The east is the front of the house towards the river. The view here is open, and the most beautiful, charming, and variegated, to be imagined.
From the colonnaded verandah a flight of broad marble steps lead to a terrace carpeted with grass, and planted with rose-bushes—the Damascus, the Provence, the scarlet, the white, the multiflora, the moss rose; daily, monthly, and perpetual roses; “roses—everywhere roses”—such a luxuriant exuberance of roses upon this velvety terrace. The rose terrace is divided from the lawn by a treillage of the most delicate and elaborate trellis-work; and this also is wreathed and festooned by running rose vines.
Below this spreads the lawn on every side, not level, but gently waving, and covered with grass as soft, as smooth, and as downy as velvet; and everywhere the eye roves with pleasure over a turf of brilliant intense green, except where it is variegated with the floral mosaic work of gay parterres, or trellised arbours, or reservoirs, or single magnificent forest trees left standing in honour of their monarchal grandeur. The parterres are rich, beautiful, and fragrant beyond description; there our hothouse plants bloom in the open air; and there our common garden flowers—violets, lilies, roses, myrtles, irises, and innumerable others—flourish with surpassing luxuriance. The arbours, of delicate trellis-work and elegant form, are shaded and adorned with running vines of rich Armenean and cape jessamine, honeysuckles, and woodbine. The reservoirs contain gold fish, and other ornamental specimens of the piscatorial kingdom.
This extensive and beautiful lawn is surrounded by an iron open-work fencing, very light and elegant in appearance, yet very strong and impassable. Three ornamented gates relieve the uniformity of this iron trellis; one on the north leads through to the orange groves, always inviting and delightful, whether in full bloom, and shedding ambrosial perfume in the spring, or laden with their golden fruit in the fall. The gate on the north admitted into the vineyard, where every variety of the finest and rarest grapes flourished in luxuriant abundance. The one on the east is central between these two others, and leads from the lawn down to the white and pebbly beach of the Pearl, where pretty boats are always moored for the convenience of the rambler who might desire to cross the river.
And then the curving river itself is well named the Pearl, from the soft, semi-transparent glow of roseate, whitish, or saffron tints, caught from the heavens.
Across the soft water, in rich contrast, lie hills, and groves, and cotton-fields—the latter, one of the gayest features in southern scenery. They are sometimes a mile square. They are planted in straight rows, six feet apart; and the earth between them, of a rich Spanish-red colour, is kept entirely clean from weeds. The plants grow to the height of seven feet, and spread in full-leaved branches, bearing brilliant white and gold-hued flowers. When in full bloom, a cotton-field by itself is a gorgeous landscape. Beyond these hills, and groves, and cotton fields, are other cotton-fields, and groves, and hills, extending on and on, until afar off they blend with the horizon, in soft, indistinct hues, mingled together like the tints of the clouds.
I have led you through the beautiful grounds immediately around and in front of the villa; but behind the mansion, and back of the grove, there are gardens and orchards, and still other fields of cotton and outhouses, and offices, and the negro village called “The Quarters.”
CHAPTER III.
THE PLANTER’S DAUGHTER.
She has halls and she has vassals, and the resonant steam eagles
Follow fast on the directing of her floating dove-like hand,