nly, with their single, regularly rounded stem, crowned by the
radiating circle of leaves, they had something of the peculiar look of
palm-trees, and a person entirely ignorant of botany, who had never seen
one of the sort before, would, in all likelihood, have pronounced as my
companion had done, and called them palms. In the eyes of a jolly-tar,
all trees that have this radiating foliage, such as aloes, and yucca,
and the zamias of South Africa, are palm-trees; therefore it was natural
for Ben to call the trees in question by this name. Of course he saw
they were different from the oil-palms among which he had been
wandering; but Ben knew there were several sorts of palm-trees, although
he would not have believed it had he been told there were a thousand. I
should have been compelled to agree with Ben, and believe these strange
trees to be veritable palms--for I was no more of a botanist than he--
but, odd as it may appear, I was able to tell that they were not palms;
and, more than that, able to tell what sort of trees they actually were.
This knowledge I derived from a somewhat singular circumstance, which I
shall relate.

Among the small collection of my boy books there had been one that
treated of the "Wonders of Nature." It had been my favourite, and I had
read it through and through and over and over again a dozen times, I am
sure. Among these "wonders" figured a remarkable tree, which was said
to grow in the Canary Islands, and was know as the "dragon-tree of
Oritava." It was described by the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, who
measured it, and found its trunk to be forty-five feet in girth, and the
tree itself about fifty in height. It was said to yield, when cut or
tapped, a red juice resembling blood, and to which the name of
"dragons'-blood" has been given; hence the tree itself is called the
"dragon-tree," or, sometimes the "dragons'-blood tree"--though it is to
be observed, that several other kinds of trees that give out a red juice
are also known by this name. The trunk of this tree, said the
traveller, rose almost of equal thickness to the height of twenty feet,
when it divided into a great number of short, thick branches, that
separated from the main stem like the branches of a candelabrum, and
upon the end of each of these was a thick tuft of the stiff,
sword-shaped leaves--the same as I have above described. Out of the
midst of these leaves grew the pannicles, or flower-spikes, and the
bunch