and the scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of the
afternoon before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately
realized more and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked
so old, so world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of
Italy. They were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle
life; where they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were
young trees, apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely
waiting for others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to
their first fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic
superstition that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger
of the goats, till we were told that it was to save their roots from
being loosened by the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds
and the hilly backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous
perspectives; but when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide
expanses of pasturage, where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves for
the feasts throughout Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy
beyond others in supplying. With their devoted families they paraded the
meadows, black against the green, or stood in sharp arrest, the most
characteristic accent of the scene. In the farther rather than the
nearer distance there were towns, very white, very African, keeping
jealously away from the stations, as the custom of most towns is in
Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed the landscape with the
olive orchards.

One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow
Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its
painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The
railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with
cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical
uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright sun,