74 _ JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 29, 1878. 
residence was in the village of Dali, about halfway between 
Nitrosia and Larnaka, a small white cottage in a grove of 
Orange and Lemon trees. ‘This simple abode became our 
summer resort for several years. It was surrounded by about 
six acres of ground laid out in alleys of Lemon and Orange 
trees and the favourite Caistra, a delicious species of Necta- 
rine. Two noble Walnut trees overshadowed the traditional 
alakah (the oriental or common well), and extended their 
shade to our out-of-door saloon, where we sat the day long 
reading, writing, and chatting, with the grateful breeze at all 
hours coming through the long verdant alleys hung with 
luscious fruit. A small rivulet of the purest water found its 
way from cold sources to the feet of these Walnuts trees, the 
broad leafy branches of which formed the ceiling of our draw- 
ing-room, and being blocked by a pile of rough stones, and 
tumbled, cascade fashion, into a basin scooped out to receive 
it, which served as our wine-cooler and refrigerator. We soon 
adopted the housekeeping system of the peasants and hung 
our plate baskets and table linen among the trees, and spread- 
ing out the thick mats of the country, with a wooden settle 
dining-table, where our Turkish attendants served us with as 
much attention as if at a state dinner, though not with quite 
the same ceremony. A little further on a few Turkish rugs 
and divans formed the reception room of state for the notables 
of Dali, consisting of an old cadi, an illiterate Greek priest, 
and three wealthy Turks of Potamia, who inhabit what was 
once a royal palace and the summer residence of the Lusignan 
queens.’” TI wish I dare write what he says further of the 
charms of this beautiful island, but I must not trespass on 
your time longer.—S, S. 
BOSCOBEL. 
UNDER the above title we have received a pamphlet by Rev. 
Henry G. de Bunsen, M.A., Rector of Donington, and published 
by Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., London. which gives a full 
account of the Royal Oak, Boscobel House, and Whiteladies. 
To all who are interested in this historical old place we com- 
mend the pamphlet as being highly entertaining, as the fol- 
lowing extract will show :— : 
“Boscobel House is the same house, and very much in the same 
condition, as when King Charles II. visited it and took refuge 
there on September 6th, 1651, after the battle of Worcester. It 
would appear that this house was built for the express purpose of 
hiding so-called ‘recusants’—that is, those who, being Roman 
Catholics, refused to take the oath of supremacy. Hence the 
different hiding places where priests and others who were 
members of the Church of Rome could find an asylum from 
persecution, and worship God after their own fashion ; for there 
was an ‘oratory’ in this house. There hangs over the chimney- 
piece of the dining-room an excellent portrait of Charles IT. 
“Adjoining the dining-room there is a small inner room. Up- 
stairs, on the first floor, there are two contiguous bedrooms. A 
secret door in the wainscoting of the first bedroom opens into 
the large chimney stack which runs up from the bottom of the 
house to the top. Through this door you enter into a recess or 
closet haying a trap door in the floor, by means of which formerly 
people could descend to the bottom of the chimney stack, where 
there is a door opening into the garden. It was through this 
perpendicular passage that Charles could pass unobserved from 
the garden into the house and to his hole, or escape from the 
house through the garden to the adjoining wood. In this room, 
just above the staircase and close to the window, there is a loose 
piece of board in the floor, and by lifting up this the hole (33 feet 
by 4% feet wide and 5 feet 2inches deep) may be seen in which the 
king, it is said, passed one night in hiding. A short ladder gives 
the visitor an opportunity of going down into it, and enables him 
to realise in the total darkness of that small place what the king’s 
feelings must have been during the twelve or more hours which 
he spent there in that dark and narrow space. 
_ “THE RoyaL OaKk.—Not far from the garden, in the field ad- 
Joining it, stands the Oak tree which is shown as the Royal Oak, 
surrounded by a substantial iron palisading. Whether this is 
the identical Oak in which Charles II. took refuge during his stay 
at Boscobel or whether it is another tree, which, when the ‘poor 
remains of the Royal Oak (as Mr. Plaxton says), were fenced in 
by a handsome brick wall at the charge of Basil Fitzherbert, Esq., 
stood by its side, or has sprung up since within the same enclosed 
space, is one of the disputed points of the present day; for by 
some authorities the present tree is said to be between 400 and 
500 years old, by others only 160 or 170 years. The author of the 
pamphlet gives all the authorities he has been able to collect, 
which seem to point to the present tree as not being the Oak in 
which Charles IT. took refuge, and then gives the account of a 
living witness, in whose family the tradition has been handed 
down from father to son, that the present tree is the identical 
Royal Oak in which Charles II. was hidden for a time. This 
later testimony is from the present Earl of Bradford, whose 
estate, Weston Park, adjoins the Boscobel property. His lord- 
ship’s account, which is dated ‘Weston Park, May 6th, 1878,’ is 
as follows : ‘The account I have been accustomed to hear all my 
early life from my father about the Boscobel Oak is that after 
the king had been for some days confined to the house at Boscobel 
they could not dissuade him from going out to get fresh air, or 
even from going sometimes further from the house than was 
prudent. On one occasion, when he was out with one or two of 
the Penderils, sounds were heard of horses’ feet not very far off. 
There was not much time for consideration, but his attendants 
thought he might not be able to get back to his hiding place in 
the house quietly, or perhaps thought that even if he did he 
might be discovered there, and recommended him to go into a 
thick part of the wood (it was early in September and the trees 
and underwood still in full leaf), where they helped him up into 
an Oak tree (not a decayed but a growing Oak tree), and implored 
him on no account to come down from the tree until they should 
return to him and tell him all was safe ; they then went as if to 
their work or ordinary occupation. The troopers of the Parlia- 
ment fell in with them, made all sorts of inquiries about the 
house, and its inmates, and its neighbourhood, and ultimately 
-rode on without discovering how near they were to the king. 
The Penderils returned in due time and conducted the king back 
to the house. 
“<The tree was from that time well known to them and doubt- 
less to the owner, Mr. Giffard, and other loyal friends in the 
immediate neighbourhood ; and after the Restoration, which was 
only nine years afterwards, probably numbers of people visited 
the tree, although at that time in a thick coppice with only wood- 
man’s paths or very bad cut roads in the neighbourhood. The 
coppice was subsequently cleared, I apprehend in the time of the 
Fitzherberts, who inherited from (the Giffards, but the tree into 
which the king climbed was left standing, and regarded with 
pride and affection. It has been known from father to son by 
succeeding generations from that time to this. As to its being a 
substitute of any sort, least of all an acorn from the original tree, 
I discard the idea as Indicrous and absurd. I haye known the 
tree myself for half a century ; it looks now very much as it did 
then; and nearly as long ago as that I remember my father 
speaking of the absurdity of the stories then current as to the 
owl flying out of the decayed tree, the present tree being an acorn 
from the old one, and such like. He used to say that he had 
heard his father and, I think, his grandfather, speak in the same 
sense, and the recollection of the tree by his grandfather, my 
great-grandfather, would easily carry him back as far as 1740, 
which would be less than ninety years after the king sat in the 
tree. 
“<T may mention with respect to Oak trees and Oak wood in 
this neighbourhood, that there are trees still alive in this park 
estimated to be 1100 or 1200 years old; there are others reckoned 
to be 600, 500, and 400 years old. Sometimes a smaller tree is 
known to be considerably older than a larger one, and I should 
myself estimate the tree at Boscobel to be 400 or 450 years old ; 
but it would have been equally capable of affording a hiding 
place for a man, in the middle of a thick wood, whether it was 
then some 220 years old, as I estimate it, or whether it were 
100 years younger or older. 
“<T further remember my father speaking of hearing from 
those who went before him that some of the labouring men on 
the estate had pointed out the tree from father to son as the tree 
which the hander-down of the tradition himself remembered as 
the Royal Oak. It is mentioned in some of the histories and 
guide books that great quantities of branches and pieces of the 
Royal Oak had been from time to time broken off and carried 
away by visitors. Ncw it so happens that the appearance of the 
tree at present looks exactly as if a great many of the lower 
branches had been broken or cut off, and no doubt they were ; but 
it must be remembered that visitors were comparatively few 
before the days of railways, excursion trains, and cheap guide 
books, and that since these things were invented, and indeed 
before, the tree has been protected by a wall, and later by a high 
railing.’” 
WORK FOR THE WEEK. 
KITCHEN GARDEN. 
PULL the main crop of Onion as soon as ready, and have them 
thoroughly dried before storing them away, freeing the bulbs of 
roots and adhering soil, but do not peel them, as is too frequently 
the case, or they will not keepsound and heayy. The ground upon 
which the Onions haye been grown will be available for early Cab- 
bages, which as a spring crop is one of the most important, indeed 
it is the most generally valued of spring and early summer yege- 
tables. The ground should be well and deeply dug; if in good 
heart from recent manuring none need be applied, and in yery light 
soils forking over the surface will be sufficient, as in such soils the 
Cabbages go much to leaf, and do not produce hearts so early, nor 
withstand the weather so well, as those in firm soil. We like to 
ae 
