THE CEIBA, OR SILK COTTON TREE. 91 
and makes up in lateral spread what it lacks in elevation. The 
_ first mentioned silk cotton tree is believed by an apparently well 
informed Nassau writer, whom we have heretofore quoted, to 
have been brought from South Carolina, and, as he thinks, all 
the others upon the island have been derived from it. None of 
the latter that we saw, exhibit the wonderful formation of booths 
around and constituting a portion of the stem which characterizes 
and makes famous their ‘‘ ancestral tree.” 
“<The negroes,” says Charles Kingsley, ‘“‘are shy of felling the 
ceiba. It isa magic tree, haunted by spirits. There are ‘too 
much jumbies in him,’ the negro says, and of those who dare cut 
him down, some one will die or come to harm within the year.” 
The one we have described looks indeed as if it was ‘‘ possessed,” 
and it is easy for any one to imagine that viewless goblins sport 
among its roots and branches, and repose in the strange open 
chambers of its buttressed trunk. Mr. Gosse says that in Ja- 
maica the negroes believe that “if a person throws a stone at the 
- trunk [of a ceiba] he will be visited with sickness or other mis- 
fortune,” and that ‘‘ when they intend to cut one down they first 
pour rum at the roots as a propitiatory offering.” We have no 
doubt but that the favor of many embodied spirits has likewise 
been secured by a liberal use of good Jamaica rum, a little differ- 
ently administered. 
An old writer states that the silk cotton tree sometimes grows 
so large that fourteen thousand persons can assemble under its 
branches. 
There is a remarkable specimen of this singular tree at Trini- 
dad, which is thus described by Mr. Higgins, an English gentle- 
man, in his recently published “‘ Notes by a Field Naturalist.” 
“<We came almost suddenly upon a true monarch of the woods, 
asilk cotton tree, (Bombax Ceiba), said to be the largest tree but 
one on the island. When young, the trunk of the tree is round, 
