Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/489

 Meanwhile, a small annual rent is obtained for the State by means of purely pastoral possession—a form of occupation destined to be surely, if slowly, superseded by agriculture, when demanded by the needs of a more developed epoch and a denser population.

This particular district has for many years been settled after a fashion which permits of moderate -sized holdings. For a lengthened period, therefore, have the exotic trees and shrubs, which even the humblest farms boast, grown and flourished. The tall, columnar poplars, the wavy, tremulous aspens, the umbrageous elms, are large of girth, stately of height, and broad of shade. They are to be seen around the farm-house, or near the mansion which peeps out amid wood and meadow. Here a row of stately elms borders the roadside, affording a grateful shade to the weary wayfarer. The season has been exceptionally humid, as when

Yet the oak is not so common. Slow of growth, he does not seem to assimilate himself to all soils, although in a few localities he may be observed doing no discredit to his British comrades. The lime, the Oriental plane, the ash, the willow, and the sycamore proclaim the generous nature of the soil and climate which they have reached, so far across the foam. Besides these are the noble Paulownia imperialis, majestic with gigantic leaves and purple-scented flowers; the catalpa and even the magnolia, beauteous and fragrant—a botanic miracle. The olive grows rapidly, forgetting oft in eagerness to add branch to branch to mature the fruit, which will one day furnish a valuable export.

All these with others in this last season are spreading their green pennants to the summer breeze—grateful in shade to the traveller wearied and adust; beautiful to the eye of the lover of all plant-life; 'things of beauty and of joy for ever,' even to those whose sense of harmonious landscape -arrangement is rudimentary and undeveloped.

We halt for an instant on the verdant level, hard by the little creek whose waters, this gracious year, run yet with musical monotone, to watch the drivers of these high-piled