Читать книгу Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main онлайн

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The amusing article certainly would dispel “The Great Tropical Fallacy,” if it was true, but it can only have been written as a joke, as the writer adds that he has “lived for years in the tropics, but never yet beheld an alligator, an iguana, a toucan, or an antelope in their wild state. Scorpions do not occur.” It is an undoubted fact that these creatures—with the exception of scorpions—do not frequent the streets of towns or villages, nor are they much addicted to highway travelling, but had the writer ever visited “the bush,” or walked in the “country,” I think he would have hesitated before making such a statement, that is, supposing he has the full use of his eyesight and has lived where these animals exist.

As regards the palm, it is true that cocoa-nut trees, especially when blighted, are not very imposing; but there are many other splendid species, and to depreciate the mountain cabbage-palms is to be guilty of high treason against the princes of the forest. They are simply wonderful. To admire them it is not necessary to be a pantheist, or one of those to whom a forest is a cathedral, each tree a missionary, and every flying creature a sacred spirit; one who bows down at the sight of a daisy or buttercup, and kneels before an oak as the wild Indian does before his ceiba. For these palms are so matchless in grace, so simple and yet so stately, that they lend an indescribable air of dignity to any spot where they may chance to grow.