There are some charming drives in the neighbourhood of Noya. Our first was to the _Puente de Alonso III._ (Bridge of Alonso III.), a fine old bridge which crosses the Tambre about two miles from the point at which its mountain waters mingle with the brine of the ria. It was the 25th of March, and the fruit trees, which covered many of the valleys and half hid the villages with their pink and white blossoms, were a sight worth coming a long way to see. Green hills, their summits now bleak and bare like the Scotch moors, now covered with furze still yellow with bloom, sloped upwards in the distance on the farther side of the majestic river, and as we drove inland along its bank we could see, on looking behind us, the graceful curves and rugged peaks of the last outposts of the Pyrenees rising above the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on either side of the shining ria. One of these giant gates of the Atlantic, the one to the north, is called Monte _Barganzos_; we could see the ria coming inland to meet the Tambre just as the Arctic waters flow down to fill the lochs that separate the island of Skye from the western coast of Scotland. The Tambre flows with great force when swollen by the affluence of other mountain streams; it is twenty Spanish leagues in length, and winds in and out among the mountains like the letter S. Some of the slopes on either side of the river were carpeted with a brilliant green, others were covered with pine woods, while others again had groves of oak trees, whose bare branches were interspersed with the blossom of the cherry and the apple. There were villages everywhere, very small ones, often with only half a dozen houses in each. Now and again the hillside was a mass of white blossom like freshly fallen snow; and after we had driven about two miles the town of Noya itself could hardly be seen for its profusion of encircling blossom. Rye and wheat stood high in many of the fields; it was to be harvested in May, when maize would immediately be sown in its place, to be cut in its turn in October. Green peas filled some of the plots, and were already in flower; they too were to be ready in May, and some were already in pod. Other plots were heaped with vegetable manure, and about to be sown with maize. Our road then ran close to the water, which was fringed with overhanging willows, and here and there a tall eucalyptus, an orange, or a lemon. There were lemon trees in all the village gardens. The oranges of Noya are quite passable, though not so luscious as those of Southern Spain. Fine “lords and ladies” peeped from under the hedges, and in the more shady nooks there were a few ferns and hyacinths. The pine trees here too were covered with “brown fingers,” and below each finger we could see a cone.