172 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 269. 



struction, and have, indeed, already been grievously injured. 

 The marble tomb itself is one of the most famous struc- 

 tures in the world, and the gardens surrounding it, which 

 were laid out by the artists who built it, are equally cele- 

 brated, and have been praised by all travelers as charming 

 in themselves and exquisitely appropriate to their architec- 

 tural centre. Nevertheless, certain European vandals, ap- 

 parently calling themselves landscape-gardeners, have 

 ruined their chief feature, cutting down nearly all the 

 great Mimusops, which, with a straight canal between 

 them, formed an avenue from the main gateway of the 

 garden to the tomb. And they have also pronounced 

 " the existing medley of shrubs on either side the canal 

 unsightly," and, says the London Standard, commenting 

 upon the facts given in the Btdktin, " would like some 

 cheerful carpet-bedding and some winding walks." 



The Lieutenant-Governor would probably have been 

 shocked by a suggestion that the Taj itself should be 

 altered to bring it into accord with the taste or tastelessness 

 of modern England. But that its gardens are likewise a 

 work of art probably occurs to comparatively few persons 

 who visit them, even though their admiration for them may- 

 be great. Yet the Mahometan artists who built the Taj 

 knew this ; their garden was as carefully planned as the 

 structure to which it forms a fore-court and indispensable 

 setting. Indeed, structures of the class to which the Taj be- 

 longs, and among which it is the most beautiful, are spe- 

 cifically known as " garden-tombs." Such a place was 

 prepared during the life-time of the potentate whose body 

 it was to enshrine ; while he lived its gardens were used 

 as a pleasure-ground, and after his death as a place of pious 

 pilgrimage. Thus, shorn of its gardens, the Taj would no 

 longer represent either the beliefs and customs of the peo- 

 ple who built it or their artistic -ideals. We may say, in- 

 deed, rather that the Taj is the central feature of these 

 gardens than that they are its environment. And to say 

 this means, of course, that any tampering with them is an 

 artistic crime. Probably they have fallen from their original 

 estate of beauty in many ways ; but it seems that the most 

 ignorant gardener or official should feel that, if anything is 

 done to them, it must be in the way of restoring them to 

 their pristine estate — not of introducing alien elements, 

 whether beautiful or ugly in themselves. Certainly the 

 English critics of Indian mal-administration are right when 

 they say that plants not native to the soil should be kept 

 away from them. In a modern garden, whether in Eng- 

 land or in India, exotics may be desirable ; but in an 

 ancient garden, wrought by men who could not use foreign 

 material because they had small means of getting it, exotics 

 are in every respect out of place. The imported Cycads 

 and Eucalypti, which are now spoken of as probable sub- 

 stitutes for the trees which have been destroyed, would be 

 as inappropriate in the gardens of the Taj as a cast of the 

 Venus of Milo beneath its dome. And even the Venus of 

 Milo would seem offensive to a sensitive eye in a place 

 where her aesthetic type and the associations it excites 

 would be out of harmony with everything around her. 



An Avenue of Elms. 



ONE of the characteristic features of New England land- 

 scape appears in the illustration on page 175, repre- 

 senting an avenue shaded by American Elms, with their 

 branches forming a Gothic arch over tlie path beneath. From 

 its graceful habit of growth no tree is better adapted for this 

 purpose. While affording sufficient shade, it still leaves a 

 wide and unobstructed view along the way it shadows, and pro- 

 duces at all seasons an architectural effect of permanent 

 beauty by the arched interlacingsof the great bending boughs. 

 In all the older villages of New England these rows of Elms 

 glorify the village street and strike ttie stranger as singularly 

 beautiful. Sometimes there is a doable row, with a wide, 

 grassed space between, making even a more imposing and 

 cathedral-like effect, as of a vast nave flanked by columns sup- 

 porting a groined and vaulted roof. The tender wreathings 

 of small branches and leaves about the massive trunks 

 still further suggest the fanciful carvings of the Gothic 



architect, and indicate the source that inspired his fertile 

 fancy. Nothing can be more pleasing and playful than the 

 way Nature fantastically weaves about the rugged and shaggy 

 stems this graceful garniture of fluttering leaves and cluster- 

 ing twigs, which give the last touch of perfection to the beau- 

 tiful picture. The openness of the foliage permits glimpses 

 of the sky, while flecks of sunsliine, straying through the 

 leaves, encourage the growth of grass and flowers up to the 

 roots of the trees. In the picture the nodding heads of Dan- 

 delions gone to seed are seen, and along the pathway the sun- 

 light emphasizes the dancing shadows of the lightly moving 

 leaves above. 



An avenue of Elms is never sombre, however cool and 

 shadowy it may be. It does not shut out the light and air, but 

 merely tempers them. In winter the intricate tracery of twigs 

 is revealed and is of itself a beautiful sight. The massive shaft 

 bursts into a sheaf of springing boughs, which again break 

 into a shower of branches, with a spray of twigs. The tree 

 suggests a fountain in its manner of growth, particularly when 

 swathed and dripping with snow or ice, and the aspect of one 

 of these aisles on a glittering, frosty morning is of fantastic 

 loveliness. 



Who is there of New England birth to whom the Elm- 

 shaded way is not a vivid memory ? As the wanderer returns 

 to his home the first sight of the village street, with its leafy 

 canopy, thrills him with its familiar charm. However simple 

 the dwellings that border it, the sight of that accustomed way 

 is beautiful, and dear the roof-tree for which he has longed 

 during his pilgrimage, and to it he returns with a deep and 

 satisfied sense of unchanged beauty. Experience and travel 

 dwarf many things to the mature eye, so that a home-coming, 

 after a far journey, is not without its shadow of disappoint- 

 ment; but, wherever one may roam, whatever visions may 

 have satiated his eye, the sight of the Elm-shaded paths of 

 New England can never disappoint one of her returning chil- 

 dren. 



Notes of Mexican Travel. — I. 



IN SAN LUIS -POTOSI. 

 ^FH ROUGH eight successive summers spent in Old Mexico, 

 ^ extensively traveling over her table-lands and lowlands, 

 diligently exploring the vegetation of her plains and moun- 

 tains, her desert-regions and her lake-regions, her rich valleys 

 and her high mountain-peaks, her tropical forests and her sub- 

 alpine forests, her frightful box canons and her grand river 

 barrancas full of tropical growths, the charm of those regions 

 has grown upon me, the fascination of the work has bound 

 me more and more. There is exhilaration in the clear air of 

 the Mexican table-lands ; there is delight in living under those 

 clear tropical skies. In its outline on the map a cornucopia, 

 Mexico is a veritable horn of plenty to many. To the sight- 

 seer it is full of wonderful and inexhaustible interest. As he 

 passes from state to state the scene is constantly shifting. The 

 phases assumed by nature vary in the extreme, and the people 

 and their dwellings show wide differences. To the sportsman 

 it offers hunting-grounds illimitable ; to the invalid or the aged 

 it furnishes a climate almost perfect, where extremes of tem- 

 perature are unknown, where life may be prolonged in com- 

 fort ; to the enterprise of the age it offers virgin fields for de- 

 velopment ; to the naturalist rich fields for exploration, not to 

 be exhausted till after long years of patient toil. 



As our continent narrows in its southward trend, its surface 

 rises from the plains of Texas and New Mexico into the cooler 

 strata of the upper air. Hence the plains of the Mexican 

 plateau are from 5,000 to 8,000 feet over sea-level. Every- 

 where above these, at irregular intervals, rise mountain- 

 chams, which are usually 3.000 to 5,000 feet higher, and whose 

 direction is generally that of the continent, from north-west to 

 south-east. In northern Mexico these seldom exceed 10,000 

 feet elevation, but in the south they culminate in several peaks 

 from 15,000 to nearly 18,000 feet high. It is only in the north 

 that snows may be expected on the mountains during two or 

 three winter months, and where the intervening plains may be 

 whitened for a day or two at a time. To the south of the cen- 

 tral states a snowfall is rare and frosts are light, except at the 

 greater heights. Thus lifted above the heat of the tropics, 

 though lying under the tropic, and by its southerly situation 

 secluded from boreal cold, the plateau of south Mexico pos- 

 sesses an equable climate, where summer, with its sweltering 

 heats, and winter, with its bitter cold, are eliminated from the 

 cycle of the seasons, till only spring-time and autumn seem to 

 remain. Spring begins with the rains in May or June; and, 

 while the rains (daily thunder-storms occurring in the after- 

 noon) continue, the course of vegetation goes on with a rush, 

 as with us in June. With the closing of the rainy season in 



