The Realms of Mystery 273 



a forest, and an impenetrable thicket. An Ameri- 

 can poet, familiar with native wilderness scenery, 

 would have set this paradise-mound for security in 

 the center of a tamarack swamp, and omitted the 

 forest and the wall as superfluous. For the sake of 

 artistic variety, after the manner of Milton a native 

 poet might have intermingled a few cypress trees 

 with his tamaracks, decorated his sloughs with 

 patches of everglade, filled the waters with a mixed 

 population of muskallonge and alligators, and thus 

 have combined the charms of Florida with those of 

 northern Wisconsin, both of them dear to the vaca- 

 tioner's heart. 



Within the encircling wall, on the summit of 

 Milton's mound, were the trees of the Edenic gar- 

 den. His puritanic ideas of propriety prevented 

 him from doing justice" to the scene. Frivolous 

 poets and artists among the cavaliers have improved 

 the opportunity thus offered, so that the resultant 

 popular conception is a mosaic which would have 

 astonished Moses. Thus the Edenic trees lifted 

 their glistening and freighted branches above and 

 extended them over the high protecting wall, prob- 

 ably as a temptation to a frugivorous devil. Their 

 twigs bent low with crimson-streaked apples, which 

 had forgotten neither the colors nor the perfume of 

 their lovely ancestress, the rose. The golden gleam 

 of oranges shone in a foliage of glossy green, and 

 all abroad was the multitudinous sisterhood of the 

 flowers, rising from the humble violet to the lofty 



