FAZENDA LIFE. 109 
but while the meal was making ready and a fire building 
for the boiling of coffee, the stewing of chicken, rice, and 
other creature comforts, we wandered at will in the wood. 
This was the most beautiful, because the wildest and most 
primitive, specimen of tropical forest we hare yet seen. 
I think no description prepares one for the difference 
between this forest and our own, even though the latter 
' O 
be the " forest primeval." It is not merely the difference 
of the vegetation, but the impenetrability of the mass here 
that makes the density, darkness, and solemnity of the 
woods so impressive. It seems as if the mode of growth 
many of the trees shooting up to an immense height, but 
branching only toward the top were meant to give room 
to the legion of parasites, sipos, lianas, and climbing plants 
of all kinds which fill the intervening spaces. There is one 
fact which makes the study of the tropical forest as inter- 
esting to the geologist as to the botanist, namely, its rela- 
tion to the vegetable world of past ages hidden in the 
rocks. The tree-ferns, the Chamaerops, the Pandanus, the 
Araucarias, are all modern representatives of past types, 
and this walk in the forest was an important one to Mr. 
Agassiz, because he made out one of those laws of growth 
which unite the past and the present. The Chamasrops is a 
palm belonging to the ancient vegetable world, but having 
its representatives in our days. The modern Chamasrops, 
with its fan-like leaves spreading on one level, stands struc- 
turally lower than the Palms with pinnate leaves, which 
belong almost exclusively to our geological age, and have 
numerous leaflets arranged along either side of a central 
axis. The young Palms were exceedingly numerous, spring- 
ing up at every step upon our path, some of them not more 
than two inches high, while their elders towered fifty feet 
