156 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



scramble over them; and in return now and then one of 

 them gravely used it for a seat. 



Slowly the throbbing engine drove the launch and its 

 unwieldy side-partner against the swift current. The river 

 had risen. We made about a mile and a half an hour. 

 Ahead of us the brown water street stretched in curves 

 between endless walls of dense tropical forest. It was like 

 passing through a gigantic greenhouse. Wawasa and bu- 

 rity palms, cecropias, huge figs, feathery bamboos, strange 

 yellow-stemmed trees, low trees with enormous leaves, tall 

 trees with foliage as delicate as lace, trees with buttressed 

 trunks, trees with boles rising smooth and straight to lofty 

 heights, all woven together by a tangle of vines, crowded 

 down to the edge of the river. Their drooping branches 

 hung down to the water, forming a screen through which 

 it was impossible to see the bank, and exceedingly difficult 

 to penetrate to the bank. Rarely one of them showed 

 flowers — large white blossoms, or small red or yellow blos- 

 soms. More often the lilac flowers of the begonia-vine 

 made large patches of color. Innumerable epiphytes cov- 

 ered the limbs, and even grew on the roughened trunks. 

 We saw little bird life — a darter now and then, and king- 

 fishers flitting from perch to perch. At long intervals we 

 passed a ranch. At one the large, red-tiled, whitewashed 

 house stood on a grassy slope behind mango-trees. The 

 wooden shutters were thrown back from the unglazed 

 windows, and the big rooms were utterly bare — not a book, 

 not an ornament. A palm, loaded with scores of the pendu- 

 lous nests of the troupials, stood near the door. Behind 

 were orange-trees and coff^ee-plants, and near by fields of 

 bananas, rice, and tobacco. The sallow foreman was cour- 



