Away in front of us a smooth gray pillar glistens on high.

You can see neither the top nor the bottom of it.

But its colour, and its perfectly cylindrical shape, tell you what it is--a glorious Palmiste; one of those queens of the forest which you saw standing in the fields; with its capital buried in the green cloud and its base buried in that bank of green velvet plumes, which you must skirt carefully round, for they are a prickly dwarf palm, called here black Roseau.

{137a} Close to it rises another pillar, as straight and smooth, but one-fourth of the diameter--a giant's walking-cane.

Its head, too, is in the green cloud.