Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/175

Rh have retired to their tents in the universal post-meridian trance. As to the eighteen or nineteen thousand negroes of the town, it would he superfluous to say that, no special persuasion or inducement of local custom is needed to induce them to sleep either at this or any other hour of the day.

Follow then the leader, or rather the whole band. If, however, you still prefer to prove yourself a stranger by using your eyes for sight-seeing at a time when every genuine Paramariban has closed his for sleep, the open parade-ground will afford you while crossing it an excellent opportunity for experimental appreciation of the intensity of the solar rays, lat. 5º 40m. north. This done, you may, or rather you certainly will, take speedy refuge under the noble overarching tamarind alley that leads up from the parade-ground to the front of Government House, and passing through the cool and lofty hall of the building, left open, West-India fashion, to every corner, make your way into the garden, or rather park, that lies behind. It is probable that the peccaries, tapirs, monkeys, deer, and the other animal beauties or monstrosities, collected the most of them by his Excellency, the present governor, and domiciled in ample wire enclosures between the flower-beds, will, in their quality of natives, be fast asleep; and if the quaint, noisy, screaming birds, the tamed representatives of Guiana ornithology, collected here, are asleep also, you may admire their plumage without needing to regret the muteness of their "most sweet voices." But the humming-birds and butterflies are wide awake, and, unalarmed your approach, will continue to busy themselves among flowers such as Van Elst himself never painted, nor Spenser sang. Here is a crimson passion-flower, there a pink-streaked lily; golden clusters hang from one plant, spikes of dazzling blue rise from another; — the humming-birds themselves are only distinguishable from them, as they dart through, by the metallic lustre, not by the vividness or variety of their colours. As to the butterflies, who is the greatest admirer of the race? Let him see the butterflies of Surinam, and — die! Beyond this, the flower-garden merges in the park — a Guiana park of Guiana trees. Their names and qualities it is easy to look out in books, or recapitulate from memory; but how to describe them as they are? Mr. Ruskin says that the tree-designer begins by finding his work difficult, and ends by finding it impossible; and I say the same of tree-describer, at any rate here. And yet, luxuriant as in the Government House garden, I am not sure if any of its beauties charmed me so much as the exquisite betel-nut avenue, each palm averaging fifty feet in height, and each equally perfect in form and colour, that adorns the central space enclosed by the spacious buildings of the public hospital at the farther end of the town. Leave all these, if you can, and — which will be better still — enter instead the cool vaulted brick hall, of genuine Dutch burgher build, that serves partly as an entry to the public law offices and courts, partly as a depository for whatever colonial records have escaped the destructive fires of '21 and '32. Hence you may mount, but leisurely, in compassion for your guide if not for yourself, the central tower, till you reach the lantern-like construction that at a height of a hundred feet crowns the summit of the town hall. There stand, and look down far and wide over the most fertile plain that ever alluvial deposit formed in the new world, or the old either. On every side extends a green tree-grown level as far as the eye can reach, its surface just high enough raised above water-mark to escape becoming a swamp, yet nowhere too high for easy irrigation; capriciously marked at frequent intervals by shining silver dashes, that indicate sometimes the winding of rivers broad and deep, sometimes the more regular lines of canals, of creeks, and of all the innumerable waterways which in this region supply the want of roads, and give access to every district by that lies between the northern sea and the equatorial watershed, far beyond the limits of European enterprise, all too narrow as yet. Long years must pass before the children of Surinam have cause to complain that the "place is too strait for them" — long before the cultivation that now forms an emerald ring of exceptional brightness round the city, and reaches out in radiating lines and interrupted patches along the courses of the giant rivers, has filled up the entire land circle visible from the tower of Paramaribo alone.

The day has declined from heat to heat, and at last the tall trees begin to intercept the slant sun-rays; when, behold! with one consent, Paramaribo, high and low, awakes, shakes itself, puts on its clothes, ragged or gay, and comes out to open air and life. The chief place of resort is, of Course, the parade-ground, the where, according to established custom, a Dutch or creole military band performs 