6o Concerning South Sea Islands iv 



we differ is on the subject of islands ; he adored 

 islands, I do not. I would rather be out at sea, with 

 no land near, in any weather, on a homeward- 

 bound collier flying light, than on any island ever 

 made. I greatly prefer a tropical continental land- 

 mass, with thousands of square miles of dark forest, 

 swamps, and mountain ranges, — not mere peaks 

 which have got adrift and anchored out at sea, — 

 a land with great rivers which come from a thousand 

 miles away and swing past you at a quick march, 

 rush past you in a cavalry charge over rapids, mark 

 time in dangerous sandy, muddy estuaries, bound 

 seawards ever, whatever their pace may be when you 

 see them — things that mean business — a spacious 

 land you have no fear of falling over the edge of 

 into the ocean when either a pack of misguided 

 heathen, or an isolated big-game lunatic, makes rapid 

 action advisable whether you have a boat ready on 

 the beach or no ; but my father was not of this way 

 of thinking. 



He was a lover of islands. ' No landscape seems 

 perfect to my eyes,' he says, ' unless they can see 

 therein a bit of the blue water — therefore I love an 

 island. I love the sigh and the sough of the wind 

 in the black pine forests of Germany ; I love the 

 swish of the Northern birch - trees in the fresh, 

 odorous early morning, when the gale has just 

 gone by, and the wet is sweeping in little, glittering 

 showers off their lissom branches ; I love the creak, 

 and groan, and roar of the great oaks in a storm ; 



