234 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
up on land in which eggs were crushed for extrac- 
tion of the oil, when an immense patch of forest 
on the opposite side fell with thundering noise into 
the river, and though there a league broad, the 
waves rushed far up the beach and carried away 
canoes, eggs, oil, and everything else laid there. 
Instances are not rare of canoes being swamped by 
the force of falling masses. Owing to this falling 
away, trees become exposed which had completed 
their growth in the crowded forest and have not 
the roundness of outline to be observed in the 
permanent forest-skirts. 
The banks of inland rivers should be seen early 
in the morning, before or after sunrise. In passing 
along one of these at six in the morning, when the 
trees had mostly acquired their new foliage, some 
of fine pale green, others of pink or red (here, 
where all is evergreen, there are no autumnal tints 
like those of the temperate zone), standing out from 
deep dark recesses, occasionally varied by the 
finely divided tremulous foliage of a graceful Acacia 
and the large white star-like leaves of a Cecropia, 
while here and there hang festoons of some purple- 
flowered Bignoniacea, white- or red-flowered climbing 
Polygaleas often exhaling a most delicious odour, 
while lower shrubs, which barely stand out of the 
water, are bedecked with countless flowers of 
various Convolvulacese, chiefly of a species of 
Batatas, mixed here and there with two or three 
Phaseolae, some yellow-, others purple-flowered — 
in the glare of the midday all this seems com- 
paratively tame : the eye is fatigued with looking 
steadfastly at anything — even green seems dazzling 
