e towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow
Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its
painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The
railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with
cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical
uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright
sun, which we had already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields
for wheat. Other men were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the
long nap to follow, would last till three o'clock, and perhaps be rashly
accounted to them for sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know
that their work had begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence
may be a vice of the towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the
country, if I may believe the conclusions of my note-book. The fields
often looked barren enough, and large spaces of their surface were
covered by a sort of ground palm, as it seemed to be, though whether it
was really a ground palm or not I know no more than I know the name or
nature of the wild flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with
other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was
especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward
learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All
Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of
buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve
flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos
Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten
our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the weather
continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville.

I could not honestly say that the stations or the people about them
were more interesting than in La Mancha. But at one place, where some
gentlemen in linen jackets dismounted with their guns, a group of men
with dogs leashed in pairs and saddle-horses behind them, took me with
the sense of something peculiarly native where everything was so
native. They were slim, narrow-hipped young fellows, tight-jerkined,
loose-trousered, with a sort of divided apron of leather facing the
leg and coming to the ankle; and all were of a most masterly Velasquez
coloring and drawing. As they stood smoking motionlessly, letting the
smoke drift from their nostrils, they seemed somehow of the sa