I know of one country house in Bermuda where the origin of all the
beautiful things it contains is above all suspicion. The house stands
on a knoll overlooking the ultramarine waters of Hamilton Harbour, and
is surrounded by a dense growth of palms, fiddle trees, and spice
trees. The rooms are panelled in carved cedar-wood, and there is
charming "grillage" iron-work in the fanlights and outside gates.
There is an old circular-walled garden with brick paths, a perfect
blaze of colour; and at the back of the house, which is clothed in
stephanotis and "Gloire de Dijon" roses, an avenue of flaming scarlet
poinsettias leads to the orchard: it is a delightful, restful,
old-world place, which, together with its inhabitants, somehow still
retains its eighteenth-century atmosphere.
The red and blue birds form one of the attractions of Bermuda. The
male red bird, the Cardinal Grosbeak, a remarkably sweet songster,
wears an entire suit of vivid carmine, and has a fine tufted crest of
the same colour, whilst his wife is dressed more soberly in dull grey
bordered with red, just like a Netley nursing sister. The blue birds
have dull red breasts like our robins, with turquoise-blue backs and
wings, glinting with the same metallic sheen on the blue that the
angel-fish display in the water.
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