immensity of thirty or forty pounds
weight directly out of the largest branches or on the stem of the huge
tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green coat: internally, it has
a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are embedded a dozen or more
smooth, oval seeds about the size of large chestnuts, which they
strikingly resemble in flavor.

The mango (_Mangifera Indica_) is a drupe of the plum kind, four or
five inches long, and three at least in diameter. Greenish-colored
outside, and not very inviting, you are most agreeably surprised at
the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow pulp that adheres like the
clinging peach to a large flat seed.

The gamboge tree (_Stalagmitis Cambogioides_) grows luxuriantly in
Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed leaves, a
yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even the stem has
a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is obtained
by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves and young
shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white foreigners
for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced into Europe
early in the seventeenth century.

The plantain (_Musa paradisaica_) is one of the best gifts of
Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh
from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green
cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about
twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the
elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till there
come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred plantains,
weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth bunch is the
sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit is plucked the