I have found a good chestnut pony ("Leaña") that goes well. They are sure-footed little beasts here; and it is necessary for them to be so, as there is only one "made" road, and for the rest we scramble up mountain paths. But when we get on the road they simply scamper along.
M. has not done much riding; and sometimes, when we are scrambling up a steep place, I look back, and find her holding on for dear life with a most resigned expression on her face. But I think she is enjoying it all immensely.
We walked up to the Botanical Gardens the other day, and they are perfectly beautiful--arum lilies and many of our choicest greenhouse flowers growing like weeds, and the ferns here are so beautiful too. Up in the kloofs (here called _barrancos_) we find maidenhair growing wild, and in such enormous fronds. I measured one, and it was two feet high. At the gardens a very handsome young gardener--a Spaniard--gave us huge bunches of roses to bring away. All the natives we come across are so polite and friendly (every man you pass raises his hat), we wish we could talk Spanish to them; but so far, if we can ask for what we want, it is quite as much as we can manage. The better-class people often speak French, and I get horribly mixed. The other night a solemn señor asked me if I spoke French, and I said, "_Un très mui poco_"!
The word they seem to use the most is _mañana_ (to-morrow); as our nice waiter explained when a gentleman said, "Antonio, the coffee is cold," "Ah, it shall be hot to-morrow. With the English it is always now, to-day; with us it is _mañana_."
We hear that Laguna is the fashionable resort as soon as it becomes too hot down here, but that Icod is the fruit-growing village of the island; so we think of driving over and spending a night there.
Since my last letter we seem to have been chiefly engaged in wrestling with steamship companies in the vain endeavour to persuade them to remove us from the island. F.'s leave was up early in June, and as we had return tickets by one line, we wrote to them in good time to secure berths. At first they made us various promises; but soon we learnt the truth--namely, that all their boats were full in every berth long before they came near the island.