1832.) APPEARANCE OF THE FORESTS. 25 
prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of 
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 of 
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 was 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 18th.—In returning we spent two days at Socégo, 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. Senhér 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 foltage 
above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme 
elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimose. The latter, in 
some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches 
high. In walking across these thick beds of mimozes, a broad track 
