46 MISSION OF COLLECTOR TO BRAZIL. 



■weedy composites^ &o. ; second, the parts always under water, in 

 which grow water-weeds, tall reeds, and several species of trees of 

 small growth ; and, third, the parts which, although under water 

 during the rainy season, are now dry, or, at least, solid enough to 

 bear die weight of a man. These parts are somewhat extensive, 

 and are all covered with dense wood, the trees being of consider- 

 able size, though not to be compared with those in the hill forest 

 in this respect In these semi-aciuatic thickets I have spent 

 nearly the whole of to-day. Once fairly into these woods, there 

 is no hewing the way through them as in those on the hills, for 

 though the trees grow so thickly that it is impossible to see many 

 yards'" around, there is no underwood. The ground is covered 

 with black mud, so soft that the feet sink up to the ankles in it 

 at every step. The trees all throw out numerous roots from their 

 trunks, up to a height of three or four feet, which in the wet 

 season are nearly all below the water. The want of under vege- 

 tation is made up for, in a great degree, by abundance of epi- 

 phytes growing on the trees themselves. In the larger forest it 

 is only the oldest of the trees that are thickly coyered with such 

 plants, and the bulk of them are Brppi^l^aceous things ; but here 

 eyery tree is loaded with Orchids, Bromeliacm^ Aroids, Ferns, 

 Cactuses, &c., the Orchids predominating, and these chiefly 

 Oncidiums of several species, the old flower-spikes of some of 

 them being of immense length. A species of Cattleya, which I 

 take to be C. bicolor, is also common (of this I will send a few 

 plants), and several other species of Orchids unknown to me. 

 None of these are in flower at present. 



July 21st. — Hired a mule this morning, and set out on an 

 excursion to a village called Sao Jose de Cacaria, which lies about 

 twenty miles from Belem in a westerly direction. The road 

 crosses the Rio Santa Anna a short distance, and leads through a 

 track of marshy land intercepted by ridges of low hills for several 

 miles, when, at the Rio Sao Pedro, another sluggish stream, it 

 turns a little more to the north, in the direction of the bed of the 

 liver, which it continues to follow as far as I went. I halted at a 

 venda, a few miles from the village of Sao Jose, and sent back 

 my mule to Belem by a man who volunteered to take it for a 

 small consideratiou : he was a muleteer whom I had seen before at 

 Belem. Here I made up my mind to stay for a day or two, for 

 the purpose of^earchiug the woods in the neighbourhood. 



July 22nrf. — In one of the wooded hillside valleys near the 

 venda, I this forenoon came upon some large masses of a beautiful 



