es, usually known by the general name of
_bamboo_, though differing from each other in size and other respects.
They furnish to the inhabitants of these islands the material for almost
every article required for their domestic economy--as the various
species of palms do to the natives of South America--more especially the
denizens of the great Amazon valley. Not only are their houses
constructed of bamboo, but the greater portion of their praus; while
utensils of many kinds, cups, bottles, and water-casks of the best make,
are obtained from its huge joints, cheaply and conveniently. A bare
catalogue of bamboo tools and utensils would certainly occupy several
pages.

Notwithstanding its valuable properties, our travellers hated the sight
of it; and more than once the Irishman, as he placed his axe upon the
silicious culms, was heard to speak disrespectfully about it, "weeshin'
that there wasn't a stalk of the cane in all Burnayo."

But another kind of obstruction vexed Murtagh even more than the brakes
of bamboo. This was the webs of huge spiders--ugly tarantula-looking
animals--whose nets in places, extending from tree to tree, traversed
the forest in every direction, resembling the seines of a
fishing-village hung out to dry, or miles of musquito-curtain depending
from the horizontal branches. Through this strange festoonery they had
to make their way, often for hundreds of yards; the soft silky substance
clutching disagreeably around their throats and clinging to their
clothes till each looked as though clad in an integument of ragged
cotton, or the long loose wool of a merino sheep yet unwoven into cloth.
And as they forced their way through it--at times requiring strength to
extricate them from its tough retentive hold--they could see the hideous
forms of the huge spiders who had spun and woven these strangely
patterned webs scuttling off, and from their dark retreats in the
crevices of the trees looking defiant and angry at the intruders upon
their domain--perhaps never before trodden by man.

Yet another kind of obstruction our travellers had to encounter on their
way across the great plain. There were tracts of moist ground,
sometimes covered with tall forest-trees, at others opening out into a
sedgy morass, with perhaps a small lake or water-patch in the centre.
The first required them to make way through mud, or thick stagnant water
covered with scum, often reaching above their knees. These places were