26 WONDERS OP THE TROPICAL FORESTS, 
Livingstone mentions one in wliieh twenty or thirty men 
could lie clown and sleep, as in a hut. In the village of 
Grand Galarqnes, in Senegambivi, the negroes have deco- 
rated the entrance into the cavity of a monstrous baobab 
with rude sculptures cut into the living wood, and make 
use of the interior as a kind of assembly room, where they 
meet to deliberate on the interests of their small com- 
mnnitYj "reminding one," says Humboldt, "of the cele- 
brated plantain in Lycia, in whose hollow trunk the 
Roman consul, Luciuius i^Iutianus, once dined with a 
party of twentynDiie." As the baobab begins to decay in 
the part where the trunk divides into the larger branches, 
and the process of destruction thence continues down- 
wards, the hollow space fills, during the rainy season, 
with water, which keeps a long time, from its being pro- 
tected against the rays of the sun. The baobab thus 
forms a vegetable cistern, whose water the neighbouring 
villagers sell to travellers. In Kordofan the Arabs clirab 
up the tree, fill the water in leathern buckets, and let 
it down from above i but the people in Congo more 
