Aspects of the Forest.
Although at some times of the year the forests present only varied tints of green and brown, unrelieved by brighter colours; at others, when, after the rains, nature has revived, the banks of the streams are gay and beautiful in the extreme. Thousands of brilliant blossoms of varied colours rise amid the trunks of the trees, or hang in rich festoons from the branches, while the air is laden with the almost overpowering perfume of numberless flowers.
“Wild flowers,” says Mrs Agassiz, “are abundant; not delicate small plants growing low among the moss and grass, but large blossoms covering tall trees, and resembling exotics at home by their rich colour and powerful odour—indeed, the flowers of the Amazonian forests reminded me of hot-house plants—and there often comes a warm breath from the depth of the woods laden with perfume, like the air from the open door of a conservatory.”
“Beautiful as are the endless forests, however,” she remarks in another place, “we could not but long, when skirting them day after day, without seeing a house or meeting a canoe, for the sight of tilled soil, for pasture lands, for open ground, for wheat-fields and hay-stacks; for any sign, in short, of the presence of man. As we sat at night in the stern of the vessel, looking up the vast river stretching many hundred leagues, with its shores of impenetrable forests, it was difficult to resist an oppressive sense of loneliness. Though here and there an Indian settlement or a Brazilian village appears, yet the population is a mere handful in such a territory.”
Wonderful is the change in the appearance of the tropical representatives of well-known families in the Old World.
The india-rubber tree belongs to the milk-weed family. The euphorbiaceae assume the form of colossal trees, constituting a considerable part of its strange and luxuriant forest growth. The giant of the Amazonian woods, whose majestic flat crown towers over all other trees, while its white trunk stands out in striking relief through the surrounding mass of green—the sumaumera—is allied to the mallows of the North. Some of the most characteristic trees of the river-shore belong to these two families.
Buttress Trees.
One of the most striking characteristics of the forest vegetation is the way in which many of the trunks of the trees are supported by buttresses. The huge sumaumera is especially remarkable; but this disposition to throw out supports is not confined to one tree. It occurs in many families. These buttresses start at a distance of about ten feet from the ground, separating greatly towards the base, where they are often ten to twelve feet in depth. The lower part of the trunk is thus divided into several open compartments, so large that, if roofed over, they would form a hut with sufficient space for two people to stand up or lie down in. Others, however, rise to the height of twenty or thirty feet, and run up in the form of ribs to forty or fifty feet. Other trees appear as if they were composed of a number of slender stalks bound together, and are ribbed to their entire height. In some places the furrows reach completely through them, and appear like the narrow windows of a tower. The stems of others again rise on the summit of numerous roots, like the bulging-stemmed palm, apparently standing on a number of legs at the height of a dozen feet or more from the ground. Often the roots thus form archways sufficiently large for a person to walk beneath.
Sipos or Wild Vines.
Circling round the stems of trees in innumerable coils, and grasping them with a deadly embrace, grow in rich luxuriance countless wild vines, well meriting the name of murdering sipos. They hang in festoons from their boughs, and form an intricate tracery of network from tree to tree,—often of sufficient strength to support the falling monarchs of the forest when time has wrought decay among their roots.