For more than a hundred miles before reaching the mouth of the Amazon its dirty current colours the otherwise blue waters of the Atlantic. Entering the delta by one of the numerous outlets, the steamer passes through channels which are surrounded on either side by islands covered with dense vegetation a hundred feet or more high, with a border of lilies and other aquatic plants. It is like a fairy garden, and the islands are peopled with a noisy population of monkeys and parrots. Occasionally, a huge snake may be exposed to view on the limb of a tree. There are many kinds of trees, from adolescent saplings, as big as your arm, to immense trunks many feet through. And what a variety of palms! There are little palms that branch out like fans and do not grow high. There are palms, loaded with cocoanuts, which lean out over the water’s edge at a very pronounced angle. One species is armed with fearful spines, but bears an edible nut, while the cohune palm grows great clusters of hard, oily nuts. Above all the members of this arborial family tower the lofty royal palms, which are the aristocrats of this family. The native finds this tropical tree most useful, for “To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine, House and raiment and food and wine.” The tree which bears the Brazil nuts of commerce is one of the highest of the Amazonian trees and overtops the royal palm. Its foliage is of a deep green and spreads out on all sides. The nuts grow in a great pod as large as a good-sized apple, and inside the thick husk will be found fifteen or twenty of these rich and delicious nuts. Flowering trees are omnipresent in these forests, and some of them are covered with beautiful flowers; or perhaps it may be a vine that bears the flowers one sees in the canopy overhead. They are neither buttercups nor violets, and yet it may be that they resemble those better known blossoms.