A Botanist’s Paradise.
The preceding chapters give but a faint idea of the great wealth of plant-life in the Philippine Islands, of the richness and abundance of the fruits, the variety and usefulness of the trees, the multitude of growths that add to the comfort and convenience of human life. Yet, after all is said, every description of the plant-life there gives but an inadequate idea of the real luxuriance and beauty of the group, and its value from a botanical point of view. These rich and multitudinous islands, seated in the midst of a tropical sea, form, in reality, a botanist’s paradise, a region in which an ardent naturalist might browse for years, and still have new treasures to find.
I am no scientist. Indeed, I have often wished I were, when journeying through these lush tropical forests with their interminable variety of forms of plant-life; many of them of the greatest beauty, some odd and bizarre in appearance, numbers of them unknown to science; the whole presenting the appearance of a virgin wilderness, keeping its treasures intact for the one that can appreciate them. The Spaniard looks upon nature with a lazy eye, troubling himself little about anything that cannot be put to some immediate use. And he has jealously guarded the islands against alien footsteps, putting annoying obstacles in the way of all that sought to explore their interior. In consequence, the Philippines may be said to be in a large measure unexplored, waiting for the botanist to discover their treasures, the poet to sing their beauties, the practical man to develop their resources.
Energy and enterprise are sadly needed, and it will require the go-ahead American spirit to bring about the possibilities of those fertile tropical lands.
The Once-beautiful Botanical Gardens.
A Diadem of Island Gems.
And the earth possesses no scenes more beautiful than those to be found in this verdant and blooming Archipelago,—from its northern to its southern verge, this magnificent rosary of glowing islands, that Nature has hung above the heaving bosom of the warm Pacific. Of them all, none is more beautiful than Luzon. the largest and the richest of the whole, with its vast variety of attractive scenery, mountain and plain, lake and stream, everywhere rich with glossy leafage, clustered growths of bamboo and palm, fields of yellow cane, and verdant coffee-groves. Everywhere is wealth of trees, clothing the mountains to their summits, and bordering the long green miles of ocean-shore.