As for the gardens, they have overflowed into an ordered riot of flower. The most favoured nooks of Madeira, the _Midi_ of France, and Portugal would find it hard to hold their own in the matter of blossoms with this far Southern land. Undoubtedly, one of the most fascinating features here is the mingling of the hardy and homely plants with the exotic. Thus great banks of sweet-scented stock will spread themselves beneath the broad-leaved palms, while the bamboo spears will prick up lightly by the ivy-covered trunk of a Northern tree--a tree whose parasite is to be marked and cherished, for ivy is, in general, as rare in South America as holly, to say nothing of plum-pudding, though it is abundant here. Spreading bushes of lilac mingle their scent with the magnolia, orange, myrtle, and mimosa, until the crowded air seems almost to throb beneath the simultaneous weight of the odours. Then down upon the ground, again, are periwinkles, pansies, and marigolds, rubbing petals with arum-lilies, carnations, hedges of pink geranium, clumps of tree-marguerites, and wide borders of cineraria. From time to time the suggestions of the North are strangely compelling. Thus, when the heavy flower-cones of the horse-chestnut stand out boldly next to the snow-white circles of the elder-tree, with a grove of oaks as a background, it is with something akin to a shock that the succeeding clumps of paraiso and eucalyptus-trees, and the fleshy leaves of the aloe and prickly-pear bring the traveller back to reality and the land of warm sunshine. But it is time to make an end to this long list of mere growths and blossoms. The others must be left to the imagination, from the green fig-bulbs to the peach-blossom and guelder-roses. Let it suffice to say that a number of these gardens are many acres in extent, and that you may distribute all these flowers--and the far larger number that remain unchronicled--in any order that you will. As the open country appears in the wider gaps left between the remoter quintas, and the space between the halting-places of the tram is correspondingly lengthened, the speed of a car becomes accelerated to a marked degree. The cottages that now appear at intervals at the side of the road are trim and spotlessly white. They are, almost without exception, shaded by the native ombú-tree, and are surrounded with trelliswork of vines and with fig-trees, while near by are fields of broad beans and the extensive vineyards of commerce.