71 



after the manner of a trivet and a space of more than twenty feet 

 was left open between each of these three" basal parts, which 

 were also very high. There is nothing, however, in the further 

 details of this description about the bearing of '' wool," and nothing 

 perhaps which would absolutely exclude the possibility of its being 

 a large buttressed Sterculia. But in the first part of Oviedo's " His- 

 toria general y natural de las Indias," originally published in 1535, 

 there is a chapter " On the tree called ceyba, in especial ; and 

 other big trees ;" *and in this chapter, which first saw the light 

 only forty-three years after the discovery of America, we find vivid 

 and rather detailed descriptions of very large trees, known to the 

 natives as " ceybas," which, in our opinion, could have been 

 nothing other than the trees now known by the name Ceiba pen- 

 tat/dra, even though two or three minor inaccuracies and miscon- 

 ceptions are to be noted in Oviedo's graphic and manifestly con- 

 scientious narrative. This description is of so much interest that 

 we venture to give below a somewhat free translation of it : 



" Since writing what I have said of this great tree [i.e. the one 

 in the province of Guatero, mentioned above], I have seen many 

 others and much greater ones. And it seems to me that the ceybas 

 are for the most part the largest trees of all in these Indies ; and 

 this tree is of two kinds, one which loses its leaves, and another 

 which never sheds them or remains always green. In this island 

 of Espanola there was a ceyba, eight leagues from this city, where 

 has persisted the name Arbol Gordo, whereof I now speak very 

 often to the Admiral Don Diego Colom, and tell him that he with 

 fourteen- other men, touching hands, could not compass this ceyba 

 that they call arbol gordo. This tree died and rotted, but many 

 people are now living who saw it and say the same of its gran- 

 deur. For me this is not much of a wonder, recalling the larger 

 ones of these same ceybas that I have seen on the Terra-Firma. 

 There was another great tree of these ceybas in the town of San- 

 tiago, in this island of Espanola ; but both this one and the other 

 are much smaller than those that are found on the Terra-Firma. 



Since in the province of Nicaragua are the greatest trees which 

 I have seen up to this time and which much exceed all that I have 

 told of, I will now speak only of one ceyba which I saw many 

 times in that province, not half a league from the house and seat 

 of the chief of Fhecoatega, near a river belonging to the district 

 of the chief of Guacama, who was under the protection of a man 

 of property named Miguel Lucas or of his partners Francisco 

 Nunez and Luis Farfan. This tree I measured by my own hands 

 with a hemp cord and it had a circumference at the base of thirty- 

 three yards, which equals one hundred and thirty-two spans and 

 since it stood on the bank of a river it could not be measured low 

 about the roots on that side and it should be without doubt three 

 yards larger ; all put together, well measured, I estimate that it 

 was thirty-six yards, or one hundred and forty-four spans, in cir- 



*E1 CapitanGonzalo Fernandezde Oviedo y Valdes. Historia general y natural 

 de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Oceano. Primera parte, lib. IX, cap. XI. 

 (In edition seen, I: 342-345. Madrid, 1851. 



