He had gone with him to the neighbouring woods, and
rooted up young plants of lemon trees, oranges, and tamarinds, the round
heads of which are of so fresh a green, together with date palm trees,
producing fruit filled with a sweet cream, which has the fine perfume of
the orange flower. Those trees, which were already of a considerable size,
he planted round this little enclosure. He had also sown the seeds of many
trees which the second year bear flowers or fruits. The agathis, encircled
with long clusters of white flowers, which hang upon it like the crystal
pendants of a lustre. The Persian lilac, which lifts high in air its gay
flax-coloured branches. The pappaw tree, the trunk of which, without
branches, forms a column set round with green melons, bearing on their
heads large leaves like those of the fig tree.
"The seeds and kernels of the gum tree, terminalia, mangoes, alligator
pears, the guava, the bread tree, and the narrow-leaved eugenia, were
planted with profusion; and the greater number of those trees already
afforded to their young cultivator both shade and fruit. His industrious
hands had diffused the riches of nature even on the most barren parts of
the plantation. Several kinds of aloes, the common Indian fig, adorned with
yellow flowers, spotted with red, and the thorny five-angled touch thistle,
grew upon the dark summits of the rocks, and seemed to aim at reaching the
long lianas, which, loaded with blue or crimson flowers, hung scattered
over the steepest part of the mountain.
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