The jungle between Javita and Caìo Pimichín holds a quantity of gigantic trees: ocoteas, laurels, curvana, jacio, iacifate, with a red wood like Brazil-wood, guamufate, the Amyris caraìa and the mani. All these trees top 100 feet. As their trunks throw out branches more than 100 feet high we had trouble getting flowers and leaves. Though the ground was strewn with foliage we could not rely on the Indians to tell us from which tree or liana they came. In the midst of such natural riches, our herborizations caused us more regret than satisfaction. What we managed to collect seemed without interest in comparison with what we might have collected. It rained without a break for several months and Bonpland lost the greater part of the specimens he had dried with artificial heat. Usually Indians name trees by chewing the bark. They distinguish leaves better than flowers or fruit. Busy in locating timber for canoes they are inattentive to flowers. 'None of those tall trees have flowers or fruit, they continually repeated. Like the botanists of antiquity, they denied what they had not bothered to observe. Tired by our questions they, in turn, made us impatient.