Immortelles-
In almost every country that you visit (unless it is quite primeval, like the forests of Brazil) many of the trees that you most admire, and perhaps regard as most characteristic, prove on inquiry to be exotic. The wattles, known in Europe as mimosa, that adorn the shores of Southern France are one example. The " immortelles " that are the crowning glory of Trinidad are another. They are extravagantly brilliant when the season is favourable, and it happened that when I landed in Trinidad—that rich and lovely island—the season had proved the best for a generation. The only comparison I can suggest is of a sunset. When you looked at a group against a lilac sky they seemed to suffuse the sky itself with ruddy colours. But it was a sunset that also spilt its colours on the ground. The rough road, where flanked by immortelles, becomes brighter than the bed beneath a virginia creeper in autumn, so thickly do the red petals lie. Even the almond groves of Majorca, with the crops of peas underneath them, are of a less salient brilliance than these groves of immortelles roofing a plantation of the smaller cocoa trees whose blossoms and beans are borne not on the boughs or twigs but on the trunks.
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