tles lay in the night, and in pits about two feet deep, which they excavate with their broad, webbed paws. The eggs are about an inch and a half in diameter, having a thin, leathery shell, a very oily yolk, and a white which does not coagulate. The Indians ate them uncooked. We used them chiefly in making corn griddles. Here, as throughout its whole course, the Napo runs between two walls of evergreen verdure. On either hand. are low clay banks (no rocks are visible), and from these the forest rises to a uniform height of seventy or eighty feet. It has a more cheerful aspect than the sombre, silent wilderness of Baeza. Old aristocrats of the woods are overrun by a gay democracy of creepers and climbers, which interlace the entire forest, and, descending to take root again, appear like the shrouds and stays of a line-ofbattle ship. Monkeys gambol on this wild rigging, and mingle their chatter with the screams of the parrot. Trees as lofty as our oaks are covered with flowers as beautiful as our lilies. Here are orchids of softest tints;* flowering ferns, fifty feet high; the graceful bamboo and wild banana; while high over all countless species of palm wave their nodding plumes. Art could not arrange these beautiful forms so harmoniously as nature has done. The tropics, moreover, are strangers to the uniformity of association seen in temperate climes. We have so many social plants that we speak of a forest of oaks, and pines, and birches; but there variety is the law. Individuals of the same species are seldom seen growing together. Every * Some orchid is in flower all the year round. The finest species is the odontoglossum, having long, chocolate-colored petals, margined with yellow. "Such is their number and variety (wrote Humboldt) that the entire life of a painter would be too short to delineate all the magnificent Orchidea which adorn the recesses of the deep valleys of the Peruvian Andes." For many curious facts respecting the structure of these flowers, see Darwin's Fertilization of Orchids. tree is surrounded by strangers that seemingly prefer its room to its company; and, such is the struggle for possession of the soil, it is difficult to tell to which stem the different leaves and flowers belong. The peculiar charm of a tropical forest is increased by the mystery of its impenetrable thicket. Within that dense, matted shrubbery, and behind that phalanx of trees, the imagination of the traveler sees all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things. Tropical vegetation is of fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than the vegetation of the north. The leaves are not shed periodically—a character common, not only to the equator, but also to the whole southern hemisphere. Yet there is a variety of tints, though not autumnal. The leaves put on their best attire while budding instead of falling-passing, as they come to maturity, through different shades of red, brown, and green. The majority of tropical trees bear small flowers. The most conspicuous trees are the palms, to which the prize of beauty has been given by the concurrent voice of all ages. The earliest civilization of mankind belonged to countries bordering on the region of palms. South America, the continent of mingled heat and moisture, excels the rest of the world in the number and perfection of her palms. They are mostly of the feathery and fan-like species; the latter are inferior in rank to the former. The peculiarly majestic character of the palm is given not only by their lofty stems, but also in a very high degree by the form and arrangement of their leaves. How diverse, yet equally graceful, are the aspiring branches of the jagua and the drooping foliage of the cocoa, the shuttlecock-shaped crowns of the ubussú and the plumes of the jupati, forty feet in length. The inflorescence always springs from the top of the trunk, and the male flowers are generally yellowish. Unlike the oak, all species of which have similar fruit, there is a vast difference in the fruits of the palm: compare the triangular cocoa-nut, the peach-like date, and grape-like assaï. The silk-cotton tree is the rival of the palm in dignity; it has a white bark and a lofty flat crown. Among the loveliest children of Flora we must include the mimosa, with its delicately pinnated foliage, so endowed with sensibility that it seems to have stepped out of the bounds of vegetable life. The bamboo, the king of grasses, forms a distinctive feature in the landscape of the Napo, frequently rising eighty feet in length, though not in height, for the fronds curve downward. Fancy the airy grace of our meadow grasses united with the lordly growth of the poplar, and you have a faint idea of bamboo beauty. The first day of winter (how strangely that sounds under a vertical sun!) was Sunday; but it was folly to attempt to rest where punkies were as thick as atoms, so we floated on. It was only by keeping in mid-river and moving rapidly enough to create a breeze through our cabin, that life was made tolerable. A little after noon we were again obliged to tie up for a storm. Not a human being nor a habitation have we seen since leaving Coca; and to-day nothing is visible but the river, with its islands, and plaias, and the green palisades-the edges of the boundless forest. Not a hill over one hundred feet high are we destined to see till we reach Obidos, fifteen hundred miles eastward. Were it not for the wealth of vegetation-all new to transtropical eyes-and the concerts of monkeys and macaws, oppressively lonely would be the sail down the Napo between its uninhabited shores. But we believe the day, though distant, will come when its banks will be busy with life. Toward evening three or four canoes pulled out from the shore and came alongside. They were filled with the lowest class of Indians we have seen in South America. |