A PLANTATION BUNGALOW

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lutely harmonious, and as much a part of the place as a bird's nest built in a tree.

William Morris would have liked that little bungalow, for it unconsciously illustrated many of his ideas; perhaps yet more those of Ruskin. It was nothing whatever but a small cheap house, put together out of native materials because planking and iron were dear and difficult to carry; but it had somehow managed to capture just that perfect simplicity and inevitable beauty after which our own "rustic" and "artistic" styles too often toil in vain. The deep vault of the roof, the immense eaves, the warm brown tones of thatch and wall, the steps and verandah rails made out of saplings roughly barked, the windows-shutters of bamboo panelling that swung outward on a hinge and fastened with a bar-all were perfectly fitted to their end and perfectly satisfying to the eye. And

the view!

When one had climbed slowly up the steep corkscrewed path that led to the bungalow-passing between borders of pineapples in full bearing, and close by a trailing mass of granadilla vine heavy with varnished fruit-one stood upon a very small space of artificially levelled ground, just large enough to support the house. In front and at each side the red earth fell suddenly away, so that the tops of the young rubber trees shook their fimbriated leaves almost under the verandah, and the coffee shrubs made a quaint pattern of foreshortened foliage right down to the river below. When one stood upon the

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steps, the scarlet and pink foliaged crotons seemed to stretch their leaves right across a small, bright miniature painting of stream and coffee plantation and green grass and brown-roofed machine houses, into the high blue sky above the belt of uncleared trees. It was as if the house had been built upon a watch

tower.

The plantation was a mere handful of some sixty acres snatched out of the heart of the bush. It lay at the bottom of a cup-shaped hollow, surrounded on all sides but one by perpendicular walls of grass and trees. On that one side the river had made an opening, and through the rent in the dark green tapestry of forest one saw the far-away blue hills. . . .

All through the Astrolabe mountains one comes every now and then, unexpectedly, upon these lovely glimpses of sapphire and hyacinth-coloured ranges, framed in rugged gaps of dark-green forest. . . Pages of unwritten poetry every one, full of fantastic dreams and butterfly fancies that only break in the capturing.

But in actual travel, one does not often make the proper reflections at the proper moment-indeed, it may be taken as a rule that one makes the wrong and un-proper reflections, at any time when fine feelings might seem to be called for. I certainly did not begin poetising about distant views of the Astrolabe on the moment of our arrival at the coffee plantation. That came days later. At the moment, I was too hungry to think seriously of anything except food,

SCENERY AND FIREFLIES

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though only a Burns Philp pack-mule could have been totally insensible to the beauty of the place.

We gave the horses to the boys and went into the house. Most of its furniture was a makeshift, concocted out of local materials, but there was not a bit of it that you could not have put into an "interior," and delighted in if you were a great painter. There were no pictures on the wall, but you could always have one-much better than anything Corot or Turner could have done for you-by simply swinging wide one of the oblong bamboo-plait shutters and instantly painting on the wall a matchless landscape study, four feet by three. The door generally framed in a larger and more brilliant piece of "genre," composed of several rose and madder-red croton shrubs, and one or two of bright daffodil colour, with a butterfly as big as a swallow, and most brilliantly blue, hovering in the sun above the leaves. back door opened upon a picture after the Japanese style -a gigantic arcade of feathery bamboos fluttering with the pretty black and white wings of small birds that came after the drying coffee. And after dark, that you might not miss the beauties of the day, fireflies came and made illuminations of ghost-like green all along the edges of the overhanging thatch, where glass-like drops of the sunset shower hung still and clear, sending out crystal rays in the faint light of the lamps inside the house. And all day and all night the little cool river down below kept on singing.

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If luxury is wanting in the life of a Papuan planter