THE APPLE-TREE 



WHERE THERE IS NO APPLE-TREE 



The wind is snapping in the bamboos, knocking to- 

 gether the resonant canes and weaving the myriad flexile 

 wreaths above them. The palm heads rustle with a brisk 

 crinkling music. Great ferns stand in the edge of the 

 forest, and giant arums cling their arms about the trunks 

 of trees and rear their dim jacks-in-the-pulpit far in the 

 branches ; and in the greater distance I know that green 

 parrots are flying in twos from tree to tree. The plant 

 forms are strange and various, making mosaic of con- 

 trasting range of leaf-size and leaf-shape, palm and grass 

 and fern, epiphyte and liana and clumpy mistletoe, of 

 grace and clumsiness and even misproportion, a tall thick 

 landscape all mingled into a symmetry of disorder that 

 charms the attention and fascinates the eye. 



It is a soft and delicious air wherein I sit. A torrid 

 drowse is in the receding landscape. The people move 

 leisurely, as befits the world where there is no prepara- 

 tion for frost and no urgent need of laborious apparel. 

 There are tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys, and 

 men pushing vehicles. There are odd products and un- 

 accustomed cakes and cookies on little stands by the 

 roadside, where the turbaned vendor sits on the ground 

 unconcernedly. 



7 



