its stem was the wonderful part of it.
It rose to about twelve feet without a branch, and was not of great
thickness; on the contrary, it was remarkably slender for the size of the
tree; but, to make up for this, there were four or five wonderful
projections in this stem, which I cannot better describe than by asking
the reader to suppose that five planks of two inches thick and three feet
broad had been placed round the trunk of the tree, with their _edges_
closely fixed to it, from the ground up to the branches, and that these
planks bad been covered over with the bark of the tree and incorporated
with it. In short, they were just natural buttresses, without which the
stem could not have supported its heavy and umbrageous top. We found
these chestnuts to be very numerous. They grew chiefly on the banks of
the stream, and were of all sizes.

While we were examining a small tree of this kind, Jack chipped a piece
off a buttress with his axe, and found the wood to be firm and easily
cut. He then struck the axe into it with all his force, and very soon
split it off close to the tree, first, however, having cut it across
transversely above and below. By this means he satisfied himself that we
could now obtain short planks, as it were all ready sawn, of any size and
thickness that we desired; which was a very great discovery indeed,
perhaps the most important we had yet made.

We now wended our way back to the coast, intending to encamp near the
beach, as we found that the mosquitoes were troublesome in the forest. On
our way we could not help admiring the birds which flew and chirped
around us. Among them we observed a pretty kind of paroquet, with a
green body, a blue head, and a red breast; also a few beautiful
turtledoves, and several flocks of wood-pigeons. The hues of many of
these birds were extremely vivid,--bright green, blue, and scarlet, being
the prevailing tints. We made several attempts throughout the day to
bring down one of these, both with the bow and the sling,--not for mere
sport, but to ascertain whether they were good for food. But we
invariably missed, although once or twice we were very near hitting. As
evening drew on, however, a flock of pigeons flew past. I slung a stone
into the midst of them at a venture, and had the good fortune to kill
one. We were startled, soon after, by a loud whistling noise above our
heads; and on looking up, saw a flock of wild ducks making for the coast.
W