HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE. 
453 
all summer. After struggling through purple beeches, 
and some other dark foliage, you get out through a 
lovely grove of araucarias, Pinus excelsa, Pinus longi- 
folia, and Abies Douglasii ; from this you emerge 
into a little lawn, quite surrounded by high cliffs, cov- 
ered with superb plantations of aloes, bananas, pepper 
trees, and white and scarlet horse-chestnuts, and a col- 
lection of rhododendrons, dazzling from their gorgeous- 
ness. 
This lawn was devoted to magnolias of every possible 
variety, of which some eight or ten sorts were, when 
we saw them, in flower — the air being heavy with 
their perfume. These were in masses and as single 
specimens. 
You left this oasis by the only way it seemed possible 
to get out — a cavern in the rocks, through which you 
passed, until you again entered profound darkness — 
gradually the light returned — at last you reached a 
point from which two vistas opened, one down the lake 
to Como, the other down the lake to Lecco ; you looked 
at these as at a picture through a darkened tube, for the 
cavern was formed apparently for this purpose ; these 
tunnels led you out to a walk bordered by natural rock, 
perhaps twenty feet high, covered by lamarque and the 
Banksian roses in such a profusion of bloom, that the 
wall had the appearance of being painted white and 
yellow. On the other side the walk was bordered by 
masses of choice azalias, in every variety of color, and 
flowers some eight and ten feet high. Passing a charm- 
ing cascade overhung with weeping beeches, waving 
birches, and different varieties of willows, the walk led 
through a maze of Judas trees (pink and white), all the 
varieties of double thorns, the laburnum (purple and 
yellow), and becoming umbrageous and mazy, with purple 
beeches, purple berberries, and purple filberts ; finally 
coming out again clear and bright through different 
varieties of heath and . acacia, upon a little platform 
