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It seemed a dull trudge over the black and awful crater, and strange, like half-forgotten sights of a world with which I had ceased to have aught to do, were the dwarf tree-ferns, the lilies with their turquoise clusters, the crimson myrtle blossoms, and all the fair things which decked the precipice up which we slowly dragged our stiff and painful limbs.
The trees are crowded close together, and the convolvulus binds their branches into an impassable jungle, while ferns and creepers weave themselves into a dense mass below; and here and there a glimpse up some deep ravine shows great tree-ferns, thirty feet high, standing close to the brink of a mountain-stream, and flourishing in the damp shade.
Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man.
When they had followed the stream some distance, the gully opened out into bush scrub. The little Parrakeets then said "Good-bye," and flew back to their favourite tree-ferns and bush growth; and the Kangaroo said, that as they were nearing the home of the Platypus, they must not play in the stream any more; to do so might warn the creature of their approach and frighten it.
I give you the incident as it occurred and you will know as much as I do. It stands alone, for we saw nothing more which could be called remarkable. And now, my readers, if ever I have any, I have brought you up the broad river, and through the screen of rushes, and down the green tunnel, and up the long slope of palm trees, and through the bamboo brake, and across the plain of tree-ferns.
Among the forest trees are also several kinds of tree-ferns and a tree-nettle. When the pointed leaves of the latter prick the skin they sting the flesh as badly as does a wasp. The English have done well by both the islands and the islanders. They have made the islands yield a good yearly profit to the government itself, but they have also made the natives industrious and contented.
Ebony-trees, cotton-wood, pepper-trees, and palms, were intermixed with tree-ferns, magnolias, white oaks, and willows. Here and there, too, a sunbeam marked out a vast circle of light upon the dark water, and myriads of aquatic insects, gnats, dragon-flies, and butterflies sported in the air or swam over the glittering surface.
He was so small that we did not believe he could carry the burden, but he made no sort of trouble about it, trotting along most happily. We had been told that the road was pura subida pure ascent and so we found it. We were soon in the tropical forest of the Chinantla, and the land of the Mixes, with begonias, tree-ferns, bromelias, and orchids.
Tree-ferns and mosses and a myriad other parasitic forms jostled with gay-coloured fungoid growths for room to live, and the very atmosphere itself seemed to afford clinging space to airy fairy creepers, light and delicate as gem-dust, tremulous with microscopic blooms.
Dieffenbach have trunks so thick and high that they may be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even as far south as latitude 55 degrees in the Macquarie Islands, parrots abound. See the German Translation of this Journal; and for the other facts Mr.
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