{187b} I incline to the former belief, as the leaves seemed to me pinnated: but the doubt was pardonable enough.

There was not a leaf on the tree which was not nigh one hundred feet over our heads.

For size of spurs and wealth of parasites the tree was almost as remarkable as the Ceiba I mentioned just now.

But the curiosity of the tree was a Carat-palm which had started between its very roots; had run its straight and slender stem up parallel with the bole of its companion, and had then pierced through the head of the tree, and all its wilderness of lianes, till it spread its huge flat crown of fans among the highest branches, more than a hundred feet aloft.

The contrast between the two forms of vegetation, each so grand, but as utterly different in every line as they are in botanical affinities, and yet both living together in such close embrace, was very noteworthy; a good example of the rule, that while competition is most severe between forms most closely allied, forms extremely wide apart may not compete at all, because each needs something which the other does not.
On our return I was introduced to the 'Uncle Tom' of the neighbourhood, who had come down to spend Sunday at the Squire's house.