Such gorges, chasms, and precipices here abound, as I have nowhere seen
in the Archipelago. A sloping surface is scarcely anywhere to be found,
huge walls and rugged masses of rock terminating all the mountains
and enclosing the valleys. In many parts there are vertical or even
overhanging precipices five or six hundred feet high, yet completely
clothed with a tapestry of vegetation. Ferns, Pandanaceae, shrubs,
creepers, and even forest trees, are mingled in an evergreen network,
through the interstices of which appears the white limestone rock or
the dark holes and chasms with which it abounds. These precipices
are enabled to sustain such an amount of vegetation by their peculiar
structure. Their surfaces are very irregular, broken into holes and
fissures, with ledges overhanging the mouths of gloomy caverns; but from
each projecting part have descended stalactites, often forming a wild
gothic tracery over the caves and receding hollows, and affording an
admirable support to the roots of the shrubs, trees, and creepers, which
luxuriate in the warm pure atmosphere and the gentle moisture which
constantly exudes from the rocks. In places where the precipice offers
smooth surfaces of solid rock, it remains quite bare, or only stained
with lichens, and dotted with clumps of ferns that grow on the small
ledges and in the minutest crevices.
The reader who is familiar with tropical nature only through the medium
of books and botanical gardens will picture to himself in such a spot
many other natural beauties. He will think that I have unaccountably
forgotten to mention the brilliant flowers, which, in gorgeous masses of
crimson, gold or azure, must spangle these verdant precipices, hang over
the cascade, and adorn the margin of the mountain stream. But what is
the reality? In vain did I gaze over these vast walls of verdure, among
the pendant creepers and bushy shrubs, all around the cascade on the
river's bank, or in the deep caverns and gloomy fissures--not one single
spot of bright colour could be seen, not one single tree or bush or
creeper bore a flower sufficiently conspicuous to form an object in
the landscape. In every direction the eye rested on green foliage and
mottled rock. There was infinite variety in the colour and aspect of
the foliage; there was grandeur in the rocky masses and in the exuberant
luxuriance of the vegetation; but there was no brilliancy of colour,
none of those bright flowers and gorgeous masses of blossom so generally
considered to be everywhere present in the tropics. I have here given an
accurate sketch of a luxuriant tropical scene as noted down on the spot,
and its general characteristics as regards colour have been so often
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