Travels on the Amazon. Alfred Russel Wallace
good, the size of a small apple, and full of a rich and very juicy pulp. But strangest of all is the vegetable milk, which exudes in abundance when the bark is cut: it has about the consistence of thick cream, and but for a very slight peculiar taste could scarcely be distinguished from the genuine product of the cow. Mr. Leavens ordered a man to tap some logs that had lain nearly a month in the yard. He cut several notches in the bark with an axe, and in a minute the rich sap was running out in great quantities. It was collected in a basin, diluted with water, strained, and brought up at teatime and at breakfast next morning. The peculiar flavour of the milk seemed rather to improve the quality of the tea, and gave it as good a colour as rich cream; in coffee it is equally good. Mr. Leavens informed us that he had made a custard of it, and that, though it had a curious dark colour, it was very well tasted. The milk is also used for glue, and is said to be as durable as that made use of by carpenters. As a specimen of its capabilities in this line, Mr. Leavens showed us a violin he had made, the belly-board of which, formed of two pieces, he had glued together with it applied fresh from the tree without any preparation. It had been done two years; the instrument had been in constant use, and the joint was now perfectly good and sound throughout its whole length. As the milk hardens by exposure to air, it becomes a very tough, slightly elastic substance, much resembling gutta-percha; but, not having the property of being softened by hot water, is not likely to become so extensively useful as that article.
After leaving the wood-yard, we next visited the rice-mills, and inspected the process by which the rice is freed from its husk. There are several operations to effect this. The grain first passes between two mill-stones, not cut as for grinding flour, but worked flat, and by them the outer husk is rubbed off. It is then conveyed between two boards of similar size and shape to the stones, set all over with stiff iron wires about three-eighths of an inch long, so close together that a grain of rice can just be pushed in between them. The two surfaces very nearly touch one another, so that the rice is forced through the spaces of the wires, which rub off the rest of the husk and polish the grain. A quantity, however, is broken by this operation, so it is next shaken through sifters of different degrees of fineness, which separate the dust from the broken rice. The whole rice is then fanned, to blow off the remaining dust, and finally passes between rubbers covered with sheepskin with the wool on, which clean it thoroughly, and render it fit for the market. The Pará rice is remarkably fine, being equal in quality to that of Carolina, but, owing to the carelessness with which it is cultivated, it seldom shows so good a sample. No care is taken in choosing seed or in preparing the ground; and in harvesting, a portion is cut green, because there are not hands enough to get it in quickly when it is ripe, and rice is a grain which rapidly falls out of the ear and is wasted. It is therefore seldom cultivated on a large scale, the greater portion being the produce of Indians and small landholders, who bring it to the mills to sell.
In the morning, after a refreshing shower-bath under the mill-feeder, we shouldered our guns, insect-nets, and pouches, and, accompanied by Mr. Leavens, took a walk into the forest. On our way we saw the long-toed jacanas on the river-side, Bemteví1 flycatchers on the branches of every bare tree, and toucans flying with out-stretched bills to their morning repast. Their peculiar creaking note was often heard, with now and then the loud tapping of the great woodpeckers, and the extraordinary sounds uttered by the howling monkeys, all telling us plainly that we were in the vast forests of tropical America. We were not successful in shooting, but returned with a good appetite to our coffee and masseranduba milk, pirarucú, and eggs. The pirarucú is the dried fish which, with farinha, forms the chief subsistence of the native population, and in the interior is often the only thing to be obtained, so we thought it as well to get used to it at once. It resembles in appearance nothing eatable, looking as much like a dry cowhide grated up into fibres and pressed into cakes, as anything I can compare it with. When eaten, it is boiled or slightly roasted, pulled to pieces, and mixed with vinegar, oil, pepper, onions, and farinha, and altogether forms a very savoury mess for a person with a good appetite and a strong stomach.
After breakfast, we loaded our old Negro (who had come with us to show the way) with plants that we had collected, and a basket to hold anything interesting we might meet with on the road, and set out to walk home, promising soon to make a longer visit. We reached Nazaré with boxes full of insects, and heads full of the many interesting things we had seen, among which the milk-giving tree, supplying us with a necessary of life from so new and strange a source, held a prominent place.
Wishing to obtain specimens of a tree called Caripé, the bark of which is used in the manufacture of the pottery of the country, we inquired of Isidora if he knew such a tree, and where it grew. He replied that he knew the tree very well, but that it grew in the forest a long way off. So one fine morning after breakfast we told him to shoulder his axe and come with us in search of the Caripé,—he in his usual dishabille of a pair of trousers,—shirt, hat, and shoes being altogether dispensed with in this fine climate; and we in our shirt-sleeves, and with our hunting apparatus across our shoulders. Our old conductor, though now following the domestic occupation of cook and servant of all work to two foreign gentlemen, had worked much in the forest, and was well acquainted with the various trees, could tell their names, and was learned in their uses and properties. He was of rather a taciturn disposition, except when excited by our exceeding dulness in understanding what he wanted, when he would gesticulate with a vehemence and perform dumb-show with a minuteness worthy of a more extensive audience; yet he was rather fond of displaying his knowledge on a subject of which we were in a state of the most benighted ignorance, and at the same time quite willing to learn. His method of instruction was by a series of parenthetical remarks on the trees as he passed them, appearing to speak rather to them than to us, unless we elicited by questions further information.
"This," he would say, "is Ocöóba, very good medicine, good for sore-throat," which he explained by going through the action of gargling, and showed us that a watery sap issued freely on the bark being cut. The tree, like many others, was notched all over by the number of patients who came for the healing juice. "This," said he, glancing at a magnificent tall straight tree, "is good wood for houses, good for floors; call it Quaröóba." "This," pointing to one of the curious furrowed trees that look as if a bundle of enormously long sticks had grown into one mass, "is wood for making paddles;" and, as we did not understand this in Portuguese, he imitated rowing in a canoe; the name of this was Poetiéka. "This," pointing to another large forest-tree, "is good wood for burning, to make charcoal; good hard wood for everything,—makes the best charcoal for forges," which he explained by intimating that the wood made the fire to make the iron of the axe he held in his hand. This tree rejoiced in the name of Nowará. Next came the Caripé itself, but it was a young tree with neither fruit nor flowers, so we had to content ourselves with specimens of the wood and bark only; it grew on the edge of a swamp filled with splendid palm-trees. Here the Assai Palm, so common about the city, reached an enormous height. With a smooth stem only four inches in diameter, some specimens were eighty feet high. Sometimes they are perfectly straight, sometimes gently curved, and, with the drooping crowns of foliage, are most beautiful. Here also grew the Inajá, a fine thick-stemmed species, with a very large dense head of foliage. The undeveloped leaves of this as well as many other kinds form an excellent vegetable, called here palmeto, and probably very similar to that produced by the cabbage-palm of the West Indies. A prickly-stemmed fan-leaved palm, which we had observed at the mills, was also growing here. But the most striking and curious of all was the Paxiuba, a tall, straight, perfectly smooth-stemmed palm, with a most elegant head, formed of a few large curiously-cut leaves. Its great singularity is, that the greater part of its roots are above ground, and they successively die away, fresh ones springing out of the stem higher up, so that the whole tree is supported on three or four stout straight roots, sometimes so high that a person can stand between them with the lofty tree growing over his head. The main roots often diverge again before they reach the ground, each into three or more smaller ones, not an inch each in diameter. Though the stem of the tree is quite smooth, the roots are thickly covered with large tuberculous prickles. Numbers of small trees of a few feet high grow all around, each standing on spreading legs, a miniature copy of its parent. Isidora cut down an Assai palm, to get some palmeto for our dinner; it forms an agreeable vegetable of a sweetish flavour. Just as we were returning, we were startled by a quiet remark that the tree close by us was the Seringa, or India-rubber-tree. We rushed to it, axe in hand, cut off
"Bemteví" (I saw you well); the bird's note resembles this word.