While gazing on this wonderful picture, which varied in appearance and presented us with fresh splendours at each turn of our wheels, we saw appear on the horizon the pointed roofs of Carolina's symmetrical pavilions, a sort of model village, or agricultural phalansterium, formerly founded by the Count of Florida Blanca, and peopled by him, at a great expense, with Germans and Swiss. This village, built all of a sudden, and raised at the will of one man, possesses that tedious regularity which is unknown in places which rise gradually, and in obedience to the caprice of chance and time. Everything has been done by line and rule: from the middle of the place you can see the whole town; here is the market of the Plaza de Toros; here is the church, and here is the house of the alcade. All this is certainly very nice, but I prefer the most wretched village which has taken its form at random. The colony has not, however, succeeded; the Swiss became affected with nostalgia and died off like flies, on merely hearing the bells sound; the ringing of them was therefore obliged to be discontinued. They did not all die, however, and the population of Carolina still preserves traces of its German origin. We had a solid dinner at Carolina served up with some excellent wine, and I was not obliged to take double portions: we now no longer travelled with the courier, as the roads are perfectly safe in these parts. Aloe-trees, more and more African in size and shape, continued to rise along the sides of the road, and towards the left a long garland of flowers of the deepest rose-colour, glittering in a foliage of emeralds, marked out all the sinuosities of the bed of a dried up rivulet. Profiting by a halt made to change mules, my companion ran and gathered an enormous bouquet of these flowers; they were rose-bays of the greatest beauty and freshness. We might put to this rivulet, with the name of which I am not acquainted, and which perhaps has none, the same question that Monsieur Casimir Delavigne puts to the Greek river-- "Eurotas, Eurotas, que font tes lauriers-roses?" To the rose-bays succeeded, like a melancholy reflection after a silvery burst of laughter, tall olive-trees whose pale leaves remind you of the white foliage of the willows of the North, and which harmonize admirably well with the ashy colour of the ground. These leaves, which are of a grave, austere, and gentle tint, were most judiciously chosen by the ancients, those skilful estimators of natural evidence, as the symbol of peace and wisdom.