It
Did Not Appear On Later Inquiry That These Small Holdings Were Of
Peasant Ownership, As I Could Have Wished;
They were tenant farms, but
their neatness testified to the prosperity of the tenants, and their
frequency cheered our way
As the evening waned and the lamps began to
twinkle from their windows. At a certain station, I am reminded by my
careful mentor, the craggy mountain-tops were softened by the sunset
pink, and that then the warm afternoon air began to grow cooler, and the
dying day to empurple the uplands everywhere, without abating the charm
of the blithe cottages. It seems to have been mostly a very homelike
scene, and where there was a certain stretch of woodland its loneliness
was relieved by the antic feat of a goat lifting itself on its hind legs
to browse the olive leaves on their native bough. The air was thinner
and cooler, but never damp, and at times it relented and blew lullingly
in at our window. We made such long stops that the lights began to fade
out of the farm-windows, but kept bright in the villages, when at a
station which we were so long in coming to that we thought it must be
next to Granada, a Spanish gentleman got in with us; and though the
prohibitory notice of _No Fumadores_ stared him in the face, it did not
stare him out of countenance; for he continued to smoke like a
locomotive the whole way to our journey's end.
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