I 



98 THE NOnriTERN MOJ^XTAINS. 



for liimself the loveliest brook which he ever saw in Devon- 

 shire or Yorkshire, Ireland or Scotland ; crystal-clear, bedded 

 with grey pebbles, broken into rapids by rock-ledges or great 

 white quartz boulders, swirling under steep cliffs, winding 

 through flats of natural meadow and copses Then let hin 

 transport his stream into the great Palm-house at Kew, stretch 

 out the house up hill and down dale, five miles in length and 

 two thousand feet in height ; pour down on it from above a 

 blaze which lights up every leaf into a gem, and deepens 

 every shadow into blackness, and yet that very blackness full 

 of inner light and if his fancy can do as much as that, he 

 can imagine to himself the stream up which we rode or 

 walked, now winding along the narrow track a hundred feet 

 or two above, looking down on the upper surface of the forest, 

 on the crests of palms, and the broad sheets of the Balisier 

 copse, and often on the statelier fronds of true bananas, which 

 had run wild along the stream-side, flowering and fruiting in 

 the wilderness for the benefit of the parrots and agoutis ; or 

 on huge dark clumps of bamboo, wliich (probably not in- 

 digenous to the island) have in like manner spread themselves 

 along all the streams in the lapse of ages. 



Xow we scramVjled down into the brook, and waded 

 our horses through, amid shoals of the little spotted 

 sardine,^ who are too fearless, or too unaccustomed to 



^ Hydrocyon. 



