But The
Assumption On Which The Argument Is Founded Is Totally False, So
That Even If The Reasoning Were Valid,
We need not be afraid of
outraging nature, by decorating our houses and our persons with
all those gay hues
Which are so lavishly spread over our fields
and mountains, our hedges, woods, and meadows.
It is very easy to see what has led to this erroneous view of the
nature of tropical vegetation. In our hothouses and at our
flower-shows we gather together the finest flowering plants from
the most distant regions of the earth, and exhibit them in a
proximity to each other which never occurs in nature. A hundred
distinct plants, all with bright, or strange, or gorgeous
flowers, make a wonderful show when brought together; but perhaps
no two of these plants could ever be seen together in a state of
nature, each inhabiting a distant region or a different station.
Again, all moderately warm extra-European countries are mixed up
with the tropics in general estimation, and a vague idea is
formed that whatever is preeminently beautiful must come from the
hottest parts of the earth. But the fact is quite the contrary.
Rhododendrons and azaleas are plants of temperate regions, the
grandest lilies are from temperate Japan, and a large proportion
of our most showy flowering plants are natives of the Himalayas,
of the Cape, of the United States, of Chili, or of China and
Japan, all temperate regions. True, there are a great number of
grand and gorgeous flowers in the tropics, but the proportion
they bear to the mass of the vegetation is exceedingly small; so
that what appears an anomaly is nevertheless a fact, and the
effect of flowers on the general aspect of nature is far less in
the equatorial than in the temperate regions of the earth.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
NEW GUINEA. - DOREY,
(MARCH TO JULY 1858.)
AFTER my return from Gilolo to Ternate, in March 1858, I made
arrangements for my long-wished-for voyage to the mainland of New
Guinea, where I anticipated that my collections would surpass
those which I had formed at the Aru Islands. The poverty of
Ternate in articles used by Europeans was shown, by my searching
in vain through all the stores for such common things as flour,
metal spoons, wide-mouthed phials, beeswax, a penknife, and a
stone or metal pestle and mortar. I took with me four servants:
my head man Ali, and a Ternate lad named Jumaat (Friday), to
shoot; Lahagi, a steady middle-aged man, to cut timber and assist
me in insect-collecting; and Loisa, a Javanese cook. As I knew I
should have to build a house at Dorey, where I was going, I took
with me eighty cadjans, or waterproof mats, made of pandanus
leaves, to cover over my baggage on first landing, and to help to
roof my house afterwards.
We started on the 25th of March in the schooner Hester Helena,
belonging to my friend Mr. Duivenboden, and bound on a trading
voyage along the north coast of New Guinea.
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