Chap. II. 
A FOREST E AMBLE. 
79 
more in diameter and ten feet in length. A rare 
wood called Sapu-pira, of excessively hard texture, 
deep brown in colour, thickly speckled with yellow, 
is also a product of these forests. Captain Thomas 
showed me a mortar, four feet high, for pounding coffee, 
made of it. Many other kinds of ornamental and use- 
ful timber are met with, including a kind of box, which 
I saw made into carpenters' planes ; ebony and marupa ; 
the last-mentioned a light whitish wood of the same 
texture as mahogany. Although the trees have been 
felled near the village, more of the same kinds are said 
to exist in the forest, which extends to an unknown 
distance in the interior. I heard here, also, of the 
Murure, a lofty tree which yields a yellow milk of 
remarkable virtues, on making incisions in the bark. 
It is called by the Portuguese Mercurio vegetal, or 
vegetable mercury, from the cures it effects when taken 
internally in syphilitic rheumatism. It is said to pro- 
duce terrible pains in the limbs soon after it is taken, 
but the cure is certain. I was never able to get a sight 
of this tree. Captain Thomas said that the only 
specimen he knew of it, had been cut down. Persons 
in Santarem had attempted to send samples of the 
milk to Europe for experiment, but they had failed on 
account of the stone bottles in which it was contained 
always bursting in transit. 
We walked two or three miles along this dark and 
silent forest road, and then struck off through the 
thicket to another path running parallel to it, by which 
we returned to the village. About half way we passed 
through a tract of wood, densely overgrown with the 
