AVENUE OF TREES 



393 



scraping the ends with a knife or the tooth of an animal. 

 They are winged with a Httle oval mass of samaiima silk 

 (from the seed-vessels of the silk-cotton tree, Eriodendron 

 samaiima), cotton being too heavy. The ball of samaiima 

 should fit to a nicety the bore of the blowpipe ; when it does 

 so, the arrow can be propelled with such force by the 

 breath that it makes a noise almost as loud as a pop-gun 

 on flying from the muzzle. My little companion was 

 armed with a quiver full of these little missiles, a small 

 number of which, sufficient for the day's sport, were tipped 

 with the fatal Urari poison. The quiver was an orna- 

 mental affair, the broad rim being made of highly-polished 

 wood of a rich cherry-red colour (the Moira-piranga, or 

 red-wood of the Japura). The body was formed of neatly- 

 plaited strips of Maranta stalks, and the belt by which 

 it was suspended from the shoulder was decorated with 

 cotton fringes and tassels. 



We walked about two miles along a well-trodden path- 

 way, through high caapoeira (second-growth forest). A 

 large proportion of the trees were Melastomas, which bore 

 a hairy yellow fruit, nearly as large and as well flavoured 

 as our gooseberry. The season, however, was nearly 

 over for them. The road was bordered every inch of the 

 way by a thick bed of elegant Lycopodiums. An artificial 

 arrangement of trees and bushes could scarcely have been 

 made to wear so finished an appearance as this naturally 

 decorated avenue. The path at length terminated at a 

 plantation of mandioca, the largest I had yet seen since I 

 left the neighbourhood of Para. There were probably 

 ten acres of cleared land, and part of the ground was 

 planted with Indian corn, water-melons, and sugar-cane. 

 Beyond this field there was only a faint hunter's track, 

 leading towards the untrodden interior. My companion 

 told me he had never heard of there being any inhabi- 

 tants in that direction (the south). We crossed the forest 

 from this place to another smaller clearing, and then 

 walked, on our road home, through about two miles of 

 caapoeira of various ages, the sites of old plantations. 

 The only fruits of our ramble were a few rare insects and 

 a Japu (Cassicus cristatus), a handsome bird with chestnut 

 and saffron-coloured plumage, which wanders through the 

 tree-tops in large flocks. My little companion brought 

 this down from a height which I calculated at thirty yards. 

 The blow-pipe, however, in the hands of an expert adult 



