194 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK III. to tlie East Indies, there is mention of the Kynti, a kind of Oak, which 

 ^■^""v""*^ yield planks of four feet breadth, and forty in length. Strabo, I re- 

 member, Georg. lib. xv. talks of fifty horsemen under a tree in India : 

 his words are, coo-3"'ucp' hi ^/vSpo) iis(jr,ij.^p{'C,H-j cxia^opLe-^sq iCT-cr/a? TrevT-^zovIa; 

 and of another that shaded five stadia at once ; and in another place, of a 

 Pine about Ida, which measured twenty-four feet diameter, and of a mon- 

 strous height : to these may be added the Arhor de Rayz, a certain tree 

 growing in the East Indies, which propagates itself into a vast forest (if 

 not hindered) by shooting up, and then letting a kind of gummy string 

 to fall and drivel from its branches, Avhich takes root in the ground again, 

 and in this process spreads a vast circuit ; the stems of some of which are 

 rej^orted to be upwards of six feet diameter To this may be added the 

 Balcte, described by Mr. Ray, (Append. Vol. III.) and what he cites 

 of IMelchior Barros, who found trees proof against weapons, resisting the 



" stems united below ground in one root. I alleged that so extraordinary an object must 

 " have been celebrated by many of their writers. He told me that it had, and produced 

 " several examples ; Philoteo, Carrera, and some others. Carrera begs to be excused 

 " from telling its dimensions, but he says, he is sure there was wood enough in that 

 " one tree to build a large palace. Their poet Bagolini, too, has celebrated a tree of the 

 " same kind, perhaps the same tree *; and Massa, one of their most esteemed authors, 

 "says he has seen solid Oaks upwards of forty feet round ; but adds, that the size of the 

 " Chestnut-trees was beyond belief, the hollow of one of which, he says, contained three 

 " hundred sheep, and thirty people had often been in it on horseback. I shall not pretend 

 " to say, that this is the same tree he means ; or whether it was ever one tree or not. There 

 " are many others that are well deserving the curiosity of travellers. One of these, about 

 *' a mile and a half higher on the mountain, is called II Castagno del Galea ; it rises from one 

 " solid stem to a considerable height, after which it branches out, and is a much finer object 

 " than the other. I measured it about two feet from the ground ; it was seventy-six feet 

 " round. There is a third called // Castagno del Nave, that is pretty nearly of the same size. 

 " All these grow on a thick, rich soil, formed originally, I believe, of ashes thrown out by 

 " the mountain." 



* Supremos inter montes monstrosior omni 

 Monstrosi fcetum stipitis Etna dedit. 

 Castaneam genuit, cujus modo concava cortex 

 Turmam equitum haud parvam continet, atque greges. 



" Mr. Marsden, in his History of Sumatra, gives the dimensions of one of these trees 

 growing near Mangee, twenty miles west of Patna, in Bengal. Diameter 370 feet. Cir- 

 cumference of the shadow at noon, III6 feet. Circumference of the several stems, in 

 number fifty or sixty, 921 feet. Under this tree sat a naked fakir, who had occupied that 



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