Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Navarra (Continued FROM PAMPLONA TO TAFALLA.—OLITE.—HOUSES IN THE ROCKS. —THE WOLD OF CAPARROSO.—AN ALABASTER DESERT.—A MAN AND A BROTHER (SENOR J. Z.). — TUDELA.—THE IMPERIAL CANAL.—MY IMPRESSIONS OF NAVARRA. T T was a beautiful evening when I left Pamplona. - The sky line seemed farther off than I had ever seen it before, nor had I ever beheld a vaster extent of cloudland or a more lovely collection of forms and colours. Thousands of plots of corn and grape-vines, east, west, north, and south, made the scene a rich one. Pamplona was soon lost behind the evening clouds which came down from the hills. I walked nearly seventeen miles that evening, and slept in a fowl-house near Garicoain. The next morning it rained hard. I took shelter in the church, where I found nothing to look at save half-a-dozen effigies with swords stuck through their bodies. By this time I was far away from the plain of Ch. III.] AN UGLY, INSIGNIFICANT TOWN. 31 Pamplona — traversing wild, broken country, that carried nothing but patches of lavender, broom, gorse, rosemary, and wild brier. Just above Tafalla I struck the Cidacos. It is but a drivelling creek, a tributary of the Arragon ; but the people have turned its waters to good account, and distribute it over the gardens by means of elevated channels. Grapes flourish in this little hollow, and olive trees, which serve as break-winds to the vineyards in rough weather. Tafalla turned out to be an ugly, insignificant town, its only attraction being a citadel perched on a clay hummock, which was held by two Basque dogs and a fat woman. I drove out the Basque dogs at the point of my stick, and claimed an indemnity from the fat woman—to wit, one green pear—agreeing to evacuate the place in ten minutes. I sat down on the...