Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that
tropic world,--tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made
stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the
heart of a boy,--one who had longed like you, and who, chance-led,
beheld at last the fulfilment of the wish, can swear to you that the
magnificence of the reality far excels the imagining. Those who know
only the lands in which all processes for the satisfaction of human
wants have been perfected under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can
little guess the witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and
of light. Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and
young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory
may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the
prediction of a paradise to come,--a phantom realm of rest and perpetual
light: may this not have been but a sum of the remembrances and the
yearnings of man first exiled from his heritage,--a dream born of the
great nostalgia of races migrating to people the pallid North?...
... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you
learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise
than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with
scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be
at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual
summer as a physical delight,--something like an indefinite prolongation
of the fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had
heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a swarming
of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe you know what
precautions to take; and published statistics of climatic temperature
may have persuaded you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By that
enervation to which all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you
may have understood a pleasant languor,--a painless disinclination
to effort in a country where physical effort is less needed than
elsewhere,--a soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under
the shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith,
that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and
therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated and
strengthened by tropical influences:--you suppose that enervation will
reveal itself only as a beatific indolence which will leave the brain
free to think with lucidity, or to revel in romantic dreams.