216 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



TREE GROG 



Few of the forest trees are more picturesque than the 

 paper-bark or tea-tree (Melaleuca leucadendrori], the " Tee- 

 doo " of the blacks. It is of free and stately growth, the 

 bark white, compacted of numerous sheets as thin as tissue 

 paper. When a great wind stripped the superficial layers, 

 exposing the reddish-brown epidermis, the whole fore- 

 ground was transfigured. All during the night alone in 

 the house, I heard the great trees complaining against the 

 molestation of the wind, groaning in strife and fright ; but 

 little had I thought that the violation they had endured 

 had been so coarse and lawless. The chaste trees had 

 been incontinently stripped of their decent white vestiture, 

 leaving their limbs naked and bare. In the daylight they 

 still moaned, throwing their almost leafless branches about 

 despairingly, their flesh-tints dingy red giving to the 

 scene a strangely unfamiliar glow. This outrage was one 

 of the most uncivil of the wrong-doings of the storm wind 

 " Leonta." But within a week or so the trees assumed 

 whiter than ever robes ; pure and stainless, the breeze had 

 merely removed soiled linen. The picture had been 

 restored by the most ideal of all artists. 



The blossoms of the melaleuca come in superabundance, 

 pale yellow spikes, odorous to excess. When the trees thus 

 adorn themselves and they do so twice in the year in 

 changeless fashion, in the fulness of the wet season the 

 air is saturated with the odour as of treacle slightly burnt. 

 The island reeks of a vast sugar factory or distillery. Sips 

 of the balsamic syrup are free to all, and birds and insects 

 rejoice and are glad. A perpetual murmur and hum of 

 satisfaction and industry haunt the neighbourhood of the 

 trees as accompaniment to the varied notes of excitable 

 birds. Chemists say that insects imprisoned in an atmo- 

 sphere of melaleuca oil become intoxicated. Insects and 

 birds certainly are boldly familiar and hilarious during 

 the time that the trees offer their feast of spiced honey. 



