verandahs were festooned with a gorgeous trailer with magenta
blossoms, passion-flowers, and a vine with masses of trumpet-shaped,
yellow, waxy flowers. The delicate tamarind and the feathery
algaroba intermingled their fragile grace with the dark, shiny
foliage of the South Sea exotics, and the deep red, solitary flowers
of the hibiscus rioted among dear familiar fuschias and geraniums,
which here attain the height and size of large rhododendrons.

Few of the new trees surprised me more than the papaya. It is a
perfect gem of tropical vegetation. It has a soft, indented stem,
which runs up quite straight to a height of from 15 to 30 feet, and
is crowned by a profusion of large, deeply indented leaves, with
long foot-stalks, and among, as well as considerably below these,
are the flowers or the fruit, in all stages of development. This,
when ripe, is bright yellow, and the size of a musk melon. Clumps
of bananas, the first sight of which, like that of the palm,
constitutes a new experience, shaded the native houses with their
wonderful leaves, broad and deep green, from five to ten feet long.
The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep
green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut,
worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of
the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale
green fruit into delicate contrast. All these, with the exquisite
rose apple, with a deep red tinge in its young leaves, the fan palm,
the chirimoya, and numberless others, and the slender shafts of the
coco palms rising high above them, with their waving plumes and
perpetual fruitage, were a perfect festival of beauty.

In the deep shade of this perennial greenery the people dwell. The
foreign houses show a very various individuality. The peculiarity