a rocky pool in the river, jammed with bare white
logs (as in some North American forest), which had been stopped in
flood by one enormous trunk across the stream; then back past the
site of the ajoupa which had been our host's first shelter, and
which had disappeared by a cause strange enough to English ears. An
enormous silk-cotton near by was felled, in spite of the Negroes'
fears. Its boughs, when it fell, did not reach the ajoupa by twenty
feet or more; but the wind of its fall did, and blew the hut clean
away. This may sound like a story out of Munchausen: but there was
no doubt of the fact; and to us who saw the size of the tree which
did the deed it seemed probable enough.

We rode away again, and into the 'Morichal,' the hills where Moriche
palms are found; to see certain springs and a certain tree; and well
worth seeing they were. Out of the base of a limestone hill, amid
delicate ferns, under the shade of enormous trees, a clear pool
bubbled up and ran away, a stream from its very birth, as is the
wont of limestone springs. It was a spot fit for a Greek nymph; at
least for an Indian damsel: but the nymph who came to draw water in
a tin bucket, and stared stupidly and saucily at us, was anything
but Greek, or even Indian, either in costume or manners. Be it so.
White men are responsible for her being there; so white men must not
complain. Then we went in search of the tree. We had passed, as we
rode up, some Huras (Sandbox-trees) which would have been considered
giants in England; and I had been laughed at more than once for
asking, 'Is that the tree, or that?' I soon knew why. We scrambled
up a steep bank of broken limestone, through ferns and Balisiers,
for perhaps a hundred feet; and then were suddenly aware of a bole
which justified the saying of one of our party--that, when surveying
for a road he had come suddenly on it, he 'felt as if he had run
against a church tower.' It was a Hura, seemingly healthy,
undecayed, and growing vigorously. Its girth--we measured it
carefully--was forty-four feet, six feet from the ground, and as I
laid my face against it and looked up, I seemed to be looking up a
ship's side. It was perfectly cylindrical, branchless, and smooth,
save, of course, the tiny prickles which beset the bark, for a
height at which we could not guess, but which we luckily had an
opportunity of measuring. A wild pine grew in the lowest fork, and