Wanderings in South America | Page 3

gun of the fowler beneath, and
owed his life to the distance betwixt them.
The trees which form these far-extending wilds are as useful as they are

ornamental. It would take a volume of itself to describe them.
The green-heart, famous for its hardness and durability; the hackea for
its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and
letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the
locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a
sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest betwixt the
plantations and the rock Saba.
Beyond this rock the country has been little explored, but it is very
probable that these, and a vast collection of other kinds, and possibly
many new species, are scattered up and down, in all directions, through
the swamps and hills and savannas of ci-devant Dutch Guiana.
On viewing the stately trees around him, the naturalist will observe
many of them bearing leaves and blossoms and fruit not their own.
The wild fig-tree, as large as a common English apple-tree, often rears
itself from one of the thick branches at the top of the mora, and when
its fruit is ripe, to it the birds resort for nourishment. It was to an
undigested seed passing through the body of the bird which had
perched on the mora that the fig-tree first owed its elevated station
there. The sap of the mora raised it into full bearing, but now, in its turn,
it is doomed to contribute a portion of its own sap and juices towards
the growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which also the
birds deposited on its branches. These soon vegetate, and bear fruit in
great quantities; so what with their usurpation of the resources of the
fig-tree, and the fig- tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a
charge which nature never intended it should, languishes and dies under
its burden; and then the fig- tree, and its usurping progeny of vines,
receiving no more succour from their late foster-parent, droop and
perish in their turn.
A vine called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, on account of its use
in hauling out the heaviest timber, has a singular appearance in the
forests of Demerara. Sometimes you see it nearly as thick as a man's
body, twisted like a corkscrew round the tallest trees and rearing its
head high above their tops. At other times three or four of them, like

strands in a cable, join tree and tree and branch and branch together.
Others, descending from on high, take root as soon as their extremity
touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the
mainmast of a line-of-battle ship; while others, sending out parallel,
oblique, horizontal and perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you
in mind of what travellers call a matted forest. Oftentimes a tree, above
a hundred feet high, uprooted by the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by
these amazing cables of nature, and hence it is that you account for the
phenomenon of seeing trees not only vegetating, but sending forth
vigorous shoots, though far from their perpendicular, and their trunks
inclined to every degree from the meridian to the horizon.
Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush-rope; many of their
roots soon refix themselves in the earth, and frequently a strong shoot
will sprout out perpendicularly from near the root of the reclined trunk,
and in time become a fine tree. No grass grows under the trees and few
weeds, except in the swamps.
The high grounds are pretty clear of underwood, and with a cutlass to
sever the small bush-ropes it is not difficult walking among the trees.
The soil, chiefly formed by the fallen leaves and decayed trees, is very
rich and fertile in the valleys. On the hills it is little better than sand.
The rains seem to have carried away and swept into the valleys every
particle which Nature intended to have formed a mould.
Four-footed animals are scarce considering how very thinly these
forests are inhabited by men.
Several species of the animal commonly called tiger, though in reality
it approaches nearer to the leopard, are found here, and two of their
diminutives, named tiger-cats. The tapir, the lobba and deer afford
excellent food, and chiefly frequent the swamps and low ground near
the sides of the river and creeks.
In stating that four-footed animals are scarce, the peccari must be
excepted. Three or four hundred of them herd together and traverse the
wilds in all directions in quest of roots and fallen seeds. The Indians

mostly shoot them with poisoned arrows. When wounded they run
about one hundred and fifty paces; they then drop, and make
wholesome food.
The red monkey, erroneously called the