everal respects--all are ramshackle, all lean with the
grace of Pisa, all have shutters and doors, so that at night they may
be hermetically closed, and all are half-hidden in the folds of a
curtain of flowers. The most shiftless, unlovely hovel, poised ready
to return to its original chemical elements, is embowered in a mosaic
of color, which in a northern garden would be worth a king's
ransom--or to be strictly modern, should I not say a labor foreman's
or a comrade's ransom!

The deep trench which extends along the front of these sad dwellings
is sometimes blue with water hyacinths; next the water disappears
beneath a maze of tall stalks, topped with a pink mist of lotus; then
come floating lilies and more hyacinths. Wherever there is sufficient
clear water, the wonderful curve of a cocoanut palm is etched upon it,
reflection meeting palm, to form a dendritic pattern unequaled in
human devising.

Over a hut of rusty oil-cans, bougainvillia stretches its glowing
branches, sometimes cerise, sometimes purple, or allamanders fill the
air with a golden haze from their glowing search-lights, either hiding
the huts altogether, or softening their details into picturesque
ruins. I remember one coolie dwelling which was dirtier and less
habitable than the meanest stable, and all around it were hundreds
upon hundreds of frangipanni blooms--the white and gold temple flowers
of the East--giving forth of scent and color all that a flower is
capable, to alleviate the miserable blot of human construction. Now
and then a flamboyant tree comes into view, and as, at night, the
head-lights of an approaching car eclipse all else, so this tree of
burning scarlet draws eye and mind from adjacent human-made squalor.
In all the tropics of the world I scarcely remember to have seen more
magnificent color than in these unattended, wilful-grown gardens.

In tropical cities such as Georgetown, there are very beautiful
private gardens, and the public one is second only to that of Java.
But for the most part one is as conscious of the very dreadful borders
of brick, or bottles, or conchs, as of the flowers themselves. Some
one who is a master gardener will some day write of the possibilities
of a tropical garden, which will hold the reader as does desire to
behold the gardens of Carcassonne itself.

VI

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS

Again the Guiana jungle comes wonderfully to the eye and mysteriously
to the mind; again my khakis and s