I won't pretend but that I am disappointed by your decision, the more so because my hopes of your advent stood higher than Florence's and I had endeavoured to argue that your half-promise was a valuable security. However, I know that we are far from England, and that you are unwilling to leave your household for any long time. Also the two last boats that have come here suffered much in the Bay of Biscay and were very late. So I forgive, though I badly want someone to walk with. The time has come when I feel that walks are pleasant and do me good, but that I am very tired of the contents of my own head. But even a solitary tramp is better than a day in bed, and I am really grateful to this magnificent climate and to those who sent me here. To those who cannot speak Spanish, and I cannot and never shall, the remoter parts of this island are not very accessible. I sometimes find myself beset by a troop of boys who take a fiendish pleasure in dogging the steps of an Englishman who obviously is deaf, dumb and mad. Attempts to reason with them only lead to shouts of Penny! or Tilling!--I cannot even persuade them that Tilling is not an English word. Still at times they leave me in peace and then I can be happy until the next crowd assembles. TO LESLIE STEPHEN. HOTEL Sᵗᵃ BRIGIDA, MONTE, GRAND CANARY. _23 Jan. 1899._ I fear from your last letter that you may take too seriously what I said in play. No, there was no promise, only a certain hope that you might come here, and Reason (with a capital) tells me that your decision is wise and that you must not give up to Canarios what was meant for your home and the _Utilitarians_. I am really glad to think that you are booking them, and at times I envy you. However I cannot say that I am unhappy in my idleness. When I despaired of you for a companion, I took to myself the soundest looking man in a hotel full of invalids, and gat me up into the hills to accomplish the expedition that I had reserved for you, and we succeeded in mastering not indeed the highest, but the most prominent mountain of the island, if a mountain may be no more than 6000 feet high. This raised me in my own conceit and certainly I had a very enjoyable time. I doubt whether in any of your good ascents you can have seen so gorgeously coloured a view as that which I beheld. A great part of the island lay below me; many of the rocks are bright orange and crimson and these are diversified by patches of brilliant green; the whole was framed in the blue of sky and sea. It was like a raised map that had been over-coloured. TO FREDERICK POLLOCK. CASA PEÑATE, MONTE. _Dec. 4, 1899._