text:  Yet those wild wastes were often interspersed with delicious spots; where after toiling half the day over a desert wild as Arabia the traveller suddenly stood on the brink of some sweet and secluded valley where the eye rested on almost tropical luxuriance--all the shrubs and blossoms which require so much shelter in our rougher climate flourishing in the open air; hedges of myrtle and jessamine; huge olives and primeval vines spreading in all the prodigality of nature over the rocks; parasite plants clothing the oaks and elms with drapery of all colours floating in every breath of wind; and most delicious of all in the fiery centre of Spain streams cool as ice and clear as crystal gushing and glancing away through the depths of the valley; sometimes glittering in the sun then plunging into shade then winding along seen by starts like silver snakes until they were lost under sheets of copse and foliage unpruned by the hand of man and which seemed penetrable only by the bird or the hare