us or pod-bearing trees,
colossal nut-trees, broad-leaved Musaceae or bananas, and giant grasses.
The most prominent palms are the architectural Pupunha, or "peach-palm,"
with spiny stems, drooping, deep green leaves, and bunches of mealy,
nutritious fruit; the slender Assai, with a graceful head of delicate
green plumes; the Ubussu, with mammoth, undivided fronds; the stiff,
serrated-leaved Bussu, and gigantic Miriti. One of the noblest trees of
the forest is the Massaranduba, or "cow-tree" (_Brosimum
galactodendron_), often rising one hundred and fifty feet. It is a hard,
fine-grained, durable timber, and has a red bark, and leathery, fig-like
foliage. The milk has the consistency of cream, and may be used for tea,
coffee, or custards. It hardens by exposure, so as to resemble
gutta-percha. Another interesting tree, and one which yields the chief
article of export, is the Caucho, or India-rubber tree[169] (_Siphonia
Brasiliensis_), growing in the lowlands of the Amazon for eighteen
hundred miles above Para. It has an erect, tall trunk, from forty to
eighty feet high, a smooth, gray bark, and thick, glossy leaves. The
milk resembles thick, yellow cream, and is colored by a dense smoke
obtained by burning palm-nuts. It is gathered between August and
December. A man can collect six pounds a day, though this is rarely
done. It is frequently adulterated with sand. The tree belongs to the
same apetalous family as our castor-oil and the mandioca; while the tree
which furnishes the caoutchouc of the East Indies and Africa is a
species of Ficus, and yields an inferior article to the rubber of
America. Other characteristic trees are the Mongruba, one of the few
which shed their foliage before the new leaf-buds expand; the giant
Samauema, or silk-cotton tree (called _huimba_ in Peru); the Calabash, or
_cuieira_, whose gourd-like fruit furnishes the cups used throughout the
Amazon; the Itauba, or stone-wood, furnishing ship-timber as durable as
teak; the red and white Cedar, used for canoes (not coniferous like the
northern evergreen, but allied to the mahogany); the Jacaranda, or
rose-wood, resembling our locust; Palo de sangre, one of the most
valuable woods on the river; Huacapu, a very common timber; Capirona,
used as fuel on the steamers; and Tauari, a heavy, close-grained wood,
the bark of which splits into thin leaves, much used in making
cigarettes. The Piassaba, a palm yielding a fibre extensively
manufactured into cables