of the law (for the trees are
Government property), in cutting it down for the sake of its fruit.
But this tree your guide will cut himself. There is no gully
between it and the Government station; and he can carry it away; and
it is worth his while to do so; for it will square, he thinks, into
a log more than three feet in diameter, and eighty, ninety--he hopes
almost a hundred--feet in length of hard, heavy wood, incorruptible,
save in salt water; better than oak, as good as teak, and only
surpassed in this island by the Poui. He will make a stage round
it, some eight feet high, and cut it above the spurs. It will take
his convict gang (for convicts are turned to some real use in
Trinidad) several days to get it down, and many more days to square
it with the axe. A trace must be made to it through the wood,
clearing away vegetation for which an European millionaire, could he
keep it in his park, would gladly pay a hundred pounds a yard. The
cleared stems, especially those of the palms, must be cut into
rollers; and the dragging of the huge log over them will be a work
of weeks, especially in the wet season. But it can be done, and it
shall be; so he leaves a significant mark on his new-found treasure,
and leads you on through the bush, hewing his way with light strokes
right and left, so carelessly that you are inclined to beg him to
hold his hand, and not destroy in a moment things so beautiful, so
curious, things which would be invaluable in an English hothouse.

And where are the famous Orchids? They perch on every bough and
stem: but they are not, with three or four exceptions, in flower in
the winter; and if they were, I know nothing about them--at least, I
know enough to know how little I know. Whosoever has read Darwin's
Fertilisation of Orchids, and finds in his own reason that the book
is true, had best say nothing about the beautiful monsters till he
has seen with his own eyes more than his master.

And yet even the three or four that are in flower are worth going
many a mile to see. In the hothouse they seem almost artificial
from their strangeness: but to see them 'natural,' on natural
boughs, gives a sense of their reality, which no unnatural situation
can give. Even to look up at them perched on bough and stem, as one
rides by; and to guess what exquisite and fantastic form may issue,
in a few months or weeks, out of those fleshy, often unsightly,
leaves,