United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The men-at-arms of the Holy Brotherhood attempted to roam in quest of booty, but he called them back and rebuked them severely. At length they came to a part of the mountain completely broken up by barrancos and ramblas of vast depth and shagged with rocks and precipices.
Each iron table was a pyramid formed of all the hues of the rainbow and all the fragrance that the earth can bring forth. The fine weather was beginning. The trees of the Ramblas were covering themselves with leaves and in their shady branches were twittering thousands of birds with the deafening tenacity of the crickets.
One autumnal tempest, however, changes the whole face of nature: the clouds break in deluges among the vast congregation of mountains; the ramblas are suddenly filled with raging floods; the tinkling rivulets swell to thundering torrents that come roaring down from the mountains, tumbling great masses of rocks in their career.
For the greater part of the year there scarcely falls a drop of rain on the thirsty soil of Andalusia. The ramblas, or dry channels of the torrents, remain deep and arid gashes and clefts in the sides of the mountains; the perennial streams shrink up to mere threads of water, which, trickling down the bottoms of the deep barrancas, or ravines, scarce feed and keep alive the rivers of the valleys.
They turned off from the direct road to the mountains and struck southward toward Lebrixa, passing by the most solitary roads and along those deep ramblas and ravines by which the country is intersected. It was indeed a daring course. Every now and then they heard the distant sound of trumpets and the alarm-bells of towns and villages, and found that the war was still hurrying to the borders.
These barrancos and ramblas were overhung by immense cliffs and precipices, forming the lurking-places of ambuscades during the wars between the Moors and Spaniards, as in after times they have become the favorite haunts of robbers to waylay the unfortunate traveller.
He looked with interest on the human current passing through the Ramblas in which were mingled the natives of the country and the picturesque and absurd medley brought in by the war. The first thing that Ferragut noticed was the visible diminution of German refugees.
Word Of The Day