The San Antonio light. (San Antonio, Tex.) 1883-1886, 1883-04-04
The Gnrden of Paradise.


ers to claim an American site for the primitive
Garden OF Paradise, that spot is the Teche
country of Louisiana. Mountain scenery has,
indeed, inspired poets for many decades of
centuries, but the splendor and the grandeur
Of lofty peaks never evoked those feelings
which the first sight Of the Teche must
create in any imaginative mind. Masculine
and mighty are the words in which the beauty
Of mountains are described-the peaks call
Titan thoughts into being, longings after in
accessibilities remote as their glimering sum-
mits, fancies deep as the rayless chasms open
ing between their granite feet Races born
among the high crags have made history; the
children OF the mountains inherit statute OF
giants and fierceness of eagles
All the glory that is associated with noun
tain legend and mountain history has a saw
age glitter; the splendid is always blended
with the terrible, as in Scandinavian Eddas.
Perhaps the tenderest fancy connected with
mountains has been that religious one-com-
mon to almost all nations-that somewhere
above the fir belts, above the roar of cas-
cades, above the reach Of human endeavor,
above the flight Of eagles, there is some mys-
terious summit whose wilderness is not Of
snow, but Of Divinity-the dwelling place of
everlasting peace.
But here in a land where no Sierra bars the
horizon, where no snow falls and all is smooth
and soft as a bed, would seem filter soourn
for gods than the most iridescent summit Of
the brightest mountain ever kissed by the
sun. Heaven is not here above human
resch-one may drift dreamily into it
with a wait OF orange scented wind;
there is no eminence; the long low undula.
tons are not loftier than those of tropical
S "a on days of fervid heat-and in the virgin
llveliness of the land one beholds the dreams
of the old Greek idyllists realized in all rich
ness of perfumed greenland yet something
more, never beheld in any temple nor even in
those Arcadian wales peopled by a race who
called themselves Proselenoi, or older than
the moon.
Those groves Of great oaks are such as
Martin pictured in his illustrations to Para
disc Lost; and his fairy Eve might have mir
rored her white body in the smooihness Of
that sinuous bayou not less perfectly than in
the waters of Paradisaical pond Where
the wild bushes and the expresses do not
crowd to the bank in prom,scuous herds Of
green, the prairie dips its messy soft
ness into the water. The first general
impression of the Teche scenery is that
of sailing through some enormous garden;
but the Spanish moss gradually and fantastic
ally dissipates that idea.
Ii is the moss that forms the theme of the
scenery-if a musical word may be used de-
scriptively. 1t constitutes the character q the
landscape. 1t is omniprssent aud omnipotent
n effect II streams from the heads and limbs
OF the oaks; from the many-elbowed cypress
skeletons it hangs like decaying rags of green.
cnuOactipnc If 0ihhatc oC
corpses, of rotten rigging, of the tattered sails
of ships "drifting with the dead to shores
where all is dumb" Under the sunlight it
has also countless pleasant forms the tresses
of slumbering dryads, the draperies flung out
upon some vast woodland-holiday by skill of
merry elves. Under the moon, losing its
green, every form of goblnry, every
ness of witchcraft, every horror
of death, are Knocked by it. A weird and
wonderful mourning seems to droop over the
plains all the woods and the groves, the
lily-kissed pools, the shadow-rehecting ba-
yous,-appear to lament some incalculable be-
reavement, some vast and awful death. 1t is
as though this land were yet weeping for Pan,
as though all the forests and streams had
not ceased after more than a thousand years
to lament the passing away of the sylvan gods
ana nympnS OI the WOrlu.
ItCircling, coiling. curving, curling, the bayou
moves without a ripple through wildernesses
Of wildly fantastic beauty-through land worth
a surface covering Of golden coin, through
foIlorn cypress woods, weeping their moss
into the Swallowed water, through fields
Of cane,-through vistas of evergreens
dying away into blue dreaminess-under
orange trees holding out their yellow riches
to passing boats, close by fallen trunks
dr. ,wned in the waveless current alligators
hard to be distinguished from the dead grey
bark At long intervals white town doing
under green shadows Land and the streets
sleep beneath the sun, full Of flower fragrance,
and the nuptial incense of orange groves
There is hardly stir; the songs of birds
drown the voices of men; the shadows of the
trees scarcely waver. And the great dreami
ness of the land makes itself master OF thought
and speech, mesmerizes you, caresses
with tender treachery, soothes with
irresistible languor, woos with un.
utterable sweetness ...... Afterward when
you have returned into the vast metropolis,
into the dust and the turmoil and the roar Of
traffic and the smoke Of industry and the iron
cares OF life-that mesmerism will not have
utterly passed away, nor the perfume of that
popped land wholly evaporated from the
brain. The songs Of the birds will still be
heard by you-faint as fairy flutes, and in
dreams the golden Teche will curve for you
once more under wondrous festoons of green,
uoder wizar'l apparelled groves, through deep
entertainments Of perennial summer. and you
will awake to feel the great sweet dreamness
come back upon you again "a moment only,
but moment that makes dim the eyes as with
mists OF tropical morning