A POISONOUS STREAM 
tiful grove of akuri palms, the palms being ten to fifteen 
feet high. In going through, cutting our way with falcons 
— long, heavy-bladed knives specially made for cutting 
through forests — we were much worried by spiders’ webs 
of great size, from which we had trouble in extricating our 
heads and hands as we went along. There were thousands 
of those webs at the entrance of the forest, and we dragged 
them all along on our passage. With their viscous 
properties they clung to us, and we could only shake them 
off with difficulty. 
Most interesting of all was the cepa d’agua, a powerful 
liane, four inches in diameter, festooned from the highest 
branches of trees, and which when cut ejected most de¬ 
licious, cool water. Then there was a tree called by the 
Brazilians mulher pobre ” or “ poor woman’s tree ” — 
do you know why? — because from its juice it was possible 
to make soap, which saved the expense of buying it. 
There was a roundabout way of reasoning for you. 
Eighteen kilometres from our last camp we came to 
a rapid streamlet of the most limpid water, the Rio 
Mazagan (elevation 1,300 feet above the sea level), four 
metres wide and four inches deep. When we drank it it 
nearly made us ill, so foul was its taste of sulphur and 
lead. The treacherous stream flowed into the Cuvaba 
•/ 
River. 
There were many tamburi trees of great proportions, 
handsome trees with clean, healthy white bark and minute 
leaves — at the summit of the tree only. In the forest, 
although the taller trees were generally far apart, none 
of them had branches or leaves lower than thirty to forty 
feet from the ground. The angico or angicn (Piptadenia 
rigida Benth.), which was quite plentiful, was also a good- 
looking tree of appreciable height and circumference. 
Upon emerging from the beautiful forest, quite clear 
underneath with only a few ferns, we crossed great 
campos — " campina grande ” as my Brazilians called 
847 
