There are few contagious disorders in Guiana ; and by temperate living, together with proper care to avoid the mid-clay heat and evening dews, Europeans have been able to preserve a state of excellent health in the country. The principal disease is fever, in a variety of forms and degrees, from the simple intermittent to the dreaded yellow fever. A prickly heat, or scarlet eruption, is frequently expe rienced, which causes extreme itching, but is considered rather as friendly to health. The stings of the musquitoes or gnats are often succeeded by large pimples, which are apt to be converted by scratching into troublesome ulcers. The ring-worm consists of long scarlet spots, chiefly about the face and neck, and is prevented from spreading by the immediate application of lime-juice mixed with gun-powder. The chigoe, or jigger, is a kind of sand flea, which lodges under the toe-nails, between the skin and the flesh, and, unless extracted as soon as the itching which they occasion is felt, are apt to produce very deep and fretting ulcers. The yaws, a dreadful disorder re sembling the small-pox, and covering the body with large ulcers, is extremely infectious, but seems peculiar to the negro race. Dry gripes, bloody flux, and dropsy, are also frequent.
The vegetable productions of Guiana are exceedingly numerous, and many of them particularly worthy of notice, both as objects of curiosity and as articles of utility. The trees in the forests grow to an immense size, many of their trunks rising to the height of 100 feet, and throwing out at the lower extremity a number of flattened projections, which surround the stern like supporting buttresses, and form deep recesses, capable sometimes of affording shelter to 10 or 12 persons. The mountain cabbage, unrivalled in the vegetable world, has a straight tapering trunk 1C0 feet in height, and 7 or 8 feet in circumference, branches 20 feet in length, diverging in a horizontal direction, pal mated narrow leaves above 2 feet long, a green husky pod 20 inches in length at the clefts of the lower branches, full nuts, which are the seeds of the plant ; and, on the sum mit of the trunk, the cabbage, consisting of thin white strata, and resembling an almond in taste. The silk cot ton tree, generally growing to the height of 100 feet, with a trunk 12 feet in circumference, and free of branches for the space of 70 feet, bears a pod full of silky filaments. The red mangrove tree, growing in marshy places, rises from a number of roots, which appear several feet above ground, before they are joined together to form the main trunk, which is generally tall and large, hard, and good for building ; and numerous ligneous shoots, without leaves or branches, descend from the stem and the lateral boughs towards the ground, where they take root, and like props l' pillars, afford support to the tree in its watery soil. The ,..ocoa am tree, growing to the height of 60 or 80 feet, but seldom perfectly straight, bears fruit at the-age of six or eight years. The pipeira tree, about 70 feet high, and 9 in circumference, affords a weighty durable timber, and bears a small round fruit of a farinaceous nature, which is sometimes used by the Indians as food. Among a variety of other valuable forest trees, growing to the height of 50 feet, may be mentioned the iron-wood tree, so called from its hard and heavy wood, which is used for clubs, wind mills, and similar purposes ; the bullet-tree, which has a dark coloured wood, spotted with small white specks, very durable, and so weighty as to sink in salt water ; the launa tree, which bears a fruit like an apple, yielding a purple coloured juice, employed by the Indians in painting their bodies ; the mahogany tree, resembling the cedar, and preferring a rocky soil ; the tonquin bean tree, which bears the sweet-smelling pulse of that name, and some of which sometimes grow to the height of 70 or 80 feet ; the cassia fistula, covered with a light brown bark, and bearing pods 18 inches long, containing a sweet pulp resembling trea cle. Of a smaller size are the bourracoura, or letter wood
tree, which contains a heart of a deep red colour, marked with black spots, hard, ponderous, capable of the finest polish, and highly valued for its beauty ; the hiarree tree, which grows near rivers, and generally at a distance from other trees, esteemed a strong poison, even the smoke ni the wood when burning proving fatal to animal life ; the cocoa tree, which bears a pod of the size and shape of a melon, containing rows of nuts in its longitudinal cavities.
The most valuable fruit trees are, the guava, which bears a round fruit of a light yellow colour, the internal part of which is a red pulp generally made into jellies, and the external part resembling the substance of an apple, employed in tarts, &c. ; the tamarind tree, which grows to a considerable size, and produces its fruit in a large pod; the aviato or avogato pear tree, resembling a walnut tree, and bearing a delicious fruit like a large pear, of a pale green colour, and yellow pulp, similar in taste and flavour to the finest peach ; the female poppau, which produces an oval-shaped fruit, about six inches in length ; plan tains, bananas, pine apples, &c. Among the useful shrubs, we can only particularize the cotton bush, which produces two crops annually ; the coffee bush, which also bears two crops, each tree yielding about a pound and a half at a crop ; the palma christi, or castor bush, which bears nuts of a triangular form, covered with a thin brown fur, the kernels of which yield by expression the well known castor oil ; the cassava shrub, of which the roots are ground into meal, and formed into an excellent bread ; but the bitter cassava, though it becomes a wholesome food when boiled or baked, is in its raw state a fatal poison. Of many curious plants may be mentioned the aloe, of which there are various kinds ; the caruna shrub, bearing a nut, of which the kernel is used by the Indians as a slow poison ; the curretta, or silk-grass plant, a species of aloe, the leaves of which contain a saponaceous pulp, used in washing, mixed with fine and strong white filaments, which, when properly cleaned, can scarcely be distinguished from threads of silk, and are employed in making nets, cords, &c. ; the siliqua hirsute, a slender creeping plant like the vine, bearing pods resembling the common pea, covered with fine stiff pointed hairs, which, upon being applied to the skin, produce an intolerable sensation of itching ; troo lies, or leaves of an enormous size, from 20 to 30 feet in length, and about 2 or 3 in breadth, groking from a short root close to the ground, and used as a thatch for houses, which they protect from the heaviest rains, and last for many years ; nibbees, a kind of ligneous rope, without any foliage, growing to an immense length, and from 3 to IS inches in circumference, sometimes entwining themselves together to the thickness of a ship's cable, and at other times interweaving themselves like nets, so as to intercept the game in their course, frequently climbing to the tops of the loftiest trees, and again descending to take root in the earth, often coiling themselves.so closely around the trunks of the trees, as completely to check their growth, and so extremely tough as to be used by the natives for fastening the posts and thatch of their huts. The roots most deserving of notice, are the ipecacuanha, the ginger, and the Indian yam, which last• is about eight inches in length, and six in circumference, of a reddish purple colour, and affords an agreeable farinaceous food..