rapid and complete success in arresting ague.'
This tree spreads from Jamaica to the Spanish Main. It is plentiful
in Trinidad; still more plentiful in Guiana; and yet all of it which
reaches Europe is a little of its hard beautiful wood for the use of
cabinetmakers; while in Demerara, I am assured by an eye-witness,
many tons of this precious Greenheart bark are thrown away year by
year. So goes the world; and man meanwhile at once boasts of his
civilisation, and complains of the niggardliness of Nature.

But if I once begin on this subject I shall not know where to end.

Our way lay now for miles along a path which justified all that I
had fancied about the magnificent possibilities of landscape
gardening in the Tropics. A grass drive, as we should call it in
England--a 'trace,' as it is called in the West Indies--some sixty
feet in width, and generally carpeted with short turf, led up hill
and down dale; for the land, though low, is much ridged and gullied,
and there has been as yet no time to cut down the hills, or to metal
the centre of the road. It led, as the land became richer, through
a natural avenue even grander than those which I had already seen.
The light and air, entering the trace, had called into life the
undergrowth and lower boughs, till from the very turf to a hundred
and fifty feet in height rose one solid green wall, spangled here
and there with flowers. Below was Mamure, Roseau, Timit, Aroumas,
and Tulumas, {266c} mixed with Myrtles and Melastomas; then the
copper Bois Mulatres among the Cocorite and Jagua palms; above them
the heads of enormous broad-leaved trees of I know not how many
species; and the lianes festooning all from cope to base. The
crimson masses of Norantea on the highest tree-tops were here most
gorgeous; but we had to beware of staring aloft too long, for fear
of riding into mud-holes--for the wet season would not end as yet,
though dry weather was due--or, even worse, into the great Parasol-
ant warrens, which threatened, besides a heavy fall, stings
innumerable. At one point, I recollect, a gold-green Jacamar sat on
a log and looked at me till I was within five yards of her. At
another we heard the screams of Parrots; at another, the double note
of the Toucan; at another, the metallic clank of the Bell-bird, or
what was said to be the Bell-bird. But this note was not that
solemn and sonorous toll of the Campanese of the mainland whi