LETTER. IX. J 



TROPICAL TREES. 



17 



This place is quite unique. It is said that 15,000 people are 

 buried away in these low-browed, shadowy houses, under the 

 glossy, dark-leaved trees, but except in one or two streets of 

 miscellaneous, old-fashioned-looking stores, arranged with a 

 distinct leaning towards native tastes, it looks like a large 

 village, or rather like an aggregate of villages. As we drove 

 through the town we could only see our immediate surround- 

 ings, but each had a new fascination. We drove along roads 

 with over-arching trees, through whose dense leafage the noon 

 sunshine only trickled in dancing, broken lights ; umbrella 

 trees, caoutchouc, bamboo, mango, orange, breadfruit, candle- 

 nut, monkey pod, date and coco palms, alligator pears, " prides " 

 of Barbary, India, and Peru, and huge-leaved, wide-spreading 

 trees, exotics from the South Seas, many of them rich in para- 

 sitic ferns, and others blazing with bright, fantastic blossoms. 

 The air was heavy with odours of gardenia, tuberose, oleanders, 

 roses, lilies, and the great white trumpet-flower, and myriads 

 of others whose names I do not know, and verandahs were 

 festooned with a gorgeous trailer with magenta blossoms, 

 passion-flowers, and a vine with masses of trumpet-shaped, 

 yellow, waxy flowers. The delicate tamarind and the feathery 

 algaroba intermingled their fragile grace with the dark, shiny 

 foliage of the South Sea exotics, and the deep red, solitary 

 flowers of the hibiscus rioted among familiar fuchsias and 

 geraniums, which here attain the height and size of large rhodo- 

 dendrons. 



Few of the new trees surprised me more than the papaya. 

 It is a perfect gem of tropical vegetation. It has a soft, in- 

 dented stem, which runs up quite straight to a height of from 

 15 to 30 feet, and is crowned by a profusion of large, deeply 

 indented leaves, with long foot-stalks, and among, as well as 

 considerably below these, are the flowers or the fruit, in all 

 stages of development. This, when ripe, is bright yellow, and 

 the size of a musk melon. Clumps of bananas, the first sight 

 of which, like that of the palm, constitutes a new experience, 

 shaded the native houses with their wonderful leaves, broad and 

 deep green, from five to ten feet long. The breadfruit is a superb 

 tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot 

 broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their ex- 

 ceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in 

 architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into 

 delicate contrast. All these, with the exquisite rose apple, 

 with a deep red tinge in its young leaves, the fan palm, the 



