Pushkin, gives the following vivid impression of the horror which this ghastly tree was said to inspire: "In an inhospitable and sterile desert, on a soil burnt up by the sun, the Antchar, like a threatening watch-tower, uplifts itself, unique in creation. Nature, in these thirsty plains, planted it in the day of her wrath, and supplied its roots and the pale verdure of its branches with poison. The poison, melted by the midday sun, percolates through the bark in drops, which in the evening are congealed into a thick and transparent gum. The birds avoid its very appearance, the tiger shuns it; a breath of wind rustles its foliage; the passing wind is tainted. A shower waters for a moment its sleeping leaves, and from its branches a deadly rain falls on to the burning soil. But an order is made and a man obeys; he starts on an expedition to the Antchar without hesitation, and next day brings back from the branches and leaves the deadly gum, while from his pallid brow the sweat pours in frozen streams. He, staggering, brings it, falls on the mats of the tent, and expires at the feet of his invincible prince. And the prince soaks his flexible arrows in the poison. He wishes to carry destruction to his neighbours on the frontier."

Dr. Darwin, in the Loves of the Plants, has also given a forcible description of this Valley of Death with its sole and menacing occupant. He wrote thus:

"Where seas of glass with gay reflections smile
Round the green coasts of Java's palmy isle,
A spacious plain extends its upland scene,
Rocks rise on rocks, and fountains gush between.
Soft breathes the breeze; eternal summers reign
And showers prolific bless the soil-in vain!
No spicy nutmeg scents the vernal gales:
No towering plantain shades the midday vales;
No grassy mantle hides the sable hills;
No flowery chaplet crown the trickling rills;
No step, retreating, on the sand impressed,
Invites the visit of a second guest.

Fierce in dread silence, on the blasted heath
Fell Upas sits."

Sir John Maundevile speaks of a marvellous tree which he says grew in the kingdom of Prester John, though he apparently does not claim to have actually seen it. In that kingdom, he says, there was a great gravelly plain, on which, every day at sunrise, small trees sprang up and grew till midday. They bore fruit, but no one could gather it as it was a thing of Fayrye. After midday these trees decreased gradually in size, and finally sank again into the earth.1

Sir John also mentions a tree of miraculous origin which he saw growing in the City of Tiberias. The tree originated from a burning dart which an angry citizen had thrown at Jesus. It stuck in the earth, became green, and grew to a great tree, of which the bark, Sir John said, was black, and like coal.2

When the traveller Odoricus du Frioul arrived at Malabar in the fourteenth century, he heard certain trees spoken of which, instead of fruit, produced men and women. These beings were scarcely a cubit in height, and their lower extremities were attached to the trunk of the tree. When the wind blew, their bodies were full of moisture, but they dried up wherever it lulled.

There is said to be a tree growing in a part of Central Australia to which the sun, taking the form of a woman, is fabled to have travelled from the east. If this tree should be destroyed, the natives believe that everyone will be burned up, and if anyone kills and eats an opossum which he finds on the tree, his whole inward parts will be burned, with death as a result.3

The Voiage and Travaile, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 1883, p. 273.

2 Ibid., p. 117.

3 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 624.

CHAPTER VIII

FOLKLORE

Fossil or Petrified Forests and Trees; Bark of Trees; Leaves of Trees; Thorns, Spines, Prickles, etc.; Origin of Fire; Divination-Divining Rod, Wands, etc.; The Man in the Moon; The Yule Log.

FOSSIL OR PETRIFIED FORESTS AND TREES

DURING the ages which have elapsed since vegetation first appeared upon the face of the earth, the remains of many trees and other plants have been found in a silicified state, testifying to the fact of their former existence, and speaking eloquently of the æons which have elapsed since they waved green over the land. The vast vegetation of the Carboniferous Epoch has already been mentioned, but many isolated instances occur where the remains of forests of a later age are still plainly visible.

Baldwin Mollhausen speaks of having seen a remarkable formation of silicified stems of trees in situ, or partly prostrate. At another spot the travellers saw what resembled masses of wood which had been felled previous to the cultivation of the land. Trees of all sizes appeared scattered around, some more than sixty feet long, but a closer examination revealed that these were fossilised trees which had been gradually washed down by torrents. In long past ages these trees had flourished on the high lands, had fallen, had been covered over and silicified, and in after ages, possibly owing to convulsions of Nature, had been raised once more as fossils which torrents had swept downwards, breaking many in the process, until they appeared as if sawn into logs two or more feet in diameter. Many were hollow and of a dark hue, but the rings, and even the bark, were quite discernible. A beautiful blending of agate and jasper colouring appeared in some of

the blocks, while broken fragments presented truly lovely tints of various colours, but other pieces resembled simply rotten wood.1

In one of the expeditions to Bank's Land, in the Arctic regions, several hills were found which were formed of accumulations of wood, the remains of vast forests which had been flourishing there thousands of years previously. The records of the expedition tell that the ends of trunks and branches of trees were seen protruding through the rich, loamy soil in which they were embedded, while some of the hills were of a complete ligneous formation. They comprised the trunks and branches, some soft and dark, and in a state of semicarbonisation, while others seemed to be fresh but hard, in which the structure of the wood was quite apparent. In other places the ligneous formation was hard and flattened, owing to the pressure which it had undergone for ages, and in this case traces of coal were observed. The trunk of one tree was twenty-six inches in diameter, and that of another was three feet in circumference. Both appeared to have belonged to the Coniferæ.

Charles Darwin says that in the Uspallata range of the Andes he noticed some snow-white, projecting columns on a bare slope, and closer observation revealed that they were petrified trees. Eleven of them were silicified, and from thirty to forty were converted into a coarsely crystallised white calcareous spar. These trees were of the Fir tribe, with affinities to both the Araucaria and the Yew.2

Professor Agassiz, when travelling in Brazil, found on the seashore the remains of forests now covered with sand. One of these submerged forests was at the mouth of the Igarapé Grand, where evidently it had grown in one of those marshy lands constantly inundated, and in it the stumps of the trees, still standing erect in the peat, had been laid bare on both sides of the river by the encroachments of the ocean. At

Diary of a Journey from the Mississippi to the Coasts of the Pacific.
Journal of a Voyage round the World in H.M.S. Beagle."

Vigia, just where the Pará River meets the sea, there was another submerged forest with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it, and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand. No doubt, Agassiz remarked, these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across the whole basin of what is now called the Pará River.1

During Dr. Livingstone's first expedition to Africa, in 184056, he mentions that after leaving Chipong he skirted a range of hills, at the base of which he observed a forest of large petrified trees of the Araucarian type. He also observes that numerous fossil trees abound in the district of Chicova, many lying prostrate, and others standing upright, while others were shattered into fragments. The explorer gives other instances of having observed petrified forests and trees.

At low tide submerged forests may be seen at various places round the coasts of the British Islands, the stumps and roots becoming visible. They may be seen in Mounts Bay, Cornwall, the Bristol Channel, at the mouth of the Humber, in the Firth of Forth, and as far north as the Orkney Islands. The most of these appear to be remains of ancient forests of Sigillarias. The forests of which all these are the vestiges seem to have flourished during interglacial periods, and to have perished when the ice-cap again covered the land. Man appears to have wandered in their shade, as weapons of stone and of bronze have been found in them, along with bones of the Elk, the Beaver, and other animals not now known in these islands.

BARK OF TREES

The bark of various trees has been widely taken advantage of for many purposes-for clothing, food, writing, etc., and has even been used in lieu of coin. In very ancient times, in the northern parts of Europe, mankind had apparently no other garments than the bark of trees, and it was not until

A Journey in Brazil, by Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz in 1865, pub. 1868, pp. 434-5.