IV.
Oh, that I had words and power and skill to paint even a shadow of the beauty before me to a likeness of itself! Here Nature defies all art of pen, of thought, and brush of man! She seems to glory in the impossible loveliness of her face and form—impossible to reproduce through art or reason. Here one should find new words—words more intense, more poignant, more vividly keen to cut into the heart of the matchless colours and shades. No description can ever bring accurately to the mind the wealth, the magnificent beauty of such a spot upon God’s earth.
With skilful art, the French have utilised the hand of Nature in the formation of this wonderful garden to such a degree of perfection that none can tell, unless a master, where the two fair sisters, Art and Nature, first embraced. The natural tropical forest, running up a great ravine into the mountains, is intersected by broad and winding paths that lead from one fair view to another by mossy flights of rough stone steps. Through a rift in the hillside, down an abyss of heavy, wet foliage of a green so intense that the eye can scarcely conceive its depth of colour, cataracts of water leap through the abiding shade, through the ever-growing, ever-dying processes of nature, down into a pool whose depths reflect the blue glimmering sky and the vivid green of over-hanging vines in opalescent sheen. Great clumps of bamboo, with long, slim, arrow-shaped leaves, hang gracefully, waving like giant grass, over the walk; and an ancient bridge, ablaze with purple vines, reaches out from under the rustling thickets and spans a branch of the Rivière Roxelane, a delicious mountain stream which murmurs on through the forest, filling one with poetic musings as to whence came its romantic name.
On we sauntered heedless as to time, sheltered from the sun by the impenetrable shade of arborescent ferns and towering palms, and lured ever deeper into the forest, into the wonders of God’s marvellous creation by some unspeakable burst of beauty just beyond.
Here we find not only the trees indigenous to the soil, but trees native to all tropical climates, from all parts of the world, for this garden is the pride of the island and a wonder of the Indies. The names and habitations of foreign trees are most skilfully marked on enamelled plates fastened to the trees, part of the plate bearing the carefully engraved botanical name, the lower part containing a coloured map, indicating the country to which the tree is native.
What a pitiably weak understanding we have of God’s unending and infinite creation! However much we read of life in remoter countries the mind, like a rubber ball, ever reverts with persistent force to its original point of view. So that we, the dwellers in the North, in the land of ice and snow, of pines and duller hues, where Nature bestows her gifts with somewhat sparing hand,—we of the North forget the limitless power of creative energy, and when we come into such an overwhelming feast of colour as in this mighty forest, sighing and breathing for very burden of beauty, we try in vain to reconcile our former crude conceptions of the Creator with this new, vast revelation of his unspeakable power.
As we penetrate deeper and ever deeper into the forest, the mind reels under the effort to grasp the marvels of plant and tree and earth. Vines hang in long festoons from tree to tree, and drop down before the face in thousands of living ropes, which seem to have the power of returning upon themselves and growing up again without any visible support. Parasites, air-plants, and orchids—not singly, but in millions—cover giant trunks so that the tree itself is lost in the growth external. Off through a break in the deepest green, I see for the first time that queen of the tropics, the Amherstia nobilis, called—and well named, indeed—“the Flamboyant,” the most magnificent flowering tree in the world: tall and heavenly leafed, of graceful form, its top covered by a mass of brilliant flowers so vividly red and of such size as to seem like a blaze of fire in the forest shade. And taller than all the others of its kind, the Royal Palm lifts its regal head out into the freedom of light and air, and sways its majestic plumes in rhythmic motion. How well the Spanish do to call it “the palm,” in distinction from all others.
Everywhere about you, life, life ever coming, ever going. A deep, impenetrable wall of green, denser, thicker than any fretwork, keeps you to the path. A native lad springs into the black, green, brown depth, and you shudder involuntarily; there might be danger. The two figures—hand in hand, Life and Death—haunt the dim green shadows about you.