Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/98

 *[Footnote: which has been sometimes supposed to be San Fernando Noronha, sometimes the Peñedo de San Pedro, and sometimes the problematical Island of St. Matthew. This last-named island was discovered by Garcia Jofre de Loaysa on the 15th of October, 1525, in 2-1/2° S. lat., in the meridian of Cape Palmas, almost in the Gulf of Guinea. He remained there eighteen days at anchor, found crosses, as well as orange trees which had been planted and had become wild, and on two trunks of trees inscriptions dating back ninety years. (Navarrete, T. v. pp. 8, 247, and 401.) I have examined the questions presented by this account more in detail in my inquiries into the trustworthiness of Amerigo Vespucci. (Examen critique de l'hist. de la Geographie, T. v. pp. 129-132.)

The oldest description of the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), is that given by the Venetian Aloysius Cadamosto (the real name was Alvise da Ca da Mosto), in 1454. He found at the mouth of the Senegal, trunks of which he estimated the circumference at seventeen fathoms, or 102 feet, (Ramusio, Vol. i. p. 109): he might have compared them with Dragon trees which he had seen before. Perrottet says in his "Flore de Sénégambie" (p. 76), that he had seen monkey bread-trees which, with a height of only about 70 or 80 feet, had a diameter of 32 English feet. The same dimensions had been given by Adanson, in the account of his voyage in 1748; the largest trunks which he himself saw (in 1749) in one of the small Magdalena islands near Cape de Verd, and in the vicinity of the mouth of the Senegal River, were from 26 to 28-1/2 English feet in diameter, with a height of little more than 70 feet, and a top about 180 feet broad;]*