HOTEL Sᵗᵃ BRIGIDA,
MONTE,
GRAND CANARY.
_23 Jan. 1899._
I fear from your last letter that you may take too seriously what
I said in play. No, there was no promise, only a certain hope that
you might come here, and Reason (with a capital) tells me that your
decision is wise and that you must not give up to Canarios what was
meant for your home and the _Utilitarians_. I am really glad to think
that you are booking them, and at times I envy you. However I cannot
say that I am unhappy in my idleness. When I despaired of you for
a companion, I took to myself the soundest looking man in a hotel
full of invalids, and gat me up into the hills to accomplish the
expedition that I had reserved for you, and we succeeded in mastering
not indeed the highest, but the most prominent mountain of the island,
if a mountain may be no more than 6000 feet high. This raised me in
my own conceit and certainly I had a very enjoyable time. I doubt
whether in any of your good ascents you can have seen so gorgeously
coloured a view as that which I beheld. A great part of the island lay
below me; many of the rocks are bright orange and crimson and these
are diversified by patches of brilliant green; the whole was framed
in the blue of sky and sea. It was like a raised map that had been
over-coloured.