diameter at their bases. The large ones are hollow, and serve very well for
beehives; a small space of the tree is hollow, nearly as high as the
butterflies already mentioned. From this place, the tree, as it were, takes
another beginning, forming a grand straight column eighty or ninety feet
high, when it divides every way around into an extensive flat horizontal
top, like an umbrella, where eagles have their secure nests, and cranes and
storks their temporary resting places; and what adds to the magnificence
of their appearance is the streamers of long moss that hang from the lefty
limbs and float in the winds. This is their majestic appearance when
standing alone, in large rise plantations, or thinly planted on the banks of
great rivers.

"Parroquets are commonly seen hovering and fluttering on their
tops; they delight to shell the balls, its seed being their favorite food. The
trunks of these trees, when hollowed out, make large and durable
pettiaugers and afford excellent shingles, boards, and other timber,
adapted to every purpose in frame building. When the planters above the
buttresses; on this stage, eight or ten Negroes ascend with their axes, and
fall to work round its trunk. I have seen trunks of these trees that would
measure eight, ten, and twelve feet in diameter, and forty and fifty feet
straight shaft."