My Friends in their Gardens 
poor folk, and better-looking houses, likewise of wood, 
painted gay colours however, buried in luxuriant trees and 
bushes, and enclosed within high walls, over which hung 
masses of flowering Creepers, Trumpet-flowers, Blue Peas, 
and what seemed Convolvulus of different colours. I asked 
the names of some of these gaudy but ephemeral-looking 
beauties as we sped along, but the Doctor was no botanist : 
“ Jist weeds/’ was all he would say; adding, “ Bide a wee, 
the Padre will tell you.” At last we were away far beyond 
the outskirts of Port of Spain, and in the woods, following a 
lonely road — “ trace,” the Doctor called it — up into the 
spurs of the mountains, with occasional peeps of purple sea 
far away. There is something very beautiful about a tropical 
forest, with its vast variety of trees, all interlaced by Hanes 
of varied thickness like green cordage, starred with flowers, 
and green with an emerald-green richness which, painted 
in a picture, would be deemed unnatural by the folks at 
home in the old country. One thing struck me : at home 
the forests seem mostly to consist of one, or at most two 
kinds of trees, here in the tropics no tree resembles its 
neighbour except when Coco-palms rise in their soldierly 
lines near some habitation. The road was very lonely, we 
met no one except once a troop of black and brown men 
dragging a rough low cart with painfully creaking axle, called 
a “ diabe,” or devil, the Doctor said, on which was mounted 
in state a canoe. They were all singing in unintelligible 
patois, and a small boy seated in the canoe was beating a 
very primitive-looking drum as a sort of accompaniment. 
We heard the echo of their din long after they were out of 
sight. At last we came to a cluster of small wooden cottages 
on the edge of the wood, each with its patch of provision- 
ground full of vegetables of sorts, and a few Orange-trees 
laden with fruit, a Breadfruit-tree, and, of course, the usual 
collection of dirty, half-naked children playing about the 
doors of the huts, and on the steps of the tall white crucifix 
that, somewhat apart from the road, seemed to keep watch 
over the hamlet. There was a small white painted church 
close by, and round it a bit of enclosed ground partially 
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