gathering this fruit is odd enough.  The trunk, sixty feet high, has not, it must be remembered, a single branch to hold on by or furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole stem is rough with thick scales or horny protuberances, not very pleasant to the touch of fingers or palms.  So a strong rope is passed across the climber’s back and under his armpits, and then, after being passed around the tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together.  The rope is next placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of an old leaf, while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits toward the middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of the shoulder-blades to rest upon it.  Then with hands and knees he firmly grasps the trunk, and raises himself a few inches higher; when, still holding fast by knees and feet and one hand, he with the other slips the rope a little higher up the tree, letting it rest on another of these horny protuberances, and so on till the summit is gained.  When the fruit is reached it is easily plucked with one hand, while the gatherer maintains his position with the other, and the clusters are thrown down into a large cloth held at the corners by four persons.

The far-famed banian or Indian fig (Ficus Indica) is perhaps the grandest of tropical trees—­the most beautiful of Nature’s products, even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the sun’s rays, where she sports with such profusion and variety, clothing the earth in gorgeous flowers, variegated mosses and feathery ferns, till it seems to groan beneath the manifold treasures of beauty and fragrance lavished thereon.  This noble tree grows wild in many Eastern countries and islands, and sometimes attains to a size and an extent that are marvelous to contemplate.  Shoots are everywhere thrown out toward the ground from the horizontal branches, increasing in size as they tend downward, till at last they strike into the ground and become stems.  From these shoot new branches, which in their turn extend and form roots and new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as “a pillared shade high overarched.”  And as they are thus continually increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant’s hand may come in time to cover thousands of feet of soil.  Such a specimen is the noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat.  This wonderful tree, named after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that exceeds two thousand feet in circumference.  The principal stems number three or four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand, though some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away not only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island itself.  The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all over