32 HUTS OF THE LOWEE CLASSES. Book I. 
this curious fissure becomes so narrow that, at some places, 
a man finds it difficult to pass, and the whole formation, 
without having become less deep, abruptly terminates by a 
kind of perpendicular shaft, just wide enough for a man to 
stand at the bottom of it, and look up through a narrow 
opening, over which he perceives nothing but a little patch 
of sky. 
The huts of the outskirts and environs of Granada are 
scattered between thickets of shrubs and fruit trees, or 
hidden in the woods, which in most directions close imme- 
diately upon the city. A few hundred steps from the last 
houses of Jalteva, which, though it is called a suburb, and 
is always in a decided political opposition with Granada, 
yet in fact forms an essential part of the city, I have seen 
a deer crossing my way, which I did not shoot, because I 
could not imagine that it was not a tame one belonging to 
the next habitation ; and when, on another occasion, on my 
return from an excursion which I had been making in 
company with some friends, we all were under the impres- 
sion of having lost our way, we found ourselves imme- 
diately in front of the first houses of Granada. 
The huts of the lower classes, scattered, as I have said, 
over the outskirts and environs of the city, are often distin- 
guished by their charming sites, in which the peculiar taste 
of their Indian or half- Indian inmates is recognisable. For 
weeks the stranger may stroll about in the neighbourhood, 
and daily he will discover new gems of beauty in the situa- 
tion of some humble dwellings, built of reeds and thatched 
with palm leaves ; — here, in idyllic retirement hidden from 
the world, the footpath leading to the place scarcely visible — 
there boldly on a hill, under a group of trees, or standing 
on an open patch of savana, with a look over the lake and 
its islands and distant shores. As he passes close by, tawny 
