VIII 



TROPICAL GARDENS 



VJREAT flowers, that gaze into the sun beside the silent paths, 

 blossoms glowing from the dark shrubberies, an intoxicating fra- 

 grance that rises to the tops of the palm-trees : such is the tropical 

 garden as we have imagined it since childhood, for so the poets 

 have seen it. And I have indeed seen a garden which seemed the 

 very embodiment of Heine's "red-blossomed garden." When I sat 

 there beside the silent lotus-pond, on whose further bank the forest- 

 clad hillside rose against the sky, I seemed to hear the immortal 

 words of the song, with Mendelssohn's harp accompaniment. It was 

 in Ceylon that I saw this, at a height of six thousand feet, on a terrace 

 of the central range ; beneath the garden the ground fell steeply 

 into the depths. 



But Heine's description would not fit the tropical lowlands. There, 

 in Ceylon at all events, are no "chuckling violets," no roses. In 

 Brazil, however, much to my surprise, I saw roses in the gardens 

 of Pernambuco, and they did very well there, although their scent 

 was not equal to that of their European sisters. And the villa suburb 

 of Belgrano, in Buenos Aires, is one mass of roses in October, but here 

 again, it is said, the scent is not equal to the splendour of the flowers. 

 I was not able to verify this for myself, as I had to leave the city 

 earlier in the year. 



The tropical garden, then, is gay with other flowers. Like the birds 

 and the foliage of the tropics, the flowers are glossier than the tenderer 

 blooms of Europe, and many of them gleam as though they had 

 been varnished. 



There is a Laburnum or "Golden Rain" in Brazil, but its racemes 

 of blossom are larger than those of our European tree, and a much 

 more luminous golden-yellow. The more characteristic of the tropical 

 flowers have, of course, no counterpart in Europe. In India, as in 

 Brazil, the Hibiscus (a native of Southern China) glows in the hedges 

 and thickets ; the great mallow-like flowers are a blazing red, and 

 out of each a long pollen-covered stamen hangs. With its rose-like 

 petals the Hibiscus is the true tropical substitute for our rose, and 

 it always delights the eye ; but it has no fragrance. 



The red of the Hibiscus verges upon orange, and red and orange 

 above all are the colours which not only shine from the flower-beds, 



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