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The Ubussu has erect, uncut leaves, twenty-five feet long, and six feet wide, all arranged round the top of a four-foot high stem, so as to form a figure like that of a colossal shuttlecock. The fan-leaved palms, which clothed nearly the entire islet, had huge cylindrical smooth stems, three feet in diameter, and about a hundred feet high.
As we progressed slowly, we took the montaria, and went ashore, from time to time, to the houses, which were numerous on the river banks as well as on the larger islands. In low situations they had a very unfinished appearance, being mere frameworks raised high on wooden piles, and thatched with the leaves of the Ubussu palm.
The Ubussu, lower in height, showed only its shuttlecock shaped crowns of huge undivided fronds, which, being of a vivid pale-green, contrasted forcibly against the sombre hues of the surrounding foliage. The shape of this last is exceedingly elegant, the size of the crown being in proper proportion to the straight smooth stem.
The land lay below the upper level of the daily tides, so that there was no underwood, and the ground was bare. The trees were almost all of one species of Palm, the gigantic fan-leaved Mauritia flexuosa; only on the borders was there a small number of a second kind, the equally remarkable Ubussu palm, Manicaria saccifera.
The fruits of the two palms were scattered over the ground; those of the Ubussu adhere together by twos and threes, and have a rough, brown-coloured shell; the fruit of the Mauritia, on the contrary, is of a bright red hue, and the skin is impressed with deep-crossing lines, which give it a resemblance to a quilted cricket-ball.
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