OF FOREST-TREES. 



193 



of whose nuts hardly one man is able to carry ; and which are so vast, CHAP, 

 as they depend not, like other fruit, by a stalk from the boughs, but are 

 produced out of the very body and stem of the tree, and are sufficient 

 to feed twenty persons at a meal ? There were trees found in Brazil, 

 that sixteen men could scarcely fathom about : and the J esuits caused 

 one of these to be felled, for being superstitiously worshipped by the 

 savages, which was one hundred and twenty feet in circumference. 

 The Mexican emperor is said to have had a tree in his garden, under 

 whose shade a thousand men might sit at a competent distance. 



We read of a certain Fig in the Caribbee Islands, which emits such 

 large buttresses, that great planks for tables and flooring are cleft out of 

 them, without the least prejudice to the tree ; and that one of these does 

 easily shelter two hundred men under them : and in Nieuhoff 's voyage 



still in being, and frequently visited by the curious and enterprising traveller. In the year 

 1 770, Mr. Brydone made an accurate examination of them, and in an elegant history of his 

 travels, entitled, A Tour through Sicily and Malta, has favoured us with the following account : 



" From this place it is not less than five or six miles to the great Chestnut-trees, through 

 " forests growing out of the lava, in several places almost impassable. Of these trees there 

 " are many of an enormous size ; but the Caslagno de Cento Cavalli is by much the most 

 " celebrated. I have even found it marked in an old map of Sicily, published near an 

 "hundred years ago ; and in all the maps of ^tna, and its environs, it makes a very 

 " conspicuous figure. I own I was by no means struck with its appearance, as it does not 

 " seem to be one tree, but a bush of five large trees growing together. We complained 

 " to our guides of ihe imposition ; when they unanimously assured us, that by the universal 

 " tradition and even testimony of the country, all these were once united in one stem ; 

 " that their grandfathers once remembered this, when it was looked upon as the glory of 

 "the forest, and visited from all quarters ; that for many years past, it had been reduced to 

 " the venerable ruin we beheld. We began to examine it with more attention, and 

 "found that there is an appearance that these five trees were really once united in one. — 

 " The opening in the middle is at present prodigious ; and it does, indeed, require faith to 

 " believe, that so vast a space was once occupied by solid timber. But there is no ap- 

 " pearance of bark on the inside of any of the stumps, nor on the sides that are opposite to 

 " one another. Mr. Glover and I measured it separately, and brought it exactly to the same 

 " size, viz. two hundred and four feet round. If this was once united in one solid stem, 

 " it must with justice, indeed, have been looked upon as a very wonderful phaenomenon 

 " in the vegetable world, and deservedly styled the glory of the forest. 



" I have since been told by the Canonica Recupero, an ingenious ecclesiastic of this 

 " place, that he was at the expense of carrying up peasants with tools to dig round the 

 " Caslagno de Cento Cavalli, and he assures me, upon his honour, that he found all these 



