A GIANT CEIBA. 39 



After church we wandered about the estate to see huge 

 trees. One Ceiba, left standing in a cane-piece, was very 

 grand, from the multitude and mass of its parasites and its 

 huge tresses of lianes; and grand also from its form. The 

 prickly board-wall spurs were at least fifteen feet high, some 

 of them, where they entered the trunk ; and at the summit 

 of the trunk, which could not have been less than seventy or 

 eighty feet, one enormous limb (itself a tree) stuck out quite 

 horizontally, and gave a marvellous notion of strength. It 

 seemed as if its length must have snapped it off, years since, 

 where it joined the trunk ; or as if the leverage of its weight 

 must have toppled the whole tree over. But the great vege- 

 table had known its own business best, and had built itself 

 up right cannily ; and stood, and will stand for many a year^ 

 perhaps for many a century, if the Matapalos do not squeeze 

 out its life. I found, by the bye, in groping my way to that 

 tree through canes twelve feet high, that one must be careful, 

 at least with some varieties of cane, not to get cut. The 

 leaf-edges are finely serrated ; and more, the sheaths of 

 the leaves are covered with prickly hairs, which give the 

 Coolies sore shins if they work barelegged. The soil here, a-s 

 everywhere, was exceedingly rich, and sawn out into rolling 

 mounds and steep gullies sometimes almost too steep for 

 cane-cultivation by the tropic rains. If, as cannot be 

 doubted, denudation by rain has gone on here, for thou- 



