79

XIII. The Mending of the Apple-Tree 85

XIV. Citizens of the Apple-Tree 89

XV. The Apple-Tree Regions 97

XVI. The Harvest of the Apple-Tree 102

XVII. The Appraisal of the Apple-Tree 107

[Illustration: 1. The home apple-tree]

THE APPLE-TREE

I

WHERE THERE IS NO APPLE-TREE

The wind is snapping in the bamboos, knocking together the resonant
canes and weaving the myriad flexile wreaths above them. The palm
heads rustle with a brisk crinkling music. Great ferns stand in the
edge of the forest, and giant arums cling their arms about the trunks
of trees and rear their dim jacks-in-the-pulpit far in the branches;
and in the greater distance I know that green parrots are flying in
twos from tree to tree. The plant forms are strange and various,
making mosaic of contrasting range of leaf-size and leaf-shape, palm
and grass and fern, epiphyte and liana and clumpy mistletoe, of grace
and clumsiness and even misproportion, a tall thick landscape all
mingled into a symmetry of disorder that charms the attention and
fascinates the eye.

It is a soft and delicious air wherein I sit. A torrid drowse is in
the receding landscape. The people move leisurely, as befits the world
where there is no preparation for frost and no urgent need of
laborious apparel. There are tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys,
and men pushing vehicles. There are odd products and unaccustomed
cakes and cookies on little stands by the roadside, where the turbaned
vendor sits on the ground unconcernedly.

There are strange fruits in the carts, on the donkeys that move down
the hillsides from distant plantations in the heart of the jungle, on
the trees by winding road and thatched cottage, in the great crowded
markets in the city. I recognize coconuts and mangoes, star-apples and
custard-apples and cherimoyas, papayas, guavas, mamones, pomegranates,
figs, christophines, and the varied range of citrus fruits. There are
also great polished apples in the markets, coming from cooler regions,
tied by their stems, good to look at but impossible to relish; and I
understand how these people of the tropics think the apple an inferior
fruit, so successfully do the poor varieties stop the desire for more.
There are vegetables I have never seen before.

I am conscious o