352 l i:\ AND PORTO KICO 



onlar dimness, made by the foliage of great trees meeting overhead. 

 Palms rooted a hundred feel below you hold their heads a hundred 

 feet above you j yet they can barely reach the light . . . Farther 

 cm the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes, dotted with arti- 

 ficial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique, Guadeloupe, 

 and Dominica. These are covered with tropical plants, many of 

 which are total strangers even here ; they are natives of India, 

 Senegambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arborescent 

 terns of unfamiliar elegance curve up from path-verge or lake- 

 brink, and the great arbn'-rfu-royageur outspreads its colossal fan. 

 Giant lianas droop down over the way in loops and festoons; 

 tapering green cords, which are creepers descending to take root, 

 hang everywhere; and parasites with stems thick as cables coil 

 about the trees like boas. Trunks shooting up out of sight, into 

 the green wilderness above, display no bark ; you cannot guess 

 what sort of trees they are ; they are so thickly wrapped in creep- 

 ers as to seem pillars of leaves. Between you and the sky, where 

 everything is fighting for sun, there is an almost unbroken vault 

 of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which nothing particular is 

 distinguishable. 



You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your 

 left openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed 

 basin of brown stone to another, or gaps occupied by flights of 

 stone steps, green with mosses, and chocolate-colored by age. 

 These steps lead to loftier paths; and all the stonework, the 

 grottoes, bridges, basins, terraces, steps, are darkened by time and 

 velveted with mossy things. ... It is of another century, this 

 garden ; special ordinances were passed concerning it during the 

 French Revolution ; it is very quaint ; it suggests an art spirit as 

 old as Versailles, or older; but it is indescribablv beautiful even 



7 7 / 



now. 



... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water 

 there is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river 

 below you ; and at a sudden turn you come in sight of the cascade. 

 Before you is the Morne itself ; and against the burst of descend- 

 ing light you discern a precipice- verge. Over it, down one green 

 furrow in its brow, tumbles the rolling foam of a cataract, like 

 falling smoke, to be caught below in a succession of moss-covered 

 basins. The first clear leap of the water is nearly seventy 

 feet. . . . Did Josephine ever rest upon that shadowed bench 



