76 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
These boats are long and narrow,, so much so as to 
require outriggers in order to prevent their upsetting. 
These outriggers are long pieces of wood, pointed both 
at the head and stern, and attached to the boat at 
right angles by bamboos, thus staying her fore and aft. 
This simple contrivance is applied to one side only. 
Our attention was also particularly arrested by several 
rafts on this river, over each of which a complete 
canopy was thrown, formed by a single leaf of the 
talipat tree, that entirely covered both the freight and 
the crew. 
This extraordinary tree, certainly among the most 
singular productions of the vegetable kingdom, grows 
sometimes to the height of two hundred feet. It 
blossoms only once during its existence, then dies, and 
in dying, like the fabled Phoenix, sheds the seeds of a 
future generation around it. The flower, which bursts 
forth with a loud explosion,* is occasionally thirty 
feet long. The following is the account published 
under the sanction of Sir Alexander Johnstone, accom- 
panied by a very wretched print made from a most 
beautiful drawing by Mr. Samuel Daniell.t 
“ The talipat, or rather palm, is a native of Ceylon, 
* Mr. John Whitchurch Bennett, author of a curious and va- 
luable work on the Fishes of Ceylon, during a residence of some 
years on that island, was several times present when these ex- 
plosions took place. He brought home a leaf of the talipat-tree 
thirty-six feet in circumference. 
f The name of Mr. William Daniell appears to this print 
without his sanction, and this is the more to be regretted as it 
is a most feeble representation of a very beautiful drawing made 
from nature, not by him, but by his brother, an artist of extra- 
ordinary promise, who early fell a victim to the noxious climate 
of Ceylon. 
