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Updated: September 22, 2025
The walls of the deer-park were broken down, and the aviaries thrown open; and, after distributing plenty of food to the numerous pets, we left them to themselves, and took our departure from the valley.
Upon entering the Tropical Saloon, we found a most welcome and delightful change of temperature among those gigantic leaves of banyan-trees, and the broad expanse of water-plants, floating on lakes, and spacious aviaries, where birds of brilliant plumage sported and sang amid such foliage as they knew at home.
Eggs were hard at a price per dozen that purchased a gross in the not too cheap days of peace; while ducks and drakes, no bigger than crows, but worth their weight in diamonds, were too heavy for the patrons of paste. The military people had an extensive variety of precious birds stuffed away in their own selected aviaries. They had also seized upon all the cigarettes in town.
In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; on the side and behind, elaborate garden walks walled with high walls of box and oak and laurel, in which stand statues in green niches; gardens with little channels to bring water, even during droughts, to the myrtles, the roses, the stocks and clove pinks, over which bend with blossoms brilliant against the pale blue sky the rose-flowered oleander, the scarlet-flowered pomegranate; also aviaries and cages full of odd and harmless creatures, ferrets, guinea pigs, porcupines, squirrels, and monkeys; arbours where wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law may sew and make music; and neat lawns where the young men may play at quoits, football, or swordsticks and bucklers; and then, sweeping all round the house and gardens and terraces an undulating expanse of field and orchard, smoke-tinted with olive, bright green in spring with budding crops, russet in autumn with sere vines; and from which, in the burning noon, rises the incessant sawing noise of the cicalas, and ever and anon the high, nasal, melancholy chant of the peasant, lying in the shade of barn door or fig tree till the sun shall sink and he can return to his labour.
They contained all the vegetable productions of the empire, with magnificent aviaries, and a fish pond built of stone, nearly a mile in circumference. At daybreak next morning, that of November 8th, 1519, the Spaniards were mustered and again set forward. The four hundred white troops led the way.
The crocus and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like fragrance, and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked outside by the American mocking-bird, who chants all night under the full moon, as if day was too short for his medley.
No brilliant light mars the pervading softness of the atmosphere; no violent colour materialises the light, ethereal hues of the dresses; no sudden noises interrupt the fitful and plaintive notes of the lute, jar with the soft twittering of the birds in the aviaries, or drown the still, regular melody of the ladies' voices. All objects, animate and inanimate, are in harmony with each other.
Let us say here that a prince's apartment was then composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from the chamber of state to the oratory, not to mention the galleries, baths, vapor-baths, and other "superfluous places," with which each apartment was provided; not to mention the private gardens for each of the king's guests; not to mention the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and riding at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables, barns, libraries, arsenals and foundries.
The sumptuous palace to which the populace of London gave the name of Dunkirk Mouse, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth.
Fish of various kinds stocked the basins, and in rich aviaries were birds of glowing tropical plumage. Many birds and animals were reproduced in gold and silver with wonderful fidelity to nature. In the inner apartments dwelt the wives and children of the monarch, who were as numerous as those of an Eastern sultan.
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