runners climb the highest trees, and hang down in the most fantastic bunches. Its stem, like that of another plant of the same genus (the Vitis Indica), when freshly cut, yields a copious draught of pure tasteless fluid, and is eagerly sought after by elephants. But it is the trees of older and loftier growth that exhibit the rank luxuriance of these wonderful epiphytes in the most striking manner. They are tormented by climbing plants of such extraordinary dimensions that many of them exceed in diameter the girth of a man; and these gigantic appendages are to be seen surmounting the tallest trees of the forest, grasping their stems in firm convolutions, and then flinging their monstrous tendrils over the larger limbs till they reach the top, whence they descend to the ground in huge festoons, and, after including another and another tree in their successive toils, they once more ascend to the summit, and wind the whole into a maze of living network as massy as if formed by the cable of a line-of-battle ship. When, by-and-by, the trees on which this singular fabric has become suspended give way under its weight, or sink by their own decay, the fallen trunk speedily disappears, whilst the convolutions of climbers continue to grow on, exhibiting one of the most marvellous and peculiar living mounds of confusion that it is possible to fancy. Frequently one of these creepers may be seen holding by one extremity the summit of a tall tree, and grasping with the other an object at some distance near the earth, between which it is strained as tight and straight as if hauled over a block. In all probability the young tendril had been originally fixed in this position by the wind, and retained in it till it had gained its maturity, where it has the appearance of having been artificially arranged as if to support a falling tree. This peculiarity of tropical vegetation has been turned to profitable account by the Ceylon woodmen, employed by the European planters in felling forest In this trees, preparatory to the cultivation of coffee. craft they are singularly expert, and far surpass the Malabar coolies, who assist in the same operations. In steep and mountainous places where the trees have been thus lashed together by the interlacing climbers, the practice is to cut halfway through each stem in succession, till an area of some acres in extent is prepared for the final overthrow. Then severing some tall group on the eminence, and allowing it in its descent to precipitate itself on those below, the whole expanse is in one moment brought headlong to the ground; the falling timber forcing down those beneath it by its weight, and dragging those behind to which it is harnessed by its living attachments. The crash occasioned by this startling operation is so deafeningly loud, that it is audible for two or three miles in the clear and still atmosphere of the hills. One monstrous creeping plant called by the Kandyans the Maha-pus-wael, or "Great hollow climber," has pods, some of which I have seen fully five feet long and six inches broad, with beautiful brown beans, so large that the natives hollow them out, and carry them as tinder-boxes. Another climber of less dimensions2, but greater luxuriance, haunts the jungle, and often reaches the tops of the highest trees, whence it suspends large bunches of its yellow flowers, and eventually produces clusters of prickly pods containing greyish-coloured seeds, the size of marbles, which are so strongly coated with silex, that they are said to strike fire like a flint. One other curious climber is remarkable for the vigour and vitality of its vegetation, a faculty in which it equals, if it do not surpass, the banyan. This is the 1 Entada pursætha. The same plant, when found in lower situations, where it wants the soil and moisture of the mountains, is so altered in appearance that the natives call it the "heen-puswael;" and even botanists have taken it for a distinct species. The beautiful mountain region of Pusilawa, now familiar as one of the finest coffee districts in Ceylon, in all probability takes its name from the giant bean "Pus-waelawa." 2 Guilandina Bonduc. Cocculus cordifolius, the "rasa-kinda" of the Singhalese, a medicinal plant which produces the guluncha of Bengal. It is largely cultivated by the natives, and when it has acquired the diameter of half an inch, it is not unusual for the natives to cut from the main stem a portion of from twenty to thirty feet in length, leaving the dissevered plant suspended from the branches of the tree which sustained it. The amputation naturally serves for a time to check its growth, but presently small rootlets, not thicker than a pack-thread, are seen shooting downwards from the wounded end; these swing in the wind till, reaching the ground, they attach themselves in the soil, and form new stems, which in turn, when sufficiently grown, are cut away and replaced by a subsequent growth. Such is its tenacity of life, that when the Singhalese wish to grow the rasakindu, they twist several yards of the stem into a coil of six or eight inches in diameter, and simply hang it on the branch of a tree, where it speedily puts forth its large heart-shaped leaves, and sends down its rootlets to the earth. The ground too has its creepers, and some of them very curious. The most remarkable are the ratans, belonging to the Calamus genus of palms. Of these I have seen a specimen 250 feet long and an inch in diameter, without a single irregularity, and no appearance of foliage other than the bunch of feathery leaves at the extremity. The strength of these slender plants is so extreme, that the natives employ them with striking success in the formation of bridges across the water-courses and ravines. One which crossed the falls of the Mahawelliganga, in the Kotmalie range of hills, was constructed with the scientific precision of an engineer's work. It was entirely composed of the plant, called by the natives the "Waywel," its extremities fastened to living trees, on the opposite sides of the ravine through which a furious and otherwise impassable mountain torrent thundered and fell from rock to rock with a descent of nearly 100 feet. The flooring of this aerial bridge consisted of short splints of wood, laid transversely, and bound in their places by thin strips of the Waywel itself. The whole structure vibrated and swayed with fearful ease, but the coolies traversed it though heavily laden; and the European, between whose estate and the high road it lay, rode over it daily without dismounting. Another class of trees which excites the astonishment of an European, are those whose stems are protected, as high as cattle can reach, by thorns, which in the jungle attain a growth and size quite surprising. One species of palm1, the Caryota horrida, often rises to a height of fifty feet, and has a coating of thorns for about six or eight feet from the ground, each about an inch in length, and so densely covering the stem that the bark is barely visible. A climbing plant, the "Kudu-miris" of the Singhalese2, very common in the hill jungles with a diameter of three or four inches, is thickly studded with knobs about half an inch high, and from the extremity of each a thorn protrudes, as large and sharp as the bill of a sparrow-hawk. It has been the custom of the Singhalese from time immemorial, to employ the thorny trees of their forests in the construction of defences against their enemies. The Mahawanso relates, that in the civil wars, in the reign of Prakrama-bahu in the twelfth century, the inhabitants of the southern portion of the island entrenched themselves against his forces behind moats filled with thorns. And at an earlier period, during the contest of Dutugaimunu with Elala, the same authority states, that a town which he was about 1 This palm I have called a Caryota on the authority of Dr. GARDNER, and of Moon's Catalogue; but I have been informed by Dr. HOOKER and Mr. THWAITES that it is an Areca. The natives identify it with the 2 Toddalia aculeata. to attack was "surrounded on all sides by the thorny Dadambo creeper (probably Toddalia aculeata) within which was a triple line of fortifications, with one gate of difficult access."1 During the existence of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state, before its conquest by the British, the frontier forests were so thickened and defended by dense plantations of these thorny palms and climbers at different points, as to exhibit a natural fortification impregnable to the feeble tribes on the other side, and at each pass which led to the level country, moveable gates, formed of the same formidable thorny beams, were suspended as an ample security against the incursions of the naked and timid lowlanders.2 The pasture grounds throughout the vicinity of Jaffna abound in a low shrub called the Buffaloe-thorn 3, the black twigs of which are beset at every joint by a pair of thorns, set opposite each other like the horns of an ox, as sharp as a needle, from two to three inches in length, and thicker at the base than the stem they grow on. The Acacia tomentosa is of the same genus, with thorns so large as to be called the "jungle-nail" by Europeans. It is frequent in the woods of Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or "elephant thorn." In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Gartneri, Thun., the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely im. 1 Mahawanso, ch. xxv. 2 The kings of Kandy maintained a regulation "that no one, on pain of death, should presume to cut a road through the forest wider than was sufficient for one person to pass." WOOLF's Life and Adventures, p. 308. 3 Acacia latronum. 4 Mr. Wm. Ferguson writes to me, "This is the famous Katu-kurundu, or thorny cinnamon,' of the Sin ghalese, figured and described by Gaertner as the Limonia pusilla, which, after a great deal of labour and research, I think I have identified as the Phoberos macrophyllus (W. and A. Prod. p. 30). Thunberg alludes to it (Travels, vol. iv.) "Why the Singhalese have called it a cinnamon I do not know, unless from some fancied similarity in its seeds to those of the cinnamon laurel." |