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That of South America Alexis had carefully observed and studied in their long journey across that continent. He had noted the grand tropical trees the palms and pothos plants the mimosas and musaceae the magnificent forms of the lombax and bertholletia the curious cecropias and fig-trees the giant cedrelas and the gum-yielding siphonias.
We can conceive that a small number of the families of plants, for instance the musaceae and the palms, cannot belong to very cold regions, on account of their internal structure, and the importance of certain organs; but we cannot explain why no one of the family of the Melastomaceae vegetates north of the parallel of the thirtieth degree of latitude, or why no rose-tree belongs to the southern hemisphere.
They were a whole day upon the journey; and just before nightfall reached the place, where the man expected to fall in with the big bruangs. Of course, they could not commence their search before morning. They baited, therefore, and formed camp their Dyak guide erecting a bamboo hut in less than an hour, and thatching it over with the huge leaves of the wild musaceae.
It rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, and lianas, furnished so thick a natural trellis, that we were sheltered as under a vault of foliage. The Indians whose hammocks were placed on the edge of the river, interwove the heliconias and other musaceae, so as to form a kind of roof over them.
The people confound this alpine scitamineous plant with the arborescent gramina, under the name of carice. We saw neither its fruit nor flowers. Wandering in this thick wood of musaceae or arborescent plants, we constantly directed our course towards the eastern peak, which we perceived from time to time through an opening.
The plants rarely grow as high as two feet, and the trouble and expense are simply unremunerative. This failure may be accounted for by the extreme dryness prevailing during many months of the year, whereas in the eastern provinces plentiful showers fall the whole year round. On the volcanic mountains of Western Java a species of the Musaceae grows in great luxuriance.
The species Musaceae are herbaceous plants only. The outer stem consists of crescent-shaped petioles crossing one another alternately, and encircling the thin main stem. These petioles contain a quantity of bast fiber, which is used as string, but otherwise is of no commercial value.
There is a small valley about five hundred feet below us. It is a sort of table valley, and the stream along which we have been travelling runs through it, afterwards dashing over a fall to join the river below. In this valley I saw huge broad leaves of a brilliant yellowish green. I knew them at once to be the leaves of the great musaceae, either plantains or bananas.
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