was the wonderful part of it. It rose to about twelve feet without
a branch, and was not of great thickness; on the contrary, it was
remarkably slender for the size of the tree; but, to make up for
this, there were four or five wonderful projections in this stem,
which I cannot better describe than by asking the reader to suppose
that five planks of two inches thick and three feet broad had been
placed round the trunk of the tree, with their EDGES closely fixed
to it, from the ground up to the branches, and that these planks
bad been covered over with the bark of the tree and incorporated
with it. In short, they were just natural buttresses, without
which the stem could not have supported its heavy and umbrageous
top. We found these chestnuts to be very numerous. They grew
chiefly on the banks of the stream, and were of all sizes.

While we were examining a small tree of this kind, Jack chipped a
piece off a buttress with his axe, and found the wood to be firm
and easily cut. He then struck the axe into it with all his force,
and very soon split it off close to the tree, first, however,
having cut it across transversely above and below. By this means
he satisfied himself that we could now obtain short planks, as it
were all ready sawn, of any size and thickness that we desired;
which was a very great discovery indeed, perhaps the most important
we had yet made.

We now wended our way back to the coast, intending to encamp near
the beach, as we found that the mosquitoes were troublesome in the
forest. On our way we could not help admiring the birds which flew
and chirped around us. Among them we observed a pretty kind of
paroquet, with a green body, a blue head, and a red breast; also a
few beautiful turtledoves, and several flocks of wood-pigeons. The