There is always a feeling of uncanniness in speeding through an unknown town at night for the first time. Here at Luzo little white cottages flashed past us, a dim light flickered before a shrine at a street corner, a man dimly visible tinkled a _bandurra_ a by the side of a grated window, little groups whispered mysteriously in the semi-darkness: they were all shadows to me, whilst I, poor waif, to them was nothing, for the clatter of the mules and the rattle of the carriage over the cobble stones were the only signs they had of the momentary presence of a man who, like a ship passing in the night, flitted in the darkness through the village which to them was life and death and all things. Our road lay ever upward. By the dim light of a waning moon one could see the trunks of great pines close together, and the soft moist air was heavily charged with the grateful balsamic scent of the trees. As we toiled patiently upward and still upward, in the darkness of the night the hush of the woods fell deeply upon us, for no breath of wind stirred the lofty tops that closed over us like an arch, and the summer night-birds had already taken flight farther south. Presently we passed through what in the dimness looked like an imposing architectural gateway set in a high wall, and then the wood grew perceptibly denser. By the wayside the bank on the left rose sheer from the road covered with verdure, and one felt rather than saw that up and up, as it seemed infinitely, the great trees towered higher and higher upon the steep slope, whilst on the right hand the huge eucalyptus trunks shining white through the blackness of the night, stood upon the brink of a precipitous drop, from which emerged now and again tree tops and a tumult of vegetation that showed, even though one saw but little of it, that we were in the midst of a luxuriant forest such as those I have seen on the Amazon and in Brazil, but never before in Europe. Presently we drove into a circle of light, and one of the surprises of my life burst upon me. A palace so stately and beautiful, so new and spotless withal, as to seem like a scene from a fairy tale. But no—this flashing white dream in stone is no scenic illusion; the carved tracery, like petrified lace, and leaves, and branches, infinite in caprice and variety, the lovely cloistered terrace, the monumental staircase, and the almost insolent wealth and intricacy of sculptured ornament, are all solid chiselled stone, and this splendid royal castle in the most wondrous wood in Europe is an ordinary hotel, or rather an extraordinary one run on ordinary lines.