422 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 505 



too, a richness of red color in its beaches and rocks, which 

 gives the landscape a depth of tone rare in a northern lati- 

 tude, while the clear atmosphere lends sharpness to out- 

 lines and affords a wide perspective. The scene is most 

 beautiful when the soft autumn hazes slightly veil the lofty 

 hills and enhance the mystery of the blue distance. When 

 mingled, as it too often is, with the smoke of burning 

 forests, this haze adds a purple tint to the headlands like the 

 enchanted mantle Vesuvius spreads over the jagged lava 

 crests which encircle the Bay of Naples. To one who sails 

 up and down the river the differing views rival each other 

 in charm. Descending, there is seen the gradual widening 

 of the stream and an increasing dignity in the bluffs which 

 rise on either hand ; returning at evening up the slowly 

 narrowing channel, the heads of the high hills are violet 

 against a golden sky. Though there are other scenes more 

 rugged and wildly picturesque, few exceed this in noble, 

 tranquil charm. 



Some years ago forest fires and the devastation of lum- 

 bermen had left the banks of the St. Croix stripped and 

 desolate, and had thrown into mournful relief their rocky 

 sterile fields and hillsides. Now gentle Nature has re- 

 clothed the dreary wastes. The Devil's Head is green 

 with a young and vigorous growth, above which rise here 

 and there to a great height the gaunt skeletons of burned 

 Pines which show how tall the virgin forest once was. 

 This gradual reforesting of the burnt lands of Maine and 

 New Brunswick is very apparent along the railway from 

 Bangor which leads to the headwaters of the St Croix. 

 Where ten years ago there was but a blackened waste 

 countless numbers of Ashes, Maples, Birches, Moose woods, 

 Larches, Hemlocks and White Pines are now springing up, 

 interspersed with stiff young Spruces and Firs. The wet 

 lands and scorched moors are hidden by Blueberry-bushes 

 and Alders, and everywhere the red berries of the Dwarf 

 Cornel glow amid their whorls of foliage. Behind St. 

 Stephen, New Brunswick, are piled high ridges of hills, 

 from which one has a wide view over the broad desolate 

 landscape now fast recurring to woodland. To the eye 

 accustomed to the rounded outline of clumps and masses 

 of trees, the serrated edges of the Firs and Spruces climb- 

 ing up and down the hills seem strange and harsh. 

 The Balsam Firs (Abies balsamea) send their top shoots 

 into the air, and sometimes for two or three yards their 

 branches are so short and widely separated that they are 

 almost as unlike trees as the telegraph poles. The groves of 

 Spruce (Picea rubra) are sombre and funereal. The bluer, 

 pale, glaucous hues of the White Spruce (P. alba) here and 

 there give a brighter tone to the clearly massed ranks of 

 evergreens, or the Hackmatacks (Larix larcina) inter- 

 weave the dark warp with a woof of feathery lightness. 

 Hemlocks (Tsuga Canadensis) abound, and their graceful 

 forms and delicate foliage make them the queens of the 

 forest wherever they appear. Where the sun can reach 

 them, on the hillsides and on the edges of the swamps, 

 wave the serrated leaflets of the Mountain Ash (Pyrus 

 Americana), whose tops at this season are gay with shining 

 bunches of scarlet berries. 



All these trees are found in profusion on the banks of the 

 St. Croix, many of them growing apparently from the 

 heart of the solid rock. Along the sheer banks of the cliffs 

 which rise directly from the salt tide, I saw blocks of stone 

 cleft by the pressure of the strong roots as if by the tools 

 of a quarryman, lying in square masses where they had 

 been hurled down the slope by the force of the vigorous 

 shoots. What these trees live on, beside the rain from 

 heaven, is always a mystery, but they are undaunted by 

 the hard conditions of climate and soil, and though they 

 grow very slowly they still live and thrive where no one 

 would believe a living thing could find sustenance. 



Salmon Falls, a mile above the head of navigation of the 

 St. Croix, were beautiful within my memory, and along the 

 banks of the river at the point where they roar and tumble 

 over the rocks into the basin below, I well remember the 

 conical bark wigwams of the Passamaquoddy Indians which 



I used to wonder at in my youth. A remnant of the tribe 

 still haunts the old grounds, but their homes are no longer 

 picturesque. Tumble-down old sawmills vex the course 

 of the stream, and their refuse and sawdust form little 

 islands on which tall bushes, and even trees, grow freely. 

 At Calais the tide rises twenty-five feet, and when it falls 

 leaves but a narrow channel between wide stretches of 

 mud-flats, so that the river's beauty ebbs and flows period- 

 ically for a mile or two. But lower down, the pebbly or 

 sandy beaches of vivid red which alternate with the high 

 bluffs of differing shapes, are always fine, even when the 

 tide has receded to its utmost limit. 



This river was discovered and named by the French, 

 under Pierre du Guast Sieur de Monts, in 1604. The name 

 Ste. Croix was then given to it on account of the two 

 branching arms made by the mouths of two rivers visible 

 from the little island on which the small garrison estab- 

 lished itself and built a fort and houses, which one finds 

 rudely portrayed in Cham plain's Voyages. One of the arms 

 on the British side is now known as Oak Bay, and into it 

 flows the River Warweig, from the valley of which rises a 

 curious group of round, heavily wooded hills, clustered 

 together in a way that suggests some extraordinary convul- 

 sion of Nature, or a Titanic game of bowls, with the balls 

 left deserted in a huddled mass. From the lofty ridge 

 in New Brunswick, which overlooks this singular scene, 

 the view is remarkably beautiful. Landward, great moor- 

 like stretches dotted with woods reach away in every 

 direction to a far-distant horizon line, broken here and there 

 by faint purple hills, and directly below one's feet are seen 

 lying the round or conical dark hills, clustered together and 

 often actually rising from the waves. Over the tops of them 

 in the shadowy distance are visible the blue waters and the 

 far-away shores of the myriad islands of Passamaquoddy 

 Bay. Just above St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the highest 

 mountain of all, Chamcook, lifts a bare red top from a 

 fringe of encircling woods. Its old red sandstone forma- 

 tion shows this hill to have been one of the early upheavals 

 on the continent, and although it is not five hundred feet 

 high, nothing grows upon its summit. From it one has a 

 comprehensive view of all the surrounding region on both 

 sides of the St. Croix, dotted with myriad lakes, and can 

 behold the broad bay with its hundreds of islands of varying 

 extent. 



Hingham. Mass. Maty C RobbillS. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Miscanthus. — We have in cultivation at least three, pos- 

 sibly four, of the six or seven known species of this genus. 

 They are better known under the name of Eulalia, now 

 sunk under Miscanthus, a near ally of the Sugar-cane, 

 Saccharum. These ornamental plants are useful in the 

 mixed border or as isolated specimens on the lawn. The 

 oldest species cultivated in gardens, Miscanthus Japoni- 

 cus, is now represented by three distinct forms. The type 

 has culms six or eight feet high and three-eighths of an 

 inch in diameter; these are clothed with elegantly curved 

 leaves three feet long and about an inch wide, glabrous 

 above, hairy beneath, the sheaths also hairy, the midrib 

 white, the other portions bright green. In the autumn they 

 bear terminal erect panicles of purplish flowers like those 

 of the Sugar-cane or the male plumes of the Indian Corn. 

 The variety Zebrina has leaves like the type, with the ad- 

 dition of broad, irregular, transverse bands of yellow. 

 The third form, called Japonicus variegatus, is a plant of 

 especial beauty. Its culms are six feet high and a quarter 

 of an inch in diameter ; the leaves are from two to two 

 and a half feet long and from half an inch to an inch 

 wide, glabrous both in blade and sheath, the former green 

 with a central stripe of white and broad marginal bands of 

 creamy yellow. I suspect this is another species, and not 

 a form of M. Japonicus, but it has not yet flowered. Ac- 

 cording to Walters, who collected M. Japonicus in Formosa 



