I have never had a more complete satisfaction and delight of my love of nature than I had yesterday in crossing the isthmus. You will remember that I always had a reaching out for tropical effect, but I found the reality far beyond my imagination, resting as it did upon very inadequate specimens, hastily and imperfectly observed. I constantly wished that you and Mr. Fisher were with me, and much more I wished that we could have seen five years ago what I saw yesterday, and received then the same distinct lesson which I did yesterday, and of which I certainly had some sort of prophetic feeling, and desire to avail myself in some of our study of the park planting. The groundwork was not extraordinary to us, the topographical characteristics not differing essentially from those of the park; yet the scenery excited a wholly different emotion from that produced by any of our temperate-zone scenery, or rather it excited an emotion of a kind which our scenery sometimes produces as a quiet suggestion to reflection, excited it instantly, instinctively and directly. If my retrospective analysis of this emotion is correct, it rests upon a sense of the superabundant creative power, infinite resource, and liberality of Nature—the childish playfulness and profuse careless utterance of Nature.

This is what I felt most strongly, and, after my excitement was somewhat tempered, I naturally fell to questioning how it was produced, and whether, with materials that we can command in the temperate regions, we could to any marked degree reproduce it. I think that I was rather blindly and instinctively feeling for it, in my desire to give “tropical character” to the planting of the island, and luxuriant jungled variety and density and intricate abundance to the planting generally of the lake border and the Ramble and the River Road. Of course, it is the very reverse of the emotion sought to be produced in the Mall and playgrounds region—rest, tranquillity, deliberation and maturity. As to how it is caused—I mean how the intensity of it which I yesterday experienced is occasioned by any details which I can select in tropical scenery—it is unnecessary to ask, if we can assume that these details do naturally contribute to it. Taking it for granted that they do, what is there here [86]that we have not something similar to, or that by management we can bring something that we have to resemble?

First, we have nothing that will resemble cocoanut or date palms (none of our established materials) or bamboo. These are the most striking things we see. But does this esthetic effect of the tropical scenery depend greatly upon them? In the center of the isthmus we passed considerable intervals where palms were absent from the foreground. The tropical picture was much less complete as merely a picture of the tropics, but the sense of the luxuriance of nature produced was not less complete. Indeed, I think the association of the palm with the open, flat monotonous desert, and with many scenes of barrenness, as on the rocky, parched and sterile coast of Cuba, makes it not absolutely essential, but only favorable to this impression. The banana or plantain is a great help and is of the greatest possible value, but it appears only occasionally, and is also not indispensable, though more desirable than any other of the family. On the high grounds, especially, there was often nothing of which we have not a typical representative in our scenery; the great difference being that we have no scenery in which there are not qualities which are altogether absent here, and we have no scenery in which those qualities which are common to both are seen in anything like the same profusion and combination. I frequently thought, looking at any ten or twenty square feet of which I saw before me, and omitting the palms, it would only be necessary to assemble various bits of scenes to have a complete scene resembling and producing in considerable degree the moral effect of a scene before me. Palms or palm-like trees were never out of sight, though sometimes, as I said, absent from the foreground. Well, it was then a great satisfaction to find that the trees most markedly different from our common temperate-zone trees, at a little distance, could not be distinguished from what we were trying to get and what we know it to be possible to get on the island. It is true, nature uncontrolled, except by a most rare accident possibly, never quite gives us the palm, or palm-like tree in our distances,—but she sometimes comes near it. By selection and special treatment, we can then produce trees, which, seen at a distance of a couple of hundred feet, shall lead a man to say, “I have seen such trees before only in the tropics.”

This is what we are aiming for on the island. Wherein are we wrong? As far as the palm-like effect is concerned, only in not pushing our plan far enough. The length of stem and smallness of head is more than I had supposed, often more marked than I had supposed, I mean at a distance, the trunk frequently is imperceptible, and you see the head apparently floating unsupported. The trees growing in this way are not palms or not all palms, but in their foliage so nearly like the Ailanthus that at no great distance (as a landscape painter would depict them) you would not know them apart, at least an average observer would not. [87]Another of our prominent trees on the island, the Aralia, is, if I mistake not, itself in several varieties, actually present and frequent and not unimportant in the minor scenery of the isthmus. I saw these two trees (something resembling the Ailanthus and the Aralia) on the shore of lagoons and rivers and on islands in these, not a few hundred yards away, not differing at all from those on our island, except as they stretched themselves higher toward heaven and had smaller bunches of plumes at the top. I saw also great lengths of shore, where the immediate border of the water consisted wholly of shrubs and grass or herbage, which would in the middle distance of a picture be perfectly represented by a copy of a bank, very densely grown (horizontally over the water) of our Holly-leaved Barberry and beds of Sweet Flag and Tiger Lily with vines running through and over them. These vines are thinly leaved with leaves like Kalmia, but longer, and a blossom like a white Convolvulus. The only noticeably frequent blossom or flower at all conspicuous was not to be distinguished a few rods off from the Convolvulus, sometimes white and sometimes purple. A speck of scarlet was sometimes seen in the herbage, but I could not catch the form. There were also great broad leaves of the color of the Skunk Cabbage and others which I could not distinguish from the Paulownia. A small tree was sometimes seen also having exactly the effect of the Paulownia four to five years old in rich soil. These then are all details which (seen across water) we can very well produce.

Other plants, of the general density, form, size and best color of the Berberis aquifolia, including some of broader leaf and greater pliancy, are mixed with that. The Forsythia and the Oriental Magnolias represent closely other shrubs which I saw distinctly by the roadside. I saw also, as it seemed to me, our Wild Raspberry, the fragrant variety, or a purple dark leaf of the same form (a single shrub of Purple Barberry would meet the effect in a bank). I saw also our common rushes and the Cat-tail Flag, but without seed-stems. Of many scenes, there was no other marked detail. Of trees which I could distinguish in the general body of foliage, there were besides those spoken of, what I suppose to be Tamarinds, not essentially differing in landscape effect from our Honey-locust, and one resembling in its structure our Sycamore, with a thinly scattered foliage of leaves like the Magnolia grandiflora; I almost think it is that, grown very large and straggling under tropical heat. There were glaucous-leaved small trees which the Magnolia glauca would tolerably replace and all the varieties of Magnolia, generally growing in clusters and not large, much the most marked of these not differing from our great-leaved Magnolia when young and in rich soil. Young shoots of this growing as it would if from a stool with the different stems cut down one or two every year, and none growing over five years, would give what was of most value of the great-leafed trees not palms and not of the Paulownia character. I saw no great-leafed trees more than twenty feet high, always excepting palms. As a general rule, in the landscape, [88]these and whatever trees there were, were lost completely (as individuals) in the intricacy of whatever went to make up the mass of luxuriance, but especially under the all-clothing garment of vines and creepers.

You know how we see a single tree—most frequently a Juniperus Virginiana—lost completely under the Cat-briar. Frequently—generally—the whole forest is lost in the same way here. You often see nothing but the foliage of the vines, and this is generally so small and delicate in detail that you distinguish nothing individual except in the immediate for-ground. Palms and everything are lost under it. As far as I could make out, the largest and highest trees were completely covered with a most delicate vine with a close narrow long leaf, gray-green in color, or more likely with a small white or gray blossom, which gave that effect. When growing over shrubs or small trees, a hundred feet distant, it was not essentially different in landscape effect from the Clematis as we often see it showered over a Sumach.

If you could have large spreading trees like the Chestnut or Sycamore growing on a steep hillside, and completely cover them with Clematis as the Sumach is covered, only here and there little branches and twigs of the other trees I have mentioned pushing up through, you would have the effect of the tropical forest much as I saw it yesterday across the Chagres River. There are all sorts of other vines. I saw, as I suppose, the yellow jessamine (of Georgia) and the Trumpet Creeper, but the Virginia Creeper would at a little distance answer better the purpose of what was more common. But also there were many more delicate in structure and smaller leaf, but larger and more cord-like in trunk. Very often it seemed as if hundreds of cords (½ inch) were stretched from every part of the great spreading tops of trees, fifty to a hundred feet to the ground. All large trees seem to have strained themselves to the utmost to get their foliage away from the smothering density of the ground-growth, the smaller trees and shrubs, but not to have been able to get away from the vines and creepers. Thus there is often, as it were, an upper and a lower growth, of which the cocoanut palm growing out of a jungle, but itself overgrown by the creepers, is the extreme type, thus:

There are parts of the Ramble where you will have this result, in a considerable degree, after a few years—the lower stratum being a few shrubs that will endure the shade and the upper, low spreading-topped or artificially dwarfed trees, assisted by vines. I don’t doubt that in the interior of these forests you would find spots where the ground-growth was killed by density of shade and the trunks only supported a canopy or extended parasol rendered complete and impervious by the vines and by the absence of shade above. The theory of [89]adaptation of varieties thus accounts for the palm-like growth of so many tropical trees and shrubs or sub-trees. Our Sassafras as it grows in the sassafras grove in the Ramble is a perfectly tropical tree in character. But for tropical or tropic-like scenery you must get the utmost possible intricacy and variety and can have no breadth or mass of color or simple continuity of outline, for instance:

This is a correct sketch of the profile of a hillside, a span of the Andes, as I now see it two miles away, against the sky. Many of the trees must be of the largest size.

The country is rocky but, except where there are cliffs or precipices (where stone is being quarried, generally by the Rail Road Company), all the rock is covered with verdure. The most beautiful thing in itself is the young (or a small variety of) banana—or what I suppose to be that. Is there nothing which would give something of that exquisite, transparent, glaucous green, which, by strawing and all manner of practicable winter protection, you could get on the lake shore? You get no conception of its beauty when it is grown as an object by itself in a tub under glass. It wants a little play of light, derived from its own motion and that of other foliage reflected on it. I assume, as I said at starting, that as a general rule, these things which I have mentioned as the most obvious parts (except those clearly out of our power to produce) which combine to constitute tropical scenery all help to that emotion, the root of which seems to be a profound sense of the Creator’s bountifulness. I don’t know how, without considering the probable reason (in the tropics) for this upper growth of certain and many trees, we can be led to this emotion by witnessing it, but I am inclined to think that it plays its part without this reflection being induced, as well as everything else. Therefore, in trying to make the best of our materials to the same purpose, I should not neglect to use it—to train up by continual selection of a leader and pruning off anything below its junction with the trunk, until a very unusual height was attained and so on by knife and training and manure. I think we could get objects to represent all the prominent details. Then general richness of soil and the removal or covering up and making intricate with vines and creepers of everything else, would under favorable natural circumstances, I believe, produce an effect having at least an interesting association with or, so to speak, flavor of tropical scenery and I should hope some little feeling of the emotion it is fitted to produce. For this purpose, however, we must make much of trees of the smallest size and large shrubs, and consequently must subject all large trees to peculiar treatment, so as not to destroy the minor scale of the landscape, [90]and also not to crowd out and destroy the important small trees by shade.

If I were, after this experience, in your place on the park, I should aim to have something of this character all around the lake, but especially on the east shore of the main lake. We always, or at least originally, intended to get water-plants in there. The mass of foliage on the shore opposite and to the north of the island is, I think, more monotonous than was originally intended—very much. Is it too late to break into it and reducing the surface in some places to water-level, get flags and coarse water-grasses and lilies, etc., to grow? On the island, I would cut away all the deciduous growth which inclines to run more than four feet high, except the Aralias and Ailanthus and push these as high as possible (except also the vines, of course). I question whether I would keep the cedars, but if I did, I would confine them in a network of vines to the narrowest limits consistent with the life of the lower foliage. I would remove from the island the Deciduous Cypresses. The adjoining bank, I would, if it were possible, treat in the same way for a short distance, and then make sure of great intricacy above and a water edge (where Flags would not grow) of overhanging glossy (with spots of glaucous) foliage. I would have every rock (and evergreen) in this immediate vicinity shrouded under Cat-briar or Clematis, completely so. Of course I would get in the Indian Corn here and there if I could. I think the Sorghum would have a canelike effect, would it not? And of course I would have some show of the Ailanthus and the cut-down Paulownia along the edges, as well as Callas, etc. By callas I mean plants having the general appearance of callas. I was delighted the last time I was in the park, with the appearance of the Cypresses on the west shore and thought I would be glad to have the masses of them enlarged. Would it not be well to move those on the island for that purpose? I did not like the Weeping Willow at the bridge, but don’t mind their being tried. Cut them away when you feel like it. I would have the Catalpa and the Paper Mulberry once or twice more repeated along the lake-shore. I thought the knife was badly wanted to bring out the dark on the point opposite the terrace and at a few other points. I meant to have said all this to you and more, but had no time.

I hope you will continue to pay particular attention to the enrichment of the soil on the intermediate border of the lake, especially where the rocky parts are. Up to this time there has been no part of the work which has disappointed me more than these rocky and stony parts of the lake-shore, particularly the bay opposite the terrace and the east side of the point, the north bay and the west side of the passage to the crypt, where the blasting drill-hole is still seen and where the richest luxuriance of foliage was wanted, there is rawness, bareness, and sharpness of form, and poverty. Couldn’t you have some large pocket-holes blasted or quarried near the water’s edge in those rocks in the north bay, the crypt-cove and the terrace bay and fill them with rich soil so as to get vines growing [91]over them from beneath? By some means or other the bareness of these rocks should be overcome whatever its cost, for it detracts greatly from the value of all that has been done about them.

Since the above writing, we have landed at Acapulco and Mansanillo bay in Mexico, and I have strolled a little among the trees. I find the true palms seldom except in groves and clusters by themselves, generally in low alluvial ground, and what I have said above is confirmed, except as the distinctive character of tropical foliage is less on the Mexican coast than at the isthmus. We have coasted for days within short distance of the shore. What I chiefly feel that I have above disregarded or neglected to refer to, is the peculiar beauty in tropical landscape which is due to the frequent cavernous depths of shade, to the constant recurrence of these on the forest slopes. You can easily see how these result from the circumstances I have mentioned; the umbrella-like trees, overhanging dense undergrowth and the vines making a drapery, all natural ravines and cliffs of rock and caverns of rock, which form the characteristic topography of this coast as of parts of the Italian and English coasts, being thus clothed with foliage. The play of light and shade even at noonday is most refreshing. One can often hardly believe that the forms of foliage are not artificial, so like are they when seen at a distance in effect of light and shade to the old clipped arbors and boweries and hedge figures. You have all this in some degree about the crypt and the rustic arch and with care to push the vines and coax the branches over, so as to get, not merely caverns and depths of shade, but caverns of foliage, dark and yet reflecting light at every leaf-point, and depths of shade in green, such as elsewhere in our climate we see only in gray and brown, you will get it perfectly. When you do, to the utmost extent that is possible with the materials which the climate allows you to use in those situations, I believe it will be a revelation of beauty to the people, and even to gardeners and artists, for although in some, indeed in many particulars, they have the advantage of us in England, in their materials, especially dark and glossy foliage, they cannot approach us in materials for canopy and drapery effects of foliage, and there are few situations where soil, exposure and rocky skeletons can be so happily combined for the production of this class of effects as in the Ramble and along the lake-border. I have seen my ideal of the treatment of several points, done by the unaided hand of Nature (with the tropical sun) a number of times this morning and as I never saw before.

Please tell Mr. Green that I fully intended to have spent a day with him on the park before I left, and regret that I was so pressed as to be unable to.

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