II.
READER, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse
of that tropic world,—tales of whose beauty charmed your
childhood, and made stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the
sea which pulls at the heart of a boy,—one who had longed like
you, and who, chance-led, beheld at last the fulfilment of the
wish, can swear to you that the magnificence of the reality far
excels the imagining. Those who know only the lands in which all
processes for the satisfaction of human wants have been perfected
under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can little guess the
witchery of that Nature
ruling the zones of color and of light.
Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and
young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory
may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And
the prediction of a paradise to come,—a phantom realm of rest
and perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum of the
remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled from his
heritage,—a dream born of the great nostalgia of races migrating
to people the pallid North? …
… But with the realization of the hope to know this magical
Nature you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived
ideal otherwise than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the
torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary,
your anticipations are likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had
pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer as a physical
delight,—something like an indefinite prolongation of the
fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had
heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a
swarming of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe
you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of
climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not
difficult to bear. By that enervation to which all white
dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a
pleasant languor,—a painless disinclination to effort in a
country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,—a
soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the
shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith,
that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and
therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated
and strengthened by tropical influences:—you suppose that
enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence
which will leave the brain free to think with lucidity, or to revel in
romantic dreams.
