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Updated: June 28, 2025
Nearly thirty ferns may be gathered on this excursion, including many of great beauty and rarity, but the tree-fern does not ascend so high. Grasses are very rare in these woods, excepting the dwarf bamboo, now cultivated in the open air in England.
Sailing from the Marquesas we gradually worked our way westward towards the Society Islands, catching a few whales, till we arrived at Totillah, one of the Samoa group. The scenery was magnificent, while everywhere the country was covered with beautiful trees, among them the pandanus palm, the tree-fern, the banyan, the bread-fruit tree, wild nutmeg, and superb bamboos.
The boatswain nodded, and the pair went in among the trees, leaving the others discussing the narrow escapes and sending a stone or two down, and then a great dead dry stump of a tree-fern, all of which were shot up again, the stones after an interval, the fern stump, which was as long as Billy Widgeon and thicker round, coming up again directly.
But in the mind of the principal of the two white leaders, as he traces a cipher on the scene of their recent halt, and in that of the other, who watches him, is present, now with deepening anxiety, the same thought, the same speculation: What has become of the third? Under the shade of a large tree-fern a man is lying asleep.
Then arms that were soft and warm, and strong and beautiful, came round you and gathered you in, and you fell asleep folded closely in them, or you lay awake, and the Lady talked to you in a voice that was mellow as honey and soft as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of the wild pigeons that nested in the krantzes, or the sighing of the wind among the high veld grasses, and the murmur of the little river playing among the boulders and gurgling between the roots of the tree-fern.
During the day Herbert discovered several new specimens not before met with in the island, such as the tree-fern, with its leaves spread out like the waters of a fountain, locust-trees, on the long pods of which the onagas browsed greedily, and which supplied a sweet pulp of excellent flavour.
The cloud was so dense, indeed, that the light about them faded to a gray twilight. But gradually, bit by bit, the mist grew thinner. Then it moved aside. It drifted before the wind toward the tree-fern forest and was lost to sight. The flying machine was circling and soaring silently overhead. As the mist drew aside, the pilot dived down and down.
Evelyn intended to marry him and he had to keep her cheerful, but he wished she were well away from here. He tried to move cautiously through the Tube, but his bundles bumped and rattled. It seemed hours before he was climbing up the last section into the tree-fern jungle. He was caution itself as he peered over the edge.
That shrubbery above is composed of a species of Boehmeria or Ardisia, and that scarlet flower belongs to our native Aphelandra. In the rear are one or two Philodendrons disagreeable guests, for their smell is bad enough, and they blister when imprudently touched. There also you may see a tree-fern, though a small one.
At Glenwood stages meet the tourists and convey them over a fairly good road that winds through the tree-fern forests to the Volcano House, ten miles away. The beauty of that fern-lined forest, the long, stately plumes of the gigantic ferns meeting the eye everywhere, I shall not soon forget.
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