26 
RIO DE JANEIRO 
CHAP. 
forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a 
great powerful man afraid even to ward 
off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his 
face. This man had been trained to a 
degradation lower than the slavery of the 
most helpless animal. 
April I Stk .-—In returning we spent two 
days at Socego, and I employed them in 
collecting insects in the forest. The greater 
number of trees, although so lofty, are not 
more than three or four feet in circum¬ 
ference. There are, of course, a few of 
much greater dimension. Senhor Manuel 
was then making a canoe 70 feet in length 
from a solid trunk, which had originally 
been 1 1 o feet long, and of great thickness. 
The contrast of palm trees, growing amidst 
the common branching kinds, never fails 
to give the scene an intertropical character. 
Here the woods were ornamented by the 
Cabbage Palm—one of the most beautiful 
of its family. With a stem so narrow 
that it might be clasped with the two 
hands, it waves its elegant head at the 
height of forty or fifty feet above the 
ground. The woody creepers, themselves 
covered by other creepers, were of great 
thickness : some which I measured were 
two feet in circumference. Many of the 
older trees presented a very curious 
appearance from the tresses of a liana 
hanging from their boughs, and resembling 
bundles of hay. If the eye was turned 
from the world of foliage above, to the 
ground beneath, it was attracted by the 
extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns 
and mimosse. The latter, in some parts, 
covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches high. 
In walking across these thick beds of mimosae, a broad track 
was marked by the change of shade, produced by the drooping 
CABBAGE PALM. 
