68 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
through the wildest scenery, while below us lay the valley 
broken into a billowy sea of green hills, and the harboi 
with the coast range beyond, growing soft and mellow 
in the afternoon sunshine. To complete the picture, one 
must clothe it in palms and acacias and tree-ferns, and 
drape it in a tangle of parasitic growth, with abundant 
bloom of the purple Quaresma (Flower of Lent),* the 
Thunbergia vine, with its little straw-colored blossoms 
creeping over every wall and shrub, and the blue and 
yellow Bignonias. We are constantly astonished at the 
variety of palms. A palm is such a rarity in our hot- 
houses, that we easily forget how numerous and varied 
they are in their native forests. We have the scarlet-oak, 
the white-oak, the scrub-oak, the chestnut-oak, the swamp- 
oak, and many others. And so in the tropical forest there 
is the cocoanut-palm, with its swollen, bulb-like stem when 
young, its tall, straight trunk when full grown, its cluster 
of heavy fruit, and its long, plume-like, drooping flower ; f 
the Coccoeiro, with its slighter trunk and pendant branch- 
es of small berry-like fruit ; the Palmetto, with its tender 
succulent bud on the summit of the stem, which is used 
as a vegetable here, and makes an excellent substitute 
for cabbage ; the thorny Icaree or Cari, a variety of fan- 
palms, with their leaves cut like ribbons ; and very many 
others, each with its characteristic foliage and appearance. : 
* A species of Melastoma, with very large, conspicuous flowers. L. A 
t This is not, however, native to Brazil. 
J Indeed, their diversity is much greater even than that of our Oaks, and it 
would require a comprehensive comparison with a majority of our forest-trees 
to match the differences they exhibit among themselves ; and their native 
names, far more euphonic than the systematic names under which they are 
entered in our scientific works, are as familiar to the Indians as those of our 
beerhes, birches, hazels, chestnuts, poplars, or willows to our farmers. There 
