288 VOYAGE UP THE TAP A J OS 



and is obtainable only in logs a few inches in diameter. 

 The Moira coatiara (striped wood), a most beautiful 

 material for cabinet work, being close-grained and richly- 

 streaked with chocolate-brown on a yellow ground, is 

 another of these, and is also the heart-wood of a tree, but 

 obtainable in logs a foot or more in diameter and ten feet 

 in length. A rare wood called Sapu-pira, of excessively 

 hard texture, deep brown in colour, thickly speckled with 

 yellow, is also a product of these forests. Captain 

 Thomas showed me a mortar, four feet high, for pounding 

 coffee, made of it. Many other kinds of ornamental and 

 useful timber are met with, including a kind of box, which 

 I saw made into carpenters' planes ; ebony and marupa ; 

 the last-mentioned a light whitish wood of the same 

 texture as mahogany. Although the trees have been 

 felled near the village, more of the same kinds are said to 

 exist in the forest, which extends to an unknown distance 

 in the interior. I heard here, also, of the Murure, a lofty 

 tree which yields a yellow milk of remarkable virtues, on 

 making incisions in the bark. It is called by the Portu- 

 guese Mercurio vegetal, or vegetable mercury, from the 

 cures it effects when taken internally in syphilitic rheuma- 

 tism. It is said to produce terrible pains in the limbs 

 soon after it is taken, but the cure is certain. I was never 

 able to get a sight of this tree. Captain Thomas said that 

 the only specimen he knew of it, had been cut down. 

 Persons in Santarem had attempted to send samples of 

 the milk to Europe for experiment, but they had failed 

 on account of the stone bottles in which it was contained 

 always bursting in transit. 



We walked two or three miles along this dark and silent 

 forest road, and then struck off through the thicket to 

 another path running parallel to it, by which we returned 

 to the village. About half way we passed through a tract 

 of wood, densely overgrown with the Curua palm tree ; 

 the natives call a place of this kind a Pindobal. The 

 rigid, elegantly pinnated leaves, twenty feet in length, 

 grow, us I have before described, directly out of the ground. 

 I had frequently occasion to notice in the virgin forests 

 some one kind of palm, growing abundantly in society in 

 one limited tract although scarce elsewhere, no difference 

 of soil, altitude, or humidity being apparent to account 

 for the phenomenon. The Pindobal covered an area of 

 probably four or five acres, and the whole lay under the 



