To Leslie Stephen.

Hotel S^ta Brigida,
Monte,
Grand Canary.
23 Jan. 1899.

I fear from your last letter that you may take too seriously what I said in play. No, there was no promise, only a certain hope that you might come here, and Reason (with a capital) tells me that your decision is wise and that you must not give up to Canarios what was meant for your home and the Utilitarians. I am really glad to think that you are booking them, and at times I envy you. However I cannot say that I am unhappy in my idleness. When I despaired of you for a companion, I took to myself the soundest looking man in a hotel full of invalids, and gat me up into the hills to accomplish the expedition that I had reserved for you, and we succeeded in mastering not indeed the highest, but the most prominent mountain of the island, if a mountain may be no more than 6000 feet high. This raised me in my own conceit and certainly I had a very enjoyable time. I doubt whether in any of your good ascents you can have seen so gorgeously coloured a view as that which I beheld. A great part of the island lay below me; many of the rocks are bright orange and crimson and these are diversified by patches of brilliant green; the whole was framed in the blue of sky and sea. It was like a raised map that had been over-coloured.