So steep is the Pacific slope that,
standing on the top of the ridge and looking down, you catch mosaic
gleams of the sea among the brown and grey tree-trunks. But for the
prodigality of the vegetation, one slide might take you from the cool
mountain-top to the cooler sea. The highest peak, which presents a
buttressed face to the north, and overlooks our peaceful bay, is crowned
with a forest of bloodwoods, upon which the jungle steadily encroaches.
The swaying fronds of aspiring palms, adorned in due season with masses
of straw-coloured inflorescence, to be succeeded by loose bunches of red,
bead-like berries, shoot out from the pall of leafage. In the gloomy
gullies are slender-shafted palms and tree-ferns, while ferns and mosses
cover the soil with living tapestry, and strange, snake-like epiphytes
cling in sinuous curves to the larger trees. The trail of the lawyer vine
(CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling
with incurved hooks, is over it all. Huge cables of vines trail from tree
to tree, hanging in loops and knots and festoons, the largest (ENTADA
SCANDENS) bearing pods 4 feet long and 4 inches broad, containing a dozen
or so brown hard beans used for match-boxes.
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