At Last Volume 1; A Christmas in the West Indies (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ...as they call them here), their all but leafless boughs now blazing against the blue sky with vermilion flowers, trees of red coral sixty feet in height. Ah that we could show you the avenue on the right, composed of palms from every quarter of the tropics--palms with smooth stems, or with prickly ones, with fan leaves, feather leaves, leaves (as in the wine-palm4) like Venus's hair fern; some, again, like the Cocorite,5 almost stemless, rising in a huge ostrich plume which tosses in the land breeze, till the long stiff leaflets seem to whirl like the spokes of a green glass wheel. Ah that we could wander with you through the botanic garden beyond, amid fruits and flowers brought together from all the lands of the perpetual summer; or even give you, through the great arches of the bamboo clumps, as they creak and rattle sadly in the wind, and the Bauhinias, like tall and ancient whitethorns, which shade the 1 Inga Saman; "Caraceas tree." 3 Hura crepitans. 3 Erythrina umbrosa. 4 Caryota. 5 Maximiliana. road, one glance of the flat green Savannah, with its herds of kine, beyond which lies, buried in flowering trees, and backed by mountain woods, the city of Port of Spain. One glance, too, under the boughs of the great Cotton-tree at the gate, at the still sleeping sea, with one tall Coolie-ship at anchor, seen above green cane-fields and Coolie gardens, gay with yellow Croton and purple Dracaena, and crimson Poinsettia, and the grand leaves of the grandest of all plants, the Banana, food of paradise. Or, again, far away to the extreme right, between the flat tops of the great Saman-avenue at the barracks, and the wooded mountain-spurs which rash down into the sea, the islands of the Bocas floating in the shining water; and beyond them, a cloud among ...