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Updated: June 23, 2025
At its foot was a grove of trees whose bright green foliage seemed to indicate an abundance of water. Above, a gigantic baobab tree towered out of the cleft and upreared its enormous cabbage-shaped crown high over the crest of the ridge. In the midst of the general barrenness and aridity, the verdant oasis of the ravine appeared to be the most certain place to look for the castaways.
Throughout this mob the hat shooters came and went, proud of the triumph of their leader, and leaving in their wake, as it were, little trails of glory. In front of the house of the baobab there were two large handcarts. From time to time the gate was opened and one could see men walking busily about in the garden. They carried out trunks, cases and carpet-bags which they piled onto the carts.
Not one indigenous tree grew there, not one French flower; nothing but exotic plants, gum trees, calabashes, cotton trees, coconut palms, mangos, bananas, cactuses, figs and a baobab. One might have thought oneself in the middle of Africa, thousands of miles from Tarascon.
A great many silicified trees are met with lying on the ground all over this part of the country; some are broken off horizontally, and stand upright; others are lying prone, and broken across into a number of pieces. One was 4 feet 8 inches in diameter, and the wood must have been soft like that of the baobab, for there were only six concentric rings to the inch.
Denizens of those mighty forests, which clothe the earth between the tropics of both the Old and New World, assembling by hundreds in those lands where the Palm, the Banyan, the Baobab, the Bombax, and thousands of magnificent trees adorn the soil; where the most delicious fruits are to be procured, by merely stretching out the hand to separate them from their parent stem; no wonder that both apes and monkeys there congregate, and strike the European, on his first arrival among them, with astonishment.
The hideous brutes appeared all around some squatted on the ground, some up in the branches of the baobab and in the midst of a chattering group we could see the carcass of the one that had been killed while close by was the wounded individual, also surrounded by sympathising friends.
The country between Tette and Panda Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and hilly on both banks. Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite containing copper ore. Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab.
We dressed his wound and gave him an injection of morphia, a cigarette, and a good drink of brandy, and left him in the shade of a baobab tree to recover from his fears. Then I turned toward the dividing of the contents of captured chop boxes that was being carried out under the direction of the officer in charge.
A lioness bereft of her cubs has been known to follow hunters for days in order either to recover or revenge her offspring. The sight of the large camp, however, must have incited the gigantic feline to premature action. Of the five white men only MacGregor retained his rifle. Laxdale and Danvers took to their heels, making for a large baobab that stood about fifty yards away.
The baobab trees of the Green Cape are fully four thousand years old. No doubt some of those trees will last as long as time. Is it any wonder that I claim some companionship to trees, since I passed so many years of my youth among them? Trees often prevented sharp eyes from seeing me, secreted me and helped me to luck, which was very gratifying to me.
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