CHAPTER IV.
VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE NEW WORLD.
Nature, said Linné, is admirable above all in the smallest things: _Natura maxime miranda in minimis_. He might, perhaps, have more justly said, _Natura non minus miranda in minimis quam in maximis_: Nature is not less wonderful in the least than in the greatest. Whether any created thing occupies a more or less considerable space, or contains a greater or lesser quantity of matter, is of no importance to the naturalist, who only studies the structure of the organs, the springs of life, and the different forces which set them in motion; and considered from this point of view, a vibrio[169] and an elephant, a penicillium and a baobab, possess for him the same importance, the same amount of interest. It would, however, be unjust not to recognize the fact that there is something very legitimate in the kind of reverential admiration which every man is conscious of in the presence of those things that symbolize, to a certain extent, power, strength, majesty, endurance--of those that possess in a high degree the two valuable qualities of force and greatness. Coleridge tells us that we admire the cataract because it is the type of power. Probably our feelings for the oak are connected with its emblematic properties of permanency, vigour, and durability. All the logic of logicians, and all the sentiment of natural philosophers, will never induce the mass of men to regard with the same interest an ant and a lion, a tuft of moss and a forest of oaks, a grain of sand and an Alpine peak. I do not think, therefore, that I am stooping to a merely vulgar prejudice in signalling out to the reader, among the vegetables of the forests, those whose exceptional dimensions and venerable antiquity are for every traveller an object of astonishment and curiosity. The truth is, that from their contemplation we derive a more vivid conception of Almighty Power than from the examination of even the most wonderful microscopical mechanism. To the still small voice of Nature our ears are deafened by the clash and clang of an ever-active world; but we cannot refuse to listen to the roar of the ocean or the reverberation of the thunder. As we move swiftly onward in the press of the crowd and the race of life, we ignore the tiny blade and the delicate organism beneath our feet; but our eyes must perforce be opened to the splendours of the sea, the undulating summits of snow-crowned mountains, the sapphire vault of the starry heavens. Those things realize to us, at once and with impressive force, the ubiquitous majesty of the Divine Builder. And it is well that they should lift us for a while above the materialism of our daily lives into a purer atmosphere of thought and feeling--should bid us, while still lingering in the dusty track, expand our souls to hear
"The mighty waters rolling evermore."
It is not only in tropical regions that we meet with the giants of the vegetable world. Europe possesses a few of them; isolated, it is true, but comparable in their stature to the most robust denizens of the Torrid Zone: such are the chestnut-tree of Etna, and the plane of Boudjoukdéré, near Constantinople, of which so many travellers have spoken. The remains of the virgin forests of North America also abound in species analogous to our own, and capable of attaining, with an almost incalculable longevity, truly extraordinary proportions.
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The lofty table-lands of California (the Rocky Mountains) nourish an entire tribe of gigantic Coniferæ, frequently assembled in immense forests. The _Pinus Lambertiana_, the _Pinus Sabiniana_, and the _Pinus insignis_, are not less than 160 to 180 feet in height; the _Douglas Fir_ boasts of an almost equal stature, with a circumference which varies from 18 to 36 feet. Yet these colossal trees are surpassed by the _Sequoia sempervirens_, which is 240 to 260 feet high, and by the Titan of Titans, the huge _Wellingtonia gigantea_, which is also a Sequoia. I shall mention a few individuals of the latter species, whose dimensions may defy all comparison with the greatest trees of the Tropics.
According to Müller, about ninety-four of these Coniferæ flourish on a plateau of the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5400 feet. They are distributed in small groups over a fertile soil. The gold-seekers have named one of them the "Miner's Cabin." Its trunk, 320 feet in height, presents an excavation 16 feet in width. The "Three Sisters" are individuals springing from one root; the "Old Bachelor," stripped of its branches by successive hurricanes, stands in solitary desolation; the "Family" consists of two aged trees around which four-and-twenty scions have sprung up. The "Riding-School" is an enormous hollow trunk, prostrate on the ground, into which a man on horseback may enter as far as thirty yards. Another hollow trunk has been exhibited at San Francisco, where they have constructed out of it a saloon, adorned with tapestry and furniture, capable of accommodating forty persons.
Other resinous trees of smaller dimensions grow in the more or less humid localities of North America; such are the _Chamoecyparis Chamæcyparis sphæroidea_, which does not exceed 80 feet in height, and the Western _Thuya_ of pyramidal outline. Nor must I forget to name, among the Conifers of this continent, the Cypress of Louisiana, a tree of handsome appearance, about 100 feet high and 12 to 15 feet in circumference, which lives, it is said, 5500 to 6000 years. Its leaves are shrunken like those of the larch; and from its roots, somewhat deeply buried, spring several protuberances, or rounded conical exostoses, which sometimes grow to the height of three feet without bourgeoning.
The forests of the West and of the South which have hitherto escaped the torch and the axe of the pioneer present to the traveller's admiring gaze those magnificent species described so eloquently by Chateaubriand and Cooper, and which are even less remarkable for their gigantic stature than for the majestic elegance of their port, the beauty of their foliage, and the dazzling splendour of their flowers. Some of these forests are partly formed of Oaks whose leaves assume in autumn a purple tint, like the "pupureum lumen" of the Latin poet. In others the dominant trees are the Plane of the West, the Maple, the round-crested Tulip, the large-leaved Catalpa, the Magnolia with white and scented blossoms. To their trunks clings a whole world of climbing, creeping, and parasitic plants; as the Virgin Vine, the Sumach, and the Virginian Jasmine.
Mexico, as far as relates to its climate and productions, has been divided into three distinctly marked regions, defined not by latitude, but by the elevation of various portions of its territory. The upper region, or Cold Lands, is that of the lofty mountains; the mean region, or Temperate Lands, that of the intermediate plateaus; the inferior region, or Hot Lands, is that of the low plains, sometimes arid, sometimes marshy or wooded.
The arborescent Flora of the first two regions very nearly approximates to that of our northern countries; it principally consists of Pines, Firs, Oaks, and Arbute Trees. But in the Hot Lands the vegetation generally assumes, as we descend towards the south, all the characteristics of the tropical Flora. The feathery and graceful Palm trees re-appear, mingled with Coryphas, Oreodoxas, Malpighiaceæ, and Bignoniaceæ. There also grows the _Crescentia cujete_, or Calabash-tree, which is likewise found in the Antilles; it has a tortuous trunk, long branches extended horizontally, and ovoid fruits, clothed with a hard woody bark, which the Indians fabricate into vessels of divers forms, painting them in the liveliest colours.
Mexico is the country of the _Morus tinctoria_ and the _Hæmatoxylon Campechianum_. These two trees furnish the dye-wood which forms so important an article of commerce: the first, under the name of the "yellow wood of Tampico" or "Tuspan;" the second, under that of "Campeachy wood." It is in the hottest and most humid parts of the southern provinces of this Republic that we meet, for the first time, with one of the most precious trees of the Equinoctial Zone, the Cacao-tree (_Theobroma cacao_), whose bruised and roasted seeds, mixed with variable amounts of sugar and starch, form the different kinds of Cocoa; or, sweetened and flavoured with vanilla or other substances, the article known as Chocolate. It is but a small tree, with large entire leaves, and clustered flowers growing from the sides of the old stems and branches. Its large pentagonal fruits vary from six to ten inches in length and three to five in breadth, and contain between fifty and a hundred seeds.
The _Vanilla planifolia_, another Mexican native, famous for its succulent fruit, is a plant of the Orchidaceous order, which climbs about other trees in the manner of ivy. It is the only genus of the family which possesses any economical value. The delicate perfume of its fruit is due to the presence of benzoic acid, which forms in crystals upon the pod, if left undisturbed.
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Already, in Central America, we encounter the first ranks, the vanguard, as it were, of those vast impenetrable forests which spread over the whole northern region of South America to the banks of the Amazon, and cover with dense foliage immense areas in Guiana and Brazil. If we would pause again to wonder at the Giants of the Vegetable Kingdom, we shall find many well worthy of our consideration. Such, for example, is the _Bertholletia excelsa_, a colossal Lecythidacean on the borders of the Orinoco, whose large fruits are known in Europe as "Brazil nuts," the seeds being enclosed in large woody vessels. The Sapucaya (_Lecythis ollaria_) is scarcely less abundant, and of immense height. Its fruit, popularly called "Monkey's Drinking-cups" (Cuyas de Macaco), consists of a cup-like vessel, with a circular hole at the top, in which a natural lid fits neatly. When the nuts are ripe this lid becomes loosened, and the heavy cup falls with a crash, scattering the nuts over the ground.
"What attracted us chiefly," says a traveller in the virgin forests,[170] "were the colossal trees. The general run had not remarkably thick stems; the great and uniform height to which they grow without emitting a branch, was a much more noticeable feature than their thickness; but at intervals of a furlong or so a veritable giant towered up. Only one of these monstrous trees can grow within a given space; it monopolises the domain, and none but individuals of much inferior size can find a footing near it. The cylindrical trunks of these larger trees were generally 20 to 25 feet in circumference. Von Martius mentions having measured trees in the Parà district belonging to various species (Symphonia coccinea, Lecythis spirula, and Cratæva Tagia), which were 50 to 60 feet in girth at the point where they become cylindrical. The height of the vast column-like stems could not be less than 100 feet from the ground to their lowest branch. Mr. Leavens, at the saw-mills, told me they frequently squared logs for sawing 100 feet long, of the Pas d'Arco and the Massaranduba. The total height of these trees, stem and crown together, may be estimated at from 180 to 200 feet: where one of them stands, the vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees as a domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city.
"A very remarkable feature in these trees," says Mr. Bates, "is the growth of buttressed-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces between these buttresses, which are generally thin walls of wood, form spacious chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a stable: some of them are large enough to hold half-a-dozen persons. The purpose of these structures is as obvious, at the first glance, as that of the similar props of brickwork which support a high wall. They are not peculiar to one species, but are common to most of the larger forest trees. Their nature and manner of growth are explained when a series of young trees of different ages is examined. It is then seen that they are the roots which have raised themselves ridge-like out of the earth; growing gradually upwards as the increasing height of the tree required augmented support. Thus they are plainly intended to sustain the massive crown and trunk in these crowded forests, whose lateral growth of the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by the multitude of competitors."
Scarcely less remarkable, and certainly not less useful, than the Traveller's Tree of Madagascar is the Massaranduba, or Cow Tree, of these grand Brazilian wildernesses. It is one of the largest of the forest monarchs, but rather reminds you of monarchy in its decay than of regal pomp, owing to its deeply-scored reddish and ragged back. A decoction of this bark is used as a red dye for cloth. The copious milk-like fluid which the tree supplies, and which may even be drawn from dry logs that have stood for days in the sun, is wholesome and nutritious, if taken in moderate quantities. On exposure to the air it soon thickens into an excessively tenacious glue.
But, apart from these monstrous trees, the virgin forest possesses an abundance of interest for even the least observant traveller, while in its various phases it is adapted to astonish, to impress, and to awe a thoughtful mind. It is true that it does not boast of that profusion of floral ornament, of those gay and exquisite buds and blossoms, which make the charm of our English woods; but in its infinite variety of foliage the grace of colour and beauty of form are ever present. What most seizes upon the soul, however, is its intense silence--which the occasional scream of some wild animal, or the infrequent song of some pensive bird, or the sudden crash of some over-toppling tree, does but render the more significant and appalling. The hush is like that which prevails on a battle-field before the dread voices of the cannon speak of death and carnage, but, unlike that hush, it is never interrupted. Morning comes with its cold gray lights, noon with its warmth and radiance and splendour, night with its orbed moon and pearly dews, but the hush still reigns undisturbed, and it seems to the traveller as if it would never be broken but by the sounds which shall proclaim the end of all things!
It is rather by the varied characteristics of the species which compose it, by their fantastic structures and useful properties, than by its gigantic outcomes, that the wild flora of these forest-regions appeals to our admiration. We are struck at first by the infinite variety, richness, and elegance of the vegetable forms. Especially do we pause in wonder before those glorious Tree-Ferns which I take to be the finest growth of the tropical wilderness. These Ferns, from 36 to 50 feet in height, are not unlike Palms in their physiognomy; their stem is only less upright, shorter, and more scaly; their foliage, slightly dentated on the edges, is more delicate, of a looser and more transparent texture. To this family belong the _Blechnum Brasiliense_ and the _Alsophila horrida_. Not less attractive in appearance are the _Clusia rosea_ or the _Carolinea insignis_. The former of these trees belong to a family (that of the Clusiaceæ) nearly all whose representatives throw off from every point of their branches long aerial roots. The traveller reposes with a feeling of Sybaritic delight under its thick and evergreen foliage, enriched with brilliant flowers. The second, with its shrunken leaves, owes the specific epithet (_insignis_, "remarkable") which botanists have imposed upon it, to the peculiar structure of its flowers. The latter bear in the centre of their chalice a great number of stamens, which form a silken tuft of the most graceful design.
The Gramineæ, like the Ferns,--to use an expression of Humboldt's,--"ennoble themselves" under the Tropics: witness the Bamboo, the Sugar-Cane, the Sorgho, and the great Panicums. Of the latter genus we have already seen in Africa numerous species. America in its turn offers to our attention the _Panicum maximum_ and _plicatum_, wood-inhabiting Gramineæ, which without attaining to the dimensions of the bamboo, or even to that of the cane, far surpass that of their European congener, the millet.
The graceful palms abound in South America. The greatest of all, the Cocoa-tree, seems there to have discovered its true home, for it nowhere else acquires a greater development. There, too, the Banana flourishes marvellously, no less than the Cocoa-tree, in a wild state, and, like the latter, is carefully cultivated on account of its nourishing and savoury fruits. A multitude of lianas and epiphytous plants twine round the trunks and branches of the trees, and frequently choke up their failing life. Some are indigenous to all tropical countries: the _Calamus Rotang_, for example; others are more particularly, or even exclusively, proper to the New World.
The family of Aroideæ is there represented by the _Pothos_, whose fleshy and herbaceous stems are surmounted by leaves sometimes arrow-headed, sometimes digitate or elongated, and always divided by thick cord-like nerves. We know that the Aroideæ alone possess, in the vegetable kingdom, the property of disengaging, while flowering, a heat appreciable by the thermometer. To this family belong the _Caladiums_, a genus closely allied to the Pothos. With these lianas mingle the branching stems of the Passifloræ, or Passion-Flowers, so named because Pierre de Ceza, in his "Histoire du Pérou," asserted that he had recognized in the fantastic flowers of this genus of plants all the instruments of our Saviour's Passion--an idea which could only have been conceived by an imaginative and credulous Spaniard. Elsewhere the Bignonias open by hundreds their large and richly-coloured flowers; the Bauhinias stretch along the trees their long leafless branches, often 40 to 45 feet in length, which sometimes hang vertically from the lofty summits of the Swietenias, or Mahogany trees, and sometimes extend obliquely from one huge trunk to another, like the ropes of a ship. The Tiger-Cats, says Humboldt, display a wonderful agility in mounting or descending these graceful vegetable shrouds.
Upon the umbrageous banks of the Rio Magdalena grows a creeping _Aristolochus_, whose flowers in their extraordinary development surpass those of the _Rafflesia Arnoldi_, measuring often three feet and a half in circumference. The forests of which we are now speaking also nourish numerous species of Convolvulus; I may particularize the _Convolvulus batatas_, a climbing plant, whose roots produce the feculent and saccharine tubercules known over the wide world by the name of "Patates," and frequently but erroneously confounded with that most useful vegetable, the Potato. The root of another Convolvulus, a native of Mexico, constitutes the _Jalap officinalis_, which figures in the veterinary pharmacopoeia as an important purgative.
Certain lianas, common enough in the South American forests, belong to the family of _Sapindaceæ_, which, like the orders Loganiceæ and Euphorbiaceæ, owe their reputation chiefly to the medicinal or poisonous substances extracted from them. Among the Sapindaceæ I shall mention only the genus _Paullinia_, which includes several species endowed with narcotic properties. These properties appear especially developed in the _Paullinia pinnata_. Its bark, leaves, and fruit contain an abundant acrid principle with which the Indians of Brazil prepare a slow but certain poison. The Indians of Guiana extract from the _Paullinia cururu_ another substance with which they envenom their arrows, and which was long supposed to be the veritable _Wourali_. But Sir Richard Schomburgk has shown that the latter formidable poison is really extracted, as I have already recorded, from the _Strychnos toxifera_, a shrub of the family _Loganiaceæ_, which flourishes in Guiana and Brazil. To the same family and the same countries belong the _Ignatia amara_, whose seeds are known by the name of "St. Ignatius' Beans." These beans contain two alkaloids, _Strychnine_ and _Brucine_, which we also extract from the _Nux vomica_, and which must be classed among the most violent poisons known to the toxicologist.
While speaking of the poisonous plants of South America, a few words in reference to the Manchineal (_Hippomane Mancenilla_) will not be inappropriate. This tree thrives best, it is said, on the sea-shore. It bears a profusion of very pretty fruit, resembling in colour and form the Red Apple (the Spanish _Manzanilla_), and exhaling an agreeable, lemon-like odour. They are, therefore, scarcely less beguiling than Dead Sea fruits; but they are also very poisonous, yet less deadly than the milky juice which flows from the slightest incision made in the tree's thick and grayish bark. This juice, received into the stomach, or introduced into the blood through a wound, slays the victim with awful quickness. If it do but touch the skin, it excites a violent irritation, and raises swellings or boils of the worst description. The very vapour which it emits causes a painful itching in the eyes, the lips, and the nostrils. It was formerly asserted that to sleep under the shade of a Manchineal tree was certain death; but the naturalist Jacquin, in the interests of science, courageously made the experiment, and proved the falsity of the story.
The Manchineal is not unfrequently confounded with other poisonous Euphorbiaceæ, as the _Sapium aucuparium_ and the _Excoecaria agallochia_, which flourish in very nearly the same regions. The _Excoecaria_, it is said, is not less dangerous than the Manchineal. It owes its name (_ex_, and _coecus_, "blind") to the circumstance (or the fable) that some European sailors, while felling wood in the forest, having accidentally struck with their axe a tree of this species, were blinded by the milky juice which sprang into their eyes.
By a kind of compensation, the Tropical Forests, which contain so many poisonous plants, produce also a great number of the highest utility to man. Some offer him efficient remedies against the diseases which beset his frame; others nourish him with the fecula of their roots or the delicious substance of their fruits; others again supply him with textile fibres, dyeing or resinous materials, and woods which the artist and the artisan convert to numerous uses. This vegetable wealth has been widely distributed over South America. It will suffice to indicate a few of its more notable sources.
If we direct our attention to medicinal plants, we shall probably find none more precious than the Quinquina, whose bark is the most effective of all febrifuges, and which is endowed, moreover, with very valuable tonic and depuratory properties. Sir Samuel Baker, in his recent address to the British Association at Dundee, pronounced it the traveller's best friend, the powerful weapon with which he could securely enter the African wilderness, and successfully contend against its demon-host of fevers and agues. The Quinquinas (genus, _Cinchona_; family, _Rubiaceæ_) are trees or evergreen shrubs with large and handsome leaves, and flowers whose form and fragrance remind one of the lilac. They are diffused over the two slopes, but chiefly along the eastern slope, of the Andean Cordilleras, in the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The traveller meets them occasionally in picturesque groups or thickets which the Peruvians call _Manchas_ (spots); but they are more frequently scattered in immense forests.
What of the lactiferous and resinous plants? South America is the native land of the trees whence we extract the resinous gums called "Animé d'Amérique," "White Amber," and "Soft Brazilian Copal," and the "Hevea Guyanensis," which furnishes the greater portion of the caoutchouc imported into Europe.
Caoutchouc was described for the first time in 1736, by the scientific travellers Bouguer and La Condamine, members of a Commission despatched to Peru by the Parisian "Académie des Sciences," to measure an arc of the meridian. A few years later, the engineer Fresneau, who resided for a long time in Guiana, collected, with the assistance of a native, ample information in reference to caoutchouc and the tree which produced it. Finally, in 1768, was found in a work by the traveller Aublet on the Flora of Guiana, the description and figure of the _Hevea_. This tree attains a height of 50 to 70 feet. The almond enclosed in the kernels of its fruits is white, of a very agreeable taste, and much esteemed by the Indians, who also extract from it an oil for seasoning their food.
The Banana, the American Agave, the Bamboo, and divers Palm-trees supply the inhabitants of South America with suitable materials for the fabrication of various tissues, from the finest and most brilliant linen cloth to the rude mats which ornament the cabin of the savage. Trees bearing fruits or edible roots are innumerable. To the Bananas and Cocoa-trees which I have already mentioned, we may add, as the most useful, the Maranteas or Canneas, especially the _Maranta arundinacea_, _M. alloya_, and _M. nobilis_, whose roots, rasped and washed, constitute the popular and valuable farina so widely known as _Arrow-root_; the Guavas (_Psidium pyriferum_, and _P. pomiferum_), whose gilded fruits contain a succulent and perfumed pulp; the Papaw tree (_Carica papaya_), resembling the Palm in its port and aspect, and also loaded with large yellowish fruit, whose flesh is exceedingly savoury and aromatic. The Papaw, moreover, enjoys some extremely remarkable properties; thus, its milky juice exhales, when burnt, an ammoniacal odour, and chemical analysis has recognized therein the presence of _fibrine_. Mix some of this juice in water, plunge into the mixture fresh hard meat, and in a few moments it will become exquisitely tender. The very exhalations of the tree operate in the same manner, and the inhabitants of the regions where it flourishes suspend to its branches such meat and poultry as they wish to soften.
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The immense forests of Brazil and Guiana are for the whole world an inexhaustible storehouse of woods for dyeing and cabinet work. They spread their dense masses of foliage along the borders of the sea, where the Mangroves (_Rhizophora mangle_) plunge their adventitious roots into the mud inundated by the surging tides of those regions, and form a kind of impenetrable palisade, behind which grow in infinite variety trees of the costliest timber. Such are the _Swieteniæ_, or Mahogany trees; the _Ferolia Guyanensis_, which supplies the well-known rose or satin wood; the _Jacaranda Brasiliensis_, and the _Dalbergia_, which yield the violet ebony; the _Sterculia acuminata_, whose flowers exhale a foetid odour, and whose timber, called "stinkwood," is nevertheless held in high esteem on account of its durability, the fineness of its texture, and the excellent polish of which it is susceptible. Nor must we forget the _Cæsalpineæ_, whose woods are impregnated with a red colouring matter which varies in tint according to the species, and which are largely employed by the dyer under the names of "Brazil wood" and "Pernambuco wood." A great number of other woods which we procure from these countries, and which are in daily use in cabinet work, toys, marquetry, and dyeing, belong to vegetable species as yet undetermined. We might, however, almost venture to assert that whatever tree you accidentally and at haphazard struck down in these forests, either its timber, bark, or roots would be found capable of being utilized.
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I have not mentioned, among the species proper to the Forests of the New World, those which are common with our own, and which abound upon elevated lands. The extraordinary height to which not only isolated mountains, but whole districts rise, in the vicinity of the Equator, and the low temperature which is the consequence of this elevation, provide the inhabitant of the Torrid Zone with a remarkable spectacle. For while, as Humboldt remarks, he may look around him upon groves of palms and bananas, he also sees those vegetable forms which are regarded as more particularly belonging to the countries of the North. Cypresses, firs, and oaks, barberries and alders, closely resembling our own, cover the table-lands of Southern Mexico and that part of the Andes which the Equator traverses. Thus Nature allows the denizen of the Torrid Zone to see, without quitting his native land, all the vegetable forms of the earth, at the same time that from one pole to the other the entire vault of heaven reveals to his gaze its luminous worlds.
I conclude my account of the South American Forests with a picture taken from the interesting volume of Mr. Bates, and drawn on the bank of a forest stream flowing into the Murncupé. "A glorious vegetation," he says, "piled up to an immense height, clothes the banks of the creek, which traverses a broad tract of semi-cultivated ground, and the varied masses of greenery are lighted up with the sunny glow. Open palm-thatched huts peep forth at intervals from amidst groves of banana, mango, cotton, and papaw trees and palms. Both banks are masked by lofty walls of green drapery, here and there a break occurring. The projecting boughs of the trees are hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an endless variety of creeping plants clothe the water frontage, some of which, especially the Bignonias, are ornamented with large, gaily-coloured flowers. Art could not have assorted together beautiful vegetable forms so harmoniously as is here done by Nature. Palms, as usual, form a large proportion of the lower trees; some of them, however, shoot up their slim stems to a height of sixty feet or more, and wave their branches of nodding plumes between you and the sky. One kind of palm, the Pashiúba (_Iriartea Exorhiza_), which grows here in greater abundance than elsewhere, is especially attractive. It is not one of the tallest kinds, for when full-grown its height is not more, perhaps, than forty feet; the leaves are somewhat less drooping, and the leaflets much broader than in other species, so that they have not that feathery appearance which those of some palms have, but still they possess their own peculiar beauty."
Probably there is no richer field on earth for the naturalist, the poet, or the artist than the virgin forest;--
"To mark the structure of a plant or tree, And all fair things of earth, how fair they be!"