136 THE VAST. 



largest he saw. Perrottet, in his Flora of Senegamhia, 

 declares that he had seen some thirty-two feet in diame- 

 ter, and seventy to eighty feet high, Golberry found 

 specimens attaining thirty-six feet in diameter, yet but 

 sixty-four feet in height. And Aloysius Cadamosto, who 

 was the first to describe the tree, found specimens whose 

 circumference he estimated at seventeen fathoms, which 

 would give a diameter of thirty-four feet.* 



A kind of cypress, growing in Oaxaca, in Mexico, has 

 attained great celebrity among botanists, De Candolle 

 having stated its diameter at sixty feet. Humboldt, who 

 speaks from personal examination, an advantage which 

 the great botanist did not possess, reduces it to forty feet 

 six inches — a very enormous bulk, however, still. 



A recent traveller in Venezuela, thus notices a tree of 

 remarkable dimensions : — 



" Soon • after leaving Turmero, we caught sight of the 

 far-famed Zamang del Guayre, and in about an hour's 

 time arrived at the hamlet of El Guayre, from whence it 

 takes its name. It is supposed to be the oldest tree in 

 the world, j- for so great was the reverence of the Indians 

 for it on account of its age at the time of the Spanish 

 Conquest, that the Government issued a decree for its 

 protection from all injury, and it has ever since been 

 public property. It shews no sign whatever of decay, but 

 is as fresh and green as it was most probably a thousand 

 years ago. The trunk of this magnificent tree is only 



* See Humboldt's Aspects of Nature. 



f This is probably the exaggeration of local prejudice. 



