volcanic soil, and made with their foliage a twilight shadow on the
ground, so deep that no vegetation, save a fine velvet moss, could
dispute their claim to its entire nutritious offices. These trees were
the sole wealth of the women and the sole ornament of the garden; but,
as they stood there, not only laden with golden fruit, but fragrant with
pearly blossoms, they made the little rocky platform seem a perfect
Garden of the Hesperides. The stone cottage, as we have said, had an
open, whitewashed arcade in front, from which one could look down into
the gloomy depths of the gorge, as into some mysterious underworld.
Strange and weird it seemed, with its fathomless shadows and its wild
grottoes, over which hung, silently waving, long pendants of ivy, while
dusky gray aloes uplifted their horned heads from great rock-rifts, like
elfin spirits struggling upward out of the shade. Nor was wanting the
usual gentle poetry of flowers; for white iris leaned its fairy pavilion
over the black void like a pale-cheeked princess from the window of some
dark enchanted castle, and scarlet geranium and golden broom and crimson
gladiolus waved and glowed in the shifting beams of the sunlight. Also
there was in this little spot what forms the charm of Italian gardens
always,--the sweet song and prattle of waters. A clear mountain-spring
burst through the rock on one side of the little cottage, and fell with
a lulling noise into a quaint moss-grown water-trough, which had been in
former times the sarcophagus of some old Roman sepulchre. Its sides were
richly sculptured with figures and leafy scrolls and arabesques, into
which the sly-footed lichens with quiet growth had so insinuated
themselves as in some places almost to obliterate the original design;
while, round the place where the water fell, a veil of ferns and
maiden's-hair, studded with tremulous silver drops, vibrated to its
soothing murmur. The superfluous waters, drained off by a little channel
on one side, were conducted through the rocky parapet of the garden,
whence they trickled and tinkled from rock to rock, falling with a