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

70 страница из 101

To return to the garden. Leaving the palm avenue one comes suddenly upon a beautiful waterfall rushing down a steep rock amidst a mass of hanging grasses, ferns, and waving cannas. A little way below it runs into the heart of a garden-wilderness rich with bamboos, plantains, thickets of tangled vines, and fragrant coffee trees. Here shrubs and trees are more cultivated than flowers, but the former with their brilliant blossoms save the place from the monotonous effect of a too prevailing green. Gloxinias and primulas are scattered over the sloping banks, and overhead are interlaced the branches of various trees. The bright flowers of the “Flamboyant,”[14] form a red canopy which vies in richness with the large crimson blossoms of the mountain rose.[15] Here may be seen South Sea Island bread-fruit, cinnamon from Ceylon, and sandal-wood from the Marquesas. That tree with bunches of wax-like and pear-shaped fruit is a Eugenia;[16] its trunk is a perfect fernery, and its branches are hung with parasites. Next to a stilted pandanus rises a tall “poui” with saffron flowers, and beyond are the long white trumpets of a datura. Close at hand is the much prized persimmon of Japan, having a wood like ebony, and a reddish-yellow fruit. The ground is everywhere strewn with the red beads of an erythrina, and occasionally the large uneatable fruit of a species of inga comes down with a thump, that a passer by, if hit, would not soon forget.