VISITING THE GARDENS 171 



a more cheerful aspect than the sere leaves, " last 

 of their clan," that flutter down to be swept 

 off the glistening grass. And yet those repre- 

 sentatives of another climate, so carefully 

 gathered and preserved, give but a poor idea of 

 the teeming wildernesses that know no change 

 of season but from baking heat to swamping rain, 

 their rank vegetation always glowing under the 

 breath of a fierce spring, while decaying in ever- 

 lasting autumn beneath the richest mantles, and 

 if there be any winter it is the daily frost of 

 paralysing heat. The tropics come more truly 

 before us in descriptions such as one might quote 

 from a score of eloquent travellers, for example 

 this by an American writer, W. H. Hurlbut : 



The wastes of Northern Cuba are jungles of closely 

 twining plants, gay with the myriad hues of strange, 

 magnificent flowers, and overtopped by gigantic trees, 

 whose trunks are not less gay with fantastic embroideries, 

 and from whose Briarean arms hang countless veils and 

 fringes of creeping plants, the names of which cause 

 upon the ear the same indefinite impression of savage 

 magnificence that is made by their blended, indistinguish- 

 able forms upon the eye. All things which to us of the 

 temperate zones are creatures of boxes and bales, creations, 

 we might perhaps as truly say, of the merchant and the 

 grocer, meet us here at every turn, wild and bold in the 

 woods ; the fan-like cacao tree, the spreading vanilla, the 



