ILLUSTRATIONS (12). THE GREAT AGE OF TREES. 2*1 



of the early navigators to inscribe the motto of the Infante in 

 the bark of the trees.) 



The above-named motto, cut on the bark of two trees bv 

 Portuguese navigators in the year 1435, and therefore twenty- 

 eight years before the death of the Infante Don Henrique, 

 Duke of Viseo, is singularly connected, in the history of dis- 

 coveries, with the discussions that have arisen from a com- 

 parison of Vespucci's fourth- voyage with that of Gonzalo 

 Coelho (1503). Vespucci relates, that the Admiral's ship of 

 Coelho's squadron was wrecked on an island which was some- 

 times supposed to be that of San Fernando Noronha ; some- 

 times, Pefiedo de San Pedro ; and sometimes, the problematical 

 island of St. Matthew. The last-named island was discovered 

 on the 15th of October, 1525, by Garcia Jofre de Loaysa in 

 2| south lat., in the meridian of Cape Palmas, and almost in 

 the Gulf of Guinea. He remained there eighteen days at 

 anchor, and found crosses, orange-trees that had become wild, 

 and two trunks of trees having inscriptions that bore the date 

 of ninety years back.* I have in another place,f in an in- 

 quiry regarding the trustworthiness of Amerigo Vespucci, 

 more fully considered this problem. 



The oldest description of the Baobab (Adansonia digitata) 

 is that of the Venetian, Aloysius Cadamosto, (whose real name 

 was Alvise da Ca da Mosto) in 1454. He found at the 

 mouth of the Senegal, (where he joined Antoniotto Usodimare), 

 trunks, whose circumference he estimated at 1 7 fathoms, or 

 112feet4 He might have compared them to dragon-trees, 

 which he had already seen. Perrottet says, that he had 

 seen monkey-bread fruit trees, w r hich had a diameter of 

 about thirty-two feet, with a height of only from seventy 

 to eighty-five feet. The same dimensions had been given 

 by Adanson in his voyage, 1748. The largest trunks of the 

 monkey bread-fruit trees, which he himself saw, in 1749, some 

 on one of the small Magdalena islands near Cape de Verd, 

 and others at the mouth of the Senegal, were from 26 to 

 nearly 29 feet in diameter, with a height of little more than 

 70 feet, and a top measuring upwards of 180 feet across. 



* Navarrete, t. v, pp. 8, 247, 401. 



f Examen critique de I'Hist. de la Geographic, t. v. pp. 129--132. 



J Ramusio, vol. i. p. 109. 



Flore de Senegambie p. 76. 



