The
first line of a hymn, "Oh, Paradise! oh, Paradise!" rings in my
brain, and the rustic exclamation we used to hear when we were
children, "Well, I never!" followed by innumerable notes of
admiration, seems to exhaust the whole vocabulary of wonderment.
The former cutting of some trees gives atmosphere, and the tumbled
nature of the ground shows everything to the best advantage. There
were openings over which huge candle-nuts, with their pea-green and
silver foliage, spread their giant arms, and the light played
through their branches on an infinite variety of ferns. There were
groves of bananas and plantains with shiny leaves 8 feet long, like
enormous hart's-tongue, the bright-leaved noni, the dark-leaved koa,
the mahogany of the Pacific; the great glossy-leaved Eugenia--a
forest tree as large as our largest elms; the small-leaved ohia, its
rose-crimson flowers making a glory in the forests, and its young
shoots of carmine red vying with the colouring of the New England
fall; and the strange lauhala hung its stiff drooping plumes, which
creak in the faintest breeze; and the superb breadfruit hung its
untempting fruit, and from spreading guavas we shook the ripe yellow
treasures, scooping out the inside, all juicy and crimson, to make
drinking cups of the rind; and there were trees that had surrendered
their own lives to a conquering army of vigorous parasites which had
clothed their skeletons with an unapproachable and indistinguishable
beauty, and over trees and parasites the tender tendrils of great
mauve morning glories trailed and wreathed themselves, and the
strong, strangling stems of the ie wound themselves round the tall
ohias, which supported their quaint yucca-like spikes of leaves
fifty feet from the ground.
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