Emerging from these sunken lanes, so peculiar to the island of St. Michael’s, we come to the green hills which border the village and the valley of the Seven Cities.... From these dull evergreen mountains, stretching before us without apparent end, we speedily had an unexpected change. Suddenly the mountain track up which we were climbing ended on the edge of a vast precipice, hitherto entirely concealed, and at a moment’s transition disclosed a wide and deeply sunk valley with a scattered village and a blue lake. The hills which hemmed them in were bold and precipitous, tent-shaped, rounded and serrated. Others swept in soft and gentle lines into a little plain where the small village was nestled by the water side. The lake was of the deepest blue and so calm that a sea bird skimming over its surface seemed two, so perfect was its image in the water. The clouds above were floating in this very deep lake, and the inverted tops of the hills on every side were perfectly reflected in its bosom. A few women on the shore seemed rooted there, so steady were their reflections in the water, and the cattle standing in the shallows stood like cattle in a picture.... The sides slope gradually from this part of the valley into the level ground where the village stands. It is a small collection of cottages, without a church or a wineshop or a store of any kind, and at the time I entered it was enveloped in clouds of wood smoke which rose from the fires used in the process of bleaching cloth. This and clothes washing are the chief occupations of the villagers.... A portion of the lake is separated from the larger one by a narrow causeway. It is singular to notice the difference made in the two pieces of water by this small embankment; for, while the large lake is clear and crystalline, this is thick, green, and muddy, and as gloomy as the Dead Sea, with no clouds or birds or bright sky reflected in it.[138] Perhaps a little excavating archeology might not be amiss in the neighborhood of the causeway and the green dead lakelet. But at least it is satisfactory to have a good external account of the only site in the world, so far as I know, which still bears the legendary name. As elsewhere used, this name has certainly wandered widely and been affixed to many places. Whether any of these represent real refuges of the original emigrants or their descendants or others like them no one can quite certainly say; but there is no evidence for it, and the probabilities are against it. Certainly no Spanish nor Portuguese community, of Moorish or of any pre-Columbian times, established itself in western lands for any great period to make good the aspiration of the fugitives of Merida. CHAPTER VI THE PROBLEM OF MAYDA