Guyana -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Guyana
The road wound over the top of the ridge and from its summit we looked
down on the other half of the island. No house or trace of cultivation
was visible and the beauty of the view was beyond adequate description.
Rolling, comfortably undulating hills were below us, and in front a
taller, rounded one like the head of some wearied tropical giant. Beyond
this, a long curved arm of richest green had been stretched carelessly
out into the sea, inclosing a bay, which from our height, looked like a
small pool, but such a pool as would grace a Dunsany tale. It was
limpid, its surface like glass and of the most exquisite turquoise. Its
inner rim was of pure white sand, a winding line bounding turquoise
water and the rich, dark green of the sloping land in a flattened figure
three. I never knew before that turquoise had a hundred tints and
shades, but here the film nearest the sand was unbelievably pale and
translucent, then a deeper sheen overlaid the surface, while the center
of the pool was shaded with the indescribable pigment of sheer depth. In
a great frame of shifting emerald and cobalt, set a shining blue wing of
a morpho butterfly and you can visualize this wonder scene.
Outside the encircling green arm, the water of ocean glowed ultramarine
in the slanting sunlight, and stretched on and on to the curving horizon
of Atlantis. The scene seemed the essence of peace, and to the casual
glance hardly a cloud moved. I sat for a long time and let every part
of my retina absorb the glory of colors. Soon motion and life became
apparent. Shadows shifted softly across the surface, bringing hues of
delicate purplish blue, memory tints of open ocean, and against these
darkened tones a thousand specks of white glowed and inter-weaved like a
maze of motes in a shaft of sunlight. In imagination we could enlarge
them to a swarm of silvery bees, and then my glasses resolved them into
gannets--great sea birds with wings six feet from tip to tip--an
astounding hint of the actual distance and depth below me of this
pool-like bay. An hour later the sunlight left the turquoise surface,
and its blueness darkened and strengthened and became opaque, although
it was a long time before sunset, and the ocean beyond kept all its
brilliance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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