The woods of Barracombe stretched upwards to the skyline of the ridge behind the house, and were intersected by winding paths, bordered by hardy fuchsias and delicate ferns.

Here nature, in only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig.