“The Heart of the Andes”/Part 11

We come now to the right-hand foreground. Three specific typical trees project over the basin, — a trio of comrades sustaining each other in their vanguard station, — unmistakable individuals, evidently not brothers. I have no names for these pioneers. Probably no arborist, complacent with offensive armor of Latin nomenclature, has penetrated these solitudes at the Heart of the Andes. But no ungainly polysyllable could identify these trees more completely than do their distinctive qualities as here given. Midmost stands the stalwart masculine tree, oak-like in its muscular ramification, and upholding a compact crown of plentiful leafage. Light flashes everywhere in among its leaves, catches them as they turn and gilds them, slants across them sheenily, pierces athwart their masses into the dim hollows and fills them with gleams, stands at openings of cavernous recesses in the dense umbrage and reveals their mysterious obscurity. Twigs and sprays bare of foliage, and showing that the crumbling away of soil beneath is telling upon the more delicate members of the tree, strike forth and crinkle as they clutch sunlight. And yet there is no frivolous minuteness of detail in this masterly tree, leader of the trio, and its fellows; although every leaf and spray and twig seem to be there, alive and animate.. The Artist has here, as everywhere, produced his effect by the peremptory facts of form and color, without weakening precision by attempts to convey ambiguous semblances. Hence his tree is a round salient mass, but not a cactus-like excrescence, and a maze of leafage without being a blur or a mop. In signal contrast to this sturdy, erect outstander is the tree with depending branches and delicate silvery-green foliage, — a tree of more elegance of figure and a mimosa-like sensitiveness of leaves, but vigorous and not at all shrinking from the forward and critical position which it holds. The third tree, the Lepidus of this triumvirate, keeps somewhat in the shady background, and leans rather toward the thicket, being of less notable guise and garb. His stiff, scanty leafage and channelled bark are entirely characteristic of the region. Each of these trees is not only a type in its form and foliage, but also, though less conspicuously, of the garden of smaller growth which, feeding on air, dwells on its trunk. Clustering luxuriance of boweriness belongs to the sheltered recesses, and does not inundate these foremost types. But each is a hanging garden, an upright parterre raising up to sunshine its peculiar little world of warm-blooded mosses, lichens, and tree-plants, sparkling over its trunk like an alighting of butterflies. The tropical sun loads his giants with his pigmies. Observe the rich contrast of the mound of vivid moss with the red trunk of the outermost tree. Each of these trees wears a splendid epiderm, but neither has had the leprosy, — an unpleasant malady which frequently attacks foregrounds. Mr. Church’s trees are too freshly alive, and show that they digest air and water too healthily to suffer with any cutaneous disease. A somewhat formal personage the leader of the pioneer trio may be, but his stiff dignity is invaluable in this sybaritic covert, and to the picture, as giving determined perpendicular lines after so much level and slope. Behind this picturesque group, two companions of theirs come striding out of the dusky woodland, each a standard-bearer of a new, unknown clan, and wearing new insignia of rank.

Let us enter this delightsome pleasaunce whence they come. Sunshine streams in with us a little way, and leaves us for a spot it loves among the choirs of blossoms. So we wander on into ambrosial darkness. And over us the trailers stream with innumerable tendrils; — our firmament is a gentle tempest of gold and green, — a canopy of showering clouds of verdure, — a rain of wreaths and garlands. A cascade of bowery intricacy shoots down inexhaustible, dashing into flowers at its foot, and pouring a slide of sparkling greenery among the ferns toward the pool. The cope of forest overhead flings itself down to mingle with the floral coppices, and lianas bind the bright shower to ther bright spray below. Just where the bosk thickens, a tree fern stands like a plume, waving us inward. Lesser ferns carpet the vista, making a deeper, richer greensward than Northern climates know; but this one is the pride of its race. Its prim gracefulness gains the charm of “sweet neglect” by the droop of its ripened and withered fronds, and by the delicate creepers which climb upon the scales of its past leafage. No plant in the upland tropical woods is more elegant than the tree fern. It surpasses even the palm in refinement of foliage, and its plumes become the substitute for palms in the elevated zones where the latter would chill and wither. Behind this fair, bending Oread, under overarching darkness, extends the gloaming mystery of the Montaña.

This vista of forest conducts us inward to a region as doubtful and dim as the height of the Cordillera above, and contrasts with the open road on the left, guiding us up to the Dome. And when we have had enough of dreamy wandering deep in these bowers of Elysium, we may come forth, and pluck flowers in the wondrous garden at the margin of the picture, — a maze of leaves and blossoms as intricate as the maze of vine-drapery above, or the maze of shower and rainbow at the mountain-top. The Artist has come with his hands full of tribute to Flora, and flung exuberant beauty into this sunny, sheltered spot, where warm dewy airs, stealing up the river, bring summer higher than its wont. Liberal as is the beauty here, there is no cramming, — no outlandish forcing of all possible and many impossible objects into an artificial clustering. Here there is simplicity in complexity, — order in bewilderment. Nor is this spot a glare of metallic lustres, and all aflame with hot splendors, or incarnadined with crimson hues. Peaceful colors govern here as everywhere in this home of peace. The feathery blue cymes of a plant which the Indians name “yatcièl” recall the quiet blues of the sky. White spires mingle with the blues. Below, the convolvulus strews its rosy-purple disks over mantling vines. A scarlet passion-flower, the “caruba,” sparkles upon a garland of its own. Reedy grasses start up erect. And lowest, broad juicy leaves, gilded upon their edges with the all-pervading sunshine, grow full and succulent with moisture from the stream.

A perfect garden, — crowded with infinite delicacy and refinement of leaf and flower, — where there is no spot that is not blossom, or leafage, or dim recess where faded petals may lie, — where all seems so fair with these cloud-like creatures of white, these wreaths of azure bloom, and stars of scarlet, that this gentler beauty of earth almost wins us to forget the grander beauty we have known on the summits far away. And as we turn away from the glade, with a boon of sweet flowers in our memory, the last foremost objects that linger with us are two brilliant white blossoms, dashed with the same light which flashes in the cataract, and burns sublimely in the far beacon, the giant dome of snow.

The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, beloved of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glories, cast by the sprays and branches of a dead bush. And notice how these shadows have light in them, as shadows should, and are not dark like the unillumined hollows beneath the rocks and shrubbery. An admirably defined rock, part warm color, part purple shadow, part hidden by the caruba vines, leans against the bank, and aids in supporting it.

In the middle of the lower foreground a large-leaved tree, bristling with epiphytes, stands out in vigorous perspective. The water below is half seen through its branches, and gains by an effect of partial concealment and a passing away out of the picture behind a leafy screen.