The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-07-24
THE NAVIGATING TREE.
HORRIBLE PRODUCT OF NATURE-THE
DEVIL FISH OF THE VEGETABLE
KINGDOM.

DEVIL FISH OF THE VEGETABLE
| KINGDOM.
If you can imagine pineapple eight
feet high and thick in proportion. resting
upon its base and denuded of leaves, you
will have good idea of the trunk of the
tree, which however, was not the color of
anana, but dark, dingy brown, and ap-
parently as hard as iron. From the apex,
of this fusticated cone, at least two feet in
diameter, eight huge leaves sheer to tho
ground, like doors swinging back on their
hinges. These leaves, which where Joined
at the top of the trees at regular intervals,
were eleven or twelve feet long, and shaped
very much like the leaves of an American
agave, or century plant. They are two
feet through at their thickest point and
three feet wide, tapering to a sharp point
that look like cows horn, very convex
on the outer (but not under) surface, and
on the under (not upper surface slightly
concaye. This concave face was thickly
set with strong thorny hooks like those
upon the head of the teazle. These leaves
hanging limp and lfeless, dead green in
color, had in appearance the strength of
oak fibre. The apex of the cone was
round white concave figure, like smaller
plate set within a larger one. This was
not flower, but recepticle, aSd there
exuded into it clear treacly liquid honey,
sweet, and possessed of violent Intoxicating
and sophoric properties. From underneath
the rim $50 to speak of the undermost
plate, series of long hairy green tendrills,
stretched out in every direction toward the
horizon. These were seven or eight feet
long and tapered from four to ahalf inch
in diameter yet they stretched out stiffly as
iron rods. Above these from between the
upper and under cup six white, almost
transparent palpi reared themselves toward
the sky, twirling and twisting with mar
vellous incessant motion, yet constantly
reaching upward. Thin as reed and frail
as quilts, apparently, were yet five or six
feet TALL and were so constantly and vigor-
ously in motion, with such subtle, sinuous,
silent throbbing against the air, with their
suggestions of serpents fayed, yet dancing
on their tails. My observation on this
occasion were suddenly interrupted by the
natives, who had been shrieking around
the tree with their shrll voices, and chant
ing what Hendrick told me were propitia-
tory hymns to the great tree devil. With
still wilder shrieks and chants they now
surrounded one of the women and urged
her with the points of their javelins, until
slowly, and with the despairing face, she
climbed up the stalk of the tree and stood
on the summit of the cone, the palpi SWIM
ming all about her. "Tsik! Tsikr' Drink!
DrinkD cried the man. STOPPING, she
drank of the viscid fluid in the cup, rising
instantly again, with wild frenzy in her
face and convulsive cords in her limbs.
But she did not jump down as she seemed
to intend to do. Oh, no! The atrocious
cannibal tree, that had been so inert and
dead, came to sudden savage liter. The
slender, delicate palpi, with the fury of
starved serpents, quivered moment over
her head, then, if instinct with demoniac
intelligence, fastened upon her in sudden
coil round and round her neck and arms,
and while her awful screams and yet more
awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly
strangled down again into gurgling moan,
the tendrills one after another, like great
green serpents, with brutal energy and
internal rapidity, rose, protracted them
selves and wrapped her about in fold after
fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness
and savage tenacity of anocondas fastening
upon their prey. 1t was the barbarity of
the LAGOON without it's beauty,-this
strange, horrible murder. And now the
great leaves rose slowly and stiff1y, like the
arms of a derrick, erected themselves in
the air, approached one another and closed
about the dead and hampered victim with
the silent force of hydraulic and the
ruthless purpose of thumb screw. A
moment more, and while l could see the
basis of these great levers pressing more
tightly toward each other from their inter-
stices, there trickled down the stalk of the
tree great streams of the viscid honey like
fluid, mingled horribly with the blood and
oozing viscera of the victim. At sight of
this the savages gathered around me, yell
ling madly, bounded forward, crowded to
the tree, clasped it, and with cups, leaves,
and tongues each one obtained enough of
the liquid to set him mad and frantic.
DR.. Jay, in the South Australian Reg.