A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, : $b with an account of the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon valleyWallace, Alfred Russel
History
A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, : $b with an account of the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon valley
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Amazon River Valley; Brazil -- Description and travel; Indians of South America -- Amazon River Valley; Indians of South America -- Amazon River Valley -- Languages; Natural history -- Amazon River Valley
On the morning of the 23rd of June we started early to walk to the
rice-mills at Magoary, which we had been invited to visit by the
proprietor, Mr. Upton, and the manager, Mr. Leavens, both American
gentlemen. At about two miles from the city we entered the virgin
forest, which the increased height of the trees and the deeper shade
had some time told us we were approaching. Its striking characteristics
were, the great number and variety of the forest-trees, their trunks
rising frequently for sixty or eighty feet without a branch, and
perfectly straight; the huge creepers, which climb about them,
sometimes stretching obliquely from their summits like the stays of
a mast, sometimes winding around their trunks like immense serpents
waiting for their prey. Here, two or three together, twisting spirally
round each other, form a complete living cable, as if to bind securely
these monarchs of the forest; there, they form tangled festoons, and,
covered themselves with smaller creepers and parasitic plants, hide the
parent stem from sight.
Among the trees the various kinds that have buttresses projecting
around their base are the most striking and peculiar. Some of these
buttresses are much longer than they are high, springing from a
distance of eight or ten feet from the base, and reaching only four or
five feet high on the trunk, while others rise to the height of twenty
or thirty feet, and can even be distinguished as ribs on the stem to
forty or fifty. They are complete wooden walls, from six inches to
a foot thick, sometimes branching into two or three, and extending
straight out to such a distance as to afford room for a comfortable hut
in the angle between them. Large square pieces are often cut out of
them to make paddles, and for other uses, the wood being generally very
light and soft.
Other trees, again, appear as if they were formed by a number of
slender stems growing together. They are deeply furrowed and ribbed for
their whole height, and in places these furrows reach quite through
them, like windows in a narrow tower, yet they run up as high as the
loftiest trees of the forest, with a straight stem of uniform diameter.
Another most curious form is presented by those which have many of
their roots high above the surface of the ground, appearing to stand on
many legs, and often forming archways large enough for a man to walk
beneath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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