X 
A NEW EDEN 
137 
Somerset, Cape York. 
I have not written to you for a week, but posts are 
very irregular, and the residents here have to trust to 
the Government steamer, or their own boats (when they 
are here) to bring them. I was to have gone back to 
Thursday Island to-day, but I feel like a boy who has 
been granted extra holidays, because I remain now for 
another fortnight, and then, before turning my face 
homewards, I am to take another few weeks visiting 
the different islands in the Straits. This visit has 
been one long summer’s day, and I shall never 
leave any place with more regret. The sketch I send 
you gives a very poor idea of the beauty of everything 
here. This little bay, with its wonderfully blue water, 
contrasts splendidly with the endless shades of colour 
in the jungle, where the leaves are sometimes almost as 
brilliant as the flowers themselves, and yet they tell me 
this is the worst time of the year to see it. 
When we landed here, the little pathway up the 
cliff to the house was so full of interest, with all its new 
plants — new, at least, to me — that I made every excuse 
to loiter. I do not know if many botanists have been 
here already, but excepting three trees, there is abso- 
lutely not one plant that I have ever seen before, and 
at a little distance from the sea and sheltered from the 
wind, the jungle is even more beautiful than on the 
Johnstone River, which I thought nothing could sur- 
pass. There is a magnificent palm tree beside the 
Jardines’ house, of a species which is not known any- 
where else, except in one spot a few miles away, and 
the native fig trees, now covered with fruit, are magni- 
ficent-looking, with wonderful colouring, their young 
leaves of a delicate pink, shaded off to a vivid green in 
the older, while they are as large as most of our English 
