click.(...) The tree upon which Glenarvan and his companion had just found refuge resembled a walnut-tree. It had the same shining foliage and rounded form. It was the "ombu", which is met with only on the Argentine Plains. It had an enormous, twisted trunk, and was confined to the earth not only by its great roots, but also by strong shoots which held it most tenaciously. It had thus resisted the force of the inundation.
This "ombu" measured one hundred feet in height, and might have covered with its shade a circumference of three hundred and sixty feet. All the upper part rested on three great branches, which forked from the top of the trunk, that was six feet in diameter. Two of these branches were nearly perpendicular, and supported the immense canopy of foliage, whose crossed, twisted, and interlaced limbs, as if woven by the hand of a basket-maker, formed an impenetrable shelter. The third branch, on the contrary, extended almost horizontally over the roaring waters; its leaves were bathed in them, while it seemed a promontory to this island of verdure surrounded by an ocean. There was abundant space, also, in the interior of this gigantic tree. The foliage, which was not very dense at its outer circumference, left large openings like sky-lights, and made it well ventilated and cool. At sight of these branches rising in innumerable ramifications towards the clouds, while the parasitic convolvull bound them to each other, and the rays of the sun shone through the interstices of the leaves, you would really have thought that the trunk of this "ombu" bore upon itself alone an entire forest. (...)
JULES VERNE (18281905). A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD CHAPTER XXIII.
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