The Only Thing That I Can
Remember Against The Landscape Is The Prevalence Of Olive Orchards.
I
hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, and
I did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall
hedges which now and then hid the olives.
But olive orchards may vary
their monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering their
fruit into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of
symmetrical green may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and
pomegranates around the pleasant farmsteads. The nearer we drew to
Granada the pleasanter these grew, till in the famous Vega they thickly
dotted the landscape with their brown roofs and white walls.
We had not this effect till we had climbed the first barrier of hills
and began to descend on the thither side; but we had incident enough to
keep us engaged without the picturesqueness. The beggars alone, who did
not fail us at any station, were enough; for what could the most
exacting tourist ask more than to be eating his luncheon under the eyes
of the children who besieged his car windows and protested their famine
in accents which would have melted a heart of stone or of anything less
obdurate than travel? We had always our brace of Civil Guards, who
preserved us from bandits, but they left the beggars unmolested by
getting out on the train next the station and pacing the platform, while
the rabble of hunger thronged us on the other side.
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