It was in the _patio_ that we took our meals, read, and lived. We used our room for hardly anything but to dress and sleep in. Were it not for the _patio_, an architectural arrangement which reminds you of the ancient Roman _cavædium_, the houses in Andalusia would not be inhabitable. The sort of hall which precedes it is generally paved with small pebble-stones of various colours, forming designs in rough mosaic-work, now representing vases of flowers, now soldiers and caltrops, or simply stating the time when the _patio_ was constructed. From the top of our abode, which was surmounted by a kind of _mirador_, we could perceive, above the summit of a hill standing out boldly on the blue sky, and through groups of trees, the massive towers of the Alhambra, clothed by the sun in deep red, fire-like tints. The view was rendered complete by two large cypresses placed in juxtaposition, and the dark points of which rose into the sky above the walls of red. These cypresses are never lost sight of: whether you are climbing the snow-streaked sides of the Mulhacen, or wandering about the Vega or the Sierra de Elvira, they are always to be perceived, dark and motionless in the mist of the blue or golden vapour with which the roofs of the houses appear, at a distance, to be enveloped. Granada is built on three hills, at the end of the plain of the Vega: the Vermilion Towers--thus named on account of their colour (_Torres Bermejas_), and which are asserted to be of Roman or even Phœnician origin--occupy the first and the least elevated of these eminences; the Alhambra, which is in itself an entire city, covers the second and highest hill with its square towers, connected with one another by lofty walls and immense substructures, which form an enclosure containing gardens, woods, houses, and squares; the Albaycin is situated on the third hillock, which is separated from the others by a deep ravine choked with vegetation and full of cactuses, coloquintidas, pistachio-trees, pomegranate-trees, rose-bays, and tufts of flowers, and at the bottom of which flows the Darro, with the rapidity of an Alpine torrent. The Darro, which has gold in its stream, traverses the city now beneath the open sky, now under bridges so long that they rather merit the name of vaults, and joins itself in the Vega, at a little distance from the parade, to the Xenil which is contented with containing silver. The course of the torrent through the city is called _Carrera del Darro_, and a magnificent view is obtained from the balconies of those houses which border it. The Darro wears away its shores very much, and causes frequent slips of earth; there exists, in consequence, an old couplet, sung by children, which alludes to this mania for carrying everything away, and accounts for it in a peculiar manner. The following are the lines in question:-- "Darro tiene prometido El casarse con Xenil Y le ha de llevar en dote Plaza Nueva y Zacatin,"