Spanish America, Its Romance, Reality and Future, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by C. Reginald Enock

The marvellously rich flora is among the wonders of the world. The principal characteristic is in the variety of genera and species. A single acre of ground may contain hundreds of different species of tree and shrub, including palms, acacias, myrtles, mimosas and others. The forest is in this unlike the great coniferous or other forests, and the condition is not favourable in a commercial sense as regards the industry of timber-cutting, although industrial kinds of its trees afford the basis of profit. The trees are not always of great height here, the average being perhaps a hundred feet, with many kinds reaching two hundred feet, the shorter varieties being upon the flood-plains.

The remarkable tropical growth is shown in the myriad lianas, or creepers, which often bind the mass together, overgrowing even the tallest trees. The traveller who has had to cut his way through these networks of vegetation can best understand their impenetrability. Above his head may tower that monarch of the forest the "Cow-tree," or Massaranduba. This remarkable tree takes its name from the milk, or milky sap, it yields—a latex used in rubber-curing and for medicinal purposes. The timber is valuable for shipbuilding, and is also esteemed by railway-builders for sleepers, the wood being highly resistant, whether in air or water. Here, too, the mighty cedar rises amid its neighbours, growing to an immense height; its great trunk a hundred feet to its first branch. The wood is light, strong, and susceptible of a high polish and is valued for these qualities for many purposes.

Here is another tree we shall view with a special interest in these forest fastnesses. We shall regard it with such interest not only for its great height—for it is one of the loftiest on the Amazon—but by reason of its familiar product, as it is that which produces the Brazil nut. The tree, however, will not be crowded by its neighbours, loving the open ground. It is slender relatively for its height, perhaps three or four feet in trunk diameter. Of the two varieties one is known as the Bertholetra, the other the Sapucaya.

The collector of Brazil nuts will have a care not to approach the trees in a high wind, that is when the nuts are ripe. For the nuts, enclosed in their capsule or covering, are as hard and heavy as a small cannon-ball, and will certainly crack his crown if by mischance one falls upon his head. Prudently he waits until the pod falls, or, opening the lid with which Nature has furnished it, flings the enclosed nuts abroad, where they may be gathered. Many nuts, however, are wasted in this dispersal. The only capital required by the nut-gatherer is that involved in the ownership of a boat.

In view of the appreciation of the Brazil nut in foreign lands, and its high price, the industry of its gathering, it would be supposed, might have been more extensive.

The monarch, in a commercial sense, of the Amazon forests is the rubber, the beautiful Hevea and others. These have their own special habitat. They are not found anywhere, but are solitary in their nature.

For description of the animal life of the Amazon we must turn to those works of naturalists and travellers who have made this field their special study. There we may learn about the manati, or sea-cow, one of the most remarkable of mammals, growing at times to a size of twenty feet in length, having its home in the lower and larger reaches of the river. The world of the monkeys embodies fifty species. We find them up as high as the denser parts of the Peruvian Montaña, and a colony of these creatures in conclave is always a remarkable sight, with their semi-human attributes. We shall see the sloth, and hear and see the jaguar as also the peccary. The alligator will be our constant companion amid the backwaters, and a dangerous and voracious one at times he proves. The turtles may furnish the traveller with its flesh and eggs for food, as it has done for the Indians always. The traveller on occasion need not despise, moreover, the flesh of the monkey, however repugnant it may seem in life to contemplate the creature as a constituent of the forest larder. The mighty boa-constrictor will be seen by the fortunate. The brilliant plumage of the many-hued birds is perhaps a compensation of Nature for the lack of song of the many feathered tribes of the valley. As for the parasitic creatures, the ticks, the dreadful ants and a host of others, the traveller here will rarely fail to make their close acquaintance.

The western or upper edge of the Amazon Valley differs much from the denser region such as that to which the foregoing description regarding the forest applies, conditions obtaining more particularly in the Brazilian portion of the territory. This upper edge—extending, however, in some cases a long way to the east—is known in Peru as the Montaña, and embodies a much more broken and diversified landscape, more beautiful and more habitable. Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela also partake in territory of this character, which is formed by the slopes of the Andes.

As the traveller descends the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, whose tablelands and ridges we have traversed in a previous chapter, and leaves behind him the vast grass-covered uplands, with their towering peaks, he enters upon the line of tree-life, which lies at an elevation of perhaps 11,000 feet: enters indeed upon another world. The climate becomes warmer, the mists lie heavier, thickets of flowering shrubs spread their beauty, cascades of falling water are projected like giant fountains over sheer precipices, and timber-clad ridge and profound cañon, between whose walls the torrential rivers now hurry eastwards, diversify the journey; transformation scenes which delight the eye and give an added zest to the arduous march.