Ill 
THE RIVER TROMBETAS 105 
Madeira, the Ucayali, and the Huallaga, bring down 
vast abundance of it. 
On the voyage from Santarem to Obidos, I 
measured a cedar-trunk left by floods on the beach, 
and found it no feet long, although its top had 
been broken off a little above the first branches, 
and where its diameter was still above 3 feet. It 
had four sapopemas at the base, which measured 
each 9 feet across. . . . 
The Cedros of the Amazon valley belong to the 
genus Icica (Amyrideae), some species of which yield 
the white pitch of Para, as we have already seen ; 
but whether any of them be identical with the 
Cedar of Demerara [Icica altissimd) I am unable 
to say. They are widely removed from the Conifers, 
to which the Cedars of the. Old World belong ; yet 
the colour of the wood, its grain, and particularly 
its scent, are so like those of true Cedars, that it is 
no wonder the Spanish and Portuguese settlers 
called them Cedros. Colonists are very apt to 
bestow names of the old country on the trees and 
herbs of the new, wherever they find any resem- 
blance, either in the aspect or products, to the 
familiar plants at home. The Cedro of the hill- 
forests of the Andes consists in part of a species of 
Cedrela, perhaps C. odo7^ata ; but what is called 
Cedro in the central valley of the Quiterian 
Andes is a Euphorbiacea [Phyllanthtis salvicefolius, 
H. B. K.), whose branchlets are crowded at the 
extremity of the branches, and are so closely beset 
with two-ranked leaves that they look quite like 
the long pinnate leaves of an Icica ; so that even 
a botanist might have some difficulty in deciding 
that they were really branches, and not leaves. 
