Senh?r Manuel was then making a canoe 70 feet in length
from a solid trunk, which had originally been 110 feet long, and of
great thickness. The contrast of palm trees, growing amidst the
common branching kinds, never fails to give the scene an
intertropical character. Here the woods were ornamented by the
Cabbage Palm--one of the most beautiful of its family. With a stem
so narrow that it might be clasped with the two hands, it waves its
elegant head at the height of forty or fifty feet above the ground.
The woody creepers, themselves covered by other creepers, were of
great thickness: some which I measured were two feet in
circumference. Many of the older trees presented a very curious
appearance from the tresses of a liana hanging from their boughs,
and resembling bundles of hay. If the eye was turned from the world
of foliage above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the
extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosae. The
latter, in some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a
few inches high. In walking across these thick beds of mimosae, a
broad track was marked by the change of shade, produced by the
drooping of their sensitive petioles.
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