A TREE ON STILTS. 193 



other singular results. One of these is what the 

 natives delight to show to a stranger as a great cu- 

 riosity, facetiously calling it " The Creole in the 

 embrace of the Scotchman." 



By the side of the road that leads in a zigzag line 

 up from Black River to the summit of the Luana 

 Mountains, about midway between Shrewsbury and 

 Content, is a Fig-tree perhaps still more remarkable 

 than the one above described. About thirty feet above 

 the ground is the base of the trunk, which thence 

 rears itself up pillar-like towards the heavens, and 

 spreads abroad its vast horizontal array of branches 

 across the road. From the same point there de- 

 scends to the earth a hollow cone of roots, inter- 

 woven and anastomosed, especially at the upper 

 parts, in the same manner as those of the boiling- 

 house wall, but forming towards the bottom only 

 three or four flattened irregular columns. Into the 

 area inclosed by this network of roots a person may 

 enter, for it is about six feet wide, and, looking up, 

 behold the base of the trunk eight or ten yards above 

 his head. 



The explanation of this curious phenomenon de- 

 pends upon the tendency just mentioned. On this 

 site once stood a large tree of some other species, 

 probably a Cotton-tree (Eriodendron), or some other 

 soft-timbered kind. The little scarlet berry of a 

 Fig-tree was carried by some vagrant Banana-bird or 

 Pigeon to its boughs, and there devoured. After 

 the little truant had finished his morsel, he perhaps 

 wiped his beak against the rough bark of the trunk, 

 beside the branch on which he was seated. Some of 



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