218 DE BANANA 



delusive tropics. Tropical vegetation, as ordinarily under- 

 stood by poets and painters, consists entirely of the coco- 

 nut palm and the banana bush. Do you wish to paint a 

 beautiful picture of a rich ambrosial tropical island, a la 

 Tennyson a summer isle of Eden lying in dark purple 

 spheres of sea ? then you introduce a group of coco-nuts, 

 whispering in odorous heights of even, in the very fore- 

 ground of your pretty sketch, just to let your public under- 

 stand at a glance that these are the delicious poetical tropics. 

 Do you desire to create an ideal paradise, a la Bernardin 

 de St. Pierre, where idyllic Virginies die of pure modesty 

 rather than appear before the eyes of their beloved but un- 

 wedded Pauls in a lace-bedraped peignoir? then you 

 strike the keynote by sticking in the middle distance a hut 

 or cottage, overshadowed by the broad and graceful foliage 

 of the picturesque banana. (' Hut ' is a poor and chilly word 

 for these glowing descriptions, far inferior to the pretty 

 and high-sounding original chaumiere.) That is how we 

 do the tropics when we want to work upon the emotions of 

 the reader. But it is all a delicate theatrical illusion ; a 

 trick of art meant to deceive and impose upon the unwary 

 who have never been there, and would like to think 

 it all genuine. In reality, nine times out of ten, you 

 might cast your eyes casually around you in any tropical 

 valley, and, if there didn't happen to be a native cottage 

 with a coco-nut grove and banana patch anywhere in the 

 neighbourhood, you would see nothing in the way of vege- 

 tation which you mightn't see at home any day in Europe. 

 But what painter would ever venture to paint the tropics 

 without the palm trees ? He might just as well try to 

 paint the desert without the camels, or to represent St. 

 Sebastian without a sheaf of arrows sticking unperceived in 

 the calm centre of his unruffled bosom, to mark and empha- 

 sise his Sebastianic personality. 



