Mexico -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
When I die my Heaven will be like this. It will be warm and sunny, full
of butterflies, flowers and water falling, water rushing and water
pools that trickle. How I love water and the sound of it! I have found
a little secluded place that I come to all alone. When I left the camp,
crossing the river and the rapids, I walked half a mile and then I
came to a wide shallow rivulet. Amidstream there is a tree and a big
shady rock. I reach it by stepping stones. It is my castle. The stream
tumbles from one pool into a lower one. The water is clear as crystal.
I can see the shoal of big trout as they swim together against the
current. There seems to be a myriad butterflies of every description.
They hover quite near me, as though they had never seen a human, and so
were unafraid. There is an irridescent one of sapphire blue as big as a
bat. It is luminous in the sunlight, it dances around me tantalizingly
like some great living jewel that I may not touch. I have heard of
golden butterflies, but I thought it was an exaggeration of speech, but
I have found one here. It settled on my foot and opened wide its wings,
they seemed to have been cut out of gold tinsel and sewn together
with an orange thread. On the branches of the tree over my head there
are clumps of white orchids, and a pair of wild green parrots shriek
noisily in their flight. I have loved spring days in England, with
their mist of bluebells in the woods, and brimstone butterflies the
color of the primroses, but this seasonless country, that has never
known frost, this Heaven of eternal Sunshine and riot of beauty, is
almost too wonderful to enjoy. It is as if one had picked all the best
things from every corner of the Earth and put them here, and made a
composition picture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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