They came into the
most curious garden she had ever seen.
It was long and narrow and dishevelled, without grass or flowers. The
uneven ground of it was bare, sun-baked earth, hard as parquet, rising
here into a hump, falling there into a depression. Immediately behind
the cabaret, where the dead gazelles with their large glazed eyes lay
by the fowl-run, was a rough wooden trellis with vines trained over it,
making an arbour. Beyond was a rummage of orange trees, palms, gums and
fig trees growing at their own sweet will, and casting patterns of deep
shade upon the earth in sharp contrast with the intense yellow sunlight
which fringed them where the leafage ceased. An attempt had been made
to create formal garden paths and garden beds by sticking rushes into
little holes drilled in the ground, but the paths were zig-zag as a
drunkard's walk, and the round and oblong beds contained no trace of
plants. On either hand rose steep walls of earth, higher than a man, and
crowned with prickly thorn bushes. Over them looked palm trees. At the
end of the garden ran a slow stream of muddy water in a channel with
crumbling banks trodden by many naked feet.
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