68 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



through the wildest scenery, while below us lay the valley 

 broken into a billowy sea of green hills, and the harboi 

 with the coast range beyond, growing soft and mellow 

 in the afternoon sunshine. To complete the picture, one 

 must clothe it in palms and acacias and tree-ferns, and 

 drape it in a tangle of parasitic growth, with abundant 

 bloom of the purple Quaresma (Flower of Lent),* the 

 Thunbergia vine, with its little straw-colored blossoms 

 creeping over every wall and shrub, and the blue and 

 yellow Bignonias. We are constantly astonished at the 

 variety of palms. A palm is such a rarity in our hot- 

 houses, that we easily forget how numerous and varied 

 they are in their native forests. We have the scarlet-oak, 

 the white-oak, the scrub-oak, the chestnut-oak, the swamp- 

 oak, and many others. And so in the tropical forest there 

 is the cocoanut-palm, with its swollen, bulb-like stem when 

 young, its tall, straight trunk when full grown, its cluster 

 of heavy fruit, and its long, plume-like, drooping flower ; f 

 the Coccoeiro, with its slighter trunk and pendant branch- 

 es of small berry-like fruit ; the Palmetto, with its tender 

 succulent bud on the summit of the stem, which is used 

 as a vegetable here, and makes an excellent substitute 

 for cabbage ; the thorny Icaree or Cari, a variety of fan- 

 palms, with their leaves cut like ribbons ; and very many 

 others, each with its characteristic foliage and appearance. f 



* A species of Melastoma, with very large, conspicuous flowers. — L. A 

 t This is not, however, native to Brazil. 



X Indeed, their diversity is much greater even than that of our Oaks, and it 

 would require a comprehensive comparison with a majority of our forest-trees 

 to match the differences they exhibit among themselves ; and their native 

 names, far more euphonic than the systematic names under which they are 

 entered in our scientific works, are as familiar to the Indians as those of our 

 beeches, birches, hazels, chestnuts, poplars, or willows to our farmers. There 



