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Updated: May 6, 2025
Behind us was a grove of cocoanut-trees, extending along the shore to the cliffs, and beyond them I could see a hill, which formed the farther end of the valley, opening out on the bay. Every one was asleep, and I was thankful that while in that condition we had not been discovered by savages, who might have been tempted to massacre the whole of us. I was glad that I at all events was now awake.
Most of all, as the island swam closer, the embracing fringe of cocoanut-trees drew my eyes. They were like a girdle upon the beautiful body of the land, whose lower half was in the ocean.
Groves of cocoanut-trees mark the site of ancient villages, since demolished; and indicate that it once enjoyed a superiority and preëminence, of which it has been despoiled. In point of susceptibility of cultivation, it is a full half century beforehand with Pontiana; it is capable of great improvement, and much grain might be raised with very little trouble.
Theresa, which was a cathedral by the side of the modest chapel at Iquitos. On looking toward the lake a beautiful panorama unfolded itself, bordered by a frame of cocoanut-trees and assais, which ended at the edge of the liquid level, and showed beyond the picturesque village of Noqueira, with its few small houses lost in the mass of the old olive-trees on the beach.
The visitors next found themselves at Girgaum, which is a forest of cocoanut-trees extending from the Bazaars to Chowpatti, at the head of the Back Bay. Among the trees, as the carriages proceeded along the Queen's Road, they found a great number of Hindu huts, half hidden in the dense foliage. They paused to look at one of them.
Tradition says that they were acquainted with only the rudest of Bagobo arts and industries; that they were very poor, and dressed themselves in the soft sheath torn from the cocoanut-trees. Tuglay and Tuglibung are not specific, but general, names for all those old people of the tales. The name "Mona" is ordinarily applied to the old man as well as to the old woman of prehistoric days.
It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine, with the cocoanut-trees waving and bending in the soft breeze to his right, the calm lagoon, dazzling in its brightness, to his left, and away beyond it the silver spray of the breakers thundering softly upon the coral reef. Then, too, there was a submarine garden in every pool, and a luxury of beauty on all sides, even to his very feet.
I remarked that oxen were the only animals used for burthen. I did not see a single horse. The streets of the town of St. Pierre are not laid out with much regularity, nor are the houses well built. I thought it an ugly town; it is, however, ornamented with a number of cocoanut-trees, some of which are forty and fifty feet high.
For all over the flimsy wooden houses, the wretched palings, the galvanized iron roofing, the ugly verandas, hang gorgeous draperies of the giant acacias, the brilliant flamboyantes, the bountiful, yellow allamanda, the generous breadfruit, and the uplifting glory of the cocoanut-trees, while magnificent vines and creepers cover the tawdry paint of the façades and embower the homes in green and flower.
An aspect of tropical luxuriance and languor reigned everywhere, the palm and cocoanut-trees looming above all the rest of the vegetation. About the ship floated tropical seaweed of brilliant colors, while the long snow-white beach contrasted strongly with the dark green, glossy foliage behind it.
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