Although at some times of the year the forests present only varied tints
of green and brown, unrelieved by brighter colours; at others, when,
after the rains, nature has revived, the banks of the streams are gay
and beautiful in the extreme. Thousands of brilliant blossoms of varied
colours rise amid the trunks of the trees, or hang in rich festoons from
the branches, while the air is laden with the almost overpowering
perfume of numberless flowers.
"Wild flowers," says Mrs Agassiz, "are abundant; not delicate small
plants growing low among the moss and grass, but large blossoms covering
tall trees, and resembling exotics at home by their rich colour and
powerful odour--indeed, the flowers of the Amazonian forests reminded me
of hot-house plants--and there often comes a warm breath from the depth
of the woods laden with perfume, like the air from the open door of a
conservatory."
"Beautiful as are the endless forests, however," she remarks in another
place, "we could not but long, when skirting them day after day, without
seeing a house or meeting a canoe, for the sight of tilled soil, for
pasture lands, for open ground, for wheat-fields and hay-stacks; for any
sign, in short, of the presence of man. As we sat at night in the stern
of the vessel, looking up the vast river stretching many hundred
leagues, with its shores of impenetrable forests, it was difficult to
resist an oppressive sense of loneliness. Though here and there an
Indian settlement or a Brazilian village appears, yet the population is
a mere handful in such a territory."
Wonderful is the change in the appearance of the tropical
representatives of well-known families in the Old World.
The india-rubber tree belongs to the milk-weed family. The
euphorbiaceae assume the form of colossal trees, constituting a
considerable part of its strange and luxuriant forest growth. The giant
of the Amazonian woods, whose majestic flat crown towers over all other
trees, while its white trunk stands out in striking relief through the
surrounding mass of green--the sumaumera--is allied to the mallows of
the North. Some of the most characteristic trees of the river-shore
belong to these two families.