470 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 28, 18 



fibre has also been found valuable by surgeons in the 

 treatment of fractures and in dressing wounds. It is an 

 excellent disinfectant, and probably many other uses will 

 be found for this long-neglected product of the forest. 



From a note in the English Mechanic and World of Sci- 

 ence it appears that the paper manufactured from the 

 wood of the Red Cedar (Ju/iipen/s Virgi7tidna) has been 

 found useful for underlaying carpets and for wrapping 

 wool, furs and other articles liable to be injured by 

 moths, which are driven away by the peculiar odor of 

 this wood. The wood from which this paper has been 

 made has been the waste of pencil factories ; but if 

 it is found to possess the value which is attributed to it, 

 the establishment of pulp mills in parts of this country 

 where the Red Cedar abounds will, no doubt, prove an 

 exceedingly profitable enterprise. The Red Cedar is the 

 most widely distributed of North American trees. It is 

 found growing, often in great abundance, from Canada to 

 Texas, and from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the 

 Pacific. In some parts of the country, especially in 

 Florida, where the best pencil wood has been procured, 

 and along the valley of the Red River in Texas, it grows 

 to a large size, with tall, straight trunks, which yield 

 straight-grained lumber of high quality. More often the 

 trunks of the trees are short, often contorted and filled 

 with knots, and, therefore, unfit to manufacture into lum- 

 ber, and up to this time have been of very little value, 

 except for fence-posts and inferior railway-ties. If Cedar 

 paper, however, is really valuable, the trees which have 

 been considered worthless can be profitably utilized. In 

 the central and in the eastern parts of the States of Kentucky 

 and Tennessee there are hundreds of square miles of rocky 

 and sterile soil — Barrens, as these lands are known locally 

 — covered almost entirely with Red Cedars, which, if they 

 can be profitably manufactured into paper-pulp for this 

 special purpose, will give a much greater value to these 

 lands than they have ever been suspected of possessing. 



Newport. — I. 



I THINK the fust thing that strikes a foreign visitor to New- 

 port must be the singular way in which evidence of lavish 

 expenditure mingles with signs of an almost pauper (lisregard 

 for appearances. Such contrasts often reveal themselves in 

 America, but seldom so forcibly as here. The town to which 

 the great colony of costly and ambitious summer villas is 

 attached, is much less neatly kept than is the rule in New Eng- 

 land, and certain of its outlying streets — constantly traversed 

 by pleasure-seekers in gorgeous equipages — are a veritable 

 offense to the eye. At one step we pass from little palaces, 

 surrounded by exquisitely kept grounds, almost into " Shanty- 

 town " itself. Nor are striking signs of carelessness absent, 

 even though we keep strictly within the villa districts. Even 

 on Bellevue Avenue the borders of the road are left untended 

 to a degree which, in Lenox, for example, would not be toler- 

 ated for a week; and where a vacant lot occurs, its fence is a 

 tumble-down, weed-grown affair, that a respectable farmer in 

 a rough country village might blush to own. I have heard it 

 said that Newport, despite its claims to art and taste, to ele- 

 gance and fashion, is, as a whole, a vulgar-looking place. 

 The term is too harsh, yet there is some excuse for its appli- 

 cation. In many places we seem to read a regard for what is 

 visibly one's own combined with a disregard for what is every- 

 body's; a love of display united to a lack of public spirit, 

 which should certainly not characterize a refined community. 

 The best part of Newport is the beautiful Cliff Walk, which 

 runs for more than three miles on the edge of the lifted rocky 

 shore, passing villa after villa set back beyond verdant lawns. 

 An old public right of way has most fortunately kept tliis walk 

 open and free, although the land all belongs to the villa-own- 

 ers; and the appearance of brotherly concord between neigh- 

 bor and neighbor and generosity towards the public, which it 

 seems to reveal, added to its intrinsic charms, has made it a 

 frequent theme for praise with foreign writers on landscape 

 gardening and the arrangement of country towns. Here, at 

 least, no signs of carelessness appear. The soil along the 

 cliffs is, by nature, thin and poor, so it requires an immense 

 amount of care and money to make and keep these lawns, 

 although the damp climate favors the work. Well kept and 



fresh they are, indeed. " And no wonder," I heard a lady ex- 

 claim, "tor when there are signs of a drought, the owners 

 come forth and water them with their tears." The statement 

 that the particularly beautiful turf which covers the two or 

 three acres of a certain gentleman is annually taken up and 

 rolled away in his cellars over winter, is an equally amusing 

 fiction; yet this I heard told more than once, with an accent 

 which almost implied belief in its truth. 



Beautiful and appropriate as are these lawns on the land- 

 ward side of the Cliff Walk, a mistake has perhaps been made 

 in continuing them on its seaward side, where they skirt with 

 a very narrow border the rough rocky edge of the cliff, or are 

 carried down the slope for a considerable distance in places 

 where the rocks lie lower. In such places as these they have 

 too much the look of earth-works for defense; and every- 

 where they unite but poorly with their bold rocky finish. The 

 pathway might better, perhaps, have been taken as the bound- 

 ary line for "the lawns, and the spaces beyond, whether wider 

 or' narrower, treated in a naturalistic way — made to look as 

 though the hand of man had not tampered with their original 

 covering. 



The fierce sweep of the sea winds in winter is, of course, 

 injurious to the growth of trees in such exposed situations as 

 those along the Cliif Walk; but shrubs and flowers can be 

 made to grow with great luxuriance. The lapse of five or six 

 years has surrounded many of the newer houses with rich 

 thickets of tall shrubs and even with trees of considerable size; 

 and vear by year veritable carpets, in the shape of formal beds 

 of bright flowers and foliage-plants, are spread out around 

 them. These beds deserve admiration from the merely cul- 

 tural point of view — nothing could be better, as far as luxuri- 

 ance and neatness are concerned. Nevertheless, I think they 

 may be counted as another item to excuse the cynic who 

 speaks of bad taste in connection with Newport. Bold effect- 

 iveness, rather than beauty, seems, as a rule, to have been 

 sought for alike in their composition and in their disposition. 

 As a rule, their colors are crude and inharmonious, and they 

 are multiplied out of all reason and placed where they do the 

 greatest possible harm to the effect of the grounds as a whole. 

 The fact is doubly to be regretted, for Newport is the very 

 place where formal bedding nnght often be used to the best 

 advantage. Nowhere do we see so many houses of the most 

 formal and dignified character standing close to a road or even 

 a street, and surrounded by very small grounds. In such 

 cases a formal disposition of the grounds might well suggest 

 itself as the most appropriate. But to be good in effect the 

 scheme should be consistent. Formality, should reign and 

 rule, not merely occur in certain features. But, instead of 

 straight-lined roads and paths and regular arrangements of 

 shrubberies, clipped hedges and formally shaped trees, with 

 which pattern-beds and borders would be in true accord, in- 

 formal schemes are seen where landscape effects are sim- 

 ulated in miniature — where winding drives and paths are 

 flanked by "natural" groups of trees and shrubs and tall 

 flowering plants — sadly interfered with, often, indeed, wholly 

 ruined, by a profusion of flat beds and borders, rigid in out- 

 line and gaudy in color. No outlines can be too formal for 

 such beds, if they are graceful in their own way and if the 

 general scheme sanctions formality; and no colors too bright, 

 if harmony in contrast has guided their selection. But I 

 think we may look in vain at Newport for a place in which 

 all these conditions are respected. 



There are exceptions, however, to the general and excessive 

 use of bright set beds and borders. Here and there— as in the 

 pretty grounds of iVIr. Sheldon, on Narragansett Avenue— a 

 small expanse of lawn is made the most of by plantations 

 which merely fringe its borders, and lies in refreshing peace- 

 fulness, undisturbed by notes of gaudy color. Mr. Goelet's 

 large place, again, where this avenue meets the Clift'Walk, 

 needs the removal of but one or two beds to make it per- 

 fect. There is no other house in Newport at once so beauti- 

 ful and so appropriate in its beauty, and none so charmingly 

 connected with its grounds. When I saw it the wide lawns 

 were in perfect condition, rising into a low, grassy terrace all 

 around its base ; vines had grown upon it to just the right ex- 

 tent ; a few formal plants in pots appropriately adorned its 

 steps, and the masses of green which decorated the piazza 

 towards the sea were undisturbed by over-prominent notes 

 of color— a single yellow flower-pot giving just the one 

 needed touch of brightness. 



This, I think, is a type of what a Newport house should be 

 when its grounds are comparatively large, and when a further 

 air of spaciousness and country freedom is given them by an 

 open seaward prospect. But it would be less appropriate on 

 a more contracted site with no frontage save towards a street. 



