Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/47

1848.] action of gargling, and showed us that a watery sap issued freely on the bark being cut. The tree, like many others, was notched all over by the number of patients who came for the healing juice. "This," said he, glancing at a magnificent tall straight tree, "is good wood for houses, good for floors; call it Ouaröóba." "This," pointing to one of the curious furrowed trees that look as if a bundle of enormously long sticks had grown into one mass, " is wood for making paddles;" and, as we did not understand this in Portuguese, he imitated rowing in a canoe; the name of this was Pootiéka. "'This," pointing to another large. forest-tree, "is good wood for burning, to make charcoal; good hard wood for everything,—makes the best charcoal for forges," which he explained by intimating that the wood made the fire to make the iron of the axe he held in his hand. This tree rejoiced in the name of Nowará. Next came the Caripé itself, but it was a young tree with neither fruit nor flowers, so we had to content ourselves with specimens of the wood and bark only; it grew on the edge of a swamp filled with splendid palm-trees. Here the Assai Palm, so common about the city, reached an enormous height. With a smooth stem only four inches in diameter, some specimens were eighty feet high. Sometimes they are perfectly straight, sometimes gently curved, and, with the drooping crowns of foliage, are most beautiful. Here also grew the Inaja, a fine thick-stemmed species, with a very large dense head of foliage. The undeveloped leaves of this as well as many other kinds form an excellent vegetable, called here palmeto, and probably very similar to that produced by the cabbage-palm of the West Indies. A prickly-stemmed fan-leaved palm, which we had observed at the mills, was also growing here. But the most striking and curious of all was the Paxiuba, a tall, straight, perfectly smooth-stemmed palm, with a most elegant head, formed of a few large curiously-cut leaves. Its great singularity is, that the greater part of its roots are above ground, and they successively die away, fresh ones springing out of the stem higher up, so that the whole tree is supported on three or four stout straight roots, sometimes so high that a person can stand between them with the lofty tree growing over his head. The main roots often diverge again before they reach the ground, each into three or more smaller ones, not an inch each in diameter. Though the stem of