Rambles about Rio de Janeiro 71 



leading through the forest beyond the hotel. The track 

 goes around the jutting shoulders of the hills, and rich 

 tropical forests overhang it. Great tree- trunks veiled 

 by creeping aroids, covered with parasitic growths, 

 rise on all sides. Orchids were abundant. For part 

 of the way the track runs alongside a section of the 

 old Jesuit aqueduct built of massive masonry, which 

 still in part provides a supply of water to the city. 

 The masonry was covered with a thick coat of green 

 mosses, and in the chinks grew delicate ferns. In the 

 narrow ravines, through which the streamlets came 

 bounding from the hills, tree-ferns were abundant. The 

 great variety of families and genera represented in 

 these hillside growths was one of the things which 

 attracted immediate attention. In our northern wood- 

 lands there generally appear to be certain dominant 

 forms in a given locality; in one place the hills are 

 covered by oaks and chestnuts ; in another by pines and 

 birches; in still another by beeches and poplars. It 

 was not so on the mountains about Rio de Janeiro. 

 There were indeed certain species, individuals of which 

 were more numerous than others, but there was every- 

 where a bewildering variety of species. The larger 

 trees within a radius of a quarter of a mile belonged to 

 at least twenty families and forty genera, and I have 

 no doubt, taking into account the woody shrubs, these 

 numbers would be doubled. Brazil is the metropolis 

 of the Melastomacecz, and if any family appeared more 

 prominent than another it was these. There were 

 many species of palms. It was just the period of the 

 springtime, if there can be said to be a vernal period 

 in a land where "everlasting spring abides, " and many 

 of the larger trees were in bloom. It was an impressive 

 sight to stand on a jutting eminence and look down over 



