The water is brought to the gardens along a sort of steep acclivity, bordered with little walls, forming on each side a kind of parapet, that support trenches of large hollow tiles, through which the water runs beneath the open sky with the most gay and lively murmur in the world. On each footpace, well-supplied water-jets burst forth from the middle of little basins, and shoot their crystal aigrettes into the thick foliage of the wood of laurels, the branches of which cross and recross one another above them. The mountain streams with water on every side; at each step a spring starts forth, and you continually hear at your side the murmuring of some rivulet, turned out of its course, going to supply some fountain with water, or to carry bloom and verdure to the foot of a tree. The Arabs have carried the art of irrigation to the highest point; their hydraulic works attest the most advanced state of civilization; these works still exist; and it is to them that Granada owes the reputation it has of being the Paradise of Spain, and the fact of its enjoying eternal spring in an African temperature. An arm of the Darro has been turned out of its course by the Arabs, and carried for more than two leagues along the hill of the Alhambra. From the Belvedere of the Generalife you can plainly perceive the configuration of the Alhambra, with its line of reddish, half-demolished towers, and its remaining pieces of wall, which rise and descend according to the undulations of the mountain. The palace of Charles the Fifth, which is not seen from the side of the city stamps its square and heavy mass, which the sun gilds with a white reflection, on the damask-like sides of the Sierra Neveda, whose white ridges stand out on the horizon in a singular manner. The steeple of Saint Mary's marks its Christian outline above the Moorish embattlements. A few cypresses thrust their mournful leaves through the cracks of the walls, surrounded by all this light and azure, like a melancholy thought in the midst of a joyful fête. The slopes of the hill running down towards the Darro, and the ravine of Los Molinos, disappear beneath an ocean of verdure. It is one of the finest views that can well be imagined.