We pursued our road through the wood, keeping as much as possible to the south, in order to get near the province of Batangas, where I was to meet my poor patient, who no doubt was very uneasy about my long absence. When I started I said not a word about my project, and had I done so it is most likely I should have been thought as no longer belonging to this world. The recollection of my wife, whom I had left at Manilla, and who was far from supposing me to be among the Igorrots, inspired me with the most anxious desire of returning home to my family as quick as possible. Absorbed in my thoughts, and carried away by my reflections, I walked silently along, without even casting a glance upon the luxuriant vegetation all around us. I must indeed have been very much pre-occupied, for a virgin forest between the tropics, and particularly in the Philippine islands, is in nowise to be compared with our European forests. I was aroused from my pensiveness, and recalled to the remembrance of my whereabouts, by the noise of a torrent, and I gratefully admired nature in her gigantic productions. I looked up, and before me I perceived an immense balété, an extraordinary fig-tree, that thrives in the sombre and mysterious forests of the Philippines, and I stopped to admire it. This immense tree springs from a seed similar to the seed of the ordinary fig-tree; its wood is white and spongy, and in a few years it grows to an extraordinary size. Nature, who has had foresight in all things, and who allows the young lamb to leave its wool on the bushes for the timid bird to pick it up and build its nest with--Nature, I say, has shown herself in all her genius in the fig-tree of the Philippine islands, which grows so rapidly and so immensely. The branches of this tree generally spring from the base of the trunk; they extend themselves horizontally, and, after forming an elbow or curve, rise up perpendicularly; but, as I said before, the tree is spongy, and easily broken, and the branch, while forming the curve, would inevitably be broken, did not a ligament, which the Indians call a drop of water--goutte d'eau--fall from the tree and take root in the earth; there it swells, and grows in proportion with the size of the branch, and acts to it as a living prop. Besides which, around the trunk, and at a considerable distance from the ground, are natural supports, which rise up in points or spirals to about the middle of the trunk. Has not the Grand Architect of the world foreseen everything?