A TREE ON STILTS. 
193 
Other singular results. One of these is what the 
natives delight to show to a stranger as a great cu- 
riosity, facetiously calling it “ The Creole in the 
embrace of the Scotchman.” 
By the side of the road that leads in a zigzag line 
up from Black River to the summit of the Luana 
Mountains, about midway between Shrewsbury and 
Content, is a Fig-tree perhaps still more remarkable 
than the one above described. About thirty feet above 
the ground is the base of the trunk, which thence 
rears itself up pillar-like towards the heavens, and 
spreads abroad its vast horizontal array of branches 
across the road. From the same point there de- 
scends to the earth a hollow cone of roots, inter- 
woven and anastomosed, especially at the upper 
parts, in the same manner as those of the boiling- 
house wall, but forming towards the bottom only 
three or four flattened irregular columns. Into the 
area inclosed by this network of roots a person may 
enter, for it is about six feet wide, and, looking up, 
behold the base of the trunk eight or ten yards above 
his head. 
The explanation of this curious phenomenon de- 
pends upon the tendency just mentioned. On this 
site once stood a large tree of some other species, 
probably a Cotton-tree {Eriodendron), or some other 
soft-timbered kind. The little scarlet berry of a 
Fig-tree was carried by some vagrant Banana-bird or 
Pigeon to its boughs, and there devoured. After 
the little truant had finished his morsel, he perhaps 
wiped his beak against the rough bark of the trunk, 
beside the branch on which he was seated. Some of 
K 
