House Cf Garden 
CORAL-STONE AND PALM. 
THE HOMES OF BERMUDA. 
A land where quarries obey carpenters’ 
tools and houses are “ shingled ” with 
stone; where oleanders grow wild for fuel 
and turf is a costly luxury ; where rain and 
drought leave no interval, and cedar and palm 
hobnob thriftily, would be a yet stranger 
paradox if its conditions had not developed 
unique house and garden forms. Bermuda 
is one of the largest coral atolls known—the 
only one with a considerable population. It 
has no frost to kill tropic plants or extreme 
heat to blast those 
of temperate 
zones. Rain often 
visits it, but 
through its 
porous rocks soon 
sinks out of sight, 
except where, 
rather brackish, 
it lingers above 
the heavier salt 
water in unused 
wells. These basic 
peculiarities have 
modifiedall men’s 
ways of building 
and planting. As 
one threads in 
approach the 
coral reefs that 
have lined all its 
channel-ways 
with wrecks, the 
main notes of Bermuda show at once in 
vivid green and clear white. Most of the 
foliage retains its color all the year, and 
in the crests of the old cedars it darkens 
to a tone like that which, in the stone pines 
of Southern Italy and the Turkish cypresses, 
gives to plantations their points of highest 
emphasis. The white is furnished by the 
dazzling coral sand of every beach, by all 
the roads and drives and by the houses 
themselves, which are uniformly of the same 
high key, as they peep out from the masses 
of green that encompass them. The color 
is a necessity peculiar to the soil, for the 
coral stone of which everything is built 
crumbles rapidly, unless it is kept constantly 
covered with fresh whitewash. Something 
very theatrical is the result. What looks at 
a distance like a new villa of marble, dignified 
by a stately avenue of approach, may prove 
to be the home of a small farmer whose main 
interest is a patch of onions, or of Easter 
lilies—each set in a pocket of red cedar 
mould, as fine a natural garden soil as men 
know. But there are many houses which 
less belie their appearance, being really 
pretentious, and dating from the days of 
the blockade-runners who made this their 
harbor, or sheltering the higher officers of 
the British garrison. 
Early Bermu¬ 
dans built gabled 
and chimney 
stacked cottages 
in the English 
way, and some of 
these buildings, 
neglected and 
crumbling into 
early ruin, are 
very picturesque. 
But the local 
form soon made 
its appearance. It 
suggests Italy in 
its roof lines, its 
occasional deeply- 
recessed loggie 
and its universal¬ 
ly sharp white 
masses. It 
strongly imitates 
our own country 
houses in its broad porches and verandas, and 
is in construction like nothing else in the world. 
Everything is built of the underlying coral 
stone. This is quarried at many places on 
the islands, and can be worked with chisel 
and saw to any shape when freshly cut; but 
on exposure it soon hardens, darkens and 
crumbles. Ordinary lumber, all brought 
from the United States or Canada, is dear, 
and so sparingly used as to open the eyes of 
a northern architect. The stone is sawed 
out in blocks of varying size, but usually about 
four inches by six, and twelve inches long. 
All the outer walls are laid in double courses 
of these blocks, the partition walls frequently 
of a single course but six inches thick. The 
ALONG THE SHORE BERMUDA 
l6 5 
