... How gray seem the words of poets in the presence of this Nature!...
The enormous silent poem of color and light--(you who know only the
North do not know color, do not know light!)--of sea and sky, of the
woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to paralyze
it--mocking the language of admiration, defyingall power of expression.
That is before you which never can be painted or chanted, because there
is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature realizes your
most hopeless ideals of beauty, even as one gives toys to a child. And
the sight of this supreme terrestrial expression of creative magic numbs
thought. In the great centres of civilization we admire and study only
the results of mind,--the products of human endeavor: here one views
only the work of Nature,--but Nature in all her primeval power, as in
the legendary frostless morning of creation. Man here seems to bear
scarcely more relation to the green life about him than the insect; and
the results of human effort seem impotent by comparison with the
operation of those vast blind forces which clothe the peaks and crown
the dead craters with impenetrable forest. The air itself seems inimical
to thought,--soporific, and yet pregnant with activities of dissolution
so powerful that the mightiest tree begins to melt like wax from the
moment it has ceased to live. For man merely to exist is an effort; and
doubtless in the perpetual struggle of the blood to preserve itself from
fermentation, there is such an expenditure of vital energy as leaves
little surplus for mental exertion.
... Scarcely less than poet or philosopher, the artist, I fancy, would
feel his helplessness. In the city he may find wonderful picturesqueness
to invite his pencil, but when he stands face to face alone with Nature
he will discover that he has no colors! The luminosities of tropic
foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West
Indian forest,--a West Indian landscape,--must take his view from some
great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and
subdued by distance,--toned with blues or purples by the astonishing
atmosphere.
[Illustration: ST. PIERRE-STREET AMONG THE RUINS
_Exuberant vegetation has claimed the ruins and invaded
the beautiful stone-paved streets of the former
capital._]
... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of
color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see
the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green
sea,--under a lilac sky,--against a prodigious orange light.