|
|
Plato Profile Directory 11
Page 04
We halted for the night at the _fazenda_ of Colonel Gregorio, a _seringueiro_ from whom I expected to get an Indian who knew the forest well and who could be of some assistance to me in going across it. The house of Col. Gregorio--a mere big shed--was a regular armoury, a great many rifles of all ages, sizes, and shapes adorning the walls; then there were fishing spears and harpoons, vicious-looking knives and axes. In the principal room was a large altar with a carved figure of the Virgin standing with joined hands before lighted candles and a bottle of green peppermint. The latter was not an offering to the sacred image, but it was placed on the revered spot so that none of Gregorio's men should touch it. Enormous balls of rubber filled the greater portion of the floor, waiting to be taken down the river.
The trees, overcrowded everywhere, far from being gigantic, are, instead, mean-looking and anaemic--not unlike the pallid, overgrown youth of the over-populated slums of a great city. Orchids? Yes, there are plenty of orchids about, but you never see them unless you go on a special search for them with a high ladder or some other such means of climbing high trees. In any case, you would not detect them unless you had the eye of an expert. It is well not to forget that in tropical climates, as in temperate zones, plants are not always in bloom when you happen to be passing. As for the butterflies, you seldom see any at all in the actual forest.
Besides the albumin, the gluten, and the starch, other substances about which this rough method of analysis gives us no information, are contained in the wheat grain. For example, there is woody matter or cellulose, and a certain quantity of sugar and fat. It would be possible to obtain a substance similar to albumin, starch, saccharine, and fatty matters, and cellulose, by treating the stem, leaves, and root in a similar fashion, but the cellulose would be in far larger proportion. Straw, in fact, which consists of the dry stem and leaves of the wheat plant, is almost wholly made up of cellulose. Besides this, however, it contains a certain proportion of mineral bodies, among them, pure flint or silica; and, if you should ever see a wheat rick burnt, you will find more or less of this silica, in a glassy condition, in the embers. In the living plant, all these bodies are combined with a large proportion of water, or are dissolved, or suspended in that fluid. The relative quantity of water is much greater in the stem and leaves than in the seed.
|