Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd
of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung
themselves into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and
cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the
spot. Very soon there remained only a doomed forest, with long bare
stems, bereft of their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly
rayed on to the humid soil which perhaps its shots had never before
caressed.

There was not a single tree which could not be used for some work of
skill, either in carpentry or cabinet-work. There, shooting up like
columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and
twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts,
which yield the three-cornered nuts; _"murichis,"_ unexcelled for
building purposes; _"barrigudos,"_ measuring a couple of yards at the
swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with
shining russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of
which supports a horizontal parasol; and _"bombax"_ of superb
stature, with its straight and smooth white stem. Among these
magnificent specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many
_"quatibos"_ whose rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees,
whose fruits are like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged
within, and whose wood of clear violet is specially in demand for
ship-building. And besides there was the ironwood; and more
particularly the _"ibiriratea,"_ nearly black in its skin, and so
close grained that of it the Indians make their battle-axes;
_"jacarandas,"_ more precious than mahogany; _"cæsalpinas,"_ only now
found in the depths of the old forests which have escaped the
woodman's ax; _"sapucaias,"_ one hundred and fifty feet high,