280 CITY PARKS. 



Then the road strikes the Lake, looking on one side into 

 a pool of rock-bordered water, with a spanning stone bridge 

 at 77th Street ; on the other side, over a broad view 

 of lovely lake surface. This view is bordered with the 

 sweeping branches of the wooded shores of the Ramble, and 

 emphasized in the distance by a sandy beach and a point of 

 foliage crowned by two great Lonibardy poplars. There is 

 a stone seat on the bridge close to 77th Street, where 

 one can look over the shining surface of the Lake to 

 the distant Lombardy poplars and possibly conclude that 

 this is the most charming bit of landscape in the park. 



At this point, however, the visitor is tempted away 

 from the Drive into the Ramble, which must be considered 

 as an episode needing special description. This quaint bit 

 of wild-wood is chiefly made ground, and yet not in the 

 least artificial-looking, for it is contrived quite simply out 

 of the original simple and natural conditions, intricate as 

 its paths and undulations may appear. It is identical in 

 scale with what might readily be an ordinaiy country -place 

 with the Belvidere as the mansion. 



In front of the mansion is a fine central grass plat, 

 and beyond wind paths up and down and across a stream, 

 along the lake shore, or over great masses of rock down 

 into a veritable gloomy cave. There are fine weeping 

 beeches, azaleas, rhododendrons and plenty of perennial 

 plants and shrubs blooming throughout the season. It is, 

 in a word, a picturesque wild-wood nook, where one is hid- 

 den from and entirely forgets the city. An experiment like 

 this might be hazardous, if the boundaries of the Ramble 

 were not clearly defined by nature, because it does not 



