II 
SPANISH GARDENS OF THE SEMI¬ 
TROPICS 
IT seems almost prophetic that the land which was 
the scene of the earliest attempts at gardening 
made by the white race on the western side of the At¬ 
lantic, should have been named “flowery” by its dis¬ 
coverer long before. This has a pleasant and alluring 
sound, conjuring a picture of fair delights, of sunlight 
and fragrance, and never a hint of a work-a-day world. 
Wherein is the prophecy; for the gardens which came 
indolently into existence beside the early Spanish 
dwellings were gardens of sunlight and fragrance, of 
fair delight veiling what of the work-a-day and prac¬ 
tical was there—which was never a deal, at that. 
This much we are sure of because as late as 1712, 
almost a century and a half after the establishment of 
the settlement of St. Augustine, the failure of the usual 
supply vessels, which came annually from Spain—or 
from the Spanish base in the West Indies—reduced 
the settlers to such absolute famine that they spent the 
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