‘Invade their ancient solitary reign.’

Then we went down to see the Coolie barracks, where the folk seemed as happy and well cared for as they were certain to be under such a master; then down 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 had kindly let down an air-root into the soil.  We tightened the root, set it perpendicular, cut it off exactly where it touched the ground, and then pulled carefully till we brought the plant and half a dozen more strange vegetables down on our heads.  The length of the air-root was just seventy-five