rmer
years a large amount of shipwrecked merchandise to Nassau. The
wrecking business at best is extremely demoralizing, unfitting any
community of men for legitimate industry, as we know very well by the
experience gained on our own Florida shore. Men who have cruised
fruitlessly for months in search of a profitable wreck will sometimes
be tempted to decoy a ship from her proper course, and lead her upon
the rocks, by a display of false lights.

In front of the Victoria Hotel are some noble specimens of the ceiba,
or silk-cotton tree, as it is called here, the finest and loftiest we
have seen in any country. These trees, naturally slow growers, must
be over a century in age, and afford, by their widespread branches, a
shade equally graceful and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of
Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots
exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of
the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the
part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The
tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft,
silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable neither
for timber nor fuel, and the small product of cotton is seldom if ever
gathered. The islanders are proud of a single specimen of the banyan
tree of considerable size, which they show to all visitors; but it
cannot be indigenous--it must have been brought in its youth from
Asia. There is, however, in these West Indian isles, the black
mangrove, with very similar habit to the banyan. The limbs spread to
such an extent from the trunk as to require support to prevent them
from breaking off or bending to the ground by their own weight; but to
obviate this, nature has endowed the tree with a peculiar growth. When
the branches have become so heavy as to be no longer able to support
themselves, they send forth from the under side sprigs which, rapidly
descending to the ground, take root like the banyan, and become
supporting columns to the heavy branches above. So the writer has seen
in Hindostan a vine which grew, almost leafless, closely
entwined around the trees to the very top, whence it descended, took
fresh root, and ascended the nearest adjoining tree, until it had gone
on binding an entire grove in a ligneous rope. Long tendrils of the
love-vine, that curious aerial creeper, which feeds on air alone,
were seen hanging across so