VISIT TO THE GARDEN OF THE DUKE OF SERRA DI FALCO, NEAR PALERMO.
After a delicious half hour's drive through country lanes hedged with cactus, aloes, and pomegranates, we find ourselves in front of a small villa distant about two miles from the sea. As to the house, many an English gentleman, in very moderate circumstances, has a far better; but on passing the archway of this Sicilian country-box into its garden, two trees, which must be astonished at finding themselves out of Brazil—trees of surpassing beauty—are seen on a crimson carpet of their own fallen petals, mixed with a copious effusion of their seeds, like coral. At the northern extremity of Italy (Turin) this Erythinia corallodendron is only a small stunted shrub; nor is it much bigger at Naples, where it grows under cover. Six years in the open air have in Sicily produced the tree before you: it is, in fact, larger than most of our fruit-bearers. We next recognise an agreeable acquaintance, formed two years ago, in the Neapolis Japonicus; it bears a delicate fruit, of the size of a plum, whose yellow, freckled skin contains such a nectar-like juice that the pine-apple itself scarcely excels it. Our fellow-passenger, the infallible voice of a new-made cardinal of the warlike name of Schwarzenburg, who tasted it here, as he told us, for the first time, has already pronounced a similar opinion, and no dissentients being heard, the Japan medlar passed with acclamation. The Buggibellia spectabilis of New Holland, calls you to look at his pink blossoms, which are no other than his leaves in masquerade. We grub up, on the gardener's hint and permission, some of the Cameris humilis, to whose filamentous radicles are attached certain little grains, of great sweetness and flavour. The banana-tree, "Musa paradisaica," which, cooped in our low hot-houses at home, breaks its neck, and might well break its heart, as its annual growth is resisted by the inexorable glass dome, is here no prisoner but an acclimated denizen of sun and air. The Cactus Opuntiæ, or Indian fig, is here for vulgar tastes; and the Cactus cochinellifera for the Luculluses of the day, who could afford to pay for its rearing. The small sneezing plant, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency: its vulgar name, malupertusu, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso, as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The Ferula communis or Saracinisca, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern lords, is sold in fagots at the green-grocers, and fulfils the scholastic office of birch; and, being more elastic, must be pleasant to flog with. We recommend it to head masters. The sumac, Rhus coriaria, is not only to be seen here, but every where else in Sicily; and they say there is a daily exportation of one thousand sacks of its ground leaves. The ancients knew it well, and employed it for giving a flavour to their meat, as they do now in Nubia and Egypt, according to Durante, who deems its many virtues deserving of Latin verse. We smell pepper!—a graceful shrub, whose slender twigs stand pencilled out like sea-weed spread upon paper; and the Schinus mollis, a leaf of which we have gathered ignorantly, is the source of the smell. We strew some leaves on the basin of a neighbouring fountain, and amuse ourselves by seeing them swim about as if they were bewitched, parting at the same time with a whitish fluid, which, spreading on the surface of the water, gives it an iridescent hue. The Fuchsia arborescens of Japan flowers here, they say, every month, just as we see him in all his pink luxuriance, and makes himself quite at home; and here is that little blue vegetable butterfly, the Polygala! Who can overlook his winged petals, peeping out of their myrtle-looking bower? Then the geraniums!—not potted, as in Covent-Garden, or the Marché aux Fleurs, but forming vast parti-coloured hedgerows, giving to every pathway its own particular flower and perfume; so that a connoisseur might be taken blindfold and declare where each kind grew. Hedges of geranium seven feet high! Think of that, ye Dicksons and nursery-ground men about Brompton and the King's Road! The stalks a mass of real ligneous matter, fit for the turner's lathe if it were but hard enough. A small mound enables us to look about us more at large; and now we discern the stately bamboo, thicker than your arm, and tall as a small mast; and the sugar-cane, formerly cultivated for his juice, but now looking as if he were ill-used and neglected. His biography (but as it is not auto-biography, and written with his own reed, there may be some mistake) is remarkable. Soon after the annexation of Sicily to Spain in 1420, he was carried from Syracuse into Spanish captivity; he then escaped to Madeira and the Canaries, and at length saved himself in the West Indies. The pistachia is also here, with its five-partite sessile leaf, like a dwarf walnut; the capsule holding the nut containing at present only a white germ, which it will require four months more to bring to nutty maturity. The manna-tree is very like an alder in its general character, but thicker in its stem, and bears the cicatrices of last year's ill treatment; its wounds, however, will not bleed afresh now; but towards August the salassatore of trees will run his steel into its limbs, taking care to place under the bleeding orifices leaves from the cactus hedge hard by to serve as recipients, and drain its juices till it faints.
That a leaf might not be wanting to record these vegetable treasures, the pagoda-topped papyrus nodded to us gracefully, and offered its services; while, to finish the picture, Angola goats are browsing amid the green and yellow ribbed agaves; and the beautiful blue sea peeps in through gaps of the wall of cactus, whose green stems are now all fringed with yellow blossoms. Leaving the flower garden, we enter a labyrinth, and arrive at a small hut, with a closed door, upon the threshold of which we have scarcely pressed, when the wicket flies open, and a big brown friar, with long beard and sandals, starts up in act to frighten us, which he succeeds in doing. This automaton Schedoni might really well produce abortion, and would not care if he did: he cannot, we suppose, be placed there as a lawful instrument of relief, for all the donzelle of Palermo must be aware of, and be used to him. This, however, is thought so good a joke, that it is repeated with variations; for on releasing another spring a similar contrivance introduces us to another monk of the same convent, who is reading a huge tome on the lives of the saints: resenting the interruption, he raises his head, and fixes his eyes on the intruder, at the same time beckoning to him with his hand, and intimating that if he will do him the favour to come a little nearer, he will knock him down with the folio, as Johnson did Osborn the bookseller.
Another surprise is—but really these are surprising enough—and we came here to see vegetable rarities, and not the tricks of an overgrown toyshop.