Persons Who Have Formed The Usual Ideas Of The Vegetation Of The
Tropics Who Picture To Themselves The Abundance And
Brilliancy of
the flowers, and the magnificent appearance of hundreds of forest
trees covered with masses of coloured blossoms, will
Be surprised
to hear, that though vegetation in Aru is highly luxuriant and
varied, and would afford abundance of fine and curious plants to
adorn our hothouses, yet bright and showy flowers are, as a
general rule, altogether absent, or so very scarce as to produce
no effect whatever on the general scenery. To give particulars: I
have visited five distinct localities in the islands, I have
wandered daily in the forests, and have passed 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 met with at very distant intervals.
The idea that nature exhibits gay colours in the tropics, and
that the general aspect of nature is there more bright and varied
in hue than with us, has even been made the foundation of
theories of art, and we have been forbidden to use bright colours
in our garments, and in the decorations of our dwellings, because
it was supposed that we should be thereby acting in opposition to
the teachings of nature. The argument itself is a very poor one,
since it might with equal justice be maintained, that as we
possess faculties for the appreciation of colours, we should make
up for the deficiencies of nature and use the gayest tints in
those regions where the landscape is most monotonous. But the
assumption on which the argument is founded is totally false, so
that even if the reasoning were valid, we need not be afraid of
outraging nature, by decorating our houses and our persons with
all those gay hues which are so lavishly spread over our fields
and mountains, our hedges, woods, and meadows.
It is very easy to see what has led to this erroneous view of the
nature of tropical vegetation. In our hothouses and at our
flower-shows we gather together the finest flowering plants from
the most distant regions of the earth, and exhibit them in a
proximity to each other which never occurs in nature. A hundred
distinct plants, all with bright, or strange, or gorgeous
flowers, make a wonderful show when brought together; but perhaps
no two of these plants could ever be seen together in a state of
nature, each inhabiting a distant region or a different station.
Again, all moderately warm extra-European countries are mixed up
with the tropics in general estimation, and a vague idea is
formed that whatever is preeminently beautiful must come from the
hottest parts of the earth. But the fact is quite the contrary.
Rhododendrons and azaleas are plants of temperate regions, the
grandest lilies are from temperate Japan, and a large proportion
of our most showy flowering plants are natives of the Himalayas,
of the Cape, of the United States, of Chili, or of China and
Japan, all temperate regions. True, there are a great number of
grand and gorgeous flowers in the tropics, but the proportion
they bear to the mass of the vegetation is exceedingly small; so
that what appears an anomaly is nevertheless a fact, and the
effect of flowers on the general aspect of nature is far less in
the equatorial than in the temperate regions of the earth.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
NEW GUINEA. - DOREY,
(MARCH TO JULY 1858.)
AFTER my return from Gilolo to Ternate, in March 1858, I made
arrangements for my long-wished-for voyage to the mainland of New
Guinea, where I anticipated that my collections would surpass
those which I had formed at the Aru Islands.
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