faced by a chearful valley worthy the pencil of a Claude
or Poufiin ; you infenfibly find yourffelf encircled with
mulberry trees, which gives to the whole country the appearance
o f a pleafure ground, where a rich cinereous-
foil yields three crops a year, owing to excellent culture,
as well as its natural quality, befides the advantage of
water at pleafure at fix feet depth, independent of the:
furface being amply fupplied by the river Xucar.
Three leagues to the eaftward of San Felipe, there is-
a high mountain entirely of marble o f three fpecies,
without any fifiure, white, red, and yellow, which all admit
of a very good poliih, and the fields are covered with:
plantations o f rice far fuperior to that o f the Levant,
though yellower, but will keep much longer without acquiring
any acrimony (a).
(tr) Mr. Swiuburne having given fo accurate an account of the culture of-rice on this fpot}-
1 cannot offer a more ex>a& description thereof than related by him; which cor-refponds
with Mr. Bowles’s information: u In winter they plough out a piece of land, and fow it with-
beans that come into bloffom about March, when they plough them in for manure ; water-
is then let in upon the ground, about four inches deep. It next undergoes a third ploughing,
after which the rice is fown ; in fifteen days it comes up about five inches out of the
earth, and is pulled up, tied in. bundles about a foot diameter, and carried to another well;
prepared field, covered with water to the depth o f four inches* Here each planter fets the
plants o f his bundle in the mud in rows at? about a foot diftance one from another. Every
ftcjn ought to produce from ten to twenty-four fold and grow fo-clofe that the ears may touch.
"When ripe it is gathered in fheaves, and put into a water mill, where the lower grinding-
ftone is covered with cork; by which means the chaff is feparated from the grain without
fi^uifing.”
I come
I come now to fpeakof the plain of Valencia, btit where
ihall I find words expreffive o f its beauties, fuch as none
can conceive who have not been on the fpot, and beheld
this lively fcene of natural magnificence. This plain is
compofed of two ftrata of clay, having a fandy foil or pure
fand between them. On removing the firft ftratum,
Which may be from fifteen to twenty feet deep, they
infallibly find water running between thefe two beds ;
the clay not fuffering it to filter through : whenever the
upper ftratum is wanting it o f courfe overflows that part
o f the country. This accounts for fo many lakes in thofe
plains, and for that confiderable one called Albufera ck
Valencia, which is no more than an extended portion o f
fuch a fituation, where the upper ftratum has failed, and
occafioned that great lake o f freih water, four or five
leagues in circumference, receiving alfo the waters o f the
river Xucar, and many fprings and brooks without any
vifible increafe, becaufe its furface is fo extenfive that it
lofes by evaporation as much as it receives, and thus
always preferves an equal depth of about two or three
feet.
This lake fupplies the markets of Valencia with fiih, particularly
eels ; at certain feafons o f the year it is greatly
reforted to by fportfmen, and covered with boats, as
numbers of aquatic fowls delight in this place, and fome-
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