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Plants that love humidity adorn the scenery surrounding the cataracts. We there find in the plains groups of heliconias and other scitamineae with large and glossy leaves, bamboos, and the three palm-trees, the murichi, jagua, and vadgiai, each of which forms a separate group. The murichi, or mauritia with scaly fruits, is the celebrated sago-tree of the Guaraon Indians.
The birch, willow, alder, and walnut grow side by side with wild plantain, Erythrina, Wallichia palm, and gigantic bamboos: the Cedrela Toona, figs, Melastoma, Scitamineae, balsams, Pothos, peppers, and gigantic climbing vines, grow mixed with brambles, speedwell, Paris, forget-me-not, and nettles that sting like poisoned arrows.
We camped at 6,670 feet, amongst a vegetation I little expected to find so close to the snows of Kinchin; it consisted of oak, maple, birch, laurel, rhododendron, white Daphne, jessamine, Arum, Begonia, Cyrtandraceae, pepper, fig, Menispermum, wild cinnamon, Scitamineae, several epiphytic orchids, vines, and ferns in great abundance.
Laurels and wild nutmegs, with Henslowia, Itea, etc., were frequent in the forest, with the usual prevalence of parasites, mistleto, epiphytical Orchideae, AEshynanthus, ferns, mosses, and Lycopodia; and on the ground were Rubiaceae, Scitamineae, ferns, Acanthaceae, beautiful balsams, and herbaceous and shrubby nettles.
It is made of leaves of Scitamineae, between two thin plates of bamboo-work, clumsy and heavy; this is generally used in the rainy weather, while in the dry a conical one is worn, also of platted slips of bamboo, with broad flakes of talc between the layers, and a peacock's feather at the side.
Large bamboos rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly clothed with Dendrobium Pierardi and other epiphytical Orchids, with pendulous Lycopodia and many ferns, Hoya, Scitamineae, and similar types of the hottest and dampest climates.
The palm-trees, the scitamineae, the malvaceae, the trees with pinnate leaves, do not all display the same picturesque beauties; and generally the most beautiful species of each type, in plants as in animals, belong to the equinoctial zone. It is, however, the shade and humidity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose the migration of the cactuses southward.
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