A GIANT TREE. 65 



once for asking^, " Is that the tree ? or that ? " I soon knew 

 why. We scrambled up a steep bank of broken limestone, 

 through ferns and Balisiers, for perhaps a hundred feet ; and 

 then were suddenly aware of a bole which justified the saying 

 of one of our party that, when surveying for a road he 

 had come suddenly on it, he " felt as if he had run against 

 a church tower." It was a Hura, seemingly healthy, un- 

 decayed, and growing vigorously. Its girth we measured 

 it carefully was forty-four feet, six feet from the ground, 

 and as I laid my face against it and looked up, I seemed to 

 be looking up a ship's side. It was perfectly cylindrical, 

 branchless, and smooth, save, of course, the tiny prickles 

 which beset the bark, for a height at which we could not 

 guess, but which we luckily had an opportunity of measur- 

 ing. A wild pine grew in the lowest fork, and had kindly 

 let down an air-root into the soil. We tightened the root, 

 set it perpendicular, cut it off exactly where it touched the 

 ground, and then pulled carefully till we brought the plant, 

 and half-a-dozen more strani^e vei^etables, down on our heads. 

 The length of the air-root was just seventy-five feet. Some 

 twenty feet or more above that first fork was a second fork ; 

 a^dthen the tree began. A^^iere its head was we could not 

 see. We could only, by laying our faces against the bole, 

 and looking up, discern a wilderness of boughs carrying a 



green cloud of leaves, most of them too liigh for us to dis- 



YOL. II. F 



