When the street turned into a road it turned into a road a
hundred feet wide; one of those roads which Charles III., when he came
to the Spanish throne from Naples, full of beneficent projects and
ideals, bestowed upon his unwilling and ungrateful subjects. These roads
were made about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they have been
gathering dust ever since, so that the white powder now lies in the one
beyond Triana five or six inches deep. Along the sides occasional
shade-trees stifled, and beyond these gaunt, verdureless fields widened
away, though we were told that in the spring the fields were red with
flowers and green with young wheat. There were no market-gardens, and
the chief crop seemed brown pigs and black goats. In some of the
foregrounds, as well as the backgrounds, were olive orchards with olives
heaped under them and peasants still resting from their midday
breakfast. A mauve bell-shaped flower plentifully fringed the wayside;
our driver said it had no name, and later an old peasant said it was
"bad."
VII
We passed a convent turned into a prosperous-looking manufactory and we
met a troop of merry priests talking gayly and laughing together, and
very effective in their black robes against the white road.
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