than those of
Brazil. The lofty trees shoot up to a great height before sending out
branches. At their feet grow ferns of many sorts, while climbing vines
and other creepers mantle their trunks and sometimes even their tops.
But the gloom of the tropical forest is seldom or never relieved by
flowers of brilliant tints; the few flowers that bloom in them are of a
white or greyish hue, as if bleached for want of the sunbeams, which are
shut out by the thick umbrageous foliage overhead.[4]

[4] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 31 _sq._, 52 _sq._

Very different from the aspect presented by this luxuriant vegetation is
a great part of the interior of Savaii, the largest island of the group.
Here the desolate and forbidding character of the landscape constantly
reminds the traveller of the dreadful forces which slumber beneath his
feet. Extinct volcanoes tower above him to heights of four and five
thousand feet, their steep and almost perpendicular sides formed of
volcanic ashes and denuded of vegetation. For miles around these gloomy
peaks the ground presents nothing to the eye but black rocks, scoriae,
and ashes; the forlorn wayfarer seems to be traversing a furnace barely
extinguished, so visible are the traces of fire on the sharp-pointed
stones among which he picks his painful way, and which in their twisted
and tormented forms seem still to preserve something of the movement of
the once boiling flood of molten lava. The whole country is a barren
and waterless wilderness, a solitude destitute alike of animal and of
vegetable life, alternately parched by the fierce rays of the tropical
sun and deluged by hurricanes of torrential rain. Even the natives
cannot traverse these dreary deserts; a European who strayed into them
was found, after five or six days, prostrate and almost dead on the
ground.[5]

[5] Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel
de Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) pp. 71 _sq._;
F. H. H. Guillemard, _Australasia_, ii. 502 _sq._; J. B. Stair,
Old Samoa, p. 34; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 1
_sqq._

In Samoa, as in Tonga, volcanic activity has ominously increased within
less than a hundred years. Near the island of Olosenga, in 1866 or 1867,
a submarine volcano suddenly burst out in eruption, vomiting forth rocks
and mud to a height, as it was estimated, of two thousand feet, killing
the fish and discolouring the sea for miles round.[6] Still la