It Is Visible
During Clear Weather (And Particularly Sharply Visible In The
Strange Clearness You Get After A Tornado) From
A hundred miles to
seawards, and anything more perfect than Fernando Po when you sight
it, as you occasionally do
From far-away Bonny Bar, in the sunset,
floating like a fairy island made of gold or of amethyst, I cannot
conceive. It is almost equally lovely at close quarters, namely
from the mainland at Victoria, nineteen miles distant. Its moods of
beauty are infinite; for the most part gentle and gorgeous, but I
have seen it silhouetted hard against tornado-clouds, and grandly
grim from the upper regions of its great brother Mungo. And as for
Fernando Po in full moonlight - well there! you had better go and see
it yourself.
The whole island is, or rather I should say was, heavily forested
almost to its peak, with a grand and varied type of forest, very
rich in oil palms and tree-ferns, and having an undergrowth
containing an immense variety and quantity of ferns and mosses.
Sugar-cane also grows wild here, an uncommon thing in West Africa.
The last botanical collection of any importance made from these
forests was that of Herr Mann, and its examination showed that
Abyssinian genera and species predominated, and that many species
similar to those found in the mountains of Mauritius, the Isle de
Bourbon, and Madagascar, were present. The number of European
plants (forty-three genera, twenty-seven species) is strikingly
large, most of the British forms being represented chiefly at the
higher elevations.
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