1890 THE CANARIES 151 



Marquesa, only opened as a hotel this winter, is very 

 comfortable. I am sitting with the window wide open 

 at nine o'clock at night, and the stars flash as if the sky 

 were Aiistralian. 



On Saturday we had a splendid excursion up to the 

 top of the pass that leads from here up to the other side 

 of the island. Road in the proper sense there was none, 

 and the track incredibly bad, worse than any Alpine 

 path owing to the loose irregular stones. The mules, 

 however, pick their way like cats, and you have only to 

 hold on. The pass is 6000 feet high, and we ascended 

 still higher. Fortune favoured us. It was a lovely day 

 and the clouds lay in a great sheet a thousand feet below. 

 The peak, clear in the blue sky, rose up bare and majestic 

 5000 feet out of as desolate a desert ^ clothed with the 

 stiff retama shrubs (a sort of broom) as you can well 

 imagine. It took us three hours and a half to get up, 

 passing for a good deal of the time through a kind of low 

 brush of white and red cistuses in full bloom. We saw 

 Palma on one side, and Grand Canary on the other, 

 beyond the layer of clouds which enveloped all the lower 

 part of the island. Coming down was worse than going 

 up, and we walked a good part of the way, getting back 

 about six. About seven hours in the saddle and walking. 



You never saw anything like the improvement in 

 Harry. He is burnt deep red ; he says my nose is of the 

 same hue, and at the end of the journey he raced Gurilio, 

 our guide, who understands no word of English any more 

 than we do Spanish, but we are quite intimate never- 

 theless.2 



^ The Canadas, which he calls "the one thing worth seeing 

 there." 



'^ My brother indeed averred that his language of signs was far 

 more effectual than the Spanish which my father persisted in 

 trying upon the inhabitants. This guide, by the way, was very 

 sceptical as to any Englishman being equal to walking the seventeen 

 miles, much less beating him in a race over the stony track. Hia 

 experience was entirely limited to invalids. 



