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 repeated, both in South America and over many thousand miles in the Eastern tropics, that I am driven to conclude that it represents the general aspect of nature at the equatorial (that is, the most tropical) parts of the tropical regions.
How is it then, that the descriptions of travellers generally give a very different idea?
and where, it may be asked, are the glorious flowers that we know do exist in the tropics?
These questions can be easily answered.

The fine tropical flowering-plants cultivated in our hothouses have been culled from the most varied regions, and therefore give a most erroneous idea of their abundance in any one region.

Many of them are very rare, others extremely local, while a considerable number inhabit the more arid regions of Africa and India, in which tropical vegetation does not exhibit itself in its usual luxuriance.