Take any of the roads that run outward from the city. Say, starting from the Malecon promenade: one passes through stretches of country verdant with groves of graceful bamboos, lofty cocoanut palms, flowing-leaved plantains, and all the wonderful variety and luxuriance of tropical vegetation. Upon it the eye gazes unsated, the leaves and flowers alike being rich and gorgeous in tint and form. Often have I wandered, entranced, up the eddying Pasig, enraptured by the beauty of its scenery and the charm of its coloring, viewing, also from its leafy banks the splendors of sunset skies, grand and glowing to a degree seldom seen in temperate zones. Further inland the mountain scenery never fails to charm, with the varied pictures presented by its forest-growth. A grotesqueness of form is often assumed by the trunks and limbs of tropical trees, and this, with the glossy green foliage, the rich hues and attractive shapes of the blossoms, the novel forms and colors of the fruits, the dash and sparkle of mountain streams, here and there breaking into lovely cascades, all co-ordinated to the eye, compose a spectacle of beauty seldom excelled. Of all those plants, the tall and graceful bamboo ranks among the most beautiful. Everywhere it is found, growing in groups and clusters, scattered with great profusion and variety over hill and plain, along the streams, and around the native huts and villages. At the slightest breeze its fleecy tops and supple branches wave gracefully in the air, giving to the foliage the charm of perpetual motion. In addition, too, to its almost endless variety of uses, it has a mission beyond that of utility,--the mission of beauty, and it may justly be viewed as one of the choicest decorations of the island scenery. The bamboo never grows monotonous. It presents forms and colors of wonderful attractiveness and variety, and so fully dealt with has it been by the brush of the painter and the pen of the poet, that it might well be given a fine-art gallery and a library of its own. In the depths of the forest, and along the streams, beautiful orchids abound; here clustered on stately trees so dense of growth that the sun's rays scarcely penetrate their foliage; there giving life and color to the ground, and of such odd and amazing forms, that one often seems looking rather upon flowering birds and insects than upon plants. Here and there one finds oneself amid the spreading roots of the balete tree (Ficus Indica), from whose broad buttresses rises the mighty trunk, of such girth and even rotundity, that the natives make cart-wheels from sections of it. Down from the boughs, sixty feet in air, hang the rope-like lianes, descending, like nature's cordage, to the ground, while to the limbs cling orchids and other foreign growths, until the entire great tree seems a botanical world in itself.