30 MYSTIC ISLES 



fulfilment of the wildest fantasy of wondrous color, 

 strange form, and lavish adornment. 



The island rose in changing shape from the soft Pa- 

 cific sea, here sheer and challenging, there sloping 

 gently from mountain height to ocean sheen; different 

 all about, altering with hiding sun or shifting view its 

 magic mold, with moods as varied as the wind, but ever 

 lovely, alluring, new. 



I marked the volcanic make of it, cast up from the 

 low bed of Neptune an eon ago, its loftiest peaks peer- 

 ing from the long cloud-streamers a mile and a half 

 above my eyes, and its valleys embracing caverns of 

 shadow. It was a stupendous precipice suspended 

 from the vault of heaven, and in its massive folds se- 

 creted the wonders I had come so far to see. Every 

 minute the bewildering contours were transmuted by 

 the play of sun and cloud and our swift progression 

 toward the land. 



Red spots appeared rare against the field of verdure 

 where the mountain-side had been stripped naked by 

 erosion, and the volcanic cinnabar of ages contrasted 

 oddly with the many greens of frond and palm and hill- 

 side grove. Curious, fantastic, the hanging peaks and 

 cloud-capped scarps, black against the fleecy drift, were 

 tauntingly reminiscent of the evening skies of the last 

 few days, as if the divine artist had sketched lightly 

 upon the azure of the heavens the entrancing picture to 

 be drawn firmly and grandly in beetling crag and sub- 

 lime steep. 



^lost of all, as the island swam closer, the embracing 

 fringe of cocoanut-trees drew my eyes. They were like 

 a girdle upon the beautiful body of the land, whose 



