302 BAOBABS AS CISTERNS. 



was 51 feet i inch in circumference.* From South 

 Africa Mr. Chapman tells a similar tale : " We were lost in 

 amazement," he says, "at the stupendous grandeur of 

 this mighty monarch of the forest;" another Baobab, 

 whose dimensions, taken " with a measuring tape, 

 showed its circumference to be at the base 29 yards." y 

 That of course would give it a diameter of some 27^ 

 feet. Generally, as we might naturally expect, these 

 immensely ancient specimens are hollow in the heart, 

 cavities of a very extensive nature being often formed, 

 some of which are so capacious, as to afford a dwelling- 

 place for parties of wild and wandering natives, who 

 occasionally take up their quarters there. These hollows 

 are also frequently found to become filled with water 

 during the rainy season, thus forming a most efficient 

 natural cistern, where the precious fluid, being well 

 shaded from the sun, is often preserved in considerable 

 quantities throughout the dry season. According to 

 the well-known French traveller, Count D'Escayrac de 

 Lauture, a great authority on desert travelling, these 

 vegetable cisterns are found to exist in considerable 

 numbers in the Soudan, where they are turned to profit- 

 able account by the natives, when water is scarce. The 

 hollows in some of these trees are, he says, so extensive, 

 that they have been known to hold as much as 20,000 

 gallons, which were stored up in the heart of a single 

 tree. ** 



The fruit of the Baobab, which is contained in a 



* The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by Sir Samuel W. Baker, 



1867, p. 376. 



f Travels in the Interior of South Africa, by James Chapman, 



1868, Vol. i, p. 62. 



Le Desert et le Soudan, par M. Le Comte D'Escayrac de Laiiture, 

 p. 76. ** Ibid. 



