At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies by Charles Kingsley

I have seen them at last. I have been at last in the High Woods, as the primeval forest is called here; and they are not less, but more, wonderful than I had imagined them. But they must wait awhile; for in reaching them, though they were only ten miles off, I passed through scenes so various, and so characteristic of the Tropics, that I cannot do better than sketch them one by one.

I drove out in the darkness of the dawn, under the bamboos, and Bauhinias, and palms which shade the road between the Botanic Gardens and the savannah, toward Port of Spain. The frogs and cicalas had nearly finished their nightly music. The fireflies had been in bed since midnight. The air was heavy with the fragrance of the Bauhinias, and after I passed the great Australian Blue-gum which overhangs the road, and the Wallaba-tree, {120a} with its thin curved pods dangling from innumerable bootlaces six feet long, almost too heavy with the fragrance of the 'white Ixora. ' {120b} A flush of rose was rising above the eastern mountains, and it was just light enough to see overhead the great flowers of the 'Bois chataigne,' {120c} among its horse-chestnut-like leaves; red flowers as big as a child's two hands, with petals as long as its fingers.