There, shooting up like columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts, which yield the three-cornered nuts; _"murichis,"_ unexcelled for building purposes; _"barrigudos,"_ measuring a couple of yards at the swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with shining russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of which supports a horizontal parasol; and _"bombax"_ of superb stature, with its straight and smooth white stem.

Among these magnificent specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many _"quatibos"_ whose rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees, whose fruits are like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged within, and whose wood of clear violet is specially in demand for ship-building.

And besides there was the ironwood; and more particularly the _"ibiriratea,"_ nearly black in its skin, and so close grained that of it the Indians make their battle-axes; _"jacarandas,"_ more precious than mahogany; _"caesalpinas,"_ only now found in the depths of the old forests which have escaped the woodman's ax; _"sapucaias,"_ one hundred and fifty feet high, buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow, purple, and snowy white of the parasitic plants.
Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay.

The clearance was complete.

Joam Garral had not even had to bestir himself in the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or thirty years to replace.