lively and polite old man, whom I took to be one of the
neighbours, volunteered as guide. We embarked in a little
montaria, and paddled some three or four miles up and down the
stream. Although I had now become familiarised with beautiful
vegetation, all the glow of fresh admiration came again to me in
this place. The creek was about a hundred yards wide, but
narrower in some places. Both banks were masked by lofty walls of
green drapery, here and there a break occurring, through which,
under overarching trees, glimpses were obtained of the palm-
thatched huts of settlers. The projecting boughs of lofty trees,
which in some places stretched half-way across the creek, were
hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an endless variety
of creeping plants clothed the water-frontage, some of which,
especially the Bignonias, were ornamented with large gaily-
coloured flowers. Art could not have assorted together beautiful
vegetable forms so harmoniously as was here done by Nature.
Palms, as usual, formed a large proportion of the lower trees;
some of them, however, shot up their slim stems to a height of
sixty feet or more, and waved their bunches of nodding plumes
between us and the sky. One kind of palm, the Pashiuba (Iriartea
exorhiza), which grows here in greater abundance than elsewhere,
was especially attractive. It is not one of the tallest kinds,
for when full-grown its height is not more, perhaps, than forty
feet; the leaves are somewhat less drooping, and the leaflets
much broader than in other species, so that they have not that
feathery appearance which those of some palms have, but still
they possess their own peculiar beauty. My guide put me ashore in
one place to show me the roots of the Pashiuba. These grow above
ground, radiating from the trunk many feet above the surface, so
that the tree looks as if supported on stilts; and a person can,