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A MORNING’S JOURNEY 197
the broad-leaved fig-cactus, carrying its flowers like a
torch-light procession over the cliff. Hundreds of
holes might be seen in every direction, above, below,
and in groups; each hole was the entrance to a sub-
terranean cave. Here lived the filthy, ugly, thievish
gypsies, who had formed a society of their own, which,
though it was under the jurisdiction of Granada, con-
tinued to exist only by virtue of the dubious moral prac-
tices of this curious race.
I was on the soil of the Alhambra!
Put your ear to the ground! In every direction you
hear a gurgling, laughing sound as cold iridescent
streams shoot forth and disappear again. Over a
steep, moss-green hole that looks like an ancient cliff
under its covering foliage, the water dashes down in
mighty cascades, breaking up in rainbow mists of
spray. Birds fly merrily and noisily in and out of the
crystal rain. Two ragged boys try to walk between
the descending water and the wall behind it. They
stick their heads through the thin sheet of the fall
and scream in wild delight. A gypsy woman places
her black pock-marked face under the sparkling rain
of spray, at the very point where it holds suspended
the fragment of a rainbow.
“Jesus, how lovely!” she shouts, shaking her sides
with joy.
Far out in the sunlight, between the tree-trunks, the
water drives on like a cloud of diamond dust; and
under a mighty remnant of ruined walls, which creep-
ing plants have transformed into moist dark grottoes,
there is a ceaseless tinkling and trickling of drops
descending on trembling maidenhair fern. The water
is singing its oriental song. And the walls of Alham-
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