FORESTS OF THE TERRA FIRMA 347 



meal. The result was a large daily addition to my collec- 

 tion of insects, reptiles, and shells. Sometimes the neigh- 

 bourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of 

 dry and spacious forest pleasant to ramble in ; but more 

 frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was im- 

 possible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted 

 trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, 

 thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one 

 kind or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified 

 to the highest degree by groves of the Urucuri palm 

 (Attalea excelsa), which grew by thousands under the 

 crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees ; their smooth 

 columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or 

 fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves inter- 

 locking above to form arches and woven canopies of 

 elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit of this palm 

 ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage 

 I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the 

 trees in places where we encamped. It is similar in size 

 and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly-flavoured 

 juicy pulp. The Indians would not eat it ; I was sur- 

 prised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds 

 of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less 

 palatable. Vicente shook his head when he saw me one 

 day eating a quantity of the Urucuri plums. I am not 

 sure they were not the cause of a severe indigestion under 

 which I suffered for many days afterwards. 



In passing slowly along the interminable wooded banks 

 week after week, I observed that there were three tolerably 

 distinct kinds of coast and corresponding forest constantly 

 recurring on this upper river. First, there were the low 

 and most recent alluvial deposits, — a mixture of sand and 

 mud, covered with tall, broad-leaved grasses, or with the 

 arrow-grass before described, whose feathery- topped 

 flower-stem rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet. 

 The only large trees which grow in these places are the 

 Cecropiae. Many of the smaller and newer islands were 

 of this description. Secondly, there were the moderately 

 high banks, which are only partially overflowed when the 

 flood season is at its height ; these are wooded with a 

 magnificent, varied forest, in which a great variety of 

 palms and broad-leaved Marantaceae form a very large 

 proportion of the vegetation. The general foliage is of 

 a vivid light-green hue ; the water frontage is sometimes 



