Chap. VII. WILD PINE-APPLES. 293 



they are called, situated five miles from the village. 

 The road thither led through a varied and beautiful 

 forest, containing many gigantic trees. I missed 

 the Assai, Miriti, Paxiuba, and other palms which 

 are all found only on rich moist soils, but the noble 

 Bacaba was not uncommon, and there was a gi'eat 

 diversity of dwarf species of Maraja palms (Bactris), one 

 of which, called the Peuririma, was very elegant, 

 grooving to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, with a 

 stem no thicker than a man's finger. On arriving at 

 the campo all this beautiful forest abruptly ceased, 

 and we saw before us an oval tract of land, three or 

 four miles in circumference, destitute even of the 

 smallest bush. The only vegetation was a crop of 

 coarse hairy grass gTowing in patches. The forest 

 formed a hedge all round the isolated field, and its 

 borders were composed in great part of trees which do 

 not grow in the dense virgin forest, such as a gi'eat 

 variety of bushy Melastomas, low Byrsomina trees, 

 m3rrtles, and Lacre-trees, whose berries exude globules 

 of wax resembling gamboge. On the margins of the 

 campo wild pine-apples also grew in gi^eat quantity. 

 The fruit was of the same shape as our cultivated kind, 

 but much smaller, the size being that of a moderately 

 large apple. We gathered several quite ripe ; they were 

 pleasant to the taste, of the true pine-apple flavour, but 

 had an abundance of fully developed seeds, and only a 

 small quantity of eatable pulp. There was no path 

 beyond this campo ; in fact all beyond is terra incognita 

 to the inhabitants of Villa Nova. 



The only interesting Mammalian animal which I saw 



