From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

On they went through the immense forest which extends from the foot of the Andes and the sources of the Madeira to the mouths of the Orinoco—through this dense, rank carpet which covers all the lowlands of Brazil with its teeming and superabundant life, and which is so bountifully watered by tropical rains and flooded rivers. All the rain that falls on the llanos and the selvas (as the wooded plains are called) makes its way through innumerable affluents to the Amazons and enters the sea through its trumpet-shaped mouth. The river, with its forests, is like a cornucopia of vast, wild, irrepressible nature, where life breathes and pulsates, where it bubbles and ripples, seethes and ferments in the soft productive soil, where animals swarm, and beetles and butterflies are more numerous than anywhere else on our earth, and are clad in the most gorgeous hues of the tropics. There old trees on the bank are undermined and washed away, while others decay in the sultry recesses of the forest. There the earth is constantly fertilised by the manure of animals and their corpses and by dead vegetation, and there new generations are continually rising up from the graves in nature's inexhaustible kingdom.

The Spaniards had no time to make excursions into the country from their camps. It is difficult to make one's way through this intricate, ragged network of climbing plants between trunks, boughs, bushes, and undergrowth. In the interior, far away from the waterways, and especially between some of the southern tributaries, lie forests unknown and untrodden since heathen times. Perhaps there are Indian tribes among them who have not yet heard that America has been discovered, and who may congratulate themselves that the forests are too much for the white men.

There palms predominate in a peaceful Eden, and at their feet flourish ferns with stems as hard as wood. In the bamboo clumps the jaguars play with their cubs, and on the outskirts of the swamps the peccary, a sort of small pig, jumps on his long, supple legs. A dark-green gloom prevails under the tall bay-trees, and their stems stand under their crowns like the columns of a church nave. There thrive mimosas and various species of fig, and climbing palms are not ashamed of their inquisitiveness.

See this tree 200 feet high, with its round, hard fruits as large as a child's head! When they are ripe they fall, and the shell opens to let out the triangular seeds which we call Brazil nuts.

Look at the indiarubber tree with its light-coloured stem, its light-green foliage, and its white sap, which, when congealed, rolls round motor wheels through streets and roads.

Here again is a tree that every one knows about. It grows to a height of 50 feet, and bears large, smooth, leathery leaves, but its blossoms issue from the stem and not among the foliage. Its cucumber-shaped orange fruits ripen at almost all seasons in the perpetual summer of the Amazons. In the fruit the seeds lie in rows. The tree grows wild in the forests, but was cultivated by the Indians before the arrival of white men, and they prepared from it a drink which they called "chocolatl." It was bitter, but the addition of sugar and vanilla made it palatable. This tree is called the cocoa-tree.

Still better known and more popular is another drink—coffee. The coffee-tree is not found in the primeval forests, but in plantations, and even there it is a guest, for its native country is Kaffa in Abyssinia, and coffee came from Arabia to Europe through Constantinople. Now Brazil produces three-fourths of all the world's coffee, and in all thousands of millions of pounds of coffee are consumed yearly.

The vanilla plant, also, is one of the wonderful inmates of the forests. In order that the wild plants which are indigenous in the mountain forests of Mexico and Peru may produce fruit, the pollen must be carried by insects. Many years ago the plant was transported to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where it throve capitally, but bore no fruit. The helpful insects of its native country were absent. Then artificial fertilisation with pollen was successfully attempted, and now Réunion supplies most of the vanilla in the world's markets.

Think again of all the animals which live in the forest and its outskirts towards the savannahs! There is the singular opossum, and there is the sluggish, scaly armadillo, which loves the detestable termites—those white ants which, with their sharp mandibles, gnaw to pieces paper, clothes, wood, the whole house in fact. Then there is the climbing sloth, with its round monkey head and large curved claws. All day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up when night falls. It lives only on trees and eats leaves. In far-back ages there were sloths as large as rhinoceroses and elephants. We have, too, the raccoon in a greyish-yellow coat, also a nocturnal animal, which sleeps during the day in a hollow tree. He lives on small mammals and birds, eggs and fruits, but before he swallows his food he cleans it well, generally in water.

There is a perpetual gloom under the crowns of the foliaged trees and palms. It is the home of shadows. Only lianas, these parasites of the vegetable kingdom, raise their stems above the dusky vault to open their calyces in the sun. Round them flutter innumerable butterflies in gaudy colours. On the border between sunlight and shade scream droll parrots, and busy pigeons steer their way among the trees on rustling wings. There humming-birds dart like arrows through the air. They are small, dainty birds with breast, neck, and head shining like metal with the brightest, most vivid colouring. They build their nests carefully with vegetable fibres and moss, and their beaks are long and fine as a reed. There is a humming-bird which does not grow longer than an inch and a half, and weighs little more than fifteen grains.