hrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue,
and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are.
One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them
carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching
finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my
tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of
young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty,
nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne
with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may
survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's
dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may
indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of
desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay
there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific
overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty
and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las
Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.

THE TERRACINA ROAD

Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by
express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of
the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the
Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses
the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of
Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the
past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs
from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and
Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the
strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long
Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they
warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens.
And To-day marches two and two in the stalwart figures of twin
_carabinieri_ upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some
danger from brigands. These _carabinieri_ (there are never less than two
together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law
is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax
salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient
App