Being astir betimes the next morning, we reached Elche before midday, and here we seemed to be in another world, for this region is no more like Spain than Spain is like our own country.  Entering the forest, we found ourselves encompassed on all sides by prodigious high palm trees, which hitherto we had seen only singly here and there, cultivated as curiosities.  And noble trees they are, standing eighty to a hundred feet high, with never a branch, but only a great spreading crown of leaves, with strings of dates hanging down from their midst.  Beneath, in marshy places, grew sugar-canes as high as any haystack; and elsewhere were patches of rice, which grows like corn with us, but thrives well in the shade, curiously watered by artificial streams of water.  And for hedges to their property, these Moors have agaves, with great spiky leaves which no man can penetrate, and other strange plants, whereof I will mention only one, they call the fig of Barbary, which is no fig at all, but a thing having large, fleshy leaves, growing one out of the other, with fruit and flower sprouting out of the edges, and all monstrous prickly.  To garnish and beautify this formidable defence, nature had cast over all a network of creeping herbs with most extraordinary flowers, delightful both to see and smell, but why so prickly, no man can say.

“Surely, this must be paradise,” cries Moll, staying to look around her.

And we were of the same thinking, until we came to the town, which, as I have said, lies in the midst of this forest, and then all our hopes and expectations were dashed to the ground.  For we had looked to find a city in keeping with these surroundings,—­of fairy palaces and stately mansions; in place whereof was nought but a wilderness of mean, low, squalid houses, with meandering, ill-paved alleys, and all past everything for unsavoury smells,—­heaps of refuse lying before every door, stark naked brats of children screaming everywhere, and a pack of famished dogs snapping at our heels.

Don Sanchez leads the way, we following, with rueful looks one at the other, till we reach the market-place, and there he takes us into a house of entertainment, where a dozen Moors are squatting on their haunches in groups about sundry bowls of a smoking mess, called cuscusson, which is a kind of paste with a little butter in it and a store of spices.  Their manner of eating it is simple enough:  each man dips his hand in the pot, takes out a handful, and dances it about till it is fashioned into a ball, and then he eats it with all the gusto in the world.  For our repast we were served with a joint of roast mutton, and this being cut up, we had to take up in our hands and eat like any savages,—­their religion denying these Moors anything but the bare necessities of life.  Also, their law forbids the drinking of wine, which did most upset Jack Dawson, he having for drink with his meat nothing but the choice of water and sour milk; but which he liked least I know not, for he would touch neither, saying he would rather go dry any day than be poisoned with such liquor.