assed along upwards of a
hundred miles of coast and river during a period of six months, much of
it very fine weather, and till just as I was about to leave, I never saw
a single plant of striking brilliancy or beauty, hardly a shrub equal to
a hawthorn, or a climber equal to a honeysuckle! It cannot be said that
the flowering season had not arrived, for I saw many herbs, shrubs,
and forest trees in flower, but all had blossoms of a green or
greenish-white tint, not superior to our lime-trees. Here and there on
the river banks and coasts are a few Convolvulaceae, not equal to our
garden Ipomaeas, and in the deepest shades of the forest some fine
scarlet and purple Zingiberaceae, but so few and scattered as to be
nothing amid the mass of green and flowerless vegetation. Yet the noble
Cycadaceae and screw-pines, thirty or forty feet high, the elegant tree
ferns, the lofty palms, and the variety of beautiful and curious plants
which everywhere meet the eye, attest the warmth and moisture of the
tropics, and the fertility of the soil.

It is true that Aru seemed to me exceptionally poor in flowers, but
this is only an exaggeration of a general tropical feature; for my
whole experience in the equatorial regions of the west and the east has
convinced me, that in the most luxuriant parts of the tropics, flowers
are less abundant, on the average less showy, and are far less effective
in adding colour to the landscape than in temperate climates. I have
never seen in the tropics such brilliant masses of colour as even
England can show in her furze-clad commons, her heathery mountain-sides,
her glades of wild hyacinths, her fields of poppies, her meadows of
buttercups and orchises--carpets of yellow, purple, azure-blue, and
fiery crimson, which the tropics can rarely exhibit. We, have smaller
masses of colour in our hawthorn and crab trees, our holly and
mountain-ash, our boom; foxgloves, primroses, and purple vetches, which
clothe with gay colours the whole length and breadth of our land, These
beauties are all common. They are characteristic of the country and the
climate; they have not to be sought for, but they gladden the eye at
every step. In the regions of the equator, on the other hand, whether it
be forest or savannah, a sombre green clothes universal nature. You may
journey for hours, and even for days, and meet with nothing to break the
monotony. Flowers are everywhere rare, and anything at all striking is
only to be me