Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/181

 Africa: "This was the first time that I saw the boabab, that enormous tree which has been described by Adanson, and which bears his name 'Adansonia.' I measured one, and found it to be forty feet in circumference. This majestic mass is the only monument of antiquity to be met with in Africa. To the negroes the boabab is perhaps the most valuable of vegetables. Its leaves are used for leaven, its bark furnishes indestructible cordage, and the bees form their hives in the cavities of its trunk. The negroes, too, often shelter themselves from storms in its time-worn caverns. The boabab is indisputably the monarch of African trees." It is also called monkeys'-bread. Several measured by Adanson were from sixty-five to seventy-eight feet in circumference, but not extraordinarily high. The bark furnishes a coarse thread, used in Africa for cloth and ropes; the small leaves are used as bread in times of scarcity, and the large for covering their houses, or, by burning, for the manufacture of soap.

This tree may be styled the Jugunnāth of the forest, from the style in which it grows; its large branches terminating in an abrupt end, from which the small branches are given off.

Ropes made of the boabab-tree are indestructible; there is a saying, "As secure as an elephant bound with a boabab rope." Two of these fine trees are still standing in the grounds, there were originally three; the sketch was taken in January, 1827. One of the trees fell down in the rains of that year, on the day Lord Amherst arrived at Allahabad on his return from the hills; it measured thirty-five feet in circumference, and we were surprised to find it had scarcely any roots. It did not fall from age, or from the wind, but because the branches on one side were much heavier than those on the other. It was so full of juicy sap that, when the tree was cut, the sap ran out like water, and the agent preserved some of it in bottles. The wood was woolly, spongy, of little or no use as timber, and useless even as firewood—it would not burn.

Another of these trees, which measured thirty-seven feet in circumference, is still in the grounds, which are on the banks of the Ganges.