the richest flower land I have ever known.[1] Glorious Campions, fiery red, there may be, too, before the Maples, with the frost, turn the world into a pageant of colour, and make even gay things dull by contrast. The streams run red as blood with their fallen leaves. The land is dressed in its rich brocade of autumn.
The Autumn comes from the West, the Japanese say, and on Western-sloping hills there are the Maples set to catch the very last gleam. All the poets have a word to tell us about it, for next to Spring it is their favourite theme. One says—
“Like far-off smoke upon the hill-side lies
The purple haze of Autumn, pale and chill:
Is it the blazing Maples, whose flame dies,
And trailing off in smoke would linger still?”
November has brought the Chrysanthemum, and its fête day, of Emperor and common people, but the true Autumn flowers “are the Maple leaves, little fiery hands of babies, loved and cherished by a nation, themselves still delightfully, divinely, children.”
- ↑ It is the good Rein, I think, who says that only the wild flowers of the Mississippi Valley can surpass, in variety and beauty, the flora of Japan, but although early affection for Arkansas and Missouri wild flowers would prejudice me in their favour, I am sure Japan can boast more (Sir Joseph Hooker bears me out in this, I see). Indeed, it must be so, for she has almost all the American plants and trees, and those of China, Formosa, and Manchuria as well,—temperate, tropic, even Alpine or Arctic flowers.
