The trunk of the one which I saw was twenty-two feet in diameter, about eight or twelve feet in height, with many branches, some of which stretched out horizontally, and touched the ground with their tops. These were very large, some being about forty-five or fifty-five feet in length. Each branch would have made one of the largest trees in Europe; and the tout ensemble of the monkey-bread tree looked less like a single tree than a forest. This was not all. The negro who conducted me took me to a second, which was sixty-three feet in circumference, that is twenty-one feet in diameter, and appeared to be about one hundred and ten feet in length, without counting the root which was concealed under the waters of a neighbouring river, the depth of which I had no means of ascertaining. The same negro told me of a third which was not far from the place where we were, and added that, without leaving the island, I would see a great many more which were not much inferior in size, pp. 54, 55.--Histoire Naturelle du Sénégal; avec le Relation abrégée d'un Voyage fait en ce Pays, pendant les années, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1752 and 1753. Par M. Adanson, Correspondant de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, Paris, 1757, 4to.
It was night before we reached Cogné. Our route was bordered with gum-trees, the yellow flowers of which, arranged in circular bunches, spread a delicious perfume. We also saw some _rates_. The bark of this tree yields a yellow dye; its leaf is without indentation, and of a beautiful green; it is not very high; the wood is white, and the bark is easily reduced to powder. This was the first time that I saw the baobab, that enormous tree which has been described by Adanson, and which bears his name. I measured one, and found it to be forty feet in circumference. Stripped at this time of its foliage, it resembled an immense wooden tower. This majestic mass is the only monument of antiquity to be met with in Africa. I am astonished that the negroes have not paid to this tree the same honours that the Druids did to the oak; for to them the baobab is perhaps the most valuable of vegetables. Its leaves are used for leaven, its bark furnishes indistructible cordage; and the bees form their hives in the cavities of its trunk. The negroes, too, often shelter themselves from storms in its time-worn caverns. The baobab is indisputably the monarch of African trees, p. 41.--Travels in the interior of Africa, to the sources of the Senegal and Gambia, by G. Mollien. Lond. 1820, 4to.