"
"It's the same thing, Mateo."
The deepening twilight, which, in this climate, is of short
duration, admonished us to leave this haunted ground. As we
descended the mountain defile, there was no longer herdsman nor
muleteer to be seen, nor any thing to be heard but our own footsteps
and the lonely chirping of the cricket. The shadows of the valley grew
deeper and deeper, until all was dark around us. The lofty summit of
the Sierra Nevada alone retained a lingering gleam of daylight; its
snowy peaks glaring against the dark blue firmament, and seeming close
to us, from the extreme purity of the atmosphere.
"How near the Sierra looks this evening!" said Mateo; "it seems as
if you could touch it with your hand; and yet it is many long
leagues off." While he was speaking, a star appeared over the snowy
summit of the mountain, the only one yet visible in the heavens, and
so pure, so large, so bright and beautiful, as to call forth
ejaculations of delight from honest Mateo.
"Que estrella hermosa! que clara y limpia es!- No pueda ser estrella
mas brillante!" ("What a beautiful star! how clear and lucid- a star
could not be more brilliant!")
I have often remarked this sensibility of the common people of Spain
to the charms of natural objects. The lustre of a star, the beauty
or fragrance of a flower, the crystal purity of a fountain, will
inspire them with a kind of poetical delight; and then, what
euphonious words their magnificent language affords, with which to
give utterance to their transports!
"But what lights are those, Mateo, which I see twinkling along the
Sierra Nevada, just below the snowy region, and which might be taken
for stars, only that they are ruddy, and against the dark side of
the mountain?"
"Those, senor, are fires, made by the men who gather snow and ice
for the supply of Granada.
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