January 8, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



15 



between the rivers as such there can be no comparison. The 

 Rhine seems a poor stream contrasted with this wide, arrowy 

 Rhone, so full that it has to be dyked in here and there with 

 masonry, and that even in midsummer the water rushes up 

 close to the top of the embankment ; so swift in its fullness that 

 the boat's speed is most exciting, and when we pass beneath a 

 bridge there is a roar like that of a cataract ; the most charm- 

 ing color, too — a sort of pale greenish gray that turns all sorts of 

 tints with the varying light, and seems to breathe the coolness 

 of the distant, perennially feeding glacier. For form one may 

 easily prefer the Rhone landscape to the Rhine landscape ; in 

 color it is immeasurably ahead; and if its historic interest 

 seems less, this is only because we are as oddly ignorant of 

 French history as of the aspect of France. Speaking mate- 

 rially, too, this voyage is the more-delightful. The mere 

 absence of tourists means great comfort for body and mind, and 

 even on this little provincial boat French skill provides food for 

 the daintiest palate. The weather may be hot sometimes, but 

 hardly as Americans use the word ; and on our July day it 

 chanced to be too cold in the morning, and even when we got 

 far south was rather coo! than warm. But what seems to me 

 the very best thing about the Rhone remains to be told. It 

 does not always show us varying forms of the same type of 

 landscape, but takes us from what is almost the north into 

 what is truly the south. As we watch its banks we see the 

 character of land and vegetation changing ; architectural fea- 

 tures lose their northern and take on their southern shape; 

 the light grows clearer and stronger ; color gets ever more 

 and more intense. We start at Lyons and we end at Avignon, 

 and there is almost as much difference in the names as though 

 we had said bluntly "North" and "South," and, again, as 

 though we had said the modern and the mediaeval world. 



As we left Vienne there was just behind us the great bridge 

 which connects it with the picturesque suburb of St. Colombe; 

 the shore was fringed with scattered factories, looking not un- 

 picturesque amid groves of tall Poplars and against a back- 

 ground of hills delicately tinted by the misty morning light; 

 and, in front of us, under great banks of gray cloud, there 

 looked to be no river, but a great lake, for there is a bend to 

 the westward about a mile away, and hills of beautiful outline 

 stretch across the southern sky and hide the course of the water. 

 But as we rushed off to the right — getting our first taste of 

 the motion, which is sometimes a rush, sometimes a long, 

 smooth, swallow flight and sometimes a swirl that feels like 

 incipient shipwreck — our course opened out again, with a bit 

 of flat land on the left and rounded hills on the right, with 

 densely wooded hollows between them. Quickly we take an 

 abrupt turn in the opposite direction, and the stream seems 

 blocked again by a low hill at the foot of which four giant 

 Poplars stand up above their fellows like giants to take toll. 

 Then on the west, as we round the point, is the village of Con- 

 drieu, where we make our first stop. The boat is warped up 

 to the high water-wall only by all the force of reversed 

 engines and scores of sturdy arms, so relentless is the rush of 

 the river. Every such stop is a new excitement — much cheer- 

 ful noise on shore and the feeling on board that the boat will 

 never be brought to its place. 



Condrieu is very picturesque, the low, tiled houses, whose 

 stones show through the thin, brownish-white plaster crowd- 

 ing close on top of the wall, with vine-clad loggias and masses 

 of pink and white Oleanders between them. The roofs are 

 dull brown, and the cornices of that simple, cheap yet effective 

 kind which is common all through central and southern 

 France. Several rows of concave tiles are laid with the hollow 

 side down, each row projecting beyond the one beneath it, 

 and the interstices filled with plaster, against which the tiles 

 show in pretty scalloped lines. Plere, too, we saw our first 

 Fig-trees, while Mulberries abounded, and back of the village 

 were endless rows and groups of slender Black Poplars, with 

 an occasional more massive Lombardy. Lindens and Horse- 

 Chestnuts clothed the outskirts, and just below the town the 

 hills were covered with vineyards. The river winds continu- 

 ally below Condrieu, showing us blue mountains far off to the 

 west, and here and there a square church tower that seems as 

 appropriate to the landscape as does the spire in Normandy. 

 Stone dykes are frequent and not only in the neighborhood of 

 the towns ; and where there is no dyke, Poplars and Willows 

 come close to the edge. Near St. Pierre-de-Bceuf is a light sus- 

 pension bridge — I think the one that Dumas speaks of in his 

 " Voyage dans le Midi de la France" as the first that had been 

 built in the country. Flat, fertile plains occur, but always bor- 

 dered by hills, and I remember one little town where a rough 

 stone church had buttresses and capitals of white stone or 

 marble, adding the gayest of notes to the picture. Pollard 

 Mulberries run in long lines between the fields, and some- 



times the near hills lie in low, gentle waves like sea water 

 charmed to rest. It is all incomparably picturesque — not with 

 the jagged, irregular picturcsqueness we know in the north, 

 but with a suave and gentle modulation that, perhaps, better 

 deserves the term pictorial. The Rhine may more greatly 

 attract an uneducated eye — there is no artist who would not 

 prefer the softer majesty of the Rhone shore. Harmony is 

 the word that always comes to mind — never a discordant line, 

 never a crude tint, yet what variety in line, what warmth and 

 richness of color ! When the clouds veil the sun a little and 

 Poplars and Willows are most numerous and come closest to 

 the stream, one gets a succession of "Corots" as complete 

 and exquisite as ever came from the master's brush. Perhaps 

 one of the most charming forms the shore assumes is when 

 rather steep yet rounded hills lie with their deep yet gentle 

 valleys at right angles to the stream, and, while the hills are 

 clothed with vineyards or dotted with low, gray shrubs, the 

 vales are filled with forest. 



At Serrieres is a new stone bridge with one of its piers, 

 something like a Brooklyn bridge pier on a smaller scale, set 

 close against the flank of a high green hill. The water-wall is 

 in two high terraces, and some of the houses have a strangely 

 military look, being formed of two round towers with a " cur- 

 tain " of wall between, their brownish stone and stucco com- 

 ing out effectively over the Corot-like foreground of pale gray 

 water and foliage. Near Sarras the hills were high, close to the 

 stream and uncultivated, the rocks cropping through their 

 flanks amid a scattering of grass and low brush. There is a 

 bridge with three towers here, and factories of rough stone 

 with brick trimmings, ugly, yet not actually distressing to the 

 eye. Beyond the town, on the naked hill-tops, were three 

 "calvaries," or great crucifixes for way-side prayer, gilded and 

 shining from afar. Then came cultivated hills again, varied 

 by broad patches of rough soil ; and soil and houses together 

 grew yellower and yellower, and spoke more and more plainly 

 of the coming south. ■ 



New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Holiday . Notes in Southern France and Northern 

 Italy.— X. 



A few miles westward of Mentone, on a coast abounding in 

 sites of matchless beauty, we come to Monaco, the capital of 

 a principality interesting from many points of view, histori- 

 cally and otherwise ; in size, however, the entire realm is less 

 than many and many an English parish. The mountains pro- 

 tecting the coasts from the chilling northern blasts are only of 

 moderate height, but are very picturesque, and their proximity 

 adds another charm to Monaco, the beauty-spot of the Riviera. 

 The gardens of Monte Carlo have been. frequently described 

 in horticultural journals — British and continental — but they 

 contain so many objects of interest to the botanist and gar- 

 dener and furnish such a series of contrasts and surprises that 

 accounts of them have not yet ceased to charm the plant lover. 

 Fancy the sensation of a northern gardener on seeing, side by 

 side with the common Weeping Willow, big bushes of Datura 

 (Brugmansia) stiaveolens laden with their large white trumpets ; 

 then the Bougainvillea and the Cherry Laurel — perhaps the 

 most widely planted evergreen in the British islands — the 

 scarlet-flowered Tecotna Capensis and some hardy Silver Fir. 

 Examples of shrubs, etc., hardy in Britain and the northern 

 United States, luxuriating with denizens of tropical countries 

 which we had never seen previously except under glass, are 

 too numerous to mention. 



Untraveled readers who can refer to the Gardeners' Chron- 

 icle for 1874 are invited to turn to pages 820 and 821 ; there 

 they will find an excellent illustration of the town of Monaco 

 and another of a view in the gardens at Monte Carlo. The 

 capital of the little principality is perched on a precipitous 

 mass of rock which juts out into the Mediterranean. Scarcely 

 a greater contrast can exist than that between the garden of 

 the last-named city and the one in the neighborhood of the 

 Casino at Monte Carlo ; in the former case there is an absence 

 of anything savoring much of artificiality — walks wind about 

 under the shadow of the Pines (P. Halepensis), while Agaves 

 and Opuntias, Mesembryanthemums and other succulents 

 have thoroughly naturalized themselves, particularly on the 

 seaward side, where they brave the sea breezes in spots inac- 

 cessible even to goats. The beauty of the scene here was not 

 lost on Prince Florestan, who describes " the tall Palms, the 

 giant Tree-Geraniums (Pelargoniums) blooming in masses 

 down the great cliffs to the very edge of the dark blue sea, the 

 feathery Mimosas (Acacias), the graceful Pepper-tree (Schi- 

 nus), laden with crimson berries, the Orange-grove, the Bana- 

 nas fruiting and flowering at the same "time, the Passion- 

 flowers climbing against the rugged old castle walls, etc." 



