Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/181

 little bloodsuckers could not very easily find an unoccupied place to operate upon. Poor Miguel, the Portuguese, suffered horribly from these pests, his ancles and wrists being so much inflamed that he was confined to his hammock, slung in the hold, for weeks. At every landing-place I had a ramble in the forest whilst the red skins made the fire and cooked the meal. The result was a large daily addition to my collection of insects, reptiles, and shells. Sometimes the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and spacious forest pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest degree by groves of the Urucurí palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by thousands under the crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees; their smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places where we encamped. It is similar in size and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly-flavoured juicy pulp. The Indians would not eat it; I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable.