THE BAOBAB. 135 



Three hundred and twenty main trunks may be counted, 

 while the smaller ones exceed three thousand ; and each 

 of these is constantly sending forth its branches and pen- 

 dent root-shoots to form other trunks, and become the 

 augmenters of the vast colony. Immense popular assem- 

 blies are sometimes convened beneath this patriarchal fig, 

 and it has been known to shelter seven thousand men 

 at one time beneath its ample shadow.* 



The Baobab, a tree of tropical Africa, but now natu- 

 ralised in other hot countries, is one which attains an 

 immense bulk. Its growth is chiefly in the trunk. It is 

 by no means uncommon for a bole of seventy-five or 

 eighty feet in circumference to begin to send out its 

 branches at twelve or fifteen feet from the ground ; and 

 the entire height is frequently little more than the circum- 

 ference of the trunk. The lower branches, at first hori- 

 zontal, attain a great length, and finally droop to the 

 ground, completely hiding the trunk, and giving to the 

 tree the appearance of a vast hillock of foliage. 



Some examples of the dimensions of this immense, but 

 soft-wooded and spongy tree, may be adduced. Adan- 

 son, in 1748, saw, at the mouth of the Senegal, baobabs 

 which were from twenty-six to twenty-nine feet in dia- 

 meter, with a height of little more than seventy feet, and 

 a head of foliage a hundred and eighty feet across. He 

 remarks, however, that other travellers had found speci- 

 mens considerably larger. Peters measured trunks from 

 twenty to twenty-five feet thick, which he says were the 



* Forbes' Oriental Memoir*. 



