42 



JOURNF.Y PROM RIO DE JANEIRO 



We now left the Guajmtibo and reached a thick wood of vhexias, 

 ten or twelve feet high, mixed with tall trees and intervening patches 

 of meadow. These low grounds were inclosed on all sides with lofty 

 blue mountains overgrown with vast forests and cocoa-palms. Among 

 the herds of cattle that were grazing in the meadows, numbers of 

 the razor-billed blackbird flew and hopped about, as well as the ben- 

 tavi, or tyrant fly-catcher, which is incessantly repeating its own 

 name, heiitavi or tictivi. In the neighbourhood of a fazenda (or 

 country-seat) Mr. Sellow also found a new species of flowering reed 

 with yellow blossoms. A little farther on we reached a place covered 

 with bushes, and surrounded by wild wooded hills, where we found 

 several shady pools of clear water. This spot was enlivened by a 

 great number of birds. Not far from it we came to a large forest : 

 lofty, slender, white-barked mimosas, cecropias, cocoas, and other 

 trees, were here so closely interwo\en with innumerable creeping 

 plants, that the whole seemed to form but one impenetrable mass. 

 In the dark summits of the trees, the flowers of the hignonia Bellas 

 (so called after the Marchioness de Bellas, who first discovered this 

 beautiful plant) glowed like fire, with many others almost equally 

 splendid : nor were humming-birds and butterflies of various colours 

 wanting to enliven the scene. This wood was, however, but a faint 

 image of the primeval wilderness with which we soon became ac- 

 quainted in the Serra de Inud. 



We now came to tracts, where the forests had been burnt down in 

 some places, for the purposes of cultivation, or as they here express it, 

 to form a j'Ofado. The immense scorched trunks appeared like the 

 ruins of colonnades, still in part joined together by the withered 

 stalks of their parasite plants. While here, we were greatly an- 

 noyed by the disagreeable noise of those carts which the Brazilian 

 husbandmen use in their agricultural pursuits. These are still con- 

 structed in a most rude and clumsy manner : a heavy, massy, wooden 



i 



