Page:Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. Records of a family of engineers.pdf/148

136 them, the gummy leaves of a cistus stuck to the clothes; and with its small white flower and yellow heart, stood for our English dog-rose. In place of heather, we had myrtle and lentisque with leaves somewhat similar. That large bulb with long flat leaves? Do not touch the Arabs use it as blisters for their horses. Is that the same sort? No, take that one up; it is the bulb of a dwarf palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted, like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever plant that; from the leaves we get a vegetable horsehair;- and eat the bottom of the centre spike. All the leaves you pull have the same aromatic scent. But here a little patch of cleared ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by abused civilisation:- fine, hardy thistles, one of them bright yellow, though;- honest, Scotch-looking, large daisies or gowans;- potatoes here and there, looking but sickly; and dark sturdy fig-trees looking cool and at their ease in the burning sun.

'Here we are at Fort Geneva, crowning the little point, a small old building, due to my old Genoese acquaintance who fought and traded