232 
PAEkSTTIC PLANTS. 
some dogs of a very small breed. "We were assured that in 
the. event of our meeting a jaguar in a narrow path he would 
spring on the dog rather than on a man. We did not 
proceed along the brink of the torrent, but on the slope of 
the rocks which overhung the water. We walked on the 
side of a precipice from two to three hundred feet deep, 
on a kind of very narrow cornice, like the road which leads 
from the Grindelwald along the Mettenberg to the great 
glacier. When the cornice was so narrow that we could 
find no place for our feet, we descended into the torrent, 
crossed it by fording, and then climbed the opposite wall. 
These descents are very fatiguing, and it is not safe to trust 
to the lianas, which hang like great cords from the tops of 
the trees. The creeping and parasite plants cling but feebly 
to the branches which they embrace ; the united weight of 
their stalks is considerable, and you run the risk of pulling 
down a whole mass of verdure, if, in walking on a sloping 
ground, you support your weight by the lianas. The farther 
we advanced the thicker the vegetation became. In several 
places the roots of the trees had burst the calcareous rock, by 
inserting themselves into the clefts that separate the beds. 
We had some trouble to cariy the plants which we gathered 
at every step. The cannas, the heliconias with fine purple 
flowers, the costuses, and other plants of the amomum 
family, here attain eight or ten feet in height, and their 
fresh tender verdure, their silky gloss, and the extraordinary 
development of the parenchyma, form a striking contrast 
with the brown colour of the arborescent ferns, the foliage 
of which is delicately shaped. The Indians made incisions 
with their large knives in the trunks of the trees, and fixed 
our attention on those beautiful red and gold-coloured 
woods, which will one day be sought for by our turners and 
cabinet-makers.^ They showed us a plant of the composite 
order, twenty feet high (the Eupatorium ltevigatum of La- 
marck), the rose of Belveria ,* celebrated for the brilliancy 
of its purple Hovers, and the dragon’s-lilood of this country, 
which is a kind of croton not yet described.f The red and 
* Brownea racemosa. 
t Plants of families entirely different are called in the Spanish colonies 
of both continents, sangre de draco; they are dracsenas, pterocarpi, and 
crotons, Father Caulin, (Descrip. Corografica, p. 25,) in speaking ol 
