His conversation so interested me,
his system was so curious, and he himself so frank in drawing it out,
that I almost forgot the Igorrots in listening to him.

We pursued our road through the wood, keeping as much as possible
to the south, in order to get near the province of Batangas, where
I was to meet my poor patient, who no doubt was very uneasy about
my long absence. When I started I said not a word about my project,
and had I done so it is most likely I should have been thought as no
longer belonging to this world. The recollection of my wife, whom I
had left at Manilla, and who was far from supposing me to be among
the Igorrots, inspired me with the most anxious desire of returning
home to my family as quick as possible. Absorbed in my thoughts,
and carried away by my reflections, I walked silently along, without
even casting a glance upon the luxuriant vegetation all around us. I
must indeed have been very much pre-occupied, for a virgin forest
between the tropics, and particularly in the Philippine islands, is in
nowise to be compared with our European forests. I was aroused from
my pensiveness, and recalled to the remembrance of my whereabouts,
by the noise of a torrent, and I gratefully admired nature in her
gigantic productions. I looked up, and before me I perceived an
immense balete, an extraordinary fig-tree, that thrives in the sombre
and mysterious forests of the Philippines, and I stopped to admire
it. This immense tree springs from a seed similar to the seed of the
ordinary fig-tree; its wood is white and spongy, and in a few years it
grows to an extraordinary size. Nature, who has had foresight in all
things, and who allows the young lamb to leave its wool on the bushes
for the timid bird to pick it up and build its nest with--Nature,
I say, has shown herself in all her genius in the fig-tree of the
Philippine islands, which grows so rapidly and so immensely. The
branches of this tree generally spring from the base of the trunk;
they extend themselves horizontally, and, after forming an elbow or
curve, rise up perpendicularly; but, as I said before, the tree is
spongy, and easily broken, and the branch, while forming the curve,
would inevitably be broken, did not a ligament, which the Indians
call a drop of water--goutte d'eau--fall from the tree and take root
in the earth; there it swells, and grows in proportion with the size
of the branch, and acts to it as a living prop. Besides which, around