Aimard, Gustave: The Treasure of Pearls. v1. 26 Feb 2015
 

Gustave Aimard (13 September 1818 – 20 June 1883) was the author of numerous books about Latin America.

Excerpt
At one point some twenty men, white and yet swarthy, unlike in dress but similarly armed to the teeth, were separately “worming” their tortuous way, we repeat, through the chaparral proper, or plantations of the low branching live oak, as well as the gigantic ferns, mesquite, cactus, nopal, and fruit laden shrubs, the oblong-leaved mahogany, the bread tree, the fan-leaved abanico, the pirijao languidly swinging its enormous golden fruit in clusters, the royal palm, devoid of foliage along the stem, but softly nodding its high, majestically plumed head; the guava, the banana, the intoxicating chirimoya, the cork oak, the Peruvian tree, the war palm letting its resinous gum slowly ooze forth to capture the silly moths, and even young snakes and lizards which squirmed on the hardening gum like a platter of Palissy ware abruptly galvanised into life.