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The gardens are beautifully kept, and are valuable as affording a sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree, which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its own land.
"He muster found 'em in a holler stump," remarked Billy. "I knows, 'cause that's where Doctor Shacklefoot finds aller of Aunt Blue-Gum Tempy's Peruny Pearline's, an' me an' Wilkes Booth Lincoln been lookin' in evy holler stump we see ever sence we's born, an' we ain't never foun' no baby 't all, 'cause can't nobody but jes' doctors fin' 'em. I wish he'd a-give 'em to Aunt Minerva 'stidder Mrs.
Papa Gouroff was a Russian Jew who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel proprietor in Mogador, where he called himself Turkish and married a renegade Armenian. He had a nose like a sickle and a neck like a blue-gum nigger.
Its waters were hard and transparent, and its banks, in many places, extremely lofty; with a red sandy loam and gravel under the alluvial deposits. It generally happened that where the bank was high on the one side it was low and subject to flood, to a limited extent at least, on the other. Upon these low grounds the blue-gum trees were of lofty growth, but on the upper levels box prevailed.
But it is remarkable, that, even in the midst of the marshes, the blue-gum trees were strictly confined to the immediate flooded spaces on which the reeds prevailed, or to the very beds of the water-courses. The same singular distinction marked the acacia pendula, when it ceased to cover the interior plains of light earth, and was succeeded by another shrub of the same species.
To the right of the house grew thriving plantations of blue-gum and black wattle, and to the left was a broad stretch of cultivated lands, lying so that they could be irrigated for winter crops by means of water led from the great spring that gushed out of the mountain-side high above the house, and gave its name of Mooifontein to the place.
"A thunderin' old blue-gum!" ejaculated the traveller, regarding the tree with great interest. He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silently smoking and gazing straight ahead, as if the past lay before him and it was before him. "Ah, well!" he said, in explanation of a long meditative silence on his part; "ah, well them saplings the smell of them gum-leaves set me thinking."
Meanwhile a very different scene was being enacted up at the house half a mile away. Not more than ten minutes after John and his lady-love had departed on that fateful walk to look at the young trees, Frank Muller's stalwart form, mounted on his great black horse, was to be seen leisurely advancing towards the blue-gum avenue.
Though his mouth laughed, his eyes had wistful shadows under them. He had tossed aside his Service felt when she had taken off her hat, and the sunshine, piercing the thick foliage overhead, dappled the scaly trunks of the blue-gum trees, and dripped gold upon the red-brown head and the crisp-waved golden one. "I am here. I am listening."
Its waters were hard and transparent, and its banks, in many places, extremely lofty; with a red sandy loam and gravel under the alluvial deposits. It generally happened that where the bank was high on the one side it was low and subject to flood, to a limited extent at least, on the other. Upon these low grounds the blue-gum trees were of lofty growth, but on the upper levels box prevailed.
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