1848.] 



INDIA-RUBBER TREE. 



action of gargling, and showed us that a watery sap issued 

 freely on the bark being cut. The tree, like many others, was 

 notched all over by the number of patients who came for the 

 healing juice. " This," said he, glancing at a magnificent tall 

 straight tree, " is good wood for houses, good for floors ; call 

 it Quarooba." " This," pointing to one of the curious furrowed 

 trees that look as if a bundle of enormously long sticks had 

 grown into one mass, " is wood for making paddles ; " and, as 

 we did not understand this in Portuguese, he imitated rowing 

 in a canoe ; the name of this was Pootieka. " This," pointing 

 to another large forest-tree, " is good wood for burning, to 

 make charcoal; good hard wood for everything, — makes the 

 best charcoal for forges," which he explained by intimating 

 that the wood made the fire to make the iron of the axe he 

 held in his hand. This tree rejoiced in the name of Nowara. 

 Next came the Caripe itself, but it was a young tree with 

 neither fruit nor flowers, so we had to content ourselves with 

 specimens of the wood and bark only ; it grew on the edge of 

 a swamp filled with splendid palm-trees. Here the Assai 

 Palm, so common about the city, reached an enormous 

 height. With a smooth stem only four inches in diameter, 

 some specimens were eighty feet high. Sometimes they are 

 perfectly straight, sometimes gently curved, and, with the 

 drooping crowns of foliage, are most beautiful. Here also 

 grew the Inaja, a fine thick-stemmed species, with a very large 

 dense head of foliage. The undeveloped leaves of this as 

 well as many other kinds form an excellent vegetable, called 

 here palmeto^ and probably very similar to that produced by 

 the cabbage-palm of the West Indies. A prickly-stemmed 

 fan-leaved palm, which we had observed at the mills, was also 

 growing here. But the most striking and curious of all was 

 the Paxiuba, a tall, straight, perfectly smooth-stemmed palm, 

 with a most elegant head, formed of a few large curiously-cut 

 leaves. Its great singularity is, that the greater part of its roots 

 are above ground, and they successively die away, fresh ones 

 springing out of the stem higher up, so that the whole tree is 

 supported on three or four stout straight roots, sometimes so 

 high that a person can stand between them with the lofty tree 

 growing over his head. The main roots often diverge again 

 before they reach the ground, each into three or more smaller 

 ones, not an inch each in diameter. Though the stem of 



