When the road called de Malbucho was opened by the president of Quito in 1804, as a communication between the capital and the coast, this was intended to have been the port; but on examination it was found, that the mouth of the river was almost choked by a sand-bank, and a schooner sent down by the Viceroy of Peru to examine the port foundered on the bar. To the northward of La Tola there is a convenient harbour, called Limones, and another, at a short distance to the northward of this, is called Pianguapi, or San Pedro; all these communicate by an estuary, which receives its fresh water from the river Tola.
The country adjoining the line of coast reaching from Atacames to La Tola is entirely covered with wood of an excellent quality both for the cabinet-maker and the architect; for the former the principal varieties are the caobano, a species of mahogany, very large, and in great abundance; ebony, cascol, a hard wood, completely black, and very large; pusilde, of the colour and almost of the consistency of ivory; of this wood they make billiard balls: there is also red sandal wood, of a beautiful lively red colour, and very fragrant; the bark contains such an abundance of aromatic resin, that when heated by the sun it exudes and scents the air to the distance of five hundred yards from the tree. The natives use the resin dissolved in rum to cure wounds. Here too is the guayacan, of a green hue, with dark brown veins: this wood is remarkably hard, the tree is very lofty and straight, and on this account the natives generally choose it for the upright posts which support their houses: when kept continually wet for eight or ten months it petrifies, and it is a common thing for the natives to dig at the foot of an old post, and break off pieces of the petrified wood for flints.
For architectural purposes timber grows in great luxuriance, and to an extraordinary size. There is no doubt that ere long the dock-yard of Guayaquil and the Peruvian markets must be supplied with guachapeli, cedar, robles, a kind of oak, marias, balsams, laurels, and other trees from the woods of Esmeraldas, which as yet may be said to be untouched.
Besides the varieties just mentioned, there is an abundance of ceibos, balsas, and _matapalos_, which are of an enormous size, and supply timber for canoes and rafts. The matapalo, kill tree, is so called because it entwines itself with any other trees that are near it, and by depriving them of their sap, or preventing the circulation, destroys them. I have seen several of these trees, which three feet above the ground measured upwards of twenty-five feet in circumference. The wood is soft and light, and of no other use than that to which it is applied by the natives. A kind of gum exudes from the bark, or is drawn from it by making incisions, and in many parts of Peru and Colombia is used as an antidote for ruptures.