Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/233

Rh looked wild and rugged; the weather was perfect. We met troops of pretty peasants with heavy loads, and every here and there a picturesque chapel or hermitage.

Our drive was pleasant enough, and I think at about 3 p.m. we were driving hard up and down the old Noah's-Ark-town called San Christoval de la Laguna. We drove to three inns. Number one was not possible. Number two, something like it; where they were going to put us into the same room (perhaps the same bed—who knows?) with a sick man (maybe a convalescent yellow-feverist). We held a parley and consultation. Was it possible to go on? No, neither now nor to-morrow; for the new road was being made, the old one broken up, and the coach (which, by-the-way, was the name given to a twin vehicle such as ours) was not allowed to run farther than Sausal, three miles off, from which we had twelve miles more to accomplish in order to reach the valley and town of Orotava—the El Dorado, and deservedly so, of Teneriffe. We did not like to descend again into the heat and pestilence of Santa Cruz. Moreover, we had made up our minds (not knowing Laguna) to pass a week there, and had ordered our muleteers to bring up and deposit our baggage there.

The coachman thought he knew of another house where we might get a room. So we drove to the "forlorn hope," which looked as bad as the rest, and were at first refused. The patio was a ruin, full of mud and broken plantains, the village idiot and the pig huddled up in one corner. In fact, the whole house was a ruin, and the inevitable carved-wood balcony