would explore miles of sunless jungle by ways unstable as water; if you
would have the sites of camps of past generations of blacks reveal the
arts and occupations of the race, its dietary scale and the pastimes of
its children; if you desire to have exact first-hand knowledge, to revel
in the rich delights of new experiences, your scope must be limited.

The sentiments of a true lover of an Isle cannot without sacrilege be
shared. The love is an exclusive passion, not of Herodian fierceness,
misgiving, and gloom, but of joyful jealousy, for it must be well-nigh
impossible to every one else.

Such is this delicious Isle--this unkempt, unrestrained garden where the
centuries gaze upon perpetual summer. Small it is, and of varied
charms--set in the fountain of time-defying youth. Abundantly sprinkled
with tepid rains, vivified by the glorious sun, its verdure tolerates no
trace of age. No ill or sour vapours contaminate its breath. Bland and
ever fresh breezes preserve its excellencies untarnished. It typifies all
that is tranquil, quiet, easeful, dreamlike, for it is the, Isle of
Dreams.

All is lovable--from crescentric sandpit--coaxing and consenting to the
virile moods of the sea, harmonious with wind-shaken casuarinas, tinkling
with the cries of excitable tern--to the stolid grey walls and blocks of
granite which have for unrecorded centuries shouldered off the white
surges of the Pacific. The flounces of mangroves, the sparse, grassy
epaulettes on the shoulders of the hills the fragrant forest, the dim
jungle, the piled up rocks, the caves where the rare swiftlet hatches out
her young in gloom and silence in nests of gluten and moss--all are mine
to gloat over. Among such scenes do I commune with the genius of the
Isle, and saturate myself with that restful yet exhilarating principle