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INTRODUCTION.

gourd grow almost wild from the refuse heaps, or wreathe the low-thatched cottages, and along the sandy banks of rivers sweet melons and water-melons yield not very excellent

varieties of

abundance. This concludes a rapid survey of the natural features, the climate, and the products of a province which is dependent for its wealth solely on its fertile soil, its moderate rainfall, and its generous sun. Without any of the precious metals, without coal or iron or valuable quarries, it has nothing to stimulate the manufactures which in other countries support a crowded population, but relies solely on its teeming harvests and the copious natural products which supplement the food-supply derived from cultivation. On these it lives, and these only does it export to procure the money drawn by taxes, the greater part of which is spent succession of bad years necessarily beyond its own limits. entails suffering and starvation to the people, and threatens the Government with financial disaster. The scenery is, as might be expected, entirely devoid of any features of boldness or grandeur everywhere there are four elements, and four only, to the picture. The sky, covered in the rains with masses of magnificent clouds, in the cold weather a level sheet of uninterrupted blue, and later on brazen and lurid with heat; the lakes, whose still surface reflects the colour above; the groves and the brilliant expanse of crops. If there is rarely any beauty of form beyond what grace is lent to small scenes by the grouping of trees and water, the colour at least, when the ripening harvests are seen in an atmosphere whose transparent clearness is saved from glare by a soft and almost imperceptible haze, is beyond all description lovely, and the never-absent abundance of the richest foliage gives a sufficient variety to every

fruit in profuse

A



landscape.