II.
We shall never again see anything which can compare in beauty, of its kind, with the Jardin des Plantes of Martinique. No, we never shall—still, we must be just to all. Trinidad’s Botanical Garden is beautiful in its own way, and we were impressed with the idea that it possessed some features which that of Martinique lacked. However, that might have been owing to the fact that we did not view the Martinique Garden in its entirety. Had we done so, we might have found the same species in both places.
From casual observation there seemed to me to be one distinctive characteristic of tropical vegetation; the trees did not appear to grow so much in great social orders as do those of temperate zones. In the North, vast families of the same species of trees gather together and keep together with as rigid a pertinacity as any Scotch clan; the beech, birch, oak, maple, pine, hemlock, walnut, hickory, all have their pet homes and their own relations, and no amount of coddling or persuasion will ever induce them to a wide change of habitat; but in the far South, the tropical trees seem willing to settle anywhere in this land of endless summer. Of course, one finds that certain trees love the swamps, and others prefer the high lands; and some will grow in greater magnificence in some places where the conditions are absolutely congenial, than in other places where they are not so. There is the mangrove; it loves the wet and the mire—the mosquito-ridden, miasmatic river borders—and wherever, on these coasts, you find a swamp, whether in the very hottest spots, or in others only moderately so, there you’ll find the mangrove sending out ærial roots, reaching down into the muck for new strength, forming—banyan-like—a family of new trunks, all under one leafy canopy, quite content if only it has the water about its roots and a certain degree of heat.
Away up there in Haïti, we find the ceiba, and down here in Trinidad it is equally at home. These conditions make the formation of a botanical garden, representing the world-growth of sunlit vegetation, peculiarly favourable. Trinidad is said to possess the most superb collection of tropical plants in existence; and though gathered from all lands, growing not as strangers or even stepchildren, but as rightful heirs to the immeasurable vital force which pours forth from a rich soil warmed by a blazing sun the year around.
The garden once entered, we pass a great, squarely built mansion, the governor’s residence, and are in the midst of a wonderful vegetation from the first step. At the very entrance, we are greeted with, perhaps, the most unique tree in these latitudes.
After all, there is something stupefying in the effort to describe tropical wonders. When they are passing before one’s eyes, each has a feature distinct to itself, which, in a way, is its own manner of description. Each has its peculiar wonder, its own glory,—no two alike—and yet, when one sits down to think it over, there is the same old alphabet from which to draw new pictures, new miracles; and how to make each different with the same letters is a question indeed.
If I could only tell you the name of this particular tree which stands at the entrance to the garden, you might some day hunt it up yourself, but as I know neither its family nor home, we will let that all go, and just tell you how it is dressed.
It is a heavily, glossily leafed, symmetrical, low tree, just about the size of those dear old cherry-trees we used to climb, oh, so long,—so long ago! From the tip of every branch there drops a cord-like fibre about a foot and a half long, and at the end of this little brown string there hangs a cluster of delicate pink flowers. These are suspended in almost exact length in rows from the lowest to the highest branch, and it really seems as if Nature were experimenting to see what wonderful living garlands she could create for a canopy above our heads.