sometimes resembling a smooth wall with projecting bastions; sometimes suggesting to the eye massive towers and the battlements of ruined castles. Lastly, in the southeast and surrounded by extensive wastes, lie the Llanos, a broken and hilly region, in spite of its name, forming an oasis of pasturage which formerly maintained thousands of flocks.
The general aspect of the country is desolate, its climate torrid, its soil parched and destitute of running streams. Reservoirs called represas are constructed by the peasantry to collect rain-water for the supply of their animals. I have always been disposed to think that the general aspect of Palestine resembles that of La Rioja, in the reddish or ochreous tints of the soil, the dryness of some regions and their cisterns; also the orange-trees, vines, and fig-trees bearing exquisite and enormous fruits, which are raised along the course of some turbid and confined Jordan. There is a strange combination of mountain and plain, fruitfulness and aridity, parched and bristling heights, and hills covered with dark green forests as lofty as the cedars of Lebanon.
What chiefly brings these reminiscences of the East before my imagination is the truly patriarchal appearance of the country people of La Rioja. Thanks to caprices of fashion, there is now nothing unusual in seeing men with full beards, according to the immemorial practice of Eastern nations; but yet this fact would not wholly prevent the surprise naturally occasioned by the sight of a Spanish-speaking population among whom full beards, frequently descending to the chest, are, and always have been worn; a population of mel-
