第96章

Although the meadows were unproductive ground to a naturalist, the woods on their borders teemed with life; the number and variety of curious insects of all orders which occurred here was quite wonderful.The belt of forest was intersected by numerous pathways leading from one settler's house to another.The ground was moist, but the trees were not so lofty or their crowns so densely packed together as in other parts; the sun's light and heat, therefore, had freer access to the soil, and the underwood was much more diversified than in the virgin forest.I never saw so many kinds of dwarf palms together as here; pretty miniature species; some not more than five feet high, and bearing little clusters of round fruit not larger than a good bunch of currants.

A few of the forest trees had the size and strongly-branched figures of our oaks, and a similar bark.One noble palm grew here in great abundance, and gave a distinctive character to the district.This was the Oenocarpus distichus, one of the kinds called Bacaba by the natives.It grows to a height of forty to fifty feet.The crown is of a lustrous dark-green colour, and of a singularly flattened or compressed shape, the leaves being arranged on each side in nearly the same plane.When I first saw this tree on the campos, where the east wind blows with great force night and day for several months, I thought the shape of the crown was due to the leaves being prevented from radiating equally by the constant action of the breezes.But the plane of growth is not always in the direction of the wind, and the crown has the same shape when the tree grows in the sheltered woods.

The fruit of this fine palm ripens towards the end of the year, and is much esteemed by the natives, who manufacture a pleasant drink from it similar to the assai described in a former chapter, by rubbing off the coat of pulp from the nuts, and mixing it with water.A bunch of fruit weighs thirty or forty pounds.The beverage has a milky appearance, and an agreeable nutty flavour.

The tree is very difficult to climb, on account of the smoothness of its stein; consequently the natives, whenever they want a bunch of fruit for a bowl of Bacaba, cut down and thus destroy a tree which has taken a score or two of years to grow, in order to get at it.

In the lower part of the Mahica woods, towards the river, there is a bed of stiff white clay, which supplies the people of Santarem with material for the manufacture of coarse pottery and cooking utensils: all the kettles, saucepans, mandioca ovens, coffee-pots, washing-vessels, and so forth, of the poorer classes, throughout the country, are made of this same plastic clay, which occurs at short intervals over the whole surface of the, Amazons valley, from the neighbourhood of Para to within the Peruvian borders, and forms part of the great Tabatinga marl deposit.To enable the vessels to stand the fire, the bark of a certain tree, called Caraipe, is burned and mixed with the clay, which gives tenacity to the ware.Caraipe is an article of commerce-- being sold and packed in baskets at the shops in most of the towns.The shallow pits, excavated in the marly soil at Mahica, were very attractive to many kinds of mason bees and wasps, who made use of the clay to build their nests with--so we have here another example of the curious analogy that exists between the arts of insects and those of man.I spent many an hour watching their proceedings; a short account of the habits of some of these busy creatures may be interesting.

The most conspicuous was a large yellow and black wasp, with a remarkably long and narrow waist, the Pelopaeus fistularis.This species collected the clay in little round pellets, which it carried off, after rolling them into a convenient shape, in its mouth.It came straight to the pit with a loud hum, and, on alighting, lost not a moment in beginning to work-- finishing the kneading of its little load in two or three minutes.The nest of this wasp is shaped like a pouch, two inches in length, and is attached to a branch or other projecting object.One of these restless artificers once began to build on the handle of a chest in the cabin of my canoe, when we were stationary at a place for several days.It was so intent on its work that it allowed me to inspect the movements of its mouth with a lens while it was laying on the mortar.Every fresh pellet was brought in with a triumphant song, which changed to a cheerful busy hum when it alighted and began to work.The little ball of moist clay was laid on the edge of the cell, and then spread out around the circular rim by means of the lower lip guided by the mandibles.

The insect placed itself astride over the rim to work, and, on finishing each addition to the structure, took a turn round, patting the sides with its feet inside and out before flying off to gather a fresh pellet.It worked only in sunny weather, and the previous layer was sometimes not quite dry when the new coating was added.The whole structure takes about a week to complete.I left the place before the gay little builder had quite finished her task; she did not accompany the canoe, although we moved along the bank of the river very slowly.On opening closed nests of this species, which are common in the neighbourhood of Mahica, I always found them to be stocked with small spiders of the genus Gastracantha, in the usual half-dead state to which the mother wasps reduce the insects which are to serve as food for their progeny.