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Among them are talipots, palmyras, cocoanuts, the slender areca, the date palm, and the fan palm, already described, spreading out its broad leaves like a peacock's tail. This is often called the traveler's tree, because the trunk is never without a supply of pure water with which to quench his thirst. When pierced with a knife at the juncture of the stems, it yields copious draughts of water.
As we passed the projecting tooth of Shark Point, a sandspit garnished with mangroves and dotted with palmyras, the land-squali flocked from their dirty-brown thatches to the beach, where flew the symbolic red flag.
The shore was fringed with palmyras, mangoes and other tropical trees, and behind the straw huts and stone buildings of the town leafy groves clothed the sides of a gentle hill. The harbor, which forms the mouth of a river, was studded with Angria's vessels, large and small, and from the docks situated on the sandy isthmus came the busy sound of shipwrights at work.
A strong earth wall, planted with palmyras, encircles its lower slope. The upper lies open to receive surface water, as well as the channel for the river that runs full during the monsoon months. During the "rains" the country is full of water, blue and sparkling.
In front, over a beautifully-planted fore-ground, I looked down upon a perfect sea of palms, the taller palmyras lifting their proud heads above the rest, and all so intermingled with other foliage, as to produce the richest variety of hues.
And thus Dhananjaya deprived his foes of diverse limbs, and cars decked and equipped according to rule, and looking like the vapour edifices in the welkin, he cut off into fragments, by means of his arrows, their riders and steeds and elephants. And in many places crowds of cars, whose standards had been cut off, looked like forests of headless palmyras.
Some of the palms were of stupendous size and height, while there appeared to be a spirit of emulation between talipots, palmyras, date-palms and fan-palms, as to which should develop into the finest specimen of its class.
In sandy spots there are palmyras somewhat similar to the Indian, but with a smaller seed. The soil on all the flat parts is a rich, dark, tenacious loam, known as the "cotton-ground" in India; it is covered with a dense matting of coarse grass, common on all damp spots in this country. We had the Chobe on our right, with its scores of miles of reed occupying the horizon there.
There were large groves of broad-leaved plantains and graceful cocoa-nut trees, the slender tapering betel-nut palm and elegant palmyras; while the showy-looking papaw, and here and there a rhambutan tree, or a dark-leaved guava, contrasted with the golden fruit of the shaddock, and the delicious mangustan and the curious-tasted durian were to be found in numbers among them.
Their absence is unaccompanied by any inconvenience to the individuals in whom they are wanting; and as regards the few who possess them, the only operations in which I am aware of their tusks being employed in relation to the oeconomy of the animal, is to assist in ripping open the stem of the jaggery palms and young palmyras to extract the farinaceous core; and in splitting the juicy shaft of the plantain.
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