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.
Dated in Timelessness, but with you it may be some such day as Dec. 4, and I fancy that cent. XIX may still be persisting. Dated also nominally at Hotel Quiney in Las Palmas where I preserve address for service, but de facto in the garden of a messuage or finca called or known by the name of Bateria in the pueblo of Sᵗᵃ Brigida--a fort-like structure which I hold as a monthly tenant--windows on four sides all with fine views--on ground floor lives major domo, a hard-worked peasant savouring of the soil--first and only other floor inhabited by me and mine, including our one servant, a Germano-Swiss treasure acquired as we left England--furniture a minimum and no more would be useful--small boy coatless comes to clean boots, run errands and the like, Pepé to wit--much bargaining at house door with women who bring victuals round and would rather have a chat than money. Madame's mastery of their jargon surprises me daily--I can rarely catch a word. One might fall into vegetarianism here, such is the choice of vegetals.