1832., APPEARANCE OF THE FORESTS. 25 



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

 separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, 

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

 humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run 

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

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

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

 of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who Mas 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. He, 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 1 8lh. — In returning we spent two days at Socego, and 

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

 number of trees, although so lofty, are not more than three or 

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

 greater dimension. Senhor Manuel was then making a canoe 

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

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

 trees, growing 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. With a stem so narrow that it might be 

 clasped 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 I measured were two feet in circumference. 

 Many of the older trees presented a very curious appearance from 

 the tresses of a liana hanging from their boughs, and resembling 

 bundles of hay. If the eye 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 mimosee. The latter, in 

 some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a few incite* 

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



