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Updated: May 25, 2025
Boulders may run up to several tons in weight. Where none is readily obtainable, one can be simulated by ingeniously combining a few small ones and concealing the joints by the planting of such things as stonecrops in earth which, save in rare cases of sheer necessity, is always used in the construction of a rock garden in place of mortar.
The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the island. Here and there grey rocks peep up, climbed over, mellowed by olive green stonecrops. Priscilla, glowing from her bath, lay full stretch among the flowers, drawing deep breaths of scented air and gazing at the sky. But nothing was further from her mind than soulful sentimentalising over the beauties of nature.
Wild-flowers in plenty brighten the edges of the road stonecrops, cornflowers, purple 'lady's fingers, and many others; but wedged as we are in our not too comfortable caleche, to get out and pluck them is impossible. The road from Mende to the summit of the plateau can only be described as a vertical ascent; before beginning to descend, we have a few kilometres of level, that is all.
Laurels and rhododendrons grow in dense shrubberies; the trees are full of leaf; flowers blossom profusely. There is a little orchard beneath the house, and everywhere there is the fragrant and pungent smell of sun-warmed garden-walks and box-hedges. There are little terraces everywhere, banked up with stone walls built into the steep ground, where stonecrops grow richly.
All plants of very arid soils for example, our common English stonecrops tend to be thick, jointed, and succulent; the distinction between stem and leaves tends to disappear; and the whole weed, accustomed at times to long drought, acquires the habit of drinking in water greedily at its rootlets after every rain, and storing it away for future use in its thick, sponge-like, and water-tight tissues.
A single plant of one of the trailing stonecrops would fill it, perhaps, when a number of rosettes of the smaller kinds of house leek would be called for.
The walls were not more than five feet high, over which hung the deep and heavy roof, covered with moss, and the thatch was overlaid with a heap of black mould, which afforded plentiful nourishment to stonecrops, and various tufts of beautifully feathered grass, which waved in fantastic plumes over it.
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