the most
distinguished of English botanists (Hooker) relates that a complete
_furnished_ house of bamboo, containing chairs and a table, was erected
by his six attendants in the space of one hour!

Of the bamboos there are many species--perhaps fifty in all--some of
them natives of Africa and South America, but the greater number
belonging to southern Asia, which is the true home of these gigantic
grasses. The species differ in many respects from each other--some of
them being thick and strong, while others are light and slender, and
elastic. In nothing do the different species vary more than in size.
They are found growing of all sizes, from the dwarf bamboo, as slender
as a wheat-stalk, and only two feet high, to the _Bambusa maxima_, as
thick as a man's body, and towering to the height of a hundred feet!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE MAN-EATERS.

Ossaroo had lived all his life in a bamboo country, and was well
acquainted with all its uses. Hardly a vessel or implement that he
could not manufacture of bamboo canes of some kind or another, and many
a purpose besides he knew how to apply them to. Had he been obliged to
cross a tract of country where there was no water, and required a large
vessel, or "canteen," to carry a supply, he would have made it as
follows. He would have taken two joints of bamboo, each a couple of
feet long and six or seven inches in diameter. These he would have
trimmed, so that one of the nodes between the hollow spaces would serve
as a bottom for each. In the node, or partition, at the top, he would
have pierced a small hole to admit the water, which hole could be closed
by a stopper of the pith of a palm or some soft wood, easily procured in
the tropical forests of India. In case he could not have found bamboos
with joints sufficiently long for the purpose it would have mattered
little. Two or more joints would have been taken for each jar, and the
partitions between them broken through, so as to admit the water into
the hollow spaces within. The pair of "jars" he would have then bound
together at a very acute angle--something after the form of the letter
V--and then to carry them with ease he would have strapped the bamboos
to his back, the apex of the angle downwards, and one of the ends just
peeping over each shoulder. In this way he would have provided himself
with a water-vessel that for strength and lightness--the two great
essentials--would have been superior to anything t