THE “MARTYR’S” PROMENADE (HIGH ROAD), ALICANTE.
Spain, are, as a rule, chartered libertines. Until they are old enough to make themselves useful they are quite spoiled. On the assumption that children can do no wrong, they are permitted to do exactly what they please. The girls amuse themselves with singing and dancing, and the boys, in Southern Spain especially, find a favourite diversion in imitating the perils of the bull ring. Amongst themselves they are, even in argument, punctiliously polite; with the inoffensive stranger they are wary and not disobliging; but to the peripatetic oddity they are annoying in the manner that boys, given the same provocation, display all the world over.
VIEW OF ELCHE, ALICANTE.
Elche, rising from among its thousands of date-palms to a height of fifty feet, resembles an oasis in the desert. All around, the country is flat and fertile—a slumberland of soft greens and unbroken peacefulness. From Elche one passes to Granja, with its double-towered Moorish church, its old castillo clinging to the frowning height, its houses built into the rock of the mountain, and overgrown with aloes, fig, and cacti. There are Calossa de Segura and Albatera, flat-roofed and minareted; and from these spots may be seen the Montaña de Calossa, where amethyst steeps, glowing in the afternoon light, contrast with the varied tints of the plain in an ensemble of colour and outline nowhere surpassed in effect.
Carthagena, one of the three arsenals of Spain, and the largest
GENERAL VIEW, CARTHAGENA.