Remember the Rainforest 1

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The trunks covered with mud up to the height of the previous flooded river, have interlacing branches.

Here and there, in a greater or lesser number, they are associated with the cacao trees and the thorny branches of sarsaparilla. Vines without leaves and without twigs lock themselves in grotesque shapes in the trees. Between them appears the variegated interweaving of the underbrush, that frequently is again drowned in the next flood. Instead of the great parasites, here are only mosses and jungermanias, woven above the dripping leaves.

Jungermanias

Some little creature lives in the grove. Aquatic birds perch on the spine of the shore, and the gators are conspiring in the water or lazing in the mud.

The labyrinthine curves of the coves, which cross this pool, are so darkened by the curtain of hanging vegetation, that our boat can only hardly carry on; the silent stillness is only interrupted by the little waterbugs, agitated by the fish, or else by the snores of the gators; the vaporous breeze in the dense, gleaming foliage, the dark sky, clouded over with dense clouds, is visible to spaces between the tree canopies,

all contributing to the melancholy of the setting which was suitable for landing. In these groves of the floodplain, almost annually flooded to some feet, there are no plantations. The settlers choose the nearest points of solid land, where their products can easily be transported in canoes, since any other means of communication does not exist here, nor anywhere in general, inside the provinces of Para and Rio Negro.

The trails, which exist in the bush, are only traversed by Indian hunters, and although narrow and sinuous, they are, however, visible. Due to this lack of roads and highways, only draft and cargo animals are used, yet from Barra do Rio Negro to the borders of Brazil, we saw only two horses and a mule. On the other hand, cattle are found, although in small numbers, in all towns.

They are taken to graze on the planted stretches of the forest, or fed corn, in the pens. Milk is a rare thing on the table of the inhabitant, as well as beef. They are replaced by turtles meat and eggs.

In a woodless hill, south of the village, was where I saw the first time a plantation of ipadu, (Erythroxylum coca, Lam.) (1),

which could be called "tea from Peru and Alto Maranon" because its leaves produce the same stimulating effect. The small stems, three feet high, were on the edge of a rock that also contained maracuja creepers

(Passiflora maliformis, L.) that bear

(I) Martius deals extensively (see also note VI at the end of this chapter) of Amazonian coca, here called ipadu (a vocabulary of which there are the ipanu and ipandu variants, according to Stradelli's already quoted "Vocabulary"). Perhaps the Incas of Peru taught the savages of our river the use of coca in the same way that they taught them ceramics (the so-called marajoara)? (Nota da rev., Inst Hist. And Geogr. Bras.).

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