United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A few men of the crew accompanied Lord Evandale and Dr. Rumphius at a distance, while the others, stretched out on the deck in the shadow of the cabin, were peacefully smoking their pipes and watching the craft. Lord Evandale was one of those thoroughly irreproachable young noblemen whom the upper classes of Britain give to civilisation.
The resinous flame burned with difficulty in the dense, stifling air which had been concentrated for so many thousands of years under the heated limestone of the mountain, in the labyrinths, passages, and blind ways of the hypogeum. Rumphius breathed hard and perspired in streams; the impassible Evandale turned hot and felt a moisture on his temples.
As to the tree itself, it does no manner of injury to those around it. I have sat under its shade, and seen birds alight upon its branches; and as to the story of grass not growing beneath it, everyone who has been in a forest must know that grass is not found in such situations." The information given by Rumphius upon the subject of the Ipo or Upas, in his Herb. Amboin.
This tree in all its species, stages, fructification, and appropriate uses has been so elaborately and justly described by many writers, especially the celebrated Rumphius in his Herbarium Amboinense, and Van Rheede in his Hortus Malabaricus, that to attempt it here would be an unnecessary repetition, and I shall only add a few local observations on its growth.
This conversation took place not far from the Nile, at the entrance to the valley of Biban el Molûk, between Lord Evandale, who rode an Arab horse, and Dr. Rumphius, more modestly perched upon an ass, the lean hind-quarters of which a fellah was belabouring.
"With the additional proviso," added Rumphius the prudent, "that we carry off everything we shall find in the tomb." "Agreed!" said Argyropoulos, with a look of complete confidence. "Your lordship may get ready your bank-notes and gold beforehand." "Dr. Rumphius," said Lord Evandale to his acolyte, "it strikes me that the wish you uttered just now is about to be realised.
This is the jawi-jawi and ulang-ulang of the Malays, the banyan tree of the continent, the Grossularia domestica of Rumphius, and the Ficus indica or Ficus racemosa of Linnaeus.
The dust, which in Egypt is as eternal as granite, had moulded the print and preserved it for more than thirty centuries, just as the hardened diluvian mud has preserved the tracks of the animals which last traversed it. "See," said Evandale to Rumphius, "that human footprint which is directed towards the exit from the hypogeum!
Their muscles stood out upon their thin arms, and they pressed with their whole weight on the end of the levers. At last the boulder moved, tottered for a moment like a drunken man, and, urged by the united efforts of Argyropoulos, Lord Evandale, Rumphius, and a few Arabs who had succeeded in climbing the ledge, bounded down the slope.
They are mentioned by Rumphius in his Herbarium Amboinense, vol. ii. p. 257; but the tree in which he saw their dwelling is very different from that in which we found them. A third kind we found nested in the root of a plant, which grows on the bark of trees in the manner of misletoe, and which they had perforated for that use.
Word Of The Day