242 
TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [February, 
animal inhabiting the American continent. I was how- 
ever by no means desirous of a second meeting, and, as 
it was near sunset, thought it most prudent to turn back 
towards the village. 
The next morning I sent my Indians all out to fish, 
and walked myself along the road over to Javita, and 
thus crossed the division between the basins of the 
Amazon and the Orinooko. The road is, generally 
speaking, level, consisting of a series of slight ascents 
and descents, nowhere probably varying more than fifty 
feet in elevation, and a great part of it being over swamps 
and marshes, where numerous small streams intersect it. | 
At those places roughly squared trunks of trees are laid j 
down longitudinally, forming narrow paths or bridges, j 
over which passengers have to walk. i 
The road is about twenty or thirty feet wide, running , 
nearly straight through a lofty forest. On the sides j 
grow numbers of the Inaja palm {Maximiliana regio), \ \ 
the prickly Mauritia (M. aculeato) in the marshes, and ^ 
that curious palm the Piassaba, which produces the 
fibrous substance now used for making brooms and ^ 
brushes in this country for street-sweeping and domestic 
purposes. This is the first and almost the only point ' 
where this curious tree can be seen, while following any | 
regular road or navigation. Prom the mouth of the | 
Padauari (a branch of the Rio Negro about five hundred ^ 
miles above Barra), it is found on several rivers, but | 
never on the banks of the main stream itself. A great 
part of the population of the Upper Rio Negro is em- 
ployed in obtaining the fibre for exportation ; and I thus" 
became acquainted with all the localities in which it is 
