THE GREAT TROPICAL FALLACY. 



203 



on every side with their perfumed breath. But 

 you will not find these things in the tropics. A 

 few rare trees burst once a year into masses of 

 crimson bloom ; a few stray plants after the rainy 

 season open their faint yellow petals in the fields 

 from which the showers have washed away the 

 surface dust: but the general aspect of every 

 tropical plain is one of monotonous and weari- 

 some greenish-brown. As to walking in the fields 

 in search of flowers, you might as well walk 

 through an acre of furze. In tropical countries 

 no man strays far from the dry highway, or, if he 

 strays, he repents it afterward with many a literal 

 thorn in the flesh, not to mention many a creep- 

 ing thing buried deep beneath his tender skin. 



The fruits are there, one must allow ; but not 

 the luscious fruits of our imagination. Good 

 oranges are found only in temperate climates; 

 those which grow under a vertical sun run more 

 to rind, pulp, and fibre, than to sweet juice or 

 delicate flavor. Pineapples in the West Indies 

 are mere masses of sugary string, unfit to com- 

 pare with our delicious hot-house fruit. As for 

 the common ruck of berries — resinous mangoes, 

 mealy bananas, sloppy custard-apples, insipid 

 cherimoyas, infantile naseberries — they deserve 

 no place at any decent table, and, to say the 

 truth, seldom obtain one. While we at home 

 are talking with luscious lips of the exquisite 

 tropical fruits, the wiser planter is quietly im- 

 porting prunes and raisins, figs and olives for his 

 own dessert, and would as soon think of eating 

 a crocodile as of putting the common and taste- 

 less messes of his native trees before his English 

 guests. 



The birds are equally great humbugs with the 

 fruits and the flowers. Parrots are said to in- 

 habit Jamaica, but I never succeeded in setting 

 my eyes on one. I generally lived, during my 

 long stay in the island, at the southeast corner 

 only. So, whenever I told my friends that I had 

 not yet seen a parrot, they always answered me 

 in an off-hand way : " Ah, you should go the Port 

 Royal Hills ; you'll find them there in thousands." 

 But' one day I started for the Port Royal Hills, 

 and spent three months in exploring their fauna 

 and flora throughout. All that time I never saw 

 a solitary parrot. " Ah," said my friends again, 

 " you must try St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. They 

 swarm in all the mango-trees in the Vale." So I 

 took a trap another day, and saw the Vale from 

 end to end : but not a parrot could anywhere 

 be found. My friends retreated a step farther. 

 " You must go to the North Side. On the North 

 Side there are simply myriads." At last, how- 



ever, I tracked down the myth to the North Side, 

 and not a parrot did I discover throughout the 

 whole island. They are there, I know, because 

 Mr. Gosse and other good observers have seen 

 and shot them ; but they are about as rare in 

 practical life as a badger or an otter in an Eng- 

 lish village. 



And this fact brings me into the very heart of 

 the Great Tropical Fallacy. The point which grows 

 upon the traveler in India, in South America, 

 in the Pacific islands, with greater distinctness 

 every day, is the total absence of the poetically 

 marvelous. I have lived for years in the tropics, 

 but I have never yet beheld an alligator, an igua- 

 na, a toucan, an antelope, in their wild and na- 

 tive state. I have had scorpions trapped for my 

 inspection, and tarantulas bottled as specimens 

 for my cabinet ; but I never caught a living in- 

 dividual creeping up my boots, or dropping from 

 the ceiling into my soup. These little incidents, 

 even if unpleasant, would have at least the charm 

 of novelty; they would look well to figure in 

 one's memoirs, and would point the moral of an 

 after-dinner tale. But, unhappily, they don't oc- 

 cur. Swarms of common and uninteresting in- 

 sects perpetually worry one's life in tropical 

 countries : mosquitoes, ants, jiggers, termites, 

 ticks, and fifty more unmentionable brutes dis- 

 tress the European visitor from morn to night, 

 from night to morn again ; but no creature of 

 the poetically marvelous order ever disturbs the 

 monotony of these vulgar insect plagues. The 

 pests which one did not expect make one's ex- 

 istence wretched with their ceaseless stings ; but 

 the pests to which one looked forward with a 

 vague mixture of terror and interest never make 

 their appearance on the stage at all. 



But, if all this be true, whence did the Tropi- 

 cal Fallacy derive its origin ? How have man- 

 kind come to believe so implicitly in the supreme 

 beauty of every scrap of soil between the imagi- 

 nary limits of the Crab and the Goat ? The rea- 

 son is not far to seek. Suppose we dress it up in 

 a familiar English guise, and see what idea of 

 England a tropicist would gain from a British 

 Botanical and Zoological Garden on one of his 

 coolest mountain-tops. 



Worlds of delight would open up to his gaze 

 at the first glance over the half-wild, half-culti- 

 vated bowers covered with dog-rose, honeysuckle, 

 and white clematis. Beds of purple foxglove 

 and drooping fritillary would alternate with 

 golden masses of cowslip, primrose, buttercup, 

 celandine, and corn-marigold. Pink and white 

 daisies would form borders round the graveled 



