ne tall coolie ship at
anchor, seen above green cane-fields and coolie gardens, gay with
yellow Croton and purple Dracaena, and crimson Poinsettia, and the
grand leaves of the grandest of all plants, the Banana, food of
paradise. Or, again, far away to the extreme right, between the
flat tops of the great Saman-avenue at the barracks and the wooded
mountain-spurs which rush down into the sea, the islands of the
Bocas floating in the shining water, and beyond them, a cloud among
the clouds, the peak of a mighty mountain, with one white tuft of
mist upon its top. Ah that we could show you but that, and tell you
that you were looking at the 'Spanish Main'; at South America
itself, at the last point of the Venezuelan Cordillera, and the
hills where jaguars lie. If you could but see what we see daily; if
you could see with us the strange combination of rich and luscious
beauty, with vastness and repose, you would understand, and excuse,
the tendency to somewhat grandiose language which tempts perpetually
those who try to describe the Tropics, and know well that they can
only fail.

In presence of such forms and such colouring as this, one becomes
painfully sensible of the poverty of words, and the futility,
therefore, of all word-painting; of the inability, too, of the
senses to discern and define objects of such vast variety; of our
aesthetic barbarism, in fact, which has no choice of epithets save
between such as 'great,' and 'vast,' and 'gigantic'; between such as
'beautiful,' and 'lovely,' and 'exquisite,' and so forth; which are,
after all, intellectually only one stage higher than the half-brute
Wah! wah! with which the savage grunts his astonishment--call it not
admiration; epithets which are not, perhaps, intellectually as high
as the 'God is great' of the Mussulman, who is wise enough not to
attempt any analysis either of Nature or of his feelings about her;
and wise enough also (not having the fear of Spinoza before his
eyes) to 'in omni ignoto confugere ad Deum'--in presence of the
unknown to take refuge in God.

To describe to you, therefore, the Botanic Garden (in which the
cottage stands) would take a week's work of words, which would
convey no images to your mind. Let it be enough to say, that our
favourite haunt in all the gardens is a little dry valley, beneath
the loftiest group of trees. At its entrance rises a great
Tamarind, and a still greater Saman; both have