marvellously human in their distortion, that I could scarcely believe
them to be accidental. Dore never drew anything so weird and grotesque.
Here were two club-headed individuals righting, with interlocked knees,
convulsed shoulders, and fists full of each other's hair; yonder a bully
was threatening attack, and three cowards appeared to be running away
from him with such speed that they were tumbling over one another's
heels. In one place a horrible dragon was devouring a squirming,
shapeless animal; in another, a drunken man, with whirling arms and
tangled feet, was pitching forward upon his face. The living wood in
Dante was tame beside these astonishing trees.

We now entered a wild ravine, where, nevertheless, the mountain-sides,
sheer and savage as they were, had succumbed to the rule of man, and
nourished an olive or a carob tree on every corner of earth between the
rocks. The road was built along the edge of the deep, dry bed of a
winter stream, so narrow that a single arch carried it from side to
side, as the windings of the glen compelled. After climbing thus for a
mile in the shadows of threatening masses of rock, an amphitheatre of
gardens, enframed by the spurs of two grand, arid mountains, opened
before us. The bed of the valley was filled with vines and orchards,
beyond which rose long terraces, dark with orange and citron trees,
obelisks of cypress and magnificent groups of palm, with the long white
front and shaded balconies of a hacienda between. Far up, on a higher
plateau between the peaks, I saw the church-tower of Valdemosa. The
sides of the mountains were terraced with almost incredible labor, walls
massive as the rock itself being raised to a height of thirty feet, to
gain a shelf of soil two or three yards in breadth. Where the olive and
the carob ceased, box and ilex took possession of the inaccessible
points, carrying up the long waves of vegetation until their
foam-sprinkles of silver-gray faded out among the highest clefts. The
natural channels of the rock were straightened and made to converge at
the base, so that not a wandering cloud could bathe the wild growths of
the summit without being caught and hurried into some tank below. The
wilderness was forced, by pure toil, to become a Paradise; and each
stubborn feature, which toil could not subdue, now takes its place as a
contrast and an ornament in the picture. Verily, there is nothing in all
Italy so beautiful as Valdemosa!

Lest I sh