In the marvellous light, which brings out all the rings of their bark,
these palms sometimes produce a singular impression of subtle, fleshy,
sentient life,--seem to move with a slowly stealthy motion as you ride
or drive past them. The longer you watch them, the stronger this idea
becomes,--the more they seem alive,--the more their long silver-gray
articulated bodies seem to poise, undulate, stretch.... Certainly the
palms of a Demerara country-road evoke no such real emotion as that
produced by the stupendous palms of the Jardin des Plantes in
Martinique. That beautiful, solemn, silent life upreaching through
tropical forest to the sun for warmth, for color, for power,--filled me,
I remember, with a sensation of awe different from anything which I had
ever experienced.... But even here in Guiana, standing alone under the
sky, the palm still seems a creature rather than a tree,--gives you the
idea of personality;--you could almost believe each lithe shape animated
by a thinking force,--believe that all are watching you with such
passionless calm as legend lends to beings supernatural.... And I wonder
if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by the
French colonists to the male palmiste,--_angelin_....
Very wonderful is the botanical garden here. It is new; and there are no
groves, no heavy timber, no shade; but the finely laid-out
grounds,--alternations of lawn and flower-bed,--offer everywhere
surprising sights. You observe curious orange-colored shrubs; plants
speckled with four different colors; plants that look like wigs of green
hair; plants with enormous broad leaves that seem made of colored
crystal; plants that do not look like natural growths, but like
idealizations of plants,--those beautiful fantasticalities imagined by
sculptors. All these we see in glimpses from a carriage-window,--yellow,
indigo, black, and crimson plants.... We draw rein only to observe in
the ponds the green navies of the Victoria Regia,--the monster among
water-lilies. It covers all the ponds and many of the canals. Close to
shore the leaves are not extraordinarily large; but they increase in
breadth as they float farther out, as if gaining bulk proportionately to
the depth of water. A few yards off, they are large as soup-plates;
farther out, they are broad as dinner-trays; in the centre of the pond
or canal they have surface large as tea-tables. And all have an upturned
edge, a perpendicular rim. Here and there you see the imperial
flower,--towering above the leaves.... Perhaps, if your hired driver be
a good guide, he will show you the snake-nut,--the fruit of an
extraordinary tree native to the Guiana forests. This swart nut--shaped
almost like a clam-shell, and halving in the same way along its sharp
edges--encloses something almost incredible. There is a pale envelope
about the kernel; remove it, and you find between your fingers a little
viper, triangular-headed, coiled thrice upon itself, perfect in every
detail of form from head to tail. Was this marvellous mockery evolved
for a protective end? It is no eccentricity: in every nut the
serpent-kernel lies coiled the same.
... Yet in spite of a hundred such novel impressions, what a delight it
is to turn again cityward through the avenues of palms, and to feel once
more the sensation of being watched, without love or hate, by all those
lithe, tall, silent, gracious shapes!