[Footnote 24: "Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 155. Sabine's translation ]
It is not possible for language to describe the glory of the forests of the Amazon, and yet the silence and gloom of the Brazilian forests, so often mentioned by travellers, are striking realities. Let us read Mr. Bates's impressions of the interior of a primeval forest:
"The silence and gloom," he says, "are realities, and the impression deepens on a longer acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that pensive and mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes in the midst of the stillness a sudden yell or scream will startle one; this comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is calculated to inspire is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. Often even in the still hours of mid-day a sudden crash will be heard resounding afar through the wilderness, as some great bough or entire tree falls to the ground. There are beside many sounds which it is impossible to account for. I found the natives generally as much at a loss in this respect as myself. Sometimes a sound is heard like the clang of an iron bar against a hard hollow tree, or a piercing cry rends the air; these are not repeated, and the succeeding silence tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they make on the mind. With the natives it is always the curupira, the wild man, or spirit of the forest, which produces all noises they are unable to explain."
Mr. Bates has some exceedingly interesting observations on the tendency of animals and plants of the Brazilian forests to become climbers. Speaking of a swampy forest of Pará he says:
"The leafy crowns of the trees, scarcely two of which could be seen together of the same kind, were now far away above us, in another world as it were. We could only see at times, where there was a break above, the tracery of the foliage against the clear blue sky. Sometimes the leaves were palmate, at others finely cut or feathery like the leaves of mimosae. Below, the tree trunks were everywhere linked together by sipos; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that of the latter [{180}] independent trees. Some were twisted in strands like cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree-trunks, or forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others again were of zigzag shape or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the ground to a giddy height."
Of these climbing plants he adds:
"It interested me much afterward to find these climbing trees do not form any particular family or genus. There is no order of plants whose especial habit is to climb, but species of many of the most diverse families, the bulk of whose members are not climbers, seem to have been driven by circumstances to adopt this habit. The orders Leguminosae, Guttifenae, Bignoniaceae, Moraceae, and others, furnish the greater number. There is even a climbing genus of palms (Desmoncus), the species of which are called in the Tupí language Jacitára. These have slender, thickly-spined, and flexuous stems, which twine about the latter trees from one to the other, and grow to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate shape characteristic of the family, are emitted from the stems at long intervals, instead of being collected into a dense crown, and have at their tips a number of long recurved spines. These structures are excellent contrivances to enable the trees to secure themselves by in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to the traveller, for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch the hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he passes. The number and variety of climbing trees in the Amazon forests are interesting, taken in connection with the fact of the very general tendency of the animals also to become climbers."
Of this tendency amongst animals Mr. Bates thus writes:
"All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American monkeys, are climbers. There is no group answering to the baboons of the old world, which live on the ground. The gallinaceous birds of the country, the representatives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa, are all adapted by the position of the toes to perch on trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are to be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to the bears (Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely arboreal, and has a long flexible tail like that of certain monkeys. Many other similar instances could be enumerated, but I will mention only the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, a great proportion of whose genera and species in these forest regions are, by the structure of their feet, fitted to live exclusively on the branches and leaves of trees."
Strange to the European must be the appearance of the numerous woody lianas, or air-roots of the parasitic plants of the family Araceae of which the well-known cuckoo-pint, or Arum maculatum, of this country is a non-epiphytous member, which sit on the branches of the trees above, and "hang down straight as plumb-lines," some singly, others in leashes; some reaching half-way to the ground, others touching it, and taking root in the ground. Here, too, in these forests of Pará, beside palms of various species, "some twenty to thirty feet high, others small and delicate, with stems no thicker than a finger," of the genus Bactris, producing bunches of fruit with grape-like juice, masses of a species of banana (Urania Amizonica), a beautiful plant with leaves "like broad sword-blades," eight feet long, and one foot broad, add fresh interest to the scene. These leaves rise straight upward alternately from the top of a stem five or six feet high. Various kinds of Marants, a family of plants rich in amylaceous qualities (of which the Maranta arundinacea, though not an American plant, yields the best arrowroot of commerce), clothe the ground, conspicuous for their [{181}] broad glossy leaves. Ferns of beautiful and varied forms decorate the tree-trunks, together with the large fleshy heart-shaped leaves of the Pothos plant. Gigantic grasses, such as bamboos, form arches over the pathways. "The appearance of this part of the forest was strange in the extreme, description can convey no adequate idea of it. The reader who has visited Kew, may form some notion by conceiving a vegetation like that in the great palm-house spread over a large tract of swampy ground, but he must fancy it mingled with large exogenous trees, similar to our oaks and elms, covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the ground encumbered with fallen and rotting trunks, branches, and leaves, the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking with moisture!" Amid these "swampy shades" numerous butterflies delight to flit. An entomologist in England is proud, indeed, when he succeeds in capturing the beautiful and scarce Camberwell beauty (Vanessa antiopa) or the splendid purple emperor (Apatura iris), but these fine species do not exceed three inches in expanse of wing, while the glossy blue-and-black Morpho Achilles measure six inches or more. The velvety black Papiloio Sesostris, with a large silky green patch on its wings, and other species of this genus, are almost exclusively inhabitants of the moist shades of the forest. The beautiful Epicalea ancea, "one of the most richly colored of the whole tribe of butterflies, being black, decorated with broad stripes of pale blue and orange, delights to settle on the broad leaves of the Uraniae and other similar plants." But like many other natural beauties, it is difficult to gain possession of, darting off with lightning speed when approached. Mr. Bates tells us that it is the males only of the different species which are brilliantly colored, the females being plainer and often so utterly unlike their partners that they are generally held to be different species until proved to be the same. The observations of this admirable naturalist on other points in the history of the butterflies of the Amazons, are highly important and deeply interesting. We must recur to this subject by-and-by.
We cannot yet tear ourselves away from these forests of Pará. We can well understand the intense interest with which Mr. Bates visited these different scenes month after month, in different seasons, so as to obtain something like a fair notion of their animal and vegetable productions. It is enough to make a naturalist's mouth water for a week together to think of the many successful strolls which Mr. Bates took amid the shades of these forests. For several months, he tells us, he used to visit this district two or three days every week, and never failed to obtain some species new to him of bird, reptile, or insect: