52 CHARACTER OF THE ROAD 



pectedly greeting me here, elicited a feeling that, 

 with but a little more ardent sensitiveness in my 

 nature, would have thrown me on my knees before 

 it, as Linneeus is said to have knelt to the flowering 

 furze, on first witnessing its brilliant blossoms in 

 England. 



The road now became most shockingly stony, 

 strewed with detached fragments of the cliffs 

 around, as we approached the bluff termina- 

 tion of the table land above us. A recent earth- 

 quake had brought down considerable quantities, 

 and no attempt had been made to remove the 

 blocks, travellers very patiently seeking out a new 

 path around them. In two or three places, where 

 the detour was too great, some desperate spirits 

 had forced their mules or donkeys to breast up the 

 miniature precipices a few feet in height. At one of 

 these situations I dismounted, preferring to walk 

 through the delightfully hanging gardens on either 

 side of me, and along an embowered lane, where a 

 dense shade, and numberless little streams that 

 traversed sometimes considerable distances, con- 

 tributed to the agreeable coolness of an elevation 

 between 6,000 and 7,000 feet above the level of 

 the sea. Here, as everywhere else, where trees 

 abounded, birds of all characters and colours gave 

 liveliness to the scene. One similar in size and 

 plumage to our sparrow, constructed pensile nests, 

 dropping as it were from the extreme boughs that 

 nodded with these novel appendages. The dove, 



