winter, outside the shelter of a greenhouse, may be called a 
gardener indeed ! 
IL—SOME EAST-COAST GARDENS 
But it is time that, in pursuance of the plan of this book, From West 
we transplant—-not our plants, but ourselves—to another and a to East 
widely different type of scenery and garden setting. ‘To do so 
resembles to my mind nothing so much as turning deliberately 
away from some melancholy and haunting, if barbaric, strain of 
poetry to a piece of solid and quite uninspired prose. Hitherto, 
even when not directly alluded to, a pervading sense of the 
Atlantic has seemed to dominate the situation, and to hover 
over our page. We may not have been consciously thinking 
of it, yet its personality has followed and possessed us, as the 
personality of some invisible potentate might do so long as 
one remained within his capital. No Galway hunting pasture, 
was ever yet so prosaic but that a sudden scream from 
overhead might unexpectedly, as you crossed it, assail your ear. 
You look up— it is a black-headed gull, equally likely a 
cormorant. There is, or used to be, an island upon Lough 
Cutra, well within the hunting district, where a visitor might 
see, and moreover smell, more cormorants in ten minutes than an 
average citizen would be likely to have the chance of enjoying 
in a life-time. An ancient and a powerfully fish-like smell 
emanated from that island, and anyone who had ever courage 
to land upon it must have found it to be as extensively decorated 
with the skeletons of fish, as was the town of Benin with those 
of men. Mount any little elevation again—it does not in the 
least matter how low—and you will surely see, or, if properly 
43 
