roots, which project like huge
outworks. These seem to grow in all directions, forming props, stays,
and cross-bars wherever they are wanted, just as if the whole were a
soft plastic mass, the sole purpose of which was to supply, with a
minimum of material, as much stability as possible to the trunk, whose
wood is of extreme softness and whose roots are not deep. The
pachiuba-palm (_Iriartea exorhiza_) and some species of Cecropiae exhibit
other extravagances in their roots. They appear as if standing on
stilts, the real trunks only beginning at eight or ten feet above
ground.

But, more than all, it is the profusion of orchids and Bromeliae that
excites our admiration. These bright children of the tropics envelop
with dense foliage as well the fallen and mouldering trunks as those yet
upstanding in full vigor and bloom, thus forming hanging gardens of
astounding magnificence, which reveal leaves and flowers of the most
irregular shapes and colors. Everywhere, on the branches and on the
ground, and even from out the fissures of the bare rock, light ferns and
rich moss spring up and clothe the decaying trunks with fresh green. Of
mosses and ferns, especially tree-ferns, we found a greater exuberance
and a larger variety, in species as well as in individuals, in the
Southern provinces of the empire, Sao Paulo and Parana; but for splendid
palms and gigantic dicotyledons the North is decidedly the richer of the
two.

Without the aid of the pencil it is indeed scarcely possible to give an
adequate idea of the magnificence of this vegetation, especially of the
manner in which the different forms are grouped. We may see, it is true,
in our own hot-houses, well-trimmed palms, beautiful orchids with their
abnormal blossoms, and Aroideae with their bright, sappy, sometimes
regularly perforated, leaves; but how different is this from the virgin
forest, wherein Nature, undisturbed by man, has created her own
prodigies, and where no narrow pots separate her children from the
maternal soil, and where no dim roof of glass intervenes between them
and the blue ether! Nor, in our carefully tended hot-houses, is the eye
ever gratified with such agreeable contrasts as are afforded by the
silver-gray and rust-brown tints of the decayed leaf of the palm or the
fern-tree, or the black bark of the rotting trunk, with the blazing
scarlet of some heliconia blossom. How difficult it must be to give to
every plant, especially to orchids, the exa