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Updated: May 19, 2025
The heat of the murky, lurid evening was awful, and as thousands of mosquitoes took possession of the ship, all comfort was banished, and I was glad when we steamed down the palm-fringed Saigon or Donnai waters, and through the mangrove swamps at the mouths of the Me-kong river, and past the lofty Cape St. Jacques, with its fort, into the open China Sea.
Yet, after all, I hardly think the lake was formed in this way, and suspect that it may have been dry for ages after it emerged from the primeval waves, and Snowdonia was a palm-fringed island in a tropic sea. Let us look the place over more fully.
I forget most of the lines they were probably great trash, but I hugged them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child. 'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world, The rich gleams fading in the western sky; Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled, The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high. Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore, Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar.
For miles on either hand stretches a palm-fringed shore, with the noble cocoanut trees so close to the water's edge, that at times the sea seems to dash right into their midst. Cocoanut trees, like volcanoes, seemingly prefer the proximity of the sea to a more retired position. The whole scene reminds one of the beautiful places visited by captain Cook, in his voyages.
Little remains to mark the site, but the white palm-fringed strand gleams in the sunlight and is caressed by the blue waters just as in Columbus' day. The harbor at the mouth of a stream flowing down from the mountains is small and shallow, but it is occasionally visited by coastwise vessels in search of cargoes of mahogany and other woods from the nearby hills.
Mountain walls, with palm-fringed base and violet crest, bound a fertile expanse, where myriad brooks foam through fairy arches of feathery bamboo and long vistas of spreading palm fronds. Rice in every stage of growth, from flaming green to softest yellow, covers countless terraces, the picturesque outlines of their varied contours enhancing the beauty of the fantastic scene.
From the attic-windows the best view of the bay could be obtained, and it was my delight to lean out of them like "a blessed damosel" half an hour at a time, gazing seaward and drinking in the beauty of the scene. Waialua Bay was shaped like a half moon, the tips of which were distant headlands, and the curve was the yellow, palm-fringed beach.
The Libyan mountains became spectral beyond the tombs of the kings. The tiny, rough cupolas that mark a grave close to the sphinxes, in daytime dingy and poor, now seemed made of some splendid material worthy to roof the mummy of a king. Far off a pool of the Nile, that from here looked like a little palm-fringed lake, turned ruby-red.
They gazed into the future as children might look across an unknown sea, seeing in fancy its stately galleons, its tall treasure ships, its white-winged pleasure craft, its wondrous, palm-fringed islands, where summer abode always; but they had no eyes for leaden skies and sullen shouldering swells spouting on hidden reefs, the great, gray bergs fog-hidden in the ship track, the drifting derelicts whose hopes were once as fair as their own.
Leaning over the rail, Francis Channing gazed at their verdant heights and palm-fringed beaches of yellow sand with a feeling but little short of rapture to a man with a mind so beauty-loving and poetic as was his.
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