Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/319

 they are called, situated five miles from the village. The road thither led through a varied and beautiful forest, containing many gigantic trees. I missed the Assai, Mirití, Paxiúba, and other palms which are all found only on rich moist soils, but the noble Bacába was not uncommon, and there was a great diversity of dwarf species of Marajá palms (Bactris), one of which, called the Peuriríma, was very elegant, grooving to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, with a stem no thicker than a man's finger. On arriving at the campo all this beautiful forest abruptly ceased, and we saw before us an oval tract of land, three or four miles in circumference, destitute even of the smallest bush. The only vegetation was a crop of coarse hairy grass growing in patches. The forest formed a hedge all round the isolated field, and its borders were composed in great part of trees which do not grow in the dense virgin forest, such as a great variety of bushy Melastomas, low Byrsomina trees, myrtles, and Lacre-trees, whose berries exude globules of wax resembling gamboge. On the margins of the campo wild pine-apples also grew in great quantity. The fruit was of the same shape as our cultivated kind, but much smaller, the size being that of a moderately large apple. We gathered several quite ripe; they were pleasant to the taste, of the true pine-apple flavour, but had an abundance of fully developed seeds, and only a small quantity of eatable pulp. There was no path beyond this campo; in fact all beyond is terra incognita to the inhabitants of Villa Nova.

The only interesting Mammalian animal which I saw