Gothic Horror 217 



Then I wondered at my stupidity in not having 

 guessed the riddle before. 



n 



THE characteristics of many kinds of palm have 

 been made familiar by pictures and photographs. 

 But the giant palms of the American tropics can 

 not be adequately represented by the modern 

 methods of pictorial illustration: they must be 

 seen. You cannot draw or photograph a palm 

 two hundred feet high. 



The first sight of a group of such forms, in 

 their natural environment of tropical forest, is a 

 magnificent surprise, a surprise that strikes you 

 dumb. Nothing seen in temperate zones, not 

 even the huger growths of the Californian slope, 

 could have prepared your imagination for the 

 weird solemnity of that mighty colonnade. Each 

 stone-grey trunk is a perfect pillar, but a pillar 

 of which the stupendous grace has no counterpart 

 in the works of man. You must strain your 

 head well back to follow the soaring of the pro 

 digious column, up, up, up through abysses of 

 green twilight, till at last far beyond a break in 

 that infinite interweaving of limbs and lianas 



