Moreover beneath this tree, and in its whole circumference to the distance of a stone-cast, no plant, no shrub, or herbage will grow; the soil beneath it is barren, blackened, and burnt as it were ... and the atmosphere about it is so polluted and poisoned that the birds which alight upon its branches become giddy and fall dead * * * all things perish which are touched by its emanations, insomuch that every animal shuns it and keeps away from it, and even the birds eschew flying by it.
"No man dares to approach the tree without having his arms, feet, and head wrapped round with linen ... for Death seems to have planted his foot and his throne beside this tree...." (He then tells of a venomous basilisk with two feet in front and fiery eyes, a crest, and a horn, that dwelt under this tree). * * *
"The Malays call it Cayu Upas, but in Macassar and the rest of Celebes it is called Ipo.
* * * * *
"It grows in desert places, and amid bare hills, and is easily discerned from afar, there being no other tree near it."
* * * * *
—Rumphii, Herbarium Amboinense, ii. 263-268.
1685.—"I cannot omit to set forth here an account of the poisoned missiles of the Kingdom of Macassar, which the natives of that kingdom have used against our soldiers, bringing them to sudden death. It is extracted from the Journal of the illustrious and gallant admiral, H. Cornelius Spielman.... The natives of the kingdom in question possess a singular art of shooting arrows by blowing through canes, and wounding with these, insomuch that if the skin be but slightly scratched the wounded die in a twinkling."
(Then the old story of the only antidote)....
The account follows extracted from the Journal.