And so for seven glorious days they tramped the fragrant hills, or sailed a sea as softly blue as though fallen fresh that morning from the cloudless heaven above.

The two large, fragrant hills of lamb, one with sauteed onions, the other laced with broccoli, baby corn and other vegetables, were equally mild, mellow, tender and tasty.

Yerba Buena, which means good herb in Spanish, was the original name for the fragrant hills of San Francisco and was picked for the island as more poetic than its previous name, Goat Island.

When poems like Bonnie Auld Scotland speak of "fragrant hills of purple heather', when the hero of Kidnapped flees through the heather, when heather and Scotland are linked in the same sentence, the heather talked about is Calluna vulgaris.

By the time Miss Amara finished telling her story, Miatta, whose breathing had been sharp and shallow since daybreak, lay dead, joining hundreds of others who have either starved to death or fallen victim to disease in the lush and fragrant hills of eastern Sierra Leone in the last month.