long spinous processes of a very singular character. They are from
eighteen inches to three feet long, of a black colour, flattish, and
generally broken or fibrous at the point. They are much sought after by
the Indians, who use them to make arrows for their “gravatánas” or
blow-pipes. One of these arrows is here represented with the wicker
quiver in which they are carried. They are about fifteen or eighteen
inches long, sharply pointed at the end, which is covered with “curarí”
poison for three or four inches down, and notched so as to break off in
the wound. Near the bottom a little of the soft down of the
silk-cotton-tree is twisted round into a smooth spindle-haped mass, and
carefully secured with a fibre of a “_bromelia_.” The cotton just fits
easily into the tube, offering a light resisting body for the breath to
act upon.
The fruit of this species is very similar to that of the Baccába, and is
said to be of even superior flavour.
The Patawá is found in the whole of the Amazon and Rio Negro in the
virgin forest, though apparently nowhere very abundant. Specimens are
now growing in the Palm House at Kew.
The fruit is represented on Pl. X. of the natural size.
ŒNOCARPUS MINOR, _Martius_.
Baccába miri, _Lingoa Geral_.
This is a small species common on the upper Rio Negro. The stem is not
half so thick as in the _Œ. baccába_, and the leaves are in proportion.
The fruit is also very small, but is very fleshy and fine-flavoured, and
ripens at a different time of year from the larger kind. It grows in the
dry virgin forest. My drawing of this tree was unfortunately lost on my
voyage home.
[Illustration:
Pl. X.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
ŒNOCARPUS BATAWA. Ht. 60 Ft.
]
ŒNOCARPUS DISTICHUS, _Martius_.
Baccába, of Pará.
This is the species known as the Baccába at Pará, where the _Œ. baccába_
is not found. It is quite distinct from the allied species by the leaves
being distichous, or arranged nearly in one plane on each side of the
stem, which gives it a very peculiar aspect, unlike any other Palm.
On my return to Pará from the interior, I was suffering so much from
ague, as to be unable to go in search of a specimen of this tree to
figure as I had intended.
This, like all other species of the genus, grows in dry and rather
elevated forest land.
Genus IRIARTEA, _Ruiz_ et _Pavon_.
Female flowers few, interspersed among the males, bracteate. Spathe
membranous, incomplete. Male flowers with from twelve to fifty stamens
and the rudiments of a pistil. Female flowers with three sessile
stigmas.
These singular and beautiful Palms have lofty, smooth, cylindrical or
ventricose stems, very faintly ringed. The roots grow more or less above
ground. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, and the leaflets are
somewhat triangular, notched, often twisted or curled, and have
radiating nerves. The sheathing bases form a column as in _Euterpe_. The
spadices grow from beneath the leaves and are simply branched and
drooping. The spathes vary in number and size; they are membranous, and
fall off before the fruit ripens. The fruit is oval, of moderate size,
generally of a red or yellow colour, and the pulpy part is bitter and
uneatable. The stems of this genus increase in thickness within certain
limits, differing from most other palms, which, when the stem is once
formed, only increase in height.
Nine species of this genus are known, all natives of South America. Four
of them occur in the Amazon district, three in Bolivia, one in
Venezuela, and one near Bogotá, reaching a height above the sea of 5000
to 8000 feet.
[Illustration:
Pl. XII.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
IRIARTEA EXORHIZA. Ht. 60 Ft.
]
PLATE XII.
IRIARTEA EXORHIZA, _Martius_.
Pashiúba, _Lingoa Geral_.
This curious and beautiful tree is common in the forests about Pará and
on the banks of the Amazon. It reaches fifty or sixty feet in height,
with the stem moderately thick and very smooth, there being scarcely any
rings or scars left by the fallen leaves.
The leaves are large and pinnate, with the leaflets triangular and very
deeply notched, standing out at different angles with the midrib. The
leaves curve over gracefully, and the character and aspect of the
foliage is very different from that of most other palms. The column
formed by the sheathing leaf-stalks is swollen at the base and of a deep
green colour.
The spadices are three or four in number, growing rather upwards from
the stem below the leaf-column. They are small and simply branched, and
bear small oval red fruits about the size of a damson, the outer pulp of
which is bitter and only eaten by some birds.
But what most strikes attention in this tree, and renders it so
peculiar, is, that the roots are almost entirely above ground. They
spring out from the stem, each one at a higher point than the last, and
extend diagonally downwards till they approach the ground, when they
often divide into many rootlets, each of which secures itself in the
soil. As fresh ones spring out from the stem, those below become rotten
and die off; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a lofty tree
supported entirely by three or four roots, so that a person may walk
erect beneath them, or stand with a tree seventy feet high growing
immediately over his head.
In the forests where these trees grow, numbers of young plants of every
age may be seen, all miniature copies of their parents, except that they
seldom possess more than three legs, which gives them a strange and
almost ludicrous appearance.
The figure on the opposite page (Plate XIII.) represents accurately the
roots of a tree which had been partly blown down in the forest of the
Upper Rio Negro. My friend Mr. Spruce informs me that it is a distinct
species from that found at Pará, though closely allied to it, and
scarcely differing in the character of the roots.
The wood of these trees is very hard on the outside, but soft and pithy
within. It splits easily and very straight, and is much used for forming
the floors of canoes, the ceilings of houses, shelves, seats, and
various other purposes. Perfectly straight laths are more readily made
from it than from any other wood, and they are so hard and durable as to
serve for fish-weirs, corals for turtles, and for harpoons. The
air-roots are covered with tubercular prickles, and are used by some
Indians to grate their mandiocca.
This species grows in swamps or marshy ground in the virgin forest, not
in the tide-flooded lands on the river banks.
Young plants may be seen in the great Palm House at Kew.
A fruit is represented on Plate III. fig. 5. of the natural size.
[Illustration:
Pl. XIII.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
ROOTS OF AN IRIARTEA.
]
[Illustration:
Pl. XIV.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
IRIARTEA VENTRICOSA. Ht. 20 Ft.
]
PLATE XIV.
IRIARTEA VENTRICOSA, _Martius_.
Pashiúba barriguda, _Brazil_.
This is the most majestic tree of the genus. The stem reaches eighty or
a hundred feet in height, and besides being rather thicker in proportion
than in the last species, offers a remarkable character in being
constantly more or less swollen near the middle or towards the top. The
trunk is generally cylindrical to a height of forty or fifty feet, where
it swells out to double its former diameter or more for ten or fifteen
feet further, when it again diminishes and becomes cylindrical for about
twenty feet to the summit. It is only when the trees have reached their
full height or nearly so that the swelling commences. In a forest where
they abound many may be seen of a large size, but quite cylindrical from
top to bottom, while others present every degree of swelling from a just
perceptible thickening to a most extraordinary enlargement. The column
of air-roots in this species is six or eight feet high, forming a
compact conical mass, the separate roots being more slender than in the
_Iriartea exorhiza_.
The leaves are very large, with the leaflets broadly triangular and much
cut and waved, forming a very elegant and yet massive head of foliage.
The leaf-olumn is very thick, much swollen at the base, and of a deep
bluish green colour.
The unopened spathes are lunate in shape and curved downwards, and the
spadices are small and simply branched.
The wood of this tree is very hard, heavy and black, and is used by the
Indians for making harpoons and spears with which they hunt the
cow-fish. The swollen part of the stem is sometimes cut down and made
into a canoe, when one is required in a hurry; otherwise it is not made
use of.
The tree grows on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro, on hill sides and on
the banks of brooks and springs; and the Indians say that wherever it
abounds sarsaparilla will be found growing near.
A fruit is represented on the Plate of the natural size.
[Illustration:
Pl. XV.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
IRIARTEA SETIGERA. Ht. 20 Ft.
]
PLATE XV.
IRIARTEA SETIGERA, _Martius_.
Pashiúba miri, _Lingoa Geral_.
This small species has the stem from fifteen to twenty feet high, and
varying from the thickness of a finger to that of the wrist, which it
never exceeds. The stem is smooth and cylindrical, but distinctly
ringed. The roots appear only a few inches above the ground. The leaves
are pinnate, the leaflets elongate, triangular and cut at the ends. The
column is short and cylindrical, and both it and the petioles are
covered with short hairs or down. The spadices have long stalks and grow
from beneath or from among the leaves; they are rather large and are
simply branched. The spathes form sheaths at the bases of the spadices,
and are persistent. The fruit is oval, of an orange-red colour, and
about the size of the “hip” or wild rose fruit.
These trees grow on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro in the dry virgin
forest, where they occur in small scattered groves.
This species is of great importance to the Indian of the Rio Negro. With
its stem he constructs his “gravatána” or blowing tube, which, with the
little arrows before described as made from the spines of the Patawá,
forms a most valuable weapon, enabling him to bring down monkeys,
parrots and curassow birds from their favourite stations on the summits
of the loftiest trees of the forest.
When he wishes to make a “gravatána” he searches in the forest till he
finds two straight and tall stems of the “Pashiúba miri” of such
proportionate thicknesses that one could be contained within the other.
When he returns home he takes a long slender rod which he has prepared
on purpose, generally made of the hard and elastic wood of the “Pashiúba
barriguda,” and with it pushes out the pith from both the stems, and
then with a little bunch of the roots of a tree fern, cleans and
polishes the inside till the bore becomes as hard and as smooth as
polished ebony. He then carefully inserts the slenderer tube within the
larger, placing it so that any curve in the one may counteract that in
the other. Should it still be not quite correct, he binds it carefully
to a post in his house till it is perfectly straight and dry. He then
fits a mouth-piece of wood to the smaller end of the tube, so that the
arrow may go out freely at the other; and when he wishes to finish his
work neatly, winds spirally round it from end to end, the shining bark
of a creeper. Near the lower extremity he forms a sight with the large
curved cutting tooth of the Paca (_Cœlogenus paca_), which he fixes on
with pitch, and the gravatána is then fit for use.
These tubes are never less than eight and are often ten or twelve feet
long, and on looking through a good one, not the slightest irregularity
can be detected from one end to the other. The bore is generally not
large enough to admit the tip of the little finger, so that the breath
more readily fills the whole tube and propels the arrow with great
velocity. The vertical direction is that in which the surest aim can be
taken, and for which the gravatána is best adapted. When birds are
feeding at the top of a lofty tree where the result of a gun-shot would
be doubtful, a skilful Indian will take his station beneath it, and with
a puff from his powerful lungs, will send up his little poisoned arrows
with unerring aim. The wounded birds sometimes turn giddy and drop in a
few seconds, or fly away to a neighbouring tree and in a minute fall
heavily to the ground, or try to pluck out the arrows with their beaks,
which, however, invariably break in the wound. The hunter carefully
marks the direction in which each one falls, and when his quiver is
emptied of arrows or the tree of birds, walks round and gathers up the
game. His weapon makes no noise, and he therefore often does more
execution than the best European sportsman armed with his double-barrel
Manton.
On Plate XV. fig. 1. is a fruit of the natural size; fig. 2. is the
gravatána or Indian blowpipe.
Genus RAPHIA, _Commerson_.
Male and female flowers intermixed on the same spadix. No common spathe,
but many small incomplete sheaths. Male flowers with from six to twelve
stamens and no rudiments of a pistil. Female flowers with three sessile
stigmas and barren stamens.
The stems are short, thick and ringed. The leaves are very large,
regular and pinnate; the leaflets are linear and have spinulose midribs
and edges. The bases of the petioles are sheathing, and persistent some
way down the stem, and the margins are fibrous. The spadices grow from
among the leaves, and are very large and much branched; and the fruit is
oblong and covered with large imbricated scales.
There are three species of the genus known; one is a native of the west
coast of Africa, another of Madagascar, while a third is found on the
banks of the Lower Amazon.
[Illustration:
Pl. XVI.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
RAPHIA TÆDIGERA. Ht. 60 Ft.
]
PLATE XVI.
RAPHIA TÆDIGERA, _Martius_.
Jupatí, _Lingoa Geral_.
This is one of the most striking of the many noble Palms which grow on
the rich alluvium of the Amazon. Its comparatively short stem enables us
fully to appreciate the enormous size of its leaves, which are at the
same time equally remarkable for their elegant form. They rise nearly
vertically from the stem and bend out on every side in graceful curves,
forming a magnificent plume seventy feet in height and forty in
diameter. I have cut down and measured leaves forty-eight and fifty feet
long, but could never get at the largest. The leaflets spread out four
feet on each side of the midrib. They are rather irregularly scattered
and not very closely set; they droop at the tips and have weak spinules
along the margins.
The stem does not generally exceed six or eight feet in height and is
about a foot in diameter, clothed for some distance down with the
persistent sheathing bases of the leaf-stalks and the numerous spinous
processes which proceed from them. These spines are something like those
of the “Patawá,” but not so thick and strong.
The spadices are very large, compoundly branched and drooping; they grow
from among the leaves and have numerous bract-like sheaths in the place
of spathes.
The flowers are of a greenish olive colour and densely crowded, and the
fruit is large, oblong, and reticulated with large scales.
The petiole or leaf-stalk of this tree is most extensively useful. It is
often twelve or fifteen feet long below the first leaflets, and four or
five inches in diameter, perfectly straight and cylindrical. When dried,
it almost equals the quill of a bird for strength and lightness, owing
to its thin hard outer covering and soft internal pith. But it is too
valuable to the Indian for him to use it entire. He splits off the
smooth glossy rind in perfectly straight strips and makes baskets and
window blinds. The remaining part is of a consistence between pith and
wood, and is split up into laths about half an inch thick and serves for
a variety of purposes. Window shutters, boxes, bird-cages, partitions
and even entire houses are constructed of it. In the little village of
Nazaré near Pará, many houses of this kind may be seen in which all the
walls are of this material, supported by a few posts at the angles and
fastened together with pegs and slender creepers (sipós).
The hand may be easily pushed through one of these walls, but as the
inhabitants do not trouble themselves with the possession of any article
worth stealing, they sleep as composedly as if stone walls and iron
bolts shut them in with all the security of a more advanced
civilization.
The same material is also used for stoppers for bottles, and we found it
answer admirably for lining our insect boxes, holding the pins securely
and being more uniform in its texture than cork.
This is the only American species of the genus, and it inhabits
exclusively the tide-flooded lands of the Lower Amazon and Pará rivers,
being quite unknown in the interior. When descending from the Rio Negro
to Pará in the summer of 1852, I observed some of our Indians who had
made the voyage before, pointing out this tree to their less travelled
companions as one of the curiosities of the lower country not to be
found in the “Sertaõ.”
It is probable that the leaf, though not entire, is the largest in the
whole vegetable kingdom, some of them covering a surface of more than
200 square feet. In a few years we may be able to see them in the
magnificent Palm House at Kew, where young plants are now growing.
Plate II. fig. 1, a fruit of _Raphia tædigera_ of the natural size.
Genus MAURITIA, _Linnæus_.
Male flowers on one tree, female or hermaphrodite flowers on another.
The spathes are imperfect, bract-ike, tubular sheaths. The male flowers
have six stamens. The female flowers have a three-lobed stigma and six
imperfect stamens.
The stems are either tall, columnar and smooth, or more slender and
armed with strong conical spines. The leaves are all fan-shaped or
radiating from a centre. The spadix is very large and pinnately
branched, and grows from among the leaves. The fruits are of moderate
size, oval or globular, and covered with rather small imbricated scales
pointing downwards.
Four species are described by Martius, three of which occur in the
Amazon district, and four more were met with by me on the Rio Negro, so
that the genus seems confined to the hottest parts of the American
Continent from the level of the sea to an altitude of about 3000 feet.
[Illustration:
Pl. XVII.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
MAURITIA FLEXUOSA. Ht. 100 Ft.
]
PLATE XVII.
MAURITIA FLEXUOSA, _Linnæus_.
Mirití, _Lingoa Geral_.
Muríchi, _in Venezuela_.
Itá? _Mouth of the Orinoco._
This is one of the most noble and majestic of the American Palms. It
grows to a height of eighty or a hundred feet. The stem is straight and
smooth, about five feet in circumference, often perfectly cylindrical,
but sometimes swollen near the middle or towards the top, so that the
bottom is the thinnest part.
The leaves spread out in every direction from the top of the stem. They
are very large and fan-shaped, the leaflets spreading out rigidly on all
sides and only drooping at the tips and at the midrib or elongation of
the petiole. The leaves stand on long stalks which are very straight and
thick, and much swollen at the base which clasps the stem. A full-grown
fallen leaf of this tree is a grand sight. The expanded sheathing base
is a foot in diameter; the petiole is a solid beam ten or twelve feet
long, and the leaf itself is nine or ten in diameter. An entire leaf is
a load for a man.
The spadices grow out from among the leaves; they are very large,
pinnately branched and horizontal or drooping. The fruit is spherical,
the size of a small apple and covered with rather small, smooth, brown,
reticulated scales, beneath which is a thin coating of pulp. A spadix
loaded with fruit is of immense weight, often more than two men could
carry between them.
The leaves, fruit and stem of this tree are all useful to the natives of
the interior. The leaf-stalks are applied to the same purposes as those
of the species last described, the Jupatí. The epidermis of the leaves
furnishes the material of which the string for hammocks, and cordage for
a variety of purposes is made. The unopened leaves form a thick-pointed
column rising from the very centre of the crown of foliage. This is cut
down, and by a little shaking the tender leaflets fall apart. Each one
is then skilfully stripped of its outer covering, a thin riband-like
pellicle of a pale yellow colour which shrivels up almost into a thread.
These are then tied in bundles and dried, and are afterwards twisted by
rolling on the breast or thigh into string, or with the fingers into
thicker cords. The article most commonly made from it is the “réde,” or
netted hammock, which is the almost universal bed of the native tribes
of the Amazon. These are formed by doubling the string over two rods or
poles about six or seven feet apart, till there are forty or fifty
parallel threads, which are then secured at intervals of about a foot by
cross strings twisted and tied on to every longitudinal one. A strong
cord is then passed through the loop formed by all the strings brought
together at each end, by which the hammock is hung up a few feet from
the ground, and in this open net the naked Indian sleeps beside his fire
as comfortably as we do in our beds of down.
Other tribes twist the strings together in a complicated manner so that
the hammock is more elastic, and the Brazilians have introduced a
variety of improvements by using a kind of knitting needles producing a
closer web, or by a large wooden frame with rollers, on which they weave
in a rude manner with a woof and weft as in a regular loom. They also
dye the string of many brilliant colours which they work in symmetrical
patterns, making the rédes or “maqueiras” as they are there called,
among the gayest articles of furniture to be seen in a Brazilian house
on the Amazon.
From the fruits a favourite Indian beverage is produced. They are soaked
in water till they begin to ferment, and the scales and pulpy matter
soften and can be easily rubbed off in water. When strained through a
sieve it is ready for use, and has a slight acid taste and a peculiar
flavour of the fruit at first rather disagreeable to European palates.
In the tidal districts about Pará, the massive trunks of these trees are
often used to form a raised pathway across the expanse of soft mud
generally left at low water between “terra firma” and the water’s edge.
A smooth and slippery cylinder is certainly not the best thing that
could be devised for this purpose, but as it is the most easily procured
and the least expensive it is proportionately common, and on paying a
visit to many a Brazilian country house, should you arrive at low water,
you will have no other means of getting ashore.
The Miriti is a social palm, covering large tracts of tide-flooded lands
on the Lower Amazon. In these places there is no underwood to break the
view among interminable ranges of huge columnar stems rising undisturbed
by branch or leaf to the height of eighty or a hundred feet,—a vast
natural temple which does not yield in grandeur and sublimity to those
of Palmyra or Athens.
Of the age of these noble trees we have no knowledge, but it is
remarkable how uniform they appear in size, there often being not a
single young tree over a considerable extent of ground, particularly in
places now flooded daily by the tide. One would therefore imagine that
the present trees sprung up when the ground was more elevated than at
present, and that it has since gradually sunk (or the waters risen) till
the conditions have become unfavourable for the growth of young plants,
though not hurtful to those which had already attained a certain age.
Whether such is the true explanation of the phænomenon can only be
decided by continued observation on the spot.
Besides this species which is mentioned by Martius as occurring at Pará,
my friend Mr. Spruce ascertained that another closely allied palm, the
_Mauritia vinifera_, also occurs there. On the Upper Amazon and Rio
Negro a palm is found supposed to be the _M. flexuosa_, but it is not so
lofty a tree, which may perhaps be accounted for by its growing on
annually instead of diurnally flooded lands. It is believed to be the
same species which Humboldt observed on the Serra Duida. The Itá palm
growing on the delta of the Orinoco is also thought to be the same
species. On the river Uaupes, a branch of the Upper Rio Negro, I
observed an allied species called by the natives “Caraná assu.” The stem
was smooth and much more slender and waving, and the leaves much
smaller.