506 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



stretch of water, reflecting the blue sky on bright sunny days, or at 

 night the glorious moonlight, such moonlight as can be seen only 

 here: the mountains, encircling the whole panorama, dotted over by 

 the variously tinted houses of the many villages scattered all along 

 shore, and many of them perched almost as high up as the snow-clad 

 summits of the mountains : all this makes this terrace the most desir- 

 able spot in all weathers, when the moon or the sun, the rain or the 

 gale, afford such pictures as are not often met with. 



Other, secondary, alleys cross the 'former ones, but not to any 

 . great extent (together they do not measure more than about half a mile 

 in length). All these walks have been exclusively planned by me. 

 I was prepared to have at least some of them corrected by a well- 

 known architect, who had been called in to restore the house and see 

 whether the surroundings were suited to the future buildings, but 

 the architect remained satisfied with my work and, when he sent in 

 his plans, it was I, on the contrary, who discarded them, finding 

 them superficial and absolutely out of keeping with the sober and 

 simple island and all its glorious but severe surroundings. So I kept 

 my nunnery, only now and then adding small embellishments, but 

 without disturbing its principal outlines. 



As for the reason of my success in thus distributing the walks — 

 a point which may interest others and perhaps even be of some use . 

 to those who, without any proper technical knowledge, but only with, J 

 so to say, a certain instinctive sense of perspective and beauty, arel 

 obliged to supervize the making of similar ones — it is of the simplest : I 

 they were planned and executed with the sole object either of absolute! 

 utility or necessity, or with the intention of obtaining a certain vista, or^ 

 to lead to a certain spot desired to be as handy as possible. Thus, except 

 for some roundings off, no specially intricate or useless windings had 

 been thought out and, when these more or less naturally resulting 

 walks had been completed, the necessity for fancy ones was 

 absolutely discarded, as the spaces remaining empty between them 

 happened to be just suited to the different groups of plants I wanted 

 to fit in, and other spots were left free to receive the secondary build- 

 ings, such as outhouses, cow-stalls, greenhouse, hothouse, &c. 



The very first plants, which naturally attracted a poor, ignorant, 

 and incipient amateur gardener like myself, came to the island in the 

 shape of a Tmchycarpus excelsa and a Crypto^neria japo7iica elegans 

 (a palm and a more or less red-leafed coniferous plant!). Though 

 they were both planted by a highly recommended gardener from the 

 neighbourhood, they were simply stuck into whatever little and un- 

 prepared soil was to be found in front of the house, and I, of course, 

 went daily some half dozen times round them to watch their progress ! 

 The first of these plants is still alive, while the Cryptomeria, being 

 less tough, turned yellow the first autumn and died. So this prema- 

 ture departure make me look round for a better gardener. 



T at first hit upon a rather intelligent man, who had long been in 

 a botanical garden in South America, and thus had a sufficient, though 



