Think of it!—at one time, there averaged twenty thousand humming-birds a year exported from Trinidad to England alone!
And now, well—there are none left to export. We must find new islands to denude, to ravage, to desolate, for our adornment. But it’s too unpleasant,—this seeing things as they are; we’ll hide the poor little innocent card which the black woman gave us at the hotel; we’ll cover up the word “Iere” with these coffee leaves. There, now the spray of araucaria, now the stick of camphor, and I think the lemon will fit right in among the nutmegs.
Come along, Manuel, we are ready; and we follow through the birdless paths, down where the Nux Vomica grows, and the pepper, and the lime and the calabash, and the orange and breadfruit, and tamarind, and pineapple; and we go on and wake up the comical lizards who scurry away like brown flashes of whip-cord. What ridiculous creatures they are, and how desperately frightened! Why, surely they must be fifteen inches long, and fully four inches high, and what funny, nimble legs! They start off in the same spasm-like way as do the toy lizards we buy for the youngsters.
Manuel brings us to the plant house where the great forest wonders of the Far East are babied and loved into strength, and I could not but think of Daudet’s dear old Tartarin of Tarascon, dreaming by the homesick little baobab-tree, which grew in his window-garden; and of the long nights under the mellow moon of sunny France; and how he fought great beasts and achieved great fame in the land of sweet illusion.
