Tropic

“ I triumph in the green-meshed tropic forests, with their fern-floors, and garland-galleried tree-tops, where stand the great trunks which, interlaced with their thick twining underwood, are set like fishers’ stakes with their nets, in those aerial tides of heavy fragrance. ”

“ Experience has now taught us that, not only the country exactly under the equinoctial line, but the whole torrid zone, from one tropic to the other, is habitable and fertile, by reason of the days and nights being almost equal. The coolness of the night tempers the heat of the day, and the land has its due season for growing and producing its fruits. ”

“ Moreover, when the sun is near one of the tropics, the centre of heat upon the earth’s surface is then nearer that tropic than usual, and therefore the winds about the tropic are more nearly east at that time, and those about the other tropic more nearly north and south. ”

“ I have never seen in the tropics such brilliant masses of colour as even England can show in her Furze-clad commons, 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. ”

“ Between the tropics there is a sight haziness, like a thin gauze, drawn over the sun, which, without obstructing or obscuring the light, tempers the heat which comes down with perpendicular fierceness in the Atlantic and Indian tropics. ”

“ Whoever has known the ocean in its brilliant, transparent blue, or its majestic, stormy uproar; whoever has enjoyed the charm of the tropics, and been intoxicated with their splendor and coloring--to him these evergreen forest depths appear but cold and colorless, like all of these German landscapes, anyhow. ”

“ In climate every variation was to be found, from arctic to subtropical, with scenery unparalleled anywhere in the world for magnificence and grandeur and the brightness and softness of its colouring, the bold, snow-clad and desolate expanses contrasting sharply with the rich and luxuriant vegetation of the deep-cut valleys close at hand. ”

“ Working their toilsome way across this scene of desolation, the path often led them along the borders of precipices, down whose sheer depths of two or three thousand feet the shrinking eye might behold another climate, and see all the glowing vegetation of the Tropics choking up the bottom of the ravines. ”

“ If I have come to a different conclusion, it is not that I am incapable of appreciating the splendours of tropical scenery, but because I believe that they are not of the kind usually represented, and that the scenery of our own land is, of its own kind, unsurpassed: there is nothing approaching it in the tropics, nor is the scenery of the tropics to be found with us. ”

“ The rains which have lasted and refreshed up to this time, become intermittent, and the fine season approaches, during which the azure sky of the tropics pours its splendor and its beneficial warmth upon men, animals, and plants, scattered over a plain situated 8500 feet above the level of the sea. ”

“ Remembering these things, we are reconciled to our lot in living in the temperate zone, and turn away even from the soft and easy life of the tropics, to find a keener delight in our rugged clime, and to welcome even the snow-drifts and the short winter days, since they bring the long winter evenings, and the roaring winter fires! ”

“ And fully to understand this pregnant educational importance of the Tropics we must consider with ourselves how large a part tropical conditions have borne in the development of life in general, and of human life and society in particular.
The Tropics, we must carefully remember, are the norma of nature: the way things mostly are and always have been. They represent to us the common condition of the whole world during by far the greater part of its entire existence. ”

“ To the student of nature the vegetation of the tropics will ever be of surpassing interest, whether for the variety of forms and structures which it presents, for the boundless energy with which the life of plants is therein manifested, or for the help which it gives us in our search after the laws which have determined the production of such infinitely varied organisms. When, for the first time, the traveller wanders in these primeval forests, he can scarcely fail to experience sensations of awe, akin to those excited by the trackless ocean or the alpine snowfields. ”

“ The most striking contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together in time or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics, or of a northern summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter. Next to this in startling novelty of effect, we must rank the sudden transition from the shady and verdant oasis of the desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean of sand and rock which surrounds it. ”

“ The luxuriance and beauty of Tropical Nature is a well-worn theme, and there is little new to say about it. The traveller and the naturalist have combined to praise, and not unfrequently to exaggerate the charms of tropical life—its heat and light, its superb vegetable forms, its brilliant tints of flower and bird and insect. Each strange and beautiful object has been described in detail; and both the scenery and the natural phenomena of the tropics have been depicted by master hands and with glowing colours. ”

“ Rocks and islands are adorned with the luxuriant vegetation of the tropical forest; a perpetual mist hovers over the waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the cloud of spray and vapour. ”

“ From this time, till we left the torrid zone, we were almost daily amused with the view of immense shoals of these fishes, and now and then caught one upon our decks when it had unfortunately taken its flight too far, and was spent by its too great elevation above the surface of the sea. In the uniform life which we led between the tropics, where we found weather, wind, and sea, almost constantly favourable and agreeable, the mind catched at every little circumstance that could give the hint to a reflection. ”

“ People over here think every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm-trees and surf, bless ‘em! This place, for instance, wasn’t a bit that way. Not common rocks they were, undermined by waves; but great curved banks like ironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubs and things just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassy calm and clear, and showing you a kind of dirty gray-black shine, with huge flaring red-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and darting things going through it. ”

“ To enumerate, in the broadest way, the variety of conditions under which life exists here, one has only to enumerate creatures living in the deepest abysses of the ocean; high up on the slopes of the Himalayas; swarming in arctic seas; withstanding the hot glare of a tropical sun; living deep in the ground; breeding in the darkest caves; flourishing in desert regions; thriving in water below freezing, and again in water nearly at the boiling point. ”

“ Not a ripple stirred the placid water which glided ever onward, and no breeze stirred the heavy, dark vegetation that lined the river’s bank. It had been one of those days which only the traveller to tropical lands can adequately picture; when all the earth silently droops beneath the unrelenting glare of the lurid orb overhead, and eagerly awaits the coming of night which alone can bring relief. ”

“ But the tropics preserve for us still in all their jungles something of the tangled, thickly-peopled aspect which our planet must have presented for countless ages in all latitudes before the advent of primæval man. ”

“ Yet it is from this starved and dwarfed and impoverished northern area that most of us have formed our views of life, to the total exclusion of the wider, richer, more varied world that calls for our admiration in tropical latitudes.
Insensibly this richness and vividness of nature all around one, on a first visit to the Tropics, sinks into one's mind, and produces profound, though at first unconscious, modifications in one's whole mode of regarding man and his universe. ”

“ And if we include the sea as well, this truth becomes even more strikingly evident: the Tropics are even now the rule of life; the colder regions are but an abnormal and outlying eccentricity of nature. ”

“ ENTRANCE TO RIO HARBOUR.
growth and vegetation, the wild, disordered beauty of nature’s arrangements, the rich-growing wilderness of tropical greenery that springs up everywhere is past belief. When examined closer, the vegetation upon the islands and the mountain slopes is bewildering in its profusion. The colour of all nature, under the tropical sun which shines through the misty haze of the moist heated atmosphere, is full of mystery and charm. The forms that the giant trees assume, with innumerable parasites clinging to them, are indescribable. ”

“ Hence, therefore, the secret rapture in bringing forward tropical life—the shooting of enormous power from darkness, the kindling in the midst of winter and sterility of irrepressible, simultaneous, tropical vegetation—the victorious surmounting of foliage, blossoms, flowers, fruits—burying and concealing the dreary vestiges of desolation. ”

“ To a native, a tropical climate certainly offers fewer pleasures, pursuits, and occupations than a temperate one. The heat in the dry, and the moisture in the rainy season do not admit of the outdoor exercise and amusements, in which the inhabitants of a temperate zone can almost constantly indulge. ”

“ All that intelligent women and children desire to know about the tropics will be found here—the aspects of nature, the rivers and coasts, the great sandy deserts, the gigantic vegetation, and the animal denizens from insects to apes ”

“ Remote alike on one side from the moderating tropical rains, on the other from the equalizing influences of the sea, destitute of high mountain chains and extensive forests to draw down and retain moisture, the whole expanse is virtually a naked plain, basking under a semitropical sun. ”

“ Where the sun shines very brightly, in those parts of the world called the tropics, it is not only very hot, but travellers tell us that there the green of the leaves is darker than we are accustomed to see it, and the colours of the flowers and of the birds' feathers are more brilliant than in our own country, where the sunlight is never so strong. ”

“ Nowhere but under the equatorial skies is it permitted to man to behold at once and in the same sweep of the eye all the stars of both the Northern and Southern heavens; and nowhere but at the tropics does nature combine to produce the various forms of vegetation that are parceled out separately to other climes. ”

“ Combining the effects of all these various causes we are quite able to understand the superiority of the tropical parts of the globe, not only in the abundance and variety of their forms of life, but also as regards the ornamental appendages and vivid coloration which these forms present. ”

“ The whole system of trade-winds, equatorial and tropical calms, with the cloud ring, follow the sun in declination; consequently in its journeys back and forwards it annually travels over 1000 miles of latitude, and regulates the dry and rainy season in the tropical parts of the earth. ”

“ At their homes, five thousand miles away from Europe, the visitor, who knows what it means to struggle with steaming, virgin forests, rank encroaching vegetation, deadly fevers, and the physical and mental inertia engendered by the tropics, will marvel at the courage and energy that have triumphed over such obstacles. ”

“ A tropical scene, luxuriant with tangled overgrowth and impressive in the grandeur of its phenomena, may more decisively arrest our attention than an English landscape with its green corn lands and plenteous homesteads. ”

“ Land and sea breezes along the shores of intertropical countries.—Within the tropics, however, the land and sea breezes are more gentle, and, though the night scenes there are not so suggestive as those just described, yet they are exceedingly delightful and altogether lovely. ”

“ Created, some will say, in those regions and for those regions, because of their special adaptation to them. Yet, since the globe has been inhabited, vast tracts of it have changed their climates from tropical heat to frozen gloom, and again, yielded the thick-ribbed ice to genial suns and fragrant zephyrs. ”

“ Then again there is the marvellous exuberance and novelty of the fauna and flora. And this once more has something better for us all than mere specialist interest. Sugar and ginger grow for all alike. For we must remember that not only do the Tropics represent the vastly greater portion of the world's past: they also represent the vastly greater portion of the world's present. By far the larger part of the land surface of the earth is tropical or subtropical; the temperate and arctic regions make up but a minor and unimportant fraction of the soil of our planet. ”

“ Nature has here gathered together all the influences which can modify the heat of the tropics, the neighbouring mountains being covered in their vast extent by snow; whilst constant breezes refresh the plains throughout the year. ”

“ Even on the earth, we find that tropical regions, where the seasonal changes are comparatively moderate, present many attractions and advantages in contrast with the violent and often destructive vicissitudes of the temperate zones, and nature has shown us, within the pale of our own planet, that she is capable of bringing forth harvests of fruit and grain without the stimulus of alternate frost and sunshine. ”

“ Such are the elements of the scenery, but it is a hopeless attempt to paint the general effect. Learned naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil? Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse can magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into an entangled jungle? ”