200 MR. whampoa's garden. 



villages, like those of Penaiig, are built upon piles 

 driven into the swamp. The climate is salubrious, and 

 very even throughout the year, favouring a rich and 

 beautiful vegetation, and the entire island is flat, w^ith 

 only slight undulations. The town is large and inter- 

 sected with canals and bridges, else oftering little 

 variety from other places in the tropics. 



Mr. Whampoa, a rich Chinese merchant, has a large 

 property in the neighbourhood, its gardens laid out 

 after the fashion of the country of his birth, trim 

 hedges, box and myrtle trained and clipped to shapes 

 of animals, junks, etc., tiny watercourses, and miniature 

 bridges. A little stream, crowded with gold fish, was 

 made to pass under the central portion of his mansion, 

 which formed an open gallery, and was supported by a 

 lofty bridge, admitting of a boat passing underneath. 

 A little farther on the water collected in a pond, or 

 rather, — begging Mr. Whampoa's pardon, — into a 

 diminutive lake, full of water-lilies, the most beautiful 

 of them the Victoria regia; its flowers, when expanded, 

 are a foot and more across, and its round salver-shaped 

 leaves vary from four to six feet in diameter with 

 a raised rim of two or three inches. The "piggery," 

 however, is quite the feature of the establishment, and 

 one the owner is not a little proud of There are some 

 enormous beasts, — I measured one fully seven feet from 



