LESSON 18 The tropical world (II)

The interior of Africa—so far from being a desolate waste, as was at one time supposed—is a well watered and fertile region, and is remarkable for the extraordinary dimensions both of its vegetable and of its animal life. The chief of its vegetable wonders is the baobab-tree, which has been well called the elephant of the vegetable world. One baobab has been seen whose trunk was thirty feet in diameter and ninety-five in circumference. As these trees are generally hollow, they are frequently made use of as dwellings or stables; and Dr. Livingstone mentions one in which twenty or thirty men could lie down and sleep as in a hut! There are also gigantic sycamores, under whose branches the negroes pitch their huts; while picturesque-looking mangroves are found flinging the shores of the sea and the mouths of rivers.