8 
EASTERN ETHIOPIA 
I 
ricli in foliage and fertile with fruit. Alternating with 
the mango trees are groups of cocoa-nut palms with their 
fruit ripening in the sun, and the Papaw tree [Carica 
'papaya) with its curious fruit sessile on the upper part 
of the stem. The male flowers are borne on a separate 
tree from that which bears the fruit. The papaja fruit 
when ripe is edible, but does not deserve the epithet 
“ delicious” so thoroughly merited by the fruit of the 
mango. The fruit of the papaw is considered to aid 
digestion, and it has been proved that the milky sap 
(latex) which exudes from its stem and leaves contains 
a ferment (papayotin) resembling pepsin : it is also 
averred that if meat be wrapped in its leaves two hours 
before being cooked it becomes tender. 
The baobab, or monkey bread tree, abounds on the 
island and adjacent coast land. This, the biggest tree in 
the world, was named Adansonia digitata after Adanson, 
the celebrated l)otanist. I measured the circumference 
of the trunk of some of these trees, and found several 
in which it exceeded sixty feet. Examples have been 
recorded with a o^irth of one hundred and twelve feet. 
These trees only bear leaves during the rainy season, 
and the bare branches with the pendulous fruit look 
very weird, and as they stretch heavenward recall 
strongly the human beings transformed into trees 
as represented in Gustav Dore’s illustration of Dante’s 
seventh circle of the Inferno. There is good excuse for 
the opinion held by some of the native tribes that these 
fantastic trees are inhabited by ghosts. The baobab is 
useful to the natives, for they eat the fruit, and the 
outer shell forms an excellent calabash which is in 
great demand for making water buckets, but its wood is 
light, soft, and useless. The most northern baobab grows 
in the Palace garden, Khartoum : it was planted by 
Schweinfurth. 
It is worth while when the tide is out to walk down 
to the shore of the old harbour; this is (piite a simple 
matter, for a ])athway leads to the shore by the side of 
