Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/231

 1851.3 THE PAXIUBA PALM. 199

plain-coloured Acrcea, that I had first met with at Jukeira, was here also very abundant.

In a hollow near a small stream that crossed the path I found growing the singular palm called " Paxiiiba barriguda " (the big-bellied paxiuba). It is a fine, tall, rather slender tree, with a head of very elegant curled leaves. At the base of the stem is a conical mass of air-roots, five or six feet high, more or less developed in all the species of this genus. But the peculiar character from which it derives its name is, that the stem at rather more than halfway up swells suddenly out to double its former thickness or more, and after a short distance again contracts, and continues cylindrical to the top. It is only by seeing great numbers of these trees, all with this character more or less palpable, that one can believe it is not an accidental circumstance in the individual tree, instead of being truly characteristic of the species. It is the Iriartea ventricosa of Martius.

I tried here to procure some hunters and fishermen, but was not very successful. I had a few fish brought me, and now and then a bird. A curious bird, called anamb£, was flying in flocks about the pupunha palms, and after much trouble I succeeded in shooting one, and it proved, as I had anticipated, quite different from the Gymnoderus nudicollis, which is a species much resembling it in its flight, and common in all parts of the Rio Negro. I went after them several times, but could not succeed in shooting another; for though they take but short flights, they remain at rest scarcely an instant. About the houses here were several trumpeters, curassow-birds, and those beautiful parrots, the anacas (Derotypus accipitrinus), which all wander and fly about at perfect liberty, but being bred from the nest, always return to be fed. The Uaupes Indians take much delight, and are very successful, in breeding birds and animals of all kinds.

We stayed here a week, and I went daily into the forest when the weather was not very wet, and generally obtained something interesting. I frequently met parties of women and boys, going to and returning from the rhossas. Sometimes they would run into the thicket till I had passed ; at other times they would merely stand on one side of the path, with a kind of bashful fear at encountering a white man while in that state of complete nudity, which they know is strange to us.