In the Indian Archipelago are several species of these tall canes, 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.