]

Here is a larger picture, taken on one of the smaller islands of the
Society archipelago:--

"I fear no description can possibly convey to your mind a true picture
of the lovely woods through which we wander just where fancy leads us,
knowing that no hurtful creature of any sort lurks among the mossy rocks
or in the rich undergrowth of ferns. Here and there we come on patches
of soft green turf, delightfully suggestive of rest, beneath the broad
shadow of some great tree with buttressed roots; but more often the
broken rays of sunlight gleam in ten thousand reflected lights, dancing
and glancing as they shimmer on glossy leaves of every form and
shade--from the huge silky leaves of the wild plantain or the giant arum
to the waving palm-fronds, which are so rarely at rest, but flash and
gleam like polished swords as they bend and twist with every breath of
air.

"It has just occurred to me that probably you have no very distinct idea
of the shape of a cocoa-palm leaf, which does not bear the slightest
resemblance to the palmettes in the greenhouses. It consists of a strong
mid-rib about eight feet long, which, at the end next to the tree,
spreads out very much as your two clenched fists, placed side by side,
do from your wrists. The other end tapers to a point. For a space of
about two feet the stalk is bare; then along the remaining six feet a
regiment of short swords, graduated from two feet to eighteen inches in
length, are set close together on each side of the mid-rib. Of course,
the faintest stir of the leaf causes these multitudinous swordlets to
flash in the sunlight. Hence the continual effect of glittering light.

"A little lower than these tall queens of the coral-isles rise
fairy-like canopies of graceful tree-ferns, often festooned with most
delicate lianas; and there are places where not these only, but the
larger trees, are literally matted together by the dense growth of the
beautiful large-leaved white convolvulus, or the smaller lilac ipomaae,
which twines round the tall stems of the palms, and overspreads the
light fronds like some green waterfall. Many of the larger trees are
clothed with parasitic ferns; huge bird's-nest ferns grow in the forks
of the branches, as do various orchids, the dainty children of the mist,
so that the stems are well-nigh as green as everything else in that
wilderness of lovely forms. It is a very inanimate paradise, however. I
rarely see any birds or butterflies, onl