most wild beasts, and feeling that the time had arrived to do something desperate, I waved my arms in the air and shouted
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