V NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 443 
had been a very tall, stout Palm, 80 or 100 feet 
high at the least. When the vitality of a Palm is 
exhausted, the crown of fronds first withers and 
falls, and then the soft interior of the trunk gradu- 
ally rots and is eaten away by termites until nothing 
is left but a thin shell ; and when that can no 
longer bear its own weight, it collapses and breaks 
up in an instant, with a crash very like a musket- 
shot.^ 
A few weeks later, I had to make my way on 
foot through the forest of Canelos, and it sometimes 
happened that when we had to cook our supper, 
after a day of soaking rain, we could find no wood 
that would burn but these shells of Palm-trunks. 
(The Palm was the curious Wettinia Maynensis, 
which abounded there.) A single stroke of a 
cutlass would often suffice to cause them to collapse 
and fall, in a mass of dust and splinters, repeating 
each time the report of the weapon of the mysterious 
hunter of Vasiva, and not without risk to the operator 
of being buried in the ruins. 
Sometimes when I have been deep in the virgin 
forest, and could not see through the overarching 
foliage any sign of rain in the sky, or was heedless 
of it — when not a sound or a breath of air disturbed 
the solemn calm and stillness — a shiver would all 
at once pass through the tree-tops, and yet no wind 
at all be sensible below. Then all would be still 
again, and it was not until a few minutes later that 
a distant soughing announced the coming tempest 
The preliminary shudder would bring down dead 
leaves and twigs, and such a one might have 
^ This strange sound is briefly described in Spruce's Journal. See vol. i. 
p. 423. 
