nse heat that the
paintwork of the green jalousie shutters outside the windows of the
house fairly frizzled up in liquid blotches!

The air, too, was oppressively close and warm, just as when the door of
an oven is opened in one's face, not a breath of wind stirring to
agitate the still atmosphere; but, neither did this fact, nor did the
blazing power of the glowing orb of day, which looked like a globe of
fire in the centre of the heavens, affect the wild luxuriance of nature
at Mount Pleasant.

As I gazed around, everything appeared to be invigorated instead of
prostrated by the high temperature.

This seems to be the natural order of things in the tropics, that is, in
respect of everything and everyone accustomed to broiling weather, like
hot-house flowers and coloured gentry of the kidney of Jake and his
sable brethren, whose ancestors, having been born under the sweltering
equator, handed down to their descendants constitutions of such a nature
that they seem fairly to revel in the heat, and appear to be all the
healthier and happier the hotter it is!

Ruby-throated humming-birds, with breasts of burnished gold, fluttered
about the garden on the terrace in front of me in dainty flight, or else
poised themselves in mid-air opposite the sweet-smelling blossoms of the
frangipanni, their little wings moving so rapidly as to make them appear
without motion; broad-backed butterflies, with black stripes across
their yellow uniforms, floated lazily about, purposelessly, doing
nothing, as if they could not make up their minds to anything; and the
scent of heliotropes and of big cabbage roses, that blossomed in
profusion on trees larger than shrubs, almost intoxicated the senses.
The eye, too, was charmed at the same time by the pinky prodigality of
the "Queen of Flowers," and the purple profusion of the convolvulus,
their colours contrasting with the soft green foliage of the bay-tree;
while great masses of scarlet geranium, and myriad hues of different
varieties of the balsam and Bird of Paradise plant were harmonised by
the snowy chastity of the Cape jessamine and a hundred other sorts of
lilies, of almost every tint, which encircled a warm-toned hibiscus,
that seemed to lord it over them, the king of the floral world.

I was watching a little procession of "umbrella ants," as they are
called, that were promenading across the marble flooring of the
verandah, each of the tiny insects carrying above its head a tinier