dilute it with water, and strain it before using it. It is excellent
for tea or coffee, quite equal to the best cream, and of a richer
colour. When left to stand in an open vessel, a thick coagulum forms on
the top, which the natives term cheese, and which they eat in a similar
manner, and with, equal relish. Another virtue of this extraordinary
tree is that the cream, without any preparation, makes a glue for all
purposes as good as that used by cabinet-makers, and, indeed, Don Pablo
and Guapo had already availed themselves of it in this way.

So much for the _palo de vaca_.

It still remains for me to tell you where the _salt_ came from; and
although the milk-tree was ever so welcome, yet the salt was a thing of
still greater necessity. Indeed, the latter might be looked upon as an
indispensable article in household economy. You, my young reader, know
not what it is to be without salt. With whole sacks of this beautiful
mineral within your reach, almost as cheap as sand, you cannot fancy the
longing--the absolute craving--for it, which they feel who are for a
period deprived of it. Even the wild animals will make long journeys in
search of those salt-springs--or, as they are called, "licks"--which
exist in many places in the wilderness of America. For salt, Don Pablo
and his companions would have exchanged anything they had,--their sugar,
plantains, cocoa, coffee, or even the cassava, which was their bread.
They longed for salt, and knew not how they could get on without it.
The only substitute was the "aji," or capsicum, of which several species
grew around, and almost every dish they ate was strongly spiced with it.
But still this was not salt, and they were not contented with it.

It was now that they found a friend in Guapo. Guapo knew that among
many of the Indian tribes the fruit of a certain species of palm was
manufactured into salt; and he knew the palm, too, if he could only get
his eyes upon it. Seeing his master and the rest so troubled upon this
head, Guapo rose one morning early and stole off among the groves of
palm, on the other side of the river. There, in a marshy place, with
its roots even growing in the water, stood the very tree,--a small palm
of about four inches in diameter and twenty to thirty feet high. It was
thicker at the base than the top, and the top itself rose several feet
above the tuft of pinnate, feathery fronds, ending in a pointed spike.
It was the "jara" palm, of th