ight.

* * * * *

I know of few things in this life more delicious than a ride in the
spring or summer season in the neighbourhood of Seville. My favourite
one was in the direction of Xeres, over the wide Dehesa, as it is called,
which extends from Seville to the gates of the former town, a distance of
nearly fifty miles, with scarcely a town or village intervening. The
ground is irregular and broken, and is for the most part covered with
that species of brushwood called carrasco, amongst which winds a bridle-
path, by no means well defined, chiefly trodden by the arrieros, with
their long trains of mules and borricos. It is here that the balmy air
of beautiful Andalusia is to be inhaled in full perfection. Aromatic
herbs and flowers are growing in abundance, diffusing their perfume
around. Here dark and gloomy cares are dispelled as if by magic from the
bosom, as the eyes wander over the prospect, lighted by unequalled
sunshine, in which gaily painted butterflies wanton, and green and golden
salamanquesas lie extended, enjoying the luxurious warmth, and
occasionally startling the traveller, by springing up and making off with
portentous speed to the nearest coverts, whence they stare upon him with
their sharp and lustrous eyes. I repeat, that it is impossible to
continue melancholy in regions like these, and the ancient Greeks and
Romans were right in making them the site of their Elysian fields. Most
beautiful they are, even in their present desolation, for the hand of man
has not cultivated them since the fatal era of the expulsion of the
Moors, which drained Andalusia of at least two-thirds of its population.

Every evening it was my custom to ride along the Dehesa, until the
topmost towers of Seville were no longer in sight. I then turned about,
and pressing my knees against the sides of Sidi Habismilk, my Arabian,
the fleet creature, to whom spur or lash had never been applied, would
set off in the direction of the town with the speed of a whirlwind,
seeming in his headlong course to devour the ground of the waste, until
he had left it behind, then dashing through the elm-covered road of the
Delicias, his thundering hoofs were soon heard beneath the vaulted
archway of the Puerta de Xeres and in another moment he would stand stone-
still before the door of my solitary house in the little silent square of
the Pila Seca.

* * * * *

It was not without reason that the Latins gave the name of Finis terrae