1832.] APPEARANCE OF THE FORESTS. 25 



prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of 

 separating- thirty families, who had lived together for many yearr., 

 even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that iu 

 liumanity and good feeling he was superior to the con.lnon run 

 of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of 

 interest and selfish habit. I may mention one Aerj^ trifling anec- 

 dote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story 

 of cruelty. I Mas crossing a ferry with a negro, who was un- 

 commonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I 

 talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand 

 near his face, lie, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and 

 was going to strike him ; for instantly, with a frightened look 

 and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget 

 my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great 

 powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he 

 thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degrada- 

 tion lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal. 



April 13t7i. — In returning we spent two days at Socego, and 

 I employed them in collecting insects in the forest. The greater 

 niunher of trees, although so lofty, are not more than three nr 

 four feet in circumference. There are, of course, a few of much 

 greater dimension. Senlior Manuel was then making a canoe 

 70 feet in lengtii from a solid trunk, which had originally been 

 110 feet long, and of great thickness. The contrast of palm 

 trees, growinn' amidst the common branching kinds, never fails 

 to give the scene an intertropical character. Here the woods 

 were ornamented by the Cabbage Palm — one of the most beau- 

 tiful of its family. AVith a stem so narrow that it might be 

 cla«;ped with the two hands, it waves its elegant head at the 

 height of forty or fifty feet above the ground. The woody 

 creepers, themselves covered by other creepers, were of great 

 thickness : some which 1 measured were two feet in circumference. 

 Many of the older trees presente<l a very curious appearance from 

 the tresses of a liana hanuino: from their boujrhs, and resembling 

 bundles of hav. If the eve was turned from the world of foliage 

 above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme 

 elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosae. The latter, in 

 some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches 

 high. In walking across these thick beds of mimoEes, a broad track 



