4 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
ing to justify to themselves the waste of human 
life entailed by their victories ; but if the bodies of 
the slain at Arbela or Austerlitz could all have 
been collected and preserved — stuffed and set up in 
attitudes of mortal agony — under glass cases in one 
vast museum, what instructive specimens they 
would have been of the fruits of war ! 
I was thus reduced at first to vegetation that 
was easily accessible, but having never before seen 
tropical plants in their homes, all were to me new 
and beautiful, although I knew that most coast 
plants have a wide distribution in the tropics, so 
that a very small proportion of them would be of 
any value in the eyes of botanists at home, many 
of them having already been gathered elsewhere. 
In marshy places, and at the muddy mouths of 
igarapes,^ there was great store of handsome but 
rank and corpulent grasses, and of sedge-like 
plants, especially of those tall Cyperi which form 
extensive beds in such situations, and look at first 
exceedingly beautiful with their umbels of polished 
brown or green -and-gold spikelets, but soon tire 
from their monotonous abundance. Mangroves 
cause almost the same impression — everybody 
admires their fresh and uniform green at first sight, 
and yet nothing can be more dreary and wearisome 
than to live near, or sail along, a coast where no 
trees but mangroves are visible. Mangroves are 
abundant enough from Para downwards, especially 
on islands that are flooded with every tide, but 
from thence upwards, where the water becomes 
less and less brackish, they gradually disappear. 
^ Igarape (Lingoa Geral), from igara, a canoe, and a way, is the 
general term for brooks and small rivers. 
