buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from
their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining
themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column,
whose head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the
yellow, purple, and snowy white of the parasitic plants.

Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the
trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay. The
clearance was complete. Joam Garral had not even had to bestir
himself in the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or
thirty years to replace. Not a stick of young or old wood was left to
mark the boundary of a future clearing, not even an angle to mark the
limit of the denudation. It was indeed a clean sweep; the trees were
cut to the level of the earth, to wait the day when their roots would
be got out, over which the coming spring would still spread its
verdant cloak.

This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and
its tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown,
and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes,
arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently
covered by the trees.

The last week of the month had not arrived when the trunks,
classified according to their varieties and specific gravity, were
symmetrically arranged on the bank of the Amazon, at the spot where
the immense jangada was to be guilt--which, with the different
habitations for the accommodation of the crew, would become a
veritable floating village--to wait the time when the waters of the
river, swollen by the floods, would raise it and carry it for