276 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
beggars or peasants may wait, and where one 
naturally expects to find Gil Blas in one corner 
and Sancho Panza in another. An English 
lady, on arriving, declared that our hotel was 
only a donkey stable, and refused to enter it. 
In the intervals between the houses the streets 
are lined with solid stone walls from ten to 
twenty feet high, protecting the gardens be- 
hind; and there is another stone wall inclos- 
ing the town on the water side, as if to keep 
the people from being spilled out. One must 
go some miles into the country before getting 
beyond these walls, or seeing an inch on either 
side. This would be intolerable, of course, were 
the country a level ; but as every rod of ground 
slopes up or down, it simply seems like walk- 
ing through a series of roofless ropewalks or 
bowling-alleys, each being tilted up at an angle, 
so that one observes the landscape through 
the top, but never over the sides. Thus, walk- 
ing or riding, one seldom sees the immediate 
foreground, but a changing background of soft 
valleys, an endless patchwork of varied green 
rising to the mountains in the interior of the 
island, or sinking to the blue sea, beyond which 
the mountain Pico rears its graceful outline 
across the bay. 
From the street below comes up a constant 
hum of loud voices, often rising so high that 
