Enclosed by a high wall of masonry (the "tabby" just described) was a tract of twelve acres devoted to the cultivation of flowers and tropical fruits. This wall, now broken down in places and overgrown with ivy-and trumpet-vines, yet divides the garden from the larger fields once devoted to cotton and cane. The gardener's house was next the mansion, and joined to it by this high wall. The garden lay to the south, reaching the marsh in successive terraces. On and about the semicircular terrace immediately around the house were planted crape-myrtle, clove trees and sago-palms: some yet remain to indicate what an Eden-like retreat was this garden of spices and bloom half a century ago. The first broad terrace, which ran the entire length of the garden-wall east and west, was divided by an avenue of olives, which separated in front of the house, leaving a space in which were two noble magnolias. A broad walk ran from the house to the lower garden, which was divided from the other by a thick-set hedge of mock-orange: in this garden was another walk bordered by olives. This space was entirely devoted to flowers: on each side was a grove of orange trees, and in the lower garden were the fig, India-rubber and date-palm, the golden date of Africa. Of trees there were the camphor tree, coffee, Portuguese laurel, "tree of Paradise," crape-myrtle, guava, lime, orange, citron, pomegranate, sago-palm and many others whose home is in the tropics. The delicious climate of this island, several degrees warmer than that of the main land in the same latitude, enabled the proprietors of this insular Paradise to grow nearly all the fruits of the torrid zone.
A little tongue of land runs from the garden into the marsh, an elevation of the original shell-mound, covered with oaks hung with long gray moss. This was called "The Park," and here the inhabitants of this favored estate would resort for recreation in the afternoon and evening. Near this strip of land, beneath the shade of an immense live-oak, luxuriates a clump of West India bamboo, said to have originated from a single stalk brought here by General Lee. The feathery lances clash and rattle with all the wild abandon characteristic of them in their native isles. I have not seen a more perfect group outside the islands of the Caribbean Sea.
From the walls of the second story—if you wish to view the wide-extended prospect to the south you must clamber there—you can look across three thousand acres of salt marsh to Fernandina and St. Mary's, along the river and beach, across miles of ocean. Ivy climbs the corner wall of the ruins and covers garden-wall and trees. Ruin everywhere stares you in the face: on every side are deserted fields and gardens—fields that employed the labor of four hundred negroes; fields that were fertile and yielded large crops of the famous "Sea-Island cotton." Bales from this estate were never "sampled." The Sea-Island cotton that took the prize at the World's Fair in London was raised on this island.
East of the garden, stretching toward the ocean-beach, is the olive-grove. Seventy years ago the first olive trees were imported from Italy and the south of France. They grew and flourished, and years ago this grove yielded a profit to its owners. In 1755, Mr. Henry Laurens of South Carolina imported and planted olives, capers, limes, ginger, etc., and in 1785 the olive was successfully grown in South Carolina; but probably there is not at the present day a grove equal in extent to this. It was estimated that a large tree would average a gallon of oil per year: there were eight hundred planted and brought to a flourishing and profitable stage of growth. There are several hundred now, scattered through a waste of briers and scrub and overgrown with moss.
But the avenues? In the hottest day there are shade and coolness beneath the intertwined branches of the live-oaks that arch above them. The eye is refreshed in gazing down these vistas over the leaf-strewn floors of sand. The sunshine sifts through the arch above, flecking the roadway with a mosaic of leaves and boughs in light and shade. From the limbs hang graceful pennons of Spanish moss, festooned at the sides, waved by every wind, changing in every light. Grapevines with stems six inches in diameter climb into the huge oaks and swing from tree to tree, linking limb with limb: the tree-tops are purple with great fruit-clusters. To the whole scene the dwarf palmetto gives a semi-tropic aspect. There are no signs of life, save a lizard darting over the leaves, stopping midway to look at you with bright eyes. In the evening the squirrels come out in countless numbers, and their crashing leaps may be heard in all directions; bright cardinal-birds, Florida jays and gay nonpareils enliven the gloom; the jays chatter in the branches and mocking-birds carol from the topmost limbs. It is one of the joys of earth to walk through the Grand Avenue of Dungeness at sunset.
There were, when the estate was in prosperous condition, eleven miles of avenues, seven miles of beach, eight miles of walks and nine miles of open roads. Grand Avenue, running midway the length of the island, was cleared eighteen miles, to High Point. There are now but three miles cleared, but you can look straight down beneath the arch of live-oaks for more than a mile of its length. From the Sound to the beach, crossing Central Avenue, ran River Avenue for a distance of about a mile.
This live-oak forest, which covers several thousand acres, is densely filled with scrub palmetto, impenetrable almost, and so difficult to pierce that the deer with which the forest swarms choose the old paths and roadways in their walks from sleeping- to feeding-grounds. The hunters take advantage of this, and after starting their dogs in the scrub post themselves on the main avenues where the paths intersect, and shoot the deer as they jump out. The deer of the island are estimated by thousands, and a State law which prohibits the hunting of deer with dogs, except with the owner's permission, has aided in their increase. Halfway up the island are numerous ponds, to which ducks resort in the winter in vast numbers. Bear are plentiful in the deep woods, and their tracks, with those of the deer in greater abundance, are often found crossing the abandoned fields.
Three hundred feet in width, hard as stone, shell-strewn, between wind-hollowed sand-dunes and foaming surf, this beach of Cumberland stretches for twenty miles. The sands that border it are covered with a network of beautiful convolvulus, tufts of sea-oats with nodding plumes, and picturesque clumps of Spanish bayonet (Yucca gloriosa) with pyramids of snowy flowers. This and the prickly pear suggest the climate of the tropics. I find them on the sandhills bordering the ocean-beach, the wind-swept dunes between the "beach-hammock" and the hard sand of the wave-washed beach. They are called barren by many, these sandhills of the Atlantic coast, but I never find them so. To me they are always attractive, whether I am traversing the sand-slopes of Cape Cod or the similar ones of Florida. Even the grasses possess a character of their own—gracefully erect, tiny circles traced about them where the last wind has caused them to brush the sand. Here too are grasses rare and beautiful—the feathery fox-tail, the tall, loose-branched sea-oats, and many others with names unknown, which you may see ornamenting the famous palmetto hats.
So fascinating are these sand-dunes that one wanders among them for hours, following in the paths worn by the feet of cattle which roam these hills and the neighboring marsh in a half-wild state. Sometimes the banks will shelve abruptly, hollowed out by the wind, and one can look down into a hole ten or twenty feet deep, arched over by thorn-bushes, grapevines and a species of bay. These sand-caverns are of frequent occurrence. There are clumps of scrubby oak completely covered with scarlet honeysuckle and trumpet-flower. While seeking to investigate one of these I startled a hen-quail, which, after whirring rapidly out of sight, returned and manifested much anxiety by plaintive calls. This is a queer place for quail: in the neighborhood of old fields, where they can easily run out and glean a hasty meal from weeds and broken ground, is their chosen place for a nest.
Along the surface of the sea long lines of pelicans pursue a lumbering flight; graceful terns (sea-swallows) skim the waves; a great blue heron stalks across the hard sand, majestic, solitary and shy of man's approach; and dainty little beach-birds, piping plover in snowy white and drab, glide rapidly past the surf-line. A mile below Beach Avenue is a high sandhill shelving abruptly toward the beach, half-buried trees projecting from its western slope: it is now known as "Eagle Cliff," so called by the proprietor of Dungeness from the fact of my shooting an eagle there one day in November.