130 THE TROnCAL WORLD. 



the neighbouring trees, and deceives the traveller, who fancies 

 that a verdant hill is rising before him. Its wood is much 

 firmer than that of the fir, and is, or will be, of great importance 

 to the ship-builder. On the Upper Barima alone, a river of 

 Guiana hardly even known by name in Europe, Schomburgk 

 found the giant tree growing in such profusion that it could 

 easily afford sufficient timber for the proudest fleet that ever 

 rode the ocean. 



The graceful tapering form of the Graminece, or grasses, 

 belongs to every zone ; but it is only in the warmer regions of 

 the globe that we find the colossal Bambusacece, rivalling in 

 grandeur the loftiest trees of the primeval forest. 



In New Grenada and Quito the Guadua, one of these giant 

 grasses, ranks next to the sugar-cane and maize as the plant 

 most indispensable to man. It forms dense jungles, not only in 

 the lower regions of the country, but in the valleys of the 

 Andes, 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The culms attain 

 a thickness of six inches, the single joints are twenty inches 

 long, and the leaves are of indescribable beauty. A whole hut 

 can be built and thatched with the guadua, while the single 

 joints are extensively used as water-vessels and drinking-cups. 



India, South China, and the Eastern Archipelago are the 

 seats of the real bamboos, which grow in a variety of genera 

 and species, as well on the banks of lakes and rivers in low 

 marshy grounds, as in the more elevated mountainous regions. 

 They chiefly form the impenetrable jungles, the seat of the 

 tiger and the python. Sometimes a hundred culms spring 

 from a single root, not seldom as thick as a man, and towering 

 to a height of eighty o-r a hundred feet. Fancy the grace of 

 our meadow grasses, united with the lordly growth of the 

 Italian poplar, and you will have a faint idea of the beauty of 

 a clump of bamboos. 



The variety of purposes to which these colossal reeds can be 

 applied almost rivals the multifarious uses of the cocoa-nut 

 palm itself. Splitting the culm in its whole length into very 

 thin pieces, the industrious Chinese then twist them together 

 into strong ropes, for tracking their vessels on their numerous 

 rivers and canals. The sails of their junks, as well as their 

 cables and rigging, are made of bamboo ; and in the southern 

 province of Sechuen, not only nearly every house is built solely 



