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These descents are very fatiguing, and it is not safe to trust to the lianas, which hang like great cords from the tops of the trees.
No lianas hang from the trees, and, excepting a few narrow-leaved Tillandsias, no epiphytes nestle on the branches and trunks. Below, instead of shrubby palms, large-leaved heliconias, and curious melastomae, the ground was bare and brown from the fallen leaves of the pines, excepting that in some places light grass had sprung up; in others the common bracken-fern of Europe.
Even the church was concealed in a garland of orange-trees, and had lianas and star-flowered creepers climbing over and dangling on it, up as high as the slender cross that surmounted its square white tower. As we gazed, the first sign of life appeared in the village. A puff of blue smoke rose curling and spiral from a chimney, and the matin bell rang out its summons to prayer.
He was wonderfully expert at catching lizards with his hands, and at climbing. The smoothest stems of palm trees offered little difficulty to him; he would gather a few lengths of tough, flexible lianas, tie them in a short, endless band to support his feet with, in embracing the slippery shaft, and then mount upwards by a succession of slight jerks.
From the steep summit of the mountain hung the graceful lianas, like a floating drapery, forming magnificent canopies of verdure upon the sides of the rocks. The sea birds, allured by the stillness of those retreats, resorted thither to pass the night.
When they wish to cross a river, they make a temporary canoe with the thick bark of trees, which they secure in the required shape of a boat by means of lianas. I heard it stated by a trader of Santarem, who narrowly escaped being butchered by them in 1854, that the Araras numbered 2000 fighting men. The number I think must be exaggerated, as it generally is with regard to Brazilian tribes.
We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn.
Hence the continual effect of glittering light. "A little lower than these tall queens of the coral-isles rise fairy-like canopies of graceful tree-ferns, often festooned with most delicate lianas; and there are places where not these only, but the larger trees, are literally matted together by the dense growth of the beautiful large-leaved white convolvulus, or the smaller lilac ipomaæ, which twines round the tall stems of the palms, and overspreads the light fronds like some green waterfall.
The tops of the trees, intertwined with lianas, and crowned with long wreaths of flowers, formed a vast carpet of verdure, the dark tint of which augmented the splendour of the aerial light. This picture struck us the more forcibly, as we then first beheld those great masses of tropical vegetation.
Even in the quietude of a moment, standing and looking before one at the moss-bearded trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see the struggle crystallized, just as in the still marble of the Laocoon one sees the struggle of life with death. In this place which covers an unthinkable area of the earth, a vast population has dwelt since the beginning of time. Think of it.
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