THE LOST ISLE in 



hidden streams. Others were merely precipitous de- 

 pressions in the unbroken mass of foUage, variegated 

 with aspiring palms so slender of shaft that their un- 

 ceasing swaying in the still air seemed an act of uncon- 

 scious affectation for the display of huge bunches of 

 gaudy fruit, seductive and dulcet to the taste. Spider- 

 webbed treeferns with furry, water-bespangled trunks 

 stood in crowded groves on the brink of spray-creating 

 cascades and along the margins of cool rivulets which 

 murmured as they hurried to the sea. 



Water-dripping moss padded the lintels of grottos, 

 before which dangled translucent ferns of delicate form, 

 yet so rich and intense with life that crozier-tipped 

 fronds took the hue of flowers — coral-red, golden-bronze, 

 and yellow; while golden dust clung to hair}'- under- 

 sides like pollen to the thighs of hive-returning bees. 

 Deep in perpetual shadow lived a shy plant with heart- 

 shaped leaves, so succulent and distended as to resemble 

 green capsules, and in association with each leaf was a 

 single semi-transparent fruit, pink with a central glow 

 like the fire of opal, but so frail that upon touch it 

 resolved into a dewdrop which glistened, trembled, and 

 was gone in a moment. 



In the full blaze, feather-foliaged trees crowned with 

 gigantic red blossoms offered as a sacrifice fruit which 

 blushed before the insistent gaze of the sun; while 

 beneath this gay canopy vine and creeper and pliant 

 shrub wove an undergarment which screened the moist 

 earth and created a realm of subdued light in which all 

 the flowers were pale of tint and tremulously fragile, 

 though of almost forbidding magnitude of form. 



Birds of painted plumage and loud and sonorous note 

 sang and fluttered among the flowers and fruit with no 

 ill thing to disturb them, no dissonance to compel them 

 to silence and fear. 



