8 SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS 



one's boots out by putting them on except where custom 

 orders it, in the approaches to the larger villages and 

 towns. 



Our way now lies along an extensive tract of high 

 land, eucalyptus and plane trees shading the road at 

 intervals ; the latter still dangled their last year's leaves 

 and bugles, as though in mute protest against a climate 

 so equable as to give them no chance of a period of rest 

 and bareness before again assuming their spring foliage. 

 This high land is known as the Laguna Plain, and is a 

 well cultivated district, much wheat being grown here. 



The outskirts of the old city of Laguna are in time 

 reached, and we soon find ourselves rattling through its 

 narrow stone-paved streets, overlooked on either side 

 by tall houses, many of them extremely picturesque and 

 showing quaintly modelled old doorways. At Laguna, 

 like two well-known companions of the shore, we might 

 " talk of many things," of its Dragon Tree, of the 

 beautiful silver lamps that hang in some of its old 

 churches, or of the Library, with its neglected patio, 

 containing orange trees now borne down with fruit, and 

 climbing heliotrope that reaches almost to the balcony 

 which overlooks the ground. But the outset of our 

 journey is no time for loitering ; we have a boat to 

 catch, and though Spanish punctuality is proverbially a 

 by word, it has occasionally a nasty way of reminding 

 one that its existence is not altogether a myth, as I once 

 found to my cost. 



Soon after leaving Laguna the white, flat-roofed 

 houses of Santa Cruz come into view, the town lying 

 many hundred feet below us, with its natural harbour 

 beyond, the whole bounded by the range of sharp, 



