xviii] THE JOURNEY TO THE AMAZON 273 



The houses of the Indians are often entirely built of various 

 parts of palm-trees, the stems forming posts and rafters, while 

 the leaf-stalks, often twenty feet long, placed side by side and 

 pegged together, make walls and partitions. Not a particle 

 of iron is needed, the various parts of the roofs being fastened 

 together with the lianas or forest-ropes already described, 

 while, as both stem and leaf-stalks split perfectly straight no 

 tools whatever are needed besides the heavy bush-knife 

 which every countryman carries. 



" The calabash tree supplies excellent basins, while gourds 

 of various sizes and shapes are formed into spoons, cups, and 

 bottles ; and cooking-pots of rough earthenware are made 

 everywhere. Almost every kind of food, and almost all the 

 necessaries of life, can be here grown with ease, such as coffee 

 and cocoa, sugar, cotton, farinha from the mandioca plant 

 (the universal bread of the country), with vegetables and 

 fruits in inexhaustible variety. The chief articles of export 

 from Para are india-rubber, brazil-nuts, and piassaba (the 

 coarse stiff fibre of a palm, used for making brooms for street- 

 sweeping), as well as sarsaparilla, balsam-capivi, and a few 

 other drugs. Oranges, bananas, pine-apples, and water- 

 melons are very plentiful, while custard-apples, mangoes, 

 cashews, and several other fruits abound in their season. All 

 are very cheap, as may be judged by the fact that a bushel 

 basket of delicious oranges may be purchased for sixpence or 

 a shilling. 



■ Coming to the animal world, a forest country is often dis- 

 appointing because so few of the larger animals can be seen, 

 though some of them may be often heard, especially at night. 

 The monkeys are in every way the most interesting, and are 

 the most frequently to be met with. A large proportion of 

 American monkeys have prehensile tails, which are so power- 

 ful in some of the species that they can hang their whole 

 weight upon it and swing about in the air with only a few 

 inches of the tip twisted round a branch. If disturbed in 

 such a position they "swing themselves off, catching hold of 

 boughs hand over hand, and rapidly disappear. They live 

 entirely in the tree-tops, hardly ever descending to the ground, 

 VOL. I. T 



