Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
He turned to hasten away along the gorge, past the baobab. "I'll be back soon. Got to pull down that flag." Lord James followed, and saw him ascend to the cliff crest on the right, up a withered, leafless tree. The trunk had been burned through at the base in such manner that the top had fallen over against the edge of the rocky wall.
Can you be surprised that this sun shining down on Tarascon has been able to make a retired Captain Quartermaster into the gallant Commandant Bravida, to make a thing like a turnip into a baobab and a man who almost went to Shanghai into one who has really been there. Now that we have shown Tartarin as he was in his private life, before fame had crowned his head with laurels.
We spent a night at a baobab, which was hollow, and would hold twenty men inside. It had been used as a lodging-house by the Babisa. As we approached nearer the Zambesi, the country became covered with broad-leaved bushes, pretty thickly planted, and we had several times to shout to elephants to get out of our way.
Accordingly, I secured one of these vehicles, which are pushed by two strapping Swahili boys, and was soon flying down the track, which once outside the town lay for the most part through dense groves of mango, baobab, banana and palm trees, with here and there brilliantly coloured creepers hanging in luxuriant festoons from the branches.
My female companion after we had advanced some distance, began to think of danger, and I, in mischief, rustled among the branches of the thicket in order to alarm her still more. We proceeded as far as a spring under a huge Baobab, where we stood for some time, till the monkeys began to pelt us from the tree over our heads.
Having allowed our animals to drink their full of water, and replenished our bottles, we encamped for the night under a magnificent baobab tree with a trunk seventy feet in girth as high as we could reach, while our animals found an abundance of rich grass on which to satisfy their hunger. What pigmies we felt as we stood beneath that giant tree.
Ordinarily he would have lighted three or four at a distance of five or six yards from each other, and thus found comparative immunity from the attacks of lions and hippos, but the baobab it reminded him of a certain incident when he was "attached" to the Haussas was able to protect both rear and flank from the voracious assaults of any four-footed creatures.
Toward evening the trees came out to meet them, baobab and monkey-bread, set widely apart; and they camped by a pool and lit their fire, and slept as men sleep in the pure air of the woods and the desert. Next morning they pursued their journey, Berselius still confident. At noon, however, he began to exhibit slight signs of agitation and anxiety.
You may wonder why the negroes, for the sake of mere criminals, take so much trouble as to form these large vaults in the solid trunks of trees; and especially with such rude implements as they are used to make them with. But this wonder will cease when I inform you, that the hallowing out of a chamber in the trunk of a baobab is a mere bagatelle, and costs but trifling labour.
Let us stop for a moment before this colossus, which, by the enormous diameter to which it attains, has acquired the title of the Elephant of the vegetable kingdom. The Baobab often serves the negroes for a dwelling, the construction of which costs no further trouble than cutting an opening in the side to serve as a door, and taking out the very soft pith which fills the inside of the trunk.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking