LA OLIVA 23 



the town. It was no weather for seeing birds about in, 

 much less for photographing them, so we took refuge 

 in one of the ravines, or barrancos, as they are called, 

 which we were fortunate enough to find close at hand. 



The rain continued to come down fast, being driven 

 past us by the wind, now giving us a misty view of the 

 mountains opposite, now obscuring them altogether. I 

 suppose on almost any other day in the year the sun 

 would have been pouring down with such intense heat 

 that we should have been glad enough of the shelter of 

 this cave as a protection against its rays ; as it was, it 

 felt decidedly cold and might well have been, save for 

 the bare, stone-covered ground, a day in Scotland. It 

 seemed ungrateful though, to complain, for the very 

 rain that was keeping us idle for a few hours was the 

 veriest godsend to the people who were entertaining us, 

 and to the islanders generally, whose half-starved flocks 

 had too often to be shipped in the steamboat to Grand 

 Canary or Tenerife, to be sold for what they would 

 fetch ; sometimes in the case of goats for as little as 

 one or two pesetas apiece, the peseta representing in 

 our money about /d. or 8d. Also in very dry times, 

 when there has been no rain for more than a year, water 

 brought over from Las Palmas sells at one peseta a 

 quart, a prohibitive price, considering that most of the 

 people are extremely poor. 



While we were waiting in the cave before alluded 

 to, I noticed our two small guides munching their gofio 

 and pulling at some dried fish they had brought with 

 them. Gofio, I might here explain, is the staple food of 

 the islanders, the poorer kind is made from maize, the 

 better kind from wheat, wheat gofio being rather a 



