The surrounding country of the Province of Sevilla, _La Tierra de Maria Santisima_, is flat, and in the neighbourhood of the city sparsely wooded. On the low hills of Italica and San Juan de Aznalfarache, the Hisn-al-Faradj of the Moors, olive groves cover many thousands of acres. The plain is a _parterre_ of wide grain fields, and meadows of rife grass, divided by straight white roads, with their trains of picturesque mule teams and waggons, and their rows of tall, straight trees. Here and there the cold grey cactus serves as a fence, but there is no other kind of hedgerow. Far away, across the yellow wheatfields, and beyond the vine-clad slopes of the middle distance, rise the huge shoulders and purple peaks of wild sierras. The Guadalquivir, rolling and eddying in a wide bed, takes its tint from the light soil and sand, and is always turbid, as though in spate. Below Seville, on the left bank of the river, stretch the great salt marshes, or Marismas, haunted by the stork, the heron, and innumerable wildfowl. Here, among the arms of the tidal water, the cotton plant is cultivated. Winter floods are a source of danger to Seville, especially when a south-west wind is blowing and the tide ascending the river. Then the Guadalquivir overflows its banks and deluges the town and the flat land, drowning live stock and destroying buildings. In 1595 and 1626 occurred two of the worst floods, or _avenidas_, on record. The flood of 1626 washed away the foundations of about three thousand houses. [Illustration: The Guadalquivir] It is probable that the southern kingdom of Andalusia derived its name from the Vandals, who overran the country after the Roman occupation. The region was then known as Vandalitia, or Vandalusia. Lower Andalusia has been said to be the Tarshish of the Bible. The Phœnicians called the land Tartessus, or Tartessii. Nowadays Andalusia includes the provinces of Sevilla, Huelva, Cadiz, Córdova, Jaén, Granada and Almeria, and has a population of over three millions. Seville is the capital, the seat of an archbishop, and a university town. The traveller from Northern Europe will feel the spirit of Spain upon him as he approaches Seville from Cadiz or Córdova through a semi-tropical country under a burning blue sky. He will note everywhere the influence of the Arab in the architecture of modern public buildings, churches and dwelling-houses, in the tortuous, narrow streets, in the features, language, music and garb of the people, and in many of the customs of the district. The character of the landscape is strange, the atmosphere vivid, and the distant objects show sharply against the horizon. For leagues he will traverse groves of olive, or vineyards, and pass across wastes purple with the flower of the lavender or scarlet with poppies.