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Lilac plumbago, red hybiscus, and golden allemanda mingle with pink and purple lantana, yellow daisies, and hedges of scarlet tassels, enclosing wicker huts in patches of banana and cocoanut.
The pool itself was tapu save for those consecrated to the gods, yet this wretched pair crept through the lantana there on the bank, and watched her. She stood on the rock above the pool and put off her pae, her cap of gauze, her long robe, and her pareu, all of finest tree-cloth, for in those days before the whites came our people were properly clothed.
Oranges and lemons, which had sprung decades before from seeds strewn carelessly, had become giant trees of their kinds; and the lianas and parasites, guava, lantana, and a hundred species of ferns and orchids, with myriad mosses, covered every foot of soil, or stretched upon the trunks and limbs, so that exquisite tapestries garlanded the trees and hung like green and gold draperies between them.
Hedges of lantana were not new to him, they were common from end to end of the island; but not until now had he appreciated the warm magenta coloring of gorgeous poinsettias and bougainvillea, the glowing-hearted, waxy white flowers of frangipani; not until now did he realize the prodigality of Nature towards Java in the matter of weird and awesome fruits and vegetables.
If one leaves the few principal streets or roads in Papeete, one walks only on well-worn trails through the thick growth of lantana, guavas, pandanus, wild coffee, and a dozen other trees and bushes. The paths are lined with hedges of false coffee, where thrifty people live, and again there are open spaces with vistas of little houses in groves, rows of tiny cabins close together.
Many other sunken headstones denote the last resting-places of soldiers and sailors, and civilian officials, who died between 1821 and 1830, when the little port was a thriving place, and when, as the old gossips will tell you, it made a "rare show, when the Governor came here, and Major Innes him as brought that cussed lantana plant from the Peninsula sent ninety mounted men to escort him to Lake Innes."
Colour is given to this fringe by the magenta bougainvillea, the red hibiscus, the pale blue convolvulus, the variegated crotons, and the orange and red of the lantana, and at places the poinsettia provides a predominating red head to the hedge-like greenery.
As we returned next day to the village in the valley, we found upon a hill far from the beach the tombs of the sailors who first raised the standard of France in these islands. The eternal jungle had so housed in their monuments that we had hot work to break through the jealous lantana and pandanus to see the stones.
In the direction of the capital the land slopes to a level two miles from the sea and then spreads flatly to the shore. The hillsides are not, as a rule, in a state of cultivation, although the soil is fertile. The land is now cumbered with wild guava, which bears fruit as big as the lemon, and with the lantana, the seeds of which are scattered broadcast by an imported bird called the minah.
Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky the wild-fowl leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring into the western wilderness.
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