The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1878-08-10
THE TROPICS.
Romance and Reality Contrasted.

Romance and Reality Contrasted.
That tropical towns are squalid and
| suppose everybody more or
less believes. | discovered at a later
date that Kingston, compared with Santa
Martha or Savanilla, might be consider
ed Ia clean, thriving and civilized city. |
But to my untutored European mind, it |
seemed at first sight more frightful than /
l could have believed of
Coomassie or Timbuctoo. I suppose
those who stay at home have no idea
what an extra-European town must ne
be. At any rate, | could not |
before have believed that there existed |
on earth place so wretched, SO mean
looking, so utterly bankrupt and disre-
putable, as that in which | then stood. |
But the country, thinks the unsophisti
Gated Briton, the country must be beauti
full! There the hand of man cannot mar
the natural charms of green fields and
lovely flowers. There the waving sugar
cane, the graceful bamboo, the spread
ing tree fern, the magnificent palms
(those palms again) must make a scene
of fairy loneliness. There the orange
tress, the parrots, the butterfies-all, my
dear sir, all, all mere fancy! Go and
see for yourself, or trust those who have
seen. Such things you may find if you
will at Kew Gardens or at Sydenham,
but not, | assure you, in the tropics.
Behind the town lies plain, occupied
for the most part by grazing farms and
cultivated land. You may drive out on
any side along dusty road and survey
tba haontioc Of +hoxy unfold
themselves to your inquiring eye.
Hedges of cactus shut it in on either
hama, and of course shut off the prospect
of every object except their own obtrus-
i've stems. Now, cactus hedge is a
very pretty thing in the abstract, that Is
to say hedge of such cactus plants as
one may see at Kew or Sydenham afOre-
said. But the concrete cactus hedge OF
reality consists of tall, scraggy stalks
fowerless and spiny, covered half an
inch deep in collected dust, and as thor
oughly unromantic as dirt and neglect
can make them. Here and there gap
in the hedge or an interval of wire fenc-
ing allows one to glance at the fields
within. And what fields! No soft
green turf, pied with daises and butter
cups, but great with dusty levels, over
grown with rank and weedy vegetation,
more like rushes than English grass.
The dust lies on its spiky blades, not in
light powder, but thick and deep as in an
uninhabited room. You cannot see the
shape of the leaves for the white layer
that oyerlies them, always, of course,
under that pelting sunlight which makes
the dullest gray come out in staring
whiteness. The plain is one unbroken
sea of dingv weeds, and the tropical
country has followed the tropical town tC
John Millions limbo of false imaginings
the Paradise of fools. And the flowers
Well, there are no flowers. If you wish
to see brilliant blossoms, you must e
into your own English warren on a May
morning, when the primroses cluster by
thousands on every sunny bank, wheI
the cowslips raise their dappled heads
on every grassy knoll, when the dog
roses sweeten the air on every side will
their perfumed breath. But you vii
not find these things in the tropics. a
few rare trees burst once a year int
masses of crimson bloom; a few STRAY
plants after the rainy season open thei
faint yellow petals in the fields from
which the showers have washed away
the surface dust; but the general aspec
of every tropical plain is one of monoton
Gus and wearisOme greenish-brown A
to walking in the fields in search o
flowers, you might as well walk through
an acre of furze In tropical countrie
no man strays far from the dry highway
or if he strays he repents it afterward
with many a literal thorn in the flesh
not to mention many a creeping thing
buried deep beneath his tender skin
The fruits are there, one must allow; bu1
not the luscious fruits of our magma
ton. Good oranges are found only IL
temperate climates; those which grow
under a vertical sun run more to rind
pulp and fibre, than to sweet juice OF
delicate flavor. Pineapples in the West
Indies are mere messes of sugary string
unfit to compare with our delicious hot
house fruit. As for the common rucB
of berries resinous mangoes, mealy
bananas, sloppy custard apples, insipid
cherimOyas, infantile naseberries-they
deserve no place at any decent table
and, to say the truth, seldom obtain one
While we at home are talking with lus-
cious lips of the exquisite tropical fruits,
the wiser planter is quietly importing
prunes and raisins, figs and olives for his
own dessert, and would as soon think OF
eating crocodile as of putting the com
mon and tasteless messes of his native
trees before his English guests. BeLgra
I7in