290 



Garden and Forest. 



[June 19, li 



already made serious inroads upon the supply. The 

 Hemlock is still fairly abundant in the immediate coast 

 regions of Oregon and Washington ; but the bark of the 

 western Hemlock is inferior in qualit)^ of tannin to that 

 furnished by the Tan-bark Oak of California or by these 

 Australian Acacias. It is evident that sooner or later tan- 

 bark will have to be produced in California from plantations 

 specially made for the purpose. Australian trees are 

 now known to flourish in the southern part of the State, 

 where there are vast tracts of land suited to them ; and 

 these conclusions which M. Naudin reaches in the case of 

 Algiers are equally applicable to southern California, 

 where the climate resembles that of Australia as closely 

 certainly as that of this last country resembles the Alge- 

 rian climate. 



"Algeria as a whole has the greatest climatic analogy 

 with Australia — similar heat and similar droughts. Algeria, 

 especially in the south, like Australia, possesses immense 

 tracts of unoccupied land which can be made productive 

 by the Acacia ; and, like Australia, Algeria will be able 

 through these trees to export tan-bark. 



"The Acacias will produce, besides tan-bark, which is 

 their principal product, valuable fuel, and possibly gums 

 also as they do in Australia. Certain species, like A. me- 

 lanoxylon, attain the size of forest-trees and produce tim- 

 ber. The wood of this interesting tree is exceedingly hard 

 and richly-colored, and is much sought after by cabinet- 

 makers. This species is already common in the parks and 

 gardens of Provence, and springs up freely from self-sown 

 seed in the garden of the Villa Thuret, as do many other 

 Acacias ; and I have not the least doubt that these trees 

 can become naturalized on the other side of the Mediter- 

 ranean more completely even than they can in southern 

 France." 



The Art of Gardening.— An Historical Sketch. 

 VI. — Persia. 



TTisa familiar fact that the Persians, who succeeded the 

 ■^ Assyrians and Babylonians in the dominion of eastern 

 Asia, were the most luxurious and pleasure-loving of ancient 

 peoples. When conquest had brought them enormous wealth 

 and unlimited power, their effeminate, self-indulgent habits 

 were the scorn of the hardier, simplerGreeks ; and the school- 

 boy of to-day is taught the enormous significance of tlie result 

 of those wars which left the intellectual Greek instead of the 

 sensuous Persian to be the guide and leader of the world's de- 

 velopment. But even in those earlier times, when the Persian 

 had not lapsed into sloth and dissipation, we can divine his 

 pleasure-loving temperament ; and it nowhere expressed itself 

 more strongly than in the creation of gardens. In the annals 

 of Persia we find the first distinct record of something more 

 extensive and varied than the small formal enclosure around 

 temple, palace or private dwelling — something which is rightly 

 called a park and seems to have been conceived, in part, at 

 least, in the spirit of what we now call landscape-gardening. 



The Persian park, in its first estate, was doubtless a hunt- 

 ing-preserve. Nowhere do we read of such persistent and 

 enthusiastic sportsmen as the Medes and Persians. Hunting 

 on horseback was the chief royal pastime, and the chief means 

 of training noble youths in vigor of body, quickness of mind 

 and familiarity with the saddle. In the "Cyropedia"Xenophon 

 tells us that when the grandfather of Cyrus the Great was per- 

 suading him to remain in Media he said : "All tlie animals 

 which are now in the park, I give them to you ; and I will col- 

 lect others of all kinds which you shall hunt as soon as you 

 have learned how to ride." When the lad had once tasted the 

 excitement of the chase in the open he exclaimed, " Boys, 

 what children we seemed when we hunted in the park ! It 

 seemed as though we hunted animals tied by the leg, for . . . 

 they were within a narrow compass of ground." But narrow 

 in such a connection does not mean narrow as one would use 

 the word with regard to a formal walled garden ; and there is 

 abundant evidence to prove that very large parks, containing 

 wide expanses of plain, lay near the royal residences and were 

 formed by Persian princes in distant parts of the empire. 

 For example, when Xenophon in the " Anabasis " speaks of Cel- 

 aenae, "a populous, large and rich city of Phrygia," he says 

 "here Cyrus had a palace and an extensive park full of wild 

 beasts, which he was accustomed to hunt on horseback when- 



ever he wished to give himself and his horses exercise. 

 Through the middle of this park flows the river Maeander. Its 

 springs issue from the palace itself, and it runs also through 

 the city of CelEEute. Here Cyrus held a review of the Greeks 

 in the park, and took their number, and they were in all 11,000 

 heavy armed troops, and about 2,000 peltasts." This, indeed, 

 in extent at least, was a park more than worthy of the modern 

 name, which could not have been entirely devoted to the 

 preservation of wild roving beasts; and if tiie Cyrus of the 

 "Anabasis " — Cyrus the Yoimger, a prince and satrap, but not the 

 sovereign of Persia — had such a pleasure-ground, and another 

 equally famous at Sardis, it is not surprising to find that his 

 greater namesake, a century and a half before, and all the 

 kings who followed on the throne, were no less well provided. 

 Cyrus the Great, we are told, after he had conquered the 

 Asiatic world, managed to enjoy "a perpetual spring with 

 regard to heat and cold" by spending seven months of the 

 year at Babylon, three at Susa, and the hottest two at Ecba- 

 tana, in the wind-swept mountains of Media. The love 

 for out-door life and natural beauty implied in such a state- 

 ment might alone suffice to paint the Persian character in 

 this respect. Nor even after death was Cyrus deprived of the 

 free and verdurous environment he loved. He died at Pasar- 

 gadae, "and here," says Strabo, " Alexander saw his tomb in 

 a park concealed within a thick plantation of trees." It re- 

 mains to-day in a naked plain, and is a tower with a stepped 

 platform and a closed upper room in which the l:)ody 

 lay ; and the contrast is great indeed between such a monu- 

 ment, set in such surroundings as it once possessed, and the 

 dark, sealed caverns, hid in enormous pyramids or excavated 

 in barren hill-sides, where the kings of Egypt were laid to rest. 

 When Darius transferred the capital of Persia proper from 

 Pasargadae to Persepolis he created gardens that long were 

 famous, though the nature of the site proves that they cannot 

 have been very large, and were probably terraced constructions. 



Nor did great parks exist only in the vicinity of the chief 

 royal towns. In his Life of Artaxerxes Mnemon, brother of 

 Cyrus the Younger, Plutarch tells us that, returning from an 

 expedition against the Cadusians, the king " arrived at one of 

 his own mansions which had beautiful ornamented parks in 

 the midst of a region naked and without trees ; " and he em- 

 phasizes in the succeeding words the respect and affection in 

 which the Persians held such spots : " The weather being very 

 cold, Artaxerxes gave full commission to his soldiers to pro- 

 vide themselves with wood " by cutting down any of the trees, 

 "without exception, even the Pine and the Cypress ; and when 

 they hesitated and were for sparing them, facing large and 

 goodly trees, he, taking up an axe himself, felled the greatest 

 and most beautiful of them." Moreover, in the "Economist" 

 Xenophon makes Socrates i^elate that the younger brother, 

 not content with what he had done at Celaenae and Sardis, 

 " wheresoever he travels takes care that there may be gardens, 

 such as are called Paradeisoi, stocked with everything good 

 and valuable that the soil will produce ; and in these gardens 

 he himself spends the greatest part of his time whenever the 

 season of the year does not prevent him." 



Princes and kings were rivalled in their gardening enter- 

 prises by their wealthy subjects. Xenophon cites the gardens 

 of Belesis, governor of Syria ; and the famous satrap, Tissa- 

 phernes, must have had several, for Plutarch says * that, 

 despite his hatred of the Greeks in general, he cherished such 

 love and admiration for one among them that "the most 

 beautiful of his parks . . . received by his direction the name 

 of Alcibiades, and was always so caUed and so spoken of.' 

 Could there, again, be more convincing proof of the excep- 

 tional affection that the Persians had for their pleasure- 

 grounds ? 



The Persians' name for a garden was the word from which 

 our " paradise " t has come; and it is but a just tribute to 

 their national love for such places that it should have been 

 adopted into every language, from Hebrew to English, and be- 

 come the symbol of the highest delights which the body or the 

 soul of man can enjoy. But the widespread effect of Persian 

 taste upon matters of gardening art does not rest only upon the 

 evidence of this universally borrowed word. Wherever their 

 influence extended — and this means over the whole of western 

 Asia and into Egypt and Ethiopia as well — they carried their 

 love of gardens. The "Persian gallants" who destroyed the 

 Babylonian monarchy, says Sir Thomas Browne in "The Gar- 

 dens of Cyrus," maintained the " botanical bravery" of the hang- 

 ing-gardens ; and in later times a hunting-park lay near the 

 palace which had been laid out, perhaps, by the great King. 

 When OuintusCurtius, in his "Life of Alexander," tells of the 



* " Life of Alcibiades. 



t Literally, it means "enclosed." 



