570 GARDENS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. 



and holy of places. Others again doubt the fact, on the ground that 

 Josephus states in his History of the Jews that all the trees surround- 

 ing Jerusalem were cut down by the order of Titus during the siege 

 of the city. 



The plain of Gennesar, or Gennesareth — or, as its name implies,- 

 the " Gardens of Princes " — is, according to Dean Stanley, " truly 

 the paradise or garden of Northern Palestine," — so rich and fertile 

 is its valley. Many other parts in Palestine might be enumerated 

 for the gardens that are therein situated, but as my purpose is not 

 so much to describe the different ones separately as to show the 

 manner which the art of gardening was carried on by different nations, 

 — the differences of style in the formation of the several gardens, so 

 as to contrast them with " My Garden,"— I will therefore merely 

 add, before I pass on to speak of the parks of Central and Southern 

 Asia, that the gardens of balsams (which plants, Pliny tells us, only 

 grew in his time in two royal ones in Judaea) and the palm-groves- 

 given by Antony to Cleopatra were at Jericho. 



The paradises of the Persians have ever been celebrated, and have 

 been copied by various nations of the West. In these first parks grew 

 various sorts of trees, among which the cypress may more especially be 

 named, on account of its being planted around the sacred precincts of 

 the temples ; and on account of its form bearing a strong resemblance 

 to that of the flame of fire— after the doctrine of Zoroaster (Zerduscht) 

 became enforced. In the early part of the Persian history we find that 

 nation having a special predilection for the cultivation of plants, their 

 most puissant monarchs not thinking it beneath their dignity themselves 

 to plan their parks, and even to plant the trees and plants in them. 

 Xenophon shows this more particularly in his " CEconomicus," in the 

 following interesting account of a conversation which he there gives as 

 taking place between Cyrus the Younger, king of Persia, and Lysander 

 the Greek general, in the park belonging to the former personage at 

 Sardis: "When Lysander expressed his admiration of it, of the fine 

 trees, the regularity with which they were planted, how straight the rows 

 were of them, how elegantly all the rows of them formed angles with 



