they saw stretching out before them.

"Last night," so runs the diary, "Louis and I walked up and down the
path behind the house. The air was soft and warm, but not too warm,
and filled with the most delicious fragrance. These perfumes of the
tropic forest are wonderful. When I am pulling weeds it often happens
that a puff of the sweetest scent blows back to me as I cast away a
handful of wild plants. I believe I have discovered the ylang-ylang
tree, about which there has been so much mystery. Simile tells me that
one of the priests distils perfume from the same tree. It does not
grow very large and has a delicate leaf of a tender shade of green,
with the flowers, of a greenish white, in racemes. The natives often
use these flowers to mix in their wreaths."

Every paradise has its drawbacks, and though ferocious wild beasts and
poisonous snakes are absent from that fortunate island, yet there were
many small creatures dwelling in the neighbouring jungle that
sometimes made their presence known in disconcerting ways. Of one of
these she writes: "We were driven out of the house by a tree frog of
stentorian voice, which was hidden in a tree near the front veranda
and made a noise like a saw being filed, only fifty times louder. It
actually shook the drums of my ears.... I had to stop just here to
show Paul how to tie a knot that would not slip. The last time Mr.
Caruthers was here he found his horse at the point of strangulation
from a slip noose round its neck as Paul had tethered it out in the
grass.... To return to the tree frog. When we settled ourselves at the
table for the evening what was our horror to hear a second tree frog
piping up just over our heads in the eaves of the house. We poked at
him for some time with sticks and brooms, and I had a guilty feeling
that I had done him a mortal injury; but when, after we were in bed
and half asleep, he started saw-filing again, I wished I had."

The hurricane season now came on, and wild tropic storms, of a
violence of which they had never before dreamed, beat on the little
house in the clearing with terrifying fury. "We had a very heavy
rainstorm," the diary records, "with thunder and lightning. At night
the rain fell so noisily that we could not hear each other speak, and
it seemed as though the house must be crushed in by the weight of
water falling on it. In the middle of the night Louis arose, made a
light, and fell to writing verses. I was troubled about the ta