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Silk is almost a staple of Italian industry, and doubtless the mulberry tree would flourish here as in other parts, and with as much success as at Beyrout, on the coast of Syria, a place not at all unlike Monte Carlo in its climate, the beauty of coast scenery, and luxuriance of vegetation. Had it occurred but a month earlier, there would inevitably have been a terrible loss of life.
It was impossible not to feel that there was a certain joy of life in these growths, sprouting with such security and luxuriance in a place so precisely adapted to their well-being; and yet there was the shadow of death and darkness about them, to us whose home is the free air and the sun.
So moveable turrets, constructed of the spice-trees which grew in rank luxuriance all around, were filled with earth and stones, and advanced towards the fort. Had the natives been as docile to learn as the Hollanders were eager to teach a few easy lessons in the military art, the doom of Andreas Hurtado de Mendoza would have been sealed.
The Princess had a profusion of flaxen hair, but it was so light coloured as to be almost of a bluish tinge; and her tire woman, who doubtless considered the luxuriance of her mistress's tresses as a beauty, had not greatly improved matters by arranging them in curls around her pale countenance, to which they added an expression almost corpse-like and unearthly.
Although the humid and equable climate of Chiloe, and of the coast northward and southward of it, is so unfavourable to our fruits, yet the native forests, from lat. 45 to 38 degs., almost rival in luxuriance those of the glowing intertropical regions.
And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance, the live-oak, the hackberry, the myrtle, the Spanish bayonet in bristling groups, and the shaded places gave out a scented moisture like an orangery; anon we passed fields of corn and cotton, swamps of rice, stretches of poverty-stricken indigo plants, gnawed to the stem by the pest.
But slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in the development of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, a race that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature that supplied its physical needs with little labor.
It hovers above every barque and brig and steamer, it speaks of a Jesus risen, a grave conquered, a heaven open. It is the same old Sabbath that blessed our early days. It is tropical in its luxuriance, but all its leaves are prayers, and all its blossoms praise. Sabbath on the sea! How solemn! How suggestive! Let all its hours, on deck, in cabin, in forecastle, be sacred.
He was truthful, he was generous, he was brave, kind, and tolerant; but his virtues, like his personality, were large, flamboyant, and without gradations of colour. Custom had not pruned their natural luxuriance, nor had tradition toned down the violence of their contrasts.
There are few residents in the valley, except those connected with the stages that run hither during the summer months, and with the hotel kept for the accommodation of visitors. The vegetation is remarkable for its profuseness and almost tropical luxuriance.
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