Unfortunately, the venerable dragon-tree of Orotava, in Teneriffe, which was already reverenced for its age by the extirpated nation of the Guanches, and which the adventurous Bethencourts, the conquerors of the Canaries, found hardly less colossal and cavernous in 1402 than Humboldt, who visited it in 1799, was destroyed by a storm in 1871. Above the roots the illustrious traveller measured a circumference of forty-five feet; and according to Sir George Staunton, the trunk had still a diameter of four yards, at an elevation of ten feet above the ground. The whole height of the tree was not much above sixty-five feet. The trunk divided in numerous upright branches, terminating in tufts of evergreen leaves, resembling those of the pine-apple.
Next to the baobab and the dracæna, the Sycamore (Ficus Sycomorus) holds a conspicuous rank among the giant trees of Africa. It attains a height of only forty or fifty feet, but in the course of many centuries its trunk swells to a colossal size, and its vast crown covers a large space of ground with an impenetrable shade. Its leaves are about four inches long and as many broad, and its figs have an excellent flavour. In Egypt it is almost the only grove-forming tree; and most of the mummy coffins are made of its incorruptible wood.
SYCAMORE.
No baobab rears its monstrous trunk on the banks of the Ganges; no dragon-tree of patriarchal age here reminds the wanderer of centuries long past; but the beautiful and stately Banyan (Ficus indica) gives him but little reason to regret their absence. Each tree is in itself a grove, and some of them are of an astonishing size, as they are continually increasing, and, contrary to most other animal and vegetable productions, seem to be exempted from decay; for every branch from the main body throws out its own roots, at first in small tender fibres, several yards from the ground, which continually grow thicker, until, by a gradual descent, they reach its surface, where, striking in, they increase to a large trunk and become a parent-tree, throwing out new branches from the top. These in time suspend their roots, and, receiving nourishment from the earth, swell into trunks and send forth other branches, thus continuing in a state of progression so long as the first parent of them all supplies her sustenance.
BANYAN.
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother-tree; a pillar’d shade
High overarch’d, and echoing walks between.
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loopholes cut through thickest shade.
These beautiful lines of Milton are by no means overdrawn; as a banyan tree, with many trunks, forms the most beautiful walks and cool recesses that can be imagined. The leaves are large, soft, and of a lively green; the fruit is a small fig (when ripe of a bright scarlet), affording sustenance to monkeys, squirrels, peacocks, and birds of various kinds, which dwell among the branches.
The Hindoos are peculiarly fond of this tree; they consider its long duration, its outstretching arms and overshadowing beneficence, as emblems of the Deity; they plant it near their dewals or temples; and in those villages where there is no structure for public worship they place an image under a banyan, and there perform a morning and evening sacrifice.