A FOREST HOUSE. 81 



clening will supply that defect; and a hundred plants of 

 yellow Allanianda, or purple Dolichos, or blue Clitoria, or 

 crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might use a hun- 

 dred Calceolarias or Geraniums, will carry up the forest waHs, 

 and over the tree-tops, not square yards, but I had almost 

 said square acres of richest positive colour. I can conceive 

 no limit to the effects always heightened by the intense 

 sunlight and the peculiar tenderness of the distances which 

 landscape gardening will produce when once it is brought to 

 bear on such material as it has never yet attempted to touch, 

 at least in the West Indies^ save in the Botanic Garden at 

 Port of Spain. 



And thus the little paradise at Tortuga to which we 

 descended to sleep, though cleared out without any regard to 

 art, was far more beautiful than the forest out of which it had 

 been hewn three years before. The two^ first settlers refrretted 

 the days when the house was a mere palm-thatched hut, 

 where they sat on stumps wliich would not balance, and ate 

 potted meat v/ith their pocket-knives. But it had grown 

 now into a grand place, lit to receive ladies : such a house, or 

 rather shed, as those South Sea Island ones which may be 

 seen in Hodges' Illustrations to Cook's Voyages, save that a 

 couple of bedrooms have been boarded off at the back, a 

 little of&ce on one side, and a bulwark, like that of a ship, 

 put round the gallery. And as we looked down through 



VOL. II. G 



