We saw many interesting trees and plants.  One of the most beautiful is the bamboo.  Some of the canes, nearly a foot in circumference at the base, rise to the height of forty or fifty feet, their slight, feathery-looking points, like huge plumes, waving with the slightest breeze, and assisting to keep up a circulation of the air.  They are fringed at their joints with short branches of long, lance-shaped leaves.  We saw bamboos of all sizes, some with the cane as delicate as a small quill, yet fully ten feet long; and these were also exceedingly graceful.  So also were the tree-ferns, which grew in great profusion and beauty on the sides of the hills.  But the most curious and valuable tree we saw was the traveller's-tree.  It has a thick succulent stem like the plantain.  From ten to thirty feet from the ground it sends out from the stem, not all round, but on opposite sides, like a fan, ten or a dozen huge bright green leaves; so that facing it, it has the appearance of a vast fan.  The stalk of the leaf is six or eight feet long, and the leaf itself four or six more.  In each head were four or five branches of seed-pods, in appearance something like the fruit of the plantain.  When they burst each pod was found to contain thirty or more seeds, in shape like a small bean, covered up with a very fine fibre of a brilliant purple or blue colour.  The most singular arrangement, which gains this tree the name it bears, is the pure water which it contains.  This is found in the thick part of the stem of each leaf, at the spot where it rises from the stem, where there is a cavity formed by nature.  The water is evidently collected by the broad leaf, and carried down a groove in the stem to the bowl, which holds a quart or more, perhaps, at a time.  The traveller's-tree is of great use for other purposes to the natives.  With the leaves they thatch their houses; the stems serve to portion off the rooms; and the hard outside bark is beaten flat, and is used for flooring.  The green leaves are used to envelop packages, and sometimes a table is covered with them instead of a tablecloth, while they are also folded into various shapes, to be employed as plates, bowls, and even spoons.