SOME SUMMER DAYS IN MARTINIQUE. 291 
roses, honeysuckles, and a hundred other plants, may 
here be found. 
The gem of the garden is the lake in its center, 
surrounded by great trees; tall palms pierce the 
leaves above it; a broken stream, tumbling down 
from the hill, half screening some fern-covered grotto 
as it falls, plunges into it. It is a small pond, but 
contains vegetable wonders on its three small islets 
that at home would be priceless. One island is com- 
pletely covered with a mound of vines wound about 
a screw-pine and frangipanni—a tangled mass of 
jessamine and wild vines of the tropics, spangled with 
white, red, and yellow flowers. Another, a mere 
foothold for the tree, contains a “traveler’s tree,” its 
magnificent leaves reflected in the lake. The other 
islet contains more rare plants, wild plantains with 
golden cups, ferns and flowers, and is further graced 
by two very slender areca-palms, exquisitely grace- 
ful, shooting upward with stems not larger than one’s 
wrist, and forty feet in height. Their delicate leaves 
droop above dense clusters of nuts—the famous nuts 
with which the betel is mixed and chewed by the 
natives of the East. , 
The low bushes are covered with land-snails, and 
lizards dart out from every crevice, from under every 
rock and dead limb, and run up the trunks of trees 
by scores — lizards of all sorts, sizes, and colors ; and 
they are sluggish, too, and it is easy to catch them. 
But in searching for snails, I encountered an insect 
not very agreeable, whose bite is certain fever, some- 
times death. Horribly gay is this spider, the Taran- 
tula, in the long hair that covers body and legs, which 
serves well to conceal it while waiting for its prey, 
