422 CELEBES. [chap. xvji. 



twisted living rattan, is therefore a sign that at some former 

 period a large tree has fallen there, though there may he not 

 the slightest vestige of it left. The rattan seems to have 

 unlimited powers of growth, and a single plant may mount 

 up several trees in succession, and thus reach the enormous 

 length they are said sometimes to attain. They much 

 improve the appearance of a forest as seen from the 

 coast ; for they vary the otherwise monotonous tree-tops 

 with feathery crowns of leaves rising clear above them, 

 and each terminated by an erect leafy spike like a light- 

 ning-conductor. 



The other most interesting object in the forest was a 

 beautiful palm, whose perfectly smooth and cylindrical 

 stem rises erect to more than a hundred feet high, with 

 a thickness of only eight or ten inches ; while the fan- 

 shaped leaves which compose its crown, are almost com- 

 plete circles of six or eight feet diameter, borne aloft on 

 long and slender petioles, and beautifully toothed round 

 the edge by the extremities of the leaflets, which are 

 separated only for a few inches from the circumference. It 

 is probably the Livistona rotundifolia of botanists, and is 

 the most complete and beautiful fan-leaf I have ever seen, 

 serving admirably for folding into water-buckets and 

 impromptu baskets, as well as for thatching and other 

 purposes. 



A few days afterwards I returned to Menado on horse- 



