918. A Chilian flower-garden. When Captain Hall was at Santiago, he visited a lady in the evening, who expressed great regret, owing to its being dark, that she could not show him her garden, which, she said, was ' the pride of her life.' In a few days afterwards he paid her a visit in the daytime, when the good lady was delighted, and led the way with great glee to her favourite spot. ' It certainly,' Captain, Hall observes, ' was a brilliant spectacle; for in these climates, where nature does so much, the least assistance multiplies the effect in a manner of which, in cold regions, we have no conception. But our good dame, who thought of nothing less than letting nature have her course, had planted her flowers, and cut her walks and borders, in the forms of beasts, birds, and fishes. Not only had she displayed the figures of the animals in a sort of relief, by raising and depressing the soil, but she had attended minutely to the appropriate colours of each, by the careful distribution of the proper flowers ; and, to do her justice, the spot looked more like a menagerie than a garden.' (Capt. Hall's Chili, &c., vol. i. p. 175.)
