Page:Sikhim and Bhutan.djvu/70

 delicate pink bloom. A Lilium Auratum grew to 8 teet with twenty-nine blossoms on a single stalk and the wild Lilium Gigantiums in the tree-fern ravine were often 12 feet high. The other wild lilies, Wallichianum and Nepalensis, made lovely groups, the Wallichianum over 6 feet with four or five flowers on a stem and filling the air with delicious perfume. As the seasons passed the colouring of the garden changed. With the early spring came the white narcissus and pale yellow daffodils and primroses and lovely shades of browns and yellows of the wallflowers flowering under the eaves, followed by the deeper colouring of polyanthus and pansies and great tufts of arums and the delicate mauve and white of schizanthus. Next, the roses, a flood of pink, white, yellow, and crimson, with deeper shades in the petunias and stocks and blazing masses of brilliant colour from cactus and geraniums in the verandahs to be followed by a wave of blue which spread from the actual lawns away up the hillside, iris, agapanthus, heliotrope, hydrangea so covered with blossom hardly a leaf could be seen. This was the time when the lilies also were in perfection, auratums, tigers, wild ones from the jungle, all scenting the air, as well as English sweet-peas and mignonette.

The blue flowers were followed in their turn by deep yellows, orange, and scarlet, orange lilies, sunflowers, monbretia and cannas, which here again abandoned their ordinary habit of growth and were ten and twelve feet high with huge flower spikes. As the autumn advanced, the colouring became more subdued, though not less lovely, the wild ferns and the foliage taking on exquisite tints and each stump and tree trunk a mass of flowering cymbidiums with their long, handsome racemes of lovely brown and yellow flowers. From one year's end to the other there were always flowers, and in the winter I have seen roses, heliotrope and mignonette flowering under the eaves of the verandah while the lawns were covered with snow.

In the spring the forest trees were white, as though