THE RIVER TROMBETAS 87 
Chapelete or Little-hat tree, from the fruits being 
likened to a miniature hat, of which the five large 
persistent calyx -segments, spreading horizontally 
from the margin of the disk, represent the brim or 
flaps. Gayer than any of these were the climbing 
plants — Malpighiads, Asclepiads, and, above all, 
Stenolobium coeruleum, Benth., which has leaves of 
three rhomboidal leaflets, and bright blue flowers 
in panicled spikes : I afterwards found it to grow as 
a weed all through the plains. In the forest, but 
within reach of inundations, grew a good deal of 
Licania Turniva, a tree of 50 feet or more, with 
minute green flowers in pinnate panicles : it is 
called Caraipe das agoas, and its calcined bark is 
used in the fabrication of pottery, in default of 
better, for it contains a very small proportion of 
silex. It is commonly remarked among the Indians 
that the products of trees of the gapo — whether 
bark, timber, fruits, or resins — are inferior to those 
of other trees, their congeners, growing on terra 
firme or beyond the reach of floods. 
I wandered a long way up the gently sloping 
valley, but the forest became very dense, and 
neither trees nor shrubs were to be seen in flower. 
When I returned, the Indians were just finishing 
their yapas. The broadish leaflets of the fronds of 
the Pindoba (whereof the yapas were made) are 
nearly contiguous, and are set on to the rhachis or 
midrib with great regularity at an angle of about 
45°, so that when two fronds are laid side by side, 
one half-covering the other, the leaflets cross at 
right angles, and are readily woven together. Six 
fronds being thus laid in two layers, or nine fronds 
in three layers, the whole were interwoven into a 
