in which all seem to share is, that everything is decorated and
festooned with flowering trailers. It is often difficult to tell
what the architecture is, or what is house and what is vegetation;
for all angles, and lattices, and balustrades, and verandahs are
hidden by jessamine or passion-flowers, or the gorgeous flame-like
Bougainvillea. Many of the dwellings straggle over the ground
without an upper story, and have very deep verandahs, through which
I caught glimpses of cool, shady rooms, with matted floors. Some
look as if they had been transported from the old-fashioned villages
of the Connecticut Valley, with their clap-board fronts painted
white and jalousies painted green; but then the deep verandah in
which families lead an open-air life has been added, and the
chimneys have been omitted, and the New England severity and
angularity are toned down and draped out of sight by these festoons
of large-leaved, bright-blossomed, tropical climbing plants.
Besides the frame houses there are houses built of blocks of a
cream-coloured coral conglomerate laid in cement, of adobe, or large
sun-baked bricks, plastered; houses of grass and bamboo; houses on
the ground and houses raised on posts; but nothing looks prosaic,
commonplace, or mean, for the glow and luxuriance of the tropics
rest on all. Each house has a large garden or "yard," with lawns of
bright perennial greens and banks of blazing, many-tinted flowers,
and lines of Dracaena, and other foliage plants, with their great
purple or crimson leaves, and clumps of marvellous lilies,
gladiolas, ginger, and many plants unknown to me. Fences and walls
are altogether buried by passion-flowers, the night-blowing Cereus,
and the tropaeolum, mixed with geraniums, fuchsia, and jessamine,
which cluster and entangle over them in indescribable profusion. A
soft air moves through the upper branches, and the drip of water
from miniature fountains falls musically on the perfumed air. This