startling. Banana leaves flicker and flutter along the way-side;
palms shoot up to vast altitudes, like pillars of white metal;
and there is a perpetual shifting of foliage color, from yellow-
green to orange, from reddish-green to purple, from emerald-green
to black-green. But the background color, the dominant tone, is
like the plumage of a green parrot.

... We drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way,
lined with plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar
shrubs with large broad leaves. Here and there are cocoa-palms.
Beyond the little ditches on either side, occupying openings in
the natural hedge, are the dwellings--wooden cabins, widely
separated from each other. The narrow lanes that enter the road
are also lined with habitations, half hidden by banana-trees.
There is a prodigious glare, an intense heat. Around, above the
trees and the roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some brightly
verdant, some cloudy blue, some gray. The road and the lanes are
almost deserted; there is little shade; only at intervals some
slender brown girl or naked baby appears at a door-way. The
carriage halts before a shed built against a wall--a simple roof
of palm thatch supported upon jointed posts of bamboo.

It is a little coolie temple. A few weary Indian laborers
slumber in its shadow; pretty naked children, with silver rings
round their ankles, are playing there with a white dog. Painted
over the wall surface, in red, yellow, brown, blue, and green
designs upon a white ground, are extraordinary figures of gods
and goddesses. They have several pairs of arms, brandishing
mysterious things,--they seem to dance, gesticulate, threaten;
but they are all very naïf;--remind one of the first efforts of a