flowerings, indeed; but that of the lianas alone has chromatic
force enough to change the aspect of a landscape.



XVI.


... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described
at all, it could not be described more powerfully than it has
been by Dr. E. Rufz, a creole of Martinique, one of whose works I
venture to translate the following remarkable pages:

... "The sea, the sea alone, because it is the most colossal of
earthly spectacles,--only the sea can afford us any terms of
comparison for the attempt to describe a _grand-bois_;--but even
then one must imagine the sea on a day of a storm, suddenly
immobilized in the expression of its mightiest fury. For the
summits of these vast woods repeat all the inequalities of the
land they cover; and these inequalities are mountains from 4200
to 4800 feet in height, and valleys of corresponding profundity.
All this is hidden, blended together, smoothed over by verdure,
in soft and enormous undulations,--in immense billowings of
foliage. Only, instead of a blue line at the horizon, you have a
green line; instead of flashings of blue, you have flashings of
green,--and in all the tints, in all the combinations of which
green is capable: deep green, light green, yellow-green, black-
green.

"When your eyes grow weary--if it indeed be possible for them to