80 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA 



precipice as discarded plants, where they have 

 taken root and clung to life in some cranny 

 between the stones. Within the grounds a rocky 

 bank is covered with great stretches of the red 

 Aloe arbor escens, blue agapanthus and vast clumps 

 of belladonnas, all growing in careless profusion. 

 The garden has long been noted for its orchid- 

 houses, where plants have been brought from all 

 parts of the world, and also for the pine-houses, 

 from which hundreds of pines are cut annually. 

 Showing that, though at a comparatively high 

 altitude, the garden is sheltered and warm, two 

 natives of Burmah, the giant honeysuckle, which 

 in May is wreathed with its strong-scented trumpets 

 and the Burmese rose, both flourish, and in a few 

 years have made astonishingly rapid growth. 



The road to the Little Curral leads past a grove 

 of Mimosa cornuta which is smothered with its 

 fluffy balls of yellow blossoms in early spring to 

 the valley itself. Every fresh turn of the steep 

 zigzag path opens out fresh views, and at every step 

 a new fern or little wild-flower is to be seen 

 nestling between the damp mossy stones. Down 

 near the bed of the river, which tumbles over great 

 boulders in a roaring torrent after heavy autumn or 

 winter rains, a large colony of arum lilies begin to 



