100 TIII'J N0ini1l':RN MOUNTAINS. 



riclincss and variety beyond description. Xearest to the 

 water the ])riniaival garden began witli ferns and creeping 

 SelaQjineUa. Xext, of course, the common Arum,^ with snow- 

 white spathe and spadix, mingled witli the larger leaves of 

 Balisier, wild Tania, and Seguine, some of the latter upborne 

 on crooked fleshy stalks as thick as a man's leg, and six feet 

 higli. Above them was a tangle of twenty different bushes, 

 with leaves of every shape ; above them again, the arching 

 shoots of a bamboo clump, forty feet high, threw a deep 

 shade over pool and rock and herbage ; while above it again 

 enormous timber trees were packed, one behind the other, up 

 the steep mountain-side. On the more level ground were the 

 usual weeds ; Ipomoeas with wdiite and purple flowers, Big- 

 nonias, Echites and Allamandas, with yellow ones, scrambled 

 and tumbled everywhere ; and, if not just there, then often 

 enoucrh elsewhere, mig'ht be seen a sinofle Aristolochia 

 scrambling up a low tree, from which hung, amid round 

 leaves, huge flowers shaped like a great helmet with a ladle 

 at the lower lip, a foot or more across, of purplish colour, 

 spotted like a toad, and about as fragrant as a dead dog. 



But the plants which would strike a botanist most, I 

 think, the first time he found himself on a tropic burn-side, 

 are the peppers, groves of tall herbs some ten feet high or 

 nrore, utterly unlike any European plants I have ever seen. 



1 SpatliiphylluTii cannifolium. 



