SPANISH GARDENS 29 



was simply an unroofed, unfloored part of the home. 

 And pavements of shells in fancy mosaic forms kept 

 garden walks and courtyards always dry and clean, and 

 carried the suggestion of liveableness out-of-doors. 



English money, thrift and energy did much during 

 the twenty-one years before the little city again re- 

 verted to Spain, in 1784; and one writer observes that 

 many persons who were there at that time, with whom 

 he talked, spake " highly of the beauty of the gardens, 

 the neatness of the houses, and the air of cheerfulness 

 and comfort that seemed during that preceding period 

 to have been thrown over the town." 



But all that is another story; and though it is a very 

 great debt that the English have put me under for most 

 of that which I have been able to learn, through the ac- 

 counts which they were good enough to render, it is not 

 with their flourishing gardens and neat houses that we 

 have anything to do. A certain measure of careless 

 indifference, in a land where it is always summer and 

 flowers — in this "flowery," fragrant, suimy New Spain 

 — a certain disregard, an indolence that is tolerant of 

 some disorder, once the planting which assures straight, 

 shaded walks, and satisfaction to the love of fruit, is 

 done J these are the things which characterized the 

 Spanish gardens in the new world — a new world grown 

 old enough since they were planted to make them al- 

 most, if not quite, forgotten. 



