THE PLANTEE's GUIDE. 



23 



and elegance for the age in which he lived, and he 

 adorned his palace and gardens there with a magTiificence 

 worthy of the Satraps of the east. Gaspar Barlseus, one 

 of the best poets of his time, is the historian of the expe- 

 dition ; and he has given the narrative in a style that, 

 in some instances, will bear a comparison with the deline- 

 ations of Livy or Tacitus. 



The governor's residence was upon an island, formed 

 by the confluence of two rivers, which are called by Bar- 

 Iseus the Capevaribis and the Biberibis, and was named 

 Friburg. Before the prince commenced his improve- 

 ments, as the historian informs us, it was a very hopeless 

 subject — a dreary, waste, and uncultivated plain, without 

 a tree or bush to shelter it ; and, in a word, equally worth- 

 less and unattractive. Here, notwithstanding, he erected 

 a splendid palace, and laid out gardens around it of extra- 

 ordinary extent and magnificence. In the arrangement 

 of the buildings, salubrity, seclusion, and horticultural orna- 

 ment were all studiously and tastefully combined. The 

 choicest fruits of a tropical climate — the orange, the citron, 

 the ananas, with many others unknown to us — solicited at 

 once the sight, the smell, and the taste ; while artificial 

 fountains of water, preserving the coolness of the air and 

 the verdure of the earth, rendered it a spot of peculiar 

 attraction. In laying out the grounds, also, such was the 

 designer's skiU, and the magnificent scale of the planta- 

 tions and grass-plots, that no fewer than thu'teen bastions 

 and turrets flanked and defended the gardens, and pro- 

 moted alike seclusion and security. And in order to com- 

 plete at once, and give the immediate effect of wood to so 

 great a change on the face of nature, he removed to the 

 spot no fewer than seven hundred cocoa-trees of various 

 sizes, of which some rose to thirty, some to forty, and some 

 to fifty feet high, to the lowermost branches. 



