258 
LETTERS FROM 
and apparently inaccessible points, almost 
overhanging the road, we were surprised to 
see little villages perched in the most ro¬ 
mantic situations imaginable. It appeared 
to me that a dozen men, furnished with a 
good supply of large stones, might defend 
these eyries from the attack of an army, 
supposing the assailants to be unprovided 
with artillery. 
We passed many beautiful orange and 
lemon plantations on the road, but the crops 
in most of them had been gathered in. 
We stopped at one of these plantations, when 
the owner went to his trees, and gathered for 
us twenty very fine-flavoured oranges, for 
which he asked a sum equal to rather more 
than twopence of English money. On this, 
and on the preceding day we crossed the 
dry beds of several mountain-torrents. As 
the floods come down very suddenly from 
