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#18 Banks of the Itahype
River, in the province of Bahia
Latin translation by
Ben Hennelly
All the rivers that descend through eastern Brazil to the sea, such as Parahyba, Rio Doce, Rio grande de Belmonte, Pardo or Patype, Rio de Contas and
others, generally exhibit a two-fold plant nature on their river banks.
In the interior regions, certainly, they pass for the most part through
fields or groves that, though dense, are nonetheless not as lofty as
the coastal forest that shades the mountain tract of the Serra
do Mar.
But as soon as they have entered this last, far-stretched
mountain ridge, which often bars their way as they rush seaward, so
that they crook andwind extensively or open a path for themselves through
narrow valleys by casting themselves down from the rocks, they are cloaked
with forest that, as lovely as it is singular, contains just about all
the species of vegetation of all kinds that you would name as particular
to this maritime ridge.
Especially, therefore,
there are those plants I am in the habit of calling Dryades.
Since a view of the primary forests' plant life nowhere lies so open
as from the surface of rivers, it seemed fitting to set before your
eyes the vegetation that wraps these rivers on the eastern seashore.
This was all the easier because, as I passed up and down the Itahype
River, in the district of Ilheos in Bahia,
I had good opportunity to sketch carefully the plant growth in those
places.
Since I passed along the river in a skiff in the months of December
and January, when everything there puts forth delightful flowers, I
was astonished at the wondrous beauty of the flora, which both sets
before the traveler viewing from below the severe, as it were, majesty
of the primeval forest and the immense grandeur of its forms, and displays
at the same time many lesser, humbler plants very near to the river.
There, watered by the chill stream and reaching up for the light and
warmth of the tropical sun, they presented to me a variety of the most
beautifully hued flowers such as I remember seeing just about nowhere
else in that land.
The forest stretching
along the river's bank often leans out so far over its surface that
living or dead trees slow a small boat's course. Indeed, this is the
very thing that fills the botanist with such great joy, since with dry
feet, and without great trouble, he can reach all the things that attract
his eyes for their singularity. Nor is the stream so rapid that the
skiff cannot be maneuvered as one pleases and held still, which, as
all know, happens in other rivers. Itahype and its neighbors are also
noteworthy because there is such a great variety and alternation in
forms along them, while all other rivers either are wrapped over long
stretches by one and the same plant, or offer the traveler by water
no occasion whatsoever to reach the plants along them from his boat,
as on the Amazon River and its confluents, or on the Sao
Francisco River.
 
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