Las Piedras Encantadas 



by climbing, you enjoy the beauties of scenery much 

 more than when a steamboat or a diligence carries you 

 lazily by. 



After I had made the most of these sensations and 

 reflections, and taken my breath, with a slight admixture 

 of tobacco-smoke, I crossed the narrow neck of the rock- 

 isthmus, and looked back upon the city, and down upon the 

 Huecar glen, from a brow of the precipice which we had 

 seen from the bridge. We had remarked the spot from 

 the appearance of something like a ruined building in the 

 face of the rock, though in the distance we could not 

 assure ourselves that it was not one of the fantastic natural 

 formations in which these very singular crags abound. 

 It turned out to be the front wall of the lower story of a 

 house built down a chip in the edge of the clifF, which 

 tenement, having probably tottered on the brink to an 

 extreme old age, had at length fallen over. 



Returning to the Parador^ I found Harry had returned 

 from making a sketch in the Huecar glen. 



While he was sketching, a man had come up, and 

 entered into conversation with him about the pictur- 

 esque, who said that Cuenca was nothing compared with 

 another place in the hills, about three leagues off, called 

 Las Piedras Encantadas (the enchanted stones). The 

 name struck our fancy, and we resolved to go, being 

 not at all discouraged by the dissuasion of a man at the 

 Parador^ who said it was a bad place — nada d'lgna de verse 

 (nothing worth seeing) — only rocks and pine-trees. 



The director of the diligence, a polite cahallero^ whose 

 bureau is in the Parador^ and who fraternised with us at 

 breakfast, informed us that Piedras Encantadas was a nice 

 place in z pat ^ age muy Undo (pretty scenery), also that there 

 were good shooting and fishing. Our best way, he said, 



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