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Updated: May 21, 2025
On the more level ground were the usual weeds; Ipomoeas with white and purple flowers, Bignonias, Echites, and Allamandas, with yellow ones, scrambled and tumbled everywhere; and, if not just there, then often enough elsewhere, might be seen a single Aristolochia scrambling up a low tree, from which hung, amid round leaves, huge flowers shaped like a great helmet with a ladle at the lower lip, a foot or more across, of purplish colour, spotted like a toad, and about as fragrant as a dead dog.
They are Bignonias and Mucunas creepers straying from afar which have selected this spot, where they may, under the influence of the sun's beams, propagate their race. 'Now, let us proceed on our walk; we mean the cascade: Here it is, opposite to you, a grand spectacle indeed!
Next afternoon accordingly I repaired to the priest's house, in reality a little Gothic building, part perhaps of an ancient manor-house, close to the village church. In the front garden, flower-garden and potager in one, the bees were busy among the autumn growths many-coloured asters, bignonias, scarlet-beans, and the old-fashioned parsonage flowers.
What next? Above the Cocorites dangle, amid a dozen different kinds of leaves, festoons of a liane, or of two, for one has purple flowers, the other yellow Bignonias, Bauhinias what not? At present it is like a number of round-edged boards of every size, set on end, and slowly coalescing at their edges. There is a slit down the middle of the trunk, twenty or thirty feet long.
The projecting boughs of lofty trees, which in some places stretched half-way across the creek, were hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an endless variety of creeping plants clothed the water-frontage, some of which, especially the Bignonias, were ornamented with large gaily- coloured flowers.
I could see her bright face gleaming through the branches now and then hidden by the broad leaves of the bignonias that laced them together. To make me still more miserable, I fancied that she was moving with a studied slowness! I had already reached that point, where the path parted from the log. I dared not pause: there was no excuse for it.
Gradually, as we advanced, the bank became covered with swamp ivy, bignonias, and cedar-trees, till we at last came out on a sandy shore, where five or six turtles were apparently asleep. In spite of all our exertions, the creatures reached the stream.
Here and there the drooping bamboo dips its feathery branches into the water, covered sometimes to their very tips with the purple of convolvuli; yellow bignonias carry their golden clusters to the very summits of some of the more lofty trees; while white-flowering myrtles and orange-coloured mallows border the stream. Life abounds in this quiet retreat.
Gigantic vegetables of the most different families intermix their branches; five-leaved bignonias grow by the side of bonduc-trees; cassias shed their yellow blossoms upon the rich fronds of arborescent ferns; myrtles and eugenias, with their thousand arms, contrast with the elegant simplicity of palms; and among the airy foliage of the mimosa the ceropia elevates its giant leaves and heavy candelabra-shaped branches.
While I am absent, Sister Katrina, and especially Sister Anice, can take my place in the Art School; and all my orders were finished last week, except the mirror for Mrs. St. Clair. She wished it framed in scarlet bignonias, and as the painting is more than half done, Sister Anice can easily complete it. I will not detain you longer. Good-night, Sister Ruth."
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