Not one perhaps in a hundred of those who visit Seville and Granada sees more than a glimpse of the beautiful country and curious villages of Andalucía; yet there is much pleasure and interest to be had from a journey through all this region. In February an early start with the sun will enable the traveller on horseback or on foot to accomplish a fair day’s journey, since the sun has not yet begun to burn and force him to rest for some six central hours of the day, as later in the year. And the outlines on every side are exquisitely clear, the sky usually cloudless, and streams flow where later there will be but dry channels. In parts the fields and roadside spaces are blue and purple with dwarf-irises (the peasants call them simply _lirios_, lilies), and the almond-trees are in flower; and at no time of the year is there a greater and more delightful contrast between spring in the valley and winter on the hills. Near Seville the immense plains stretch interminably to the faint mountains, brown and dull-green pastures of heather and dwarf-palm, flecked with silver-white streaks of water; herds of cattle, glossy black with white horns, pigs, horses, and great flocks of sheep graze there. Or the country is gently undulating like Sussex downs, but with softlier-moulded outlines and a horizon of faint blue mountains, in February exquisitely distinct in faintness. A village often entirely covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and compact. Steep, perfectly straight streets of sharp narrow cobbles, without side pavements, run up to the church at the top through rows of low, whitewashed houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness. At evening the labourers come in from the far distant fields in a continuous line, on foot or on mules and donkeys, and children go out to meet them and are given a ride back into the village. Sometimes their return is of several kilomètres, over deep earthy or stony paths, and, with their gleaming mattocks (_pioches_, _azadones_) over their shoulders, they are now to be seen clearly outlined on the evening sky, and now are lost from view in one of the many hollows of the hills. Far and near there is no tree, “neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all,” and the winds seem to have sifted and moulded the hills into softly folding mounds and hollows. In February the winds still blow occasionally with icy breath, and you will meet men on crimson and magenta-tasselled mules and donkeys, closely wrapped in old-fashioned _capas_ of brown, only their eyes visible. On the road there are few travellers--charcoal-burners coming down with troops of laden donkeys from the hills, or a slow cart drawn by a string of mules, the driver lazily asleep, and the reins appearing from between the soles of his sandals,[92] or a troop of gipsies, or orange sellers with the panniers of their mules brimmed with oranges, now selling at six _reales_, a