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The long roots of trees, following exposed rock surfaces downward for yards, and twisting and bending to find lodgment in the crevices, were curious. Great tufts of a plant with long, narrow, light-green leaves hung down along vertical rock faces. In little caverns, at the foot of cliffs, were damp spots filled with ferns and broad-leaved caladiums, and brilliant clusters of begonias in bloom.
The all-pervading creeper closely covered it; the sidewalk before it was shaded by a row of broad-leaved ailantus. The front room, with French windows opening on the portico, was used by Colonel Courtland as a general office; beyond this a sitting-room and dining-room overlooked the old-fashioned garden with its detached kitchen and inevitable negro cabin.
The whole mass of vegetation is interwoven with innumerable creepers, amid which the flowers of the bignonia, with their open trumpet-shaped corollas, are conspicuous. The capim is bright with the blossoms of the mallow growing in its midst, in some places edged with the broad-leaved aninga a large aquatic arum.
Thus, the acicular-leaved trees, consisting of Pines and their congeners, mark the cold-temperate and sub-arctic zones, in north latitude, while Myrtles, Magnolias, and other broad-leaved evergreens, mark the equatorial and tropical regions. The deciduous trees belong properly to the temperate zones, and constitute, indeed, the most interesting of all arborescent vegetation.
Broad-leaved poplars, dense foliaged oaks, and vine-covered maples shaded cool, mossy banks, while between the trees the sunshine streamed in bright spots. It shone silver on the glancing silver-leaf, and gold on the colored leaves of the butternut tree.
The wallabie net is about thirty feet long, of strong cord, and when set about eighteen inches high. The size of the meshes of all the nets depends upon the game to be taken; generally they are small. Neat, and variously striped baskets and mats are made by the women of certain tribes, from rushes, or a broad-leaved description of grass.
We passed some plains, and through a broad-leaved tea-tree forest, and then skirted a thick scrub, which covered the approaches of a range. After seven miles travelling, we came to an immense flat lightly timbered with box and broad-leaved tea-tree, and surrounded on every side, except the S.S.E., by high ranges, protruding like headlands into the plain.
The narrow-leaved tea-tree, in shrubs from five to seven feet high, and the broad-leaved tea-tree from twenty to twenty-five feet high, grew on a sandy loam, with many ant-hills between them; the little Severn tree and the glaucous Terminalia preferred the light sandy soil with small ironstone pebbles, on which the ant-hills were rare, or entirely wanting; the raspberry-jam tree crowded round water-holes, which were frequently rocky; and the bloodwood, the leguminous Iron-bark, the box, and apple-gum, formed patches of open forest.
It may be by hearty choice that we abide where we must forego outdoor roses in Christmas week and broad-leaved evergreens blooming at New Year's, Twelfth-night or Carnival. Well and good! But we can have even in mid-January, and ought to allow ourselves, the lawn-garden's surviving form and tranced life rather than the shrubless lawn's unmarked grave flattened beneath the void of the snow.
Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn.
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