Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... are all alike remarkable for having a most insignificant calyx, and being almost entirely composed of a great bunch of silky stamens, which fall in showers on the ground below. The most attractive of these is the Malay apple, which bears tufts of crimson blossom, especially attractive to certain lovely scarlet and green parrots with purple heads, and which in due season bears a very juicy though insipid crimson or white fruit. C. F. Gordon-cumming.--At Home in Fiji. Blackwood. "To state that the scenic, beauties of the archipelago are charming conveys no adequate conception to the mind. Beauty of the most sublime grande ur is here to be seen; on the hills and mountain faces, in the narrow glens and gorges, along the windings of the rivers, in the rapid foaming streams, by the silent lakes and marshes, and on the widespread plains and valleys--there the eager eye beholds the magnificence of nature, in the tints and shades of verdure and the richly-coloured foliage of the giants of the forest and the creeping vines and leaves; while the ocean, with its beauties, 'mid the submarine structures, and mighty foaming billows, as they crash against the faces of the ponderous Barrier Reef, impresses the spectator as amazingly he gazes on the surface of the water, over a scene of majestic beauty, wild and terrible at times. In the different countries through which I have wandered I have seen nothing to surpass the natural loveliness of the coral-girt isles of Viti."---J. P. Thomson.--Proceedings and Transactions of the Queensland Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, vol. ix. 1893-94. A most exquisite description of the colouring of the Pacific Ocean olf the Fiji group and of the wonders of a coral reef is given by Miss...