262 UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA. Cuap, X. 
the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and 
spacious forest, pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a 
rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, 
on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody 
climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind 
or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest 
degree by groves of the Urucuri palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by 
thousands under the crowns of the lofty ordinary forest trees; their 
smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty 
feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form 
arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit 
of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage 
I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places 
where we encamped. It is similar in size and shape to the date, and 
has a pleasantly-flavoured juicy pulp. ‘The Indians would not eat it; 
I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds 
of palm fruit, whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable. 
Vicente shook his head when he saw me one day eating a quantity of 
the Urucuri plums. Iam not sure they were not the cause of a severe 
indigestion under which I suffered for many days afterwards. 
In passing slowly along the interminable wooded banks week after 
week, I observed that there were three tolerably distinct kinds of coast 
and corresponding forest constantly recurring on this upper river. First, 
there were the lowand most recent alluvial deposits,—a mixture of sand 
and mud, covered with tall, broad-leaved grasses, or with the arrow-grass 
before described, whose feathery-topped flower-stem rises to a height of 
fourteen or fifteen feet. The only large trees which grow in these places 
are the Cecropiz. Many of the smaller and newer islands were of this 
description. Secondly, there were the moderately high banks, which 
are only partially overflowed when the flood season is at its height ; 
these are wooded with a magnificent varied forest, in which a great 
variety of palms and broad-leaved Marantaceze form a very large pro- 
portion of the vegetation. The general foliage is of a vivid light-green 
hue ; the water frontage is sometimes covered with a diversified mass of 
greenery ; but where the current sets strongly against the friable earthy 
banks, which at low water are twenty-five to thirty feet high, these are 
cut away, and expose a section of forest, where the trunks of trees 
loaded with epiphytes appear in massy colonnades. One might safely 
say that three-fourths of the land bordering the Upper Amazons, for a 
thousand miles, belong to this second class. The third description of 
coast is the higher, undulating, clayey land, which appears only at long 
intervals, but extends sometimes for many miles along the borders of 
the river. The coast at these places is sloping, and composed of red 
or variegated clay. The forest is of a different character from that of 
the lower tracts ; it is rounder in outline, more uniform in its general 
aspect; palms are much less numerous and of peculiar species—the 
strange bulging-stemmed species, Iriartea ventricosa, and the slender 
glossy-leaved Bacdba-f (Atnocarpus minor), being especially charac- 
teristic ; and, in short, animal life, which imparts some cheerfulness to 
the other parts of the river, is seldom apparent. ‘This “terra firme,” 
