THE BAMBOO. 
37 
or will be, of great importance to the sliipbuilder. On 
the Upper Barioia alone, a river of Guiana liardly even 
known by name in Europe, Scbomburgk found tlie giant 
tree growing in ancli profusion tliat it could easily afford 
Bnfficient timber lor tlie proudest fleet that ever rode the 
ocean. 
The graceful tapering form of the Gram incWj or grasses, 
belongs to every zune ; but it is only in the warmer 
regions of the globe that we find the colossal Batn- 
husacea: (Bamboos), rivalling in grandeur the loftiest trees 
of the primeval forest 
In New Grenada and Quito the Guadua, one of these 
giant grasses, ranks next to the sugar-cune and maize 
as the plant most indispensable to man. It forms dense 
jungles, not only in the lower regions of the country, 
but in the valleys of the Andes, 50CO feet above the 
level of the sea. The culma attain a thickness of six 
inches, the single joints are twenty inches long, and the 
leaves are of indescribable beauty. A whole hut can 
be built and thatched with the goadua, while the single 
joints are extensively used as water-vessels and drinking- 
cups. 
India, South China, and the Eastern Archipelago are 
the seats of the real bamboos, which grow in a variety of 
genera and species, as well on the banks of lakes and 
rivers in low marshy grounds, as in the more elevated 
mountainous regions. They chiefly form the impene- 
trable jungles, the seat of the tiger and the python. 
Sometimes a hundred culms spring from a single root, 
not seldom as thick as a man, and towering to a height 
of eighty or a hundred feet. Fancy the grace of our 
meadow grasses, united with the lordly growth of the 
Italian poplar, and you will have a faint idea of the 
beauty of a clump of bamboos. 
The variety of purposes to which these colossal reeds 
can be applied almost rivals the multifarious uses of the 
cocoa-nut palm itself. Splitting the culm in its wholo 
