THE GARDENS OF VENICE 
anything else in the world. You will wonder that I 
have time to think of them in the midst of all my 
labours, but I am a true Epicurean and should like to 
spend my whole life in a garden. Therefore, as you 
love me, dear Ramusio, take care of these beloved 
groves while I am absent from home, for this is the 
truest service that you can render me.” 1 
No joy is greater, he often repeats, than to receive 
his son-in-law’s letters, at the end of a long and tedious 
journey, and to hear how his trees and plants are doing. 
From Barcelona he sent some caronba trees to be 
planted at Murano, and from Seville he forwarded 
seeds of sweet orange and of a flowering shrub called 
ladano , with a blossom between a cistus and a white 
rose, as well as some curious roots called batate , which 
had lately been brought from the Indies, and were 
good to eat, tasting something like chestnuts. There 
was also a new and delicious fruit, apparently a banana, 
not unlike a melon, but with a flavour that was some¬ 
thing between a quince and a peach, of which Navagero 
sent home specimens, together with a beautiful dead 
bird—called a bird of paradise, also from the New 
World—which was to be given to Gaspare Contarini. 
There are frequent allusions in these letters to a 
certain Frate Francesco, who seems to have been his 
head gardener and had charge of both his gardens in 
his absence. 
1 D. Atanagi, Leltere , 676. 
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