50 ASPECTS OP TROPICAL NATURE 



to take part in the sport, had been steeped in water, and then 

 flung along with the infusion into the lagune. At least five 

 hundred Indians stood on the banks among the high rushes, or 

 on the trunks of trees, armed with arrows, harpoons, and clubs. 

 At first only small fishes appeared upon the surface, and, as if 

 stunned and then suddenly awakening, sought to leap upon the 

 bank. Then the larger species were seen to float on the waters, 

 or to make similar efforts to escape from the poisoned element. 

 The whole day long the canoes of the Indians were passing on 

 the lagune, and the same bustle reigned along the banks. The 

 whistling of the arrows was incessantly heard, along with the 

 beating of the clubs upon the water, while on land no less 

 activity was displayed in cutting up, smoking, and salting the 

 fish. Castelnau counted thirty-five difi"erent species, — among 

 others the famous electrical eel, — and estimated the number 

 caught at 50,000 or 60,000, many of whom measured a foot 

 or more in length. Although the lagune was thus poisoned, 

 the Indians drank the water with impunity, and the river tor- 

 toises and alligators seemed to be equally untouched by the 

 Barbasco juice, which proved so fatal to the fishes. 



The inundations of the Amazon, which often extend many 

 miles inland, essentially modify the character of the bordering 

 forest ; for it is only beyond their verge that the enormous fig 

 and laurel trees, the Lecythas and the Bertholletias, appear 

 in all their grandeur. As here the underwood is less dense 

 and more dwarfish, it is easy to measure the colossal trunks, 

 and to admire their proportions, often towering to a height of 

 120 feet, and measuring fifteen feet in diameter above the pro- 

 jecting roots. Enormous mushrooms spring from the decayed 

 ; leaves, and numberless parasites rest upon the trunks and 

 branches. The littoral forest, on the contrary, is of more 

 i humble growth. The trunks, branchless in their lower part, 

 I clothed with a thinner and a smoother bark, and covered with 

 \ a coat of mud according to the height of the previous inunda- 

 ) tion, stand close together, and form above a mass of interlacing 

 r branches. These are the sites of the cacao-tree and of the 

 ; prickly sarsaparilla, which is here gathered in large quantities 

 for the druggists of Europe. Leafless bushropes ^vind in gro- 

 tescjue festoons among the trees, between whose trunks a dense 

 underwood shoots up, to perish by the next overflowing of the 



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