Salamanca, June 6 [1832].

Here I am in this venerable university, completing my education, and endeavouring to make amends for the sad waste of time during the years mis-spent at Oxford in earning the honour of a M.A. This peaceful habitation of the Muses is disturbed by the piping of the fife and the beating of the “soul-stirring” drum. The empty colleges are filled with soldiers, who are inscribing on the walls carrajo, and the usual words by which that class of people show their proficiency in the art of writing.

Everything very quiet in Portugal; in Merida there may be 400 or 500 men; in Placencia as many cuirassiers; in Ciudad Rodrigo a company of artillery and about 1200 men. Here there are artillery from Seville, some cavalry, and altogether about 4000 to 4500 men. This army on the frontier, including Badajoz, I should state as under 10,000. They are very well appointed in all respects, and seem fine troops—full, however, of quintas [balloted men] and young lads.

I have seen much of General Sarsfield, which is more than anybody else has. He seems to think that there is no chance of anything taking place in Portugal, except in case of a general war.

This is a charming old town. I have been over the field of battle. The identical guide who was with Lord Wellington lives still in Arapiles.[27] Would you believe it? not a single Spaniard, though they have been here two months, has ever been over to see the scene of battle. They, I suppose, know full well how very little they had to do with it.

I have been wandering over the mountains to the mines of Rio Tinto, to Zafra and Merida, and thence across the uninhabited plain of Estremadura to Alcantara, a magnificent Roman bridge in a most picturesque situation, reminding me much of Toledo. Thence through Coria to Placencia, and to the convent of Yuste, where Charles V. died. The monks received me with great hospitality, lodged me in the imperial quarters, and gave me a bed in the room in which Charles died, and I did not see his ghost.

Thence through Capara (a beautiful Roman arch) to Abadia, a ruined palace of the great Duke of Alva. Thence over the mountains through the romantic valley of Jurdes to the celebrated convent of Las Batuecas, a mountain scene of the grandest description. Thence to the ruined town of Ciudad Rodrigo, and so on to Salamanca; where I have been living much with the Prior, a great ally of the Duke of Wellington, and who furnished him with the most important intelligence during the war. I am now going to Benavente, thence to Santiago, Oviedo, Leon, and so to Madrid, viá Burgos and Valladolid. Please God, I hope to arrive in the Corte early in July.

Pray be so kind as to put aside the Galignanis since May, as these are most interesting times, and I am longing to read the debates. If I can be of any service, manda V. E. con toda franqueza a su criado; and write either to Lugo, Oviedo, or Leon, in case you wish anything done in the mountains or a prayer said for your sins at Compostella.

I have good accounts of my wife at Seville, who is broiling while I am shivering under the blasts of Castille, attended with cold and rain—worse weather than the most inclement June in England. Sad work for an artist, as the wind blows one’s paper to rags and the rain wets it through, to say nothing of the chance of being shot as a spy or laid in the Red Sea as the ghost of Mr. Boyd.

Madrid, Thursday [July 13, 1832].

I arrived here this morning, having left Bilbao on Tuesday, which is not bad work this warm weather. I am very sorry not to meet you here, to talk over my pilgrimage and travels, which have been rather interesting. I have been absent from my spouse and children so long that my marital and paternal feelings are getting impatient for Seville, where I hope to arrive next week, leaving this Corte on Tuesday by the Malle de Poste. This is an excellent and most rapid mode of travelling, as we came from Vitoria nearly a gallop all the way. I hope this autumn, if Dom Pedro allows you, that you will come down and look at our pretty Sevillanas.

I have been looking over the batch of Galignanis, and have many thanks to give you for having preserved them for me; any you can henceforth spare for Seville pray send me. I saw nothing worth writing to you about on my tour in political matters. There are about two thousand men at Zamora, and, altogether, I should reckon the Spanish force to be about twelve thousand men—good troops and well appointed with everything. The general feeling everywhere is that they will not pass the frontier.

Madrid, Tuesday, 17th [July 1832].

I am off this night per Malle de Poste to Seville. I am very sorry that we have not met in Madrid, but hope in the autumn we may meet in the marble court of my house in the sweet south. You will do well to come down and dissipate a little after your fatigues with Dom Pedro. Dulce est desipere in Seville. Will you be so kind as to forward the enclosed to the Duke of Wellington, whenever you have a safe conveyance? It contains a letter which a friend of his gave me at Salamanca.

A Mr. Lewis,[28] a clever artist whose father I know well, has been recommended to me by Henry Wellesley. He is about to make a sort of picturesque tour of Spain, having orders for young ladies’ albums and from divers booksellers who are illustrating Lord Byron. Will you be so good as to get his passport viséd in manner that he may not be shot or hung as a spy? I think, if it were viséd in your Embassy in Spanish, it would be quite sufficient in a sort of form like this:—

“El contenido artista Ingles viaja en España con el unico objeto de estudiar y debujar y siendo sujeto de confianse se le recommienda a las auctoridades civiles y militares de su Transitu.”

I had a sort of visé like this from Quesada, which operated like magic. To be sure, they took me for your Excellency in disguise, or at least for a Field-Marshal. This place is very hot, dusty and glaring, and I shall be glad to repose under my orange trees and vines in the shade, and listen to the splashing of waters, the domestic details of my spouse, and the crying of my children, all which pass a single gentleman’s belief.

I see nothing new except the Velazquez, which are more extraordinary every time I meet them.

Sevilla, Aug. 1 [1832].

My poor little baby (who has been a year struggling against the organic injury received by his fall in the Alhambra) on Monday evening was released from its continual and cruel sufferings, and has been buried in the orange garden of San Diego, where the remains of those English who die in this distant land are gathered together. (I doubt if Mark will ever forgive me.)

This melancholy event, though long anticipated, has upset my wife more than I should have expected. I found her on my return very much improved in health, and looking much better than she has ever done this last three years—quite fat and stout.

José Maria is now a hombre de bien, living like an honest gentleman retired from an honourable and laborious profession, enjoying the otium cum dignitate, the rich reward of meritorious industry in Estefa. About forty gentlemen in his line have been received into the society of honest Spaniards by an ample indulto. The roads are in consequence quite safe for the present, as long as the uneasy virtue of these gentlemen continues. It is just possible that we may spend our autumn in Granada, and the winter under the protection of Marco el grande, who is always the conqueror. Malaga is a rinconcillo [small corner] we have never seen, and I am anxious to go over to Africa in the spring to see the real Moors. Many thanks for the Galignanis, which tell us something about Messrs. Peter and Miguel, a pretty pair, as the Devil said. I suppose that thing must by this time be ended. Would the cholera were!

We have a man here, fresh from London, who says nobody there pays the slightest attention to it, and if there were no newspapers its presence would be unnoticed.

The Infante[29] has been here, seeing bull-fights. The Infanta very sulky, ugly, and cross, and insulting the Sevillanas. They were coldly received, and at one time hissed (not kissed) in the Plaza. The Alcazar is exquisite. What a palace it is now, hung with the finest pictures in Seville, and furnished with the most beautiful and costly furniture, old plate, etc., lent by the principal families, all those who have saved anything since the war of dependence! The sheets on the bed, costing 5000 Rs., like Lady Holland’s, edged with lace, and for the repose of such carcasses! The consequence is that we flesh-eaters are paying the penalty of these fooleries, two cuartos[30] having been added to the pound of meat, and a tax here (and elsewhere), once put on, is never taken off.

Sevilla, Aug. 22, 1832.

We are now full of warlike reports; Juntas of Realistas; four thousand are to march from this province, and two hundred valientissimos from Sevilla, who will eat Dom Pedro in a Gaspacho [a cold vegetable soup].

They say that the Spaniards are determined to interfere, which will very much interfere with my remaining in Spain; but I hope, if you think the horizon cloudy and bad for a gentleman’s health, that you will give me a timely hint, to get a little sea-bathing at Gibraltar.

Spaniards deal so much in hyperbole, that one never knows what to believe; they say that you and the Frenchman have taken down your arms (if the Frenchman did his tombstones and cocks it would be no bad thing). They also say that Sartorius[31] has taken Dom Miguel’s ships, all except the large one. These news came per London steamer. However, the Realistas are certainly in a bustle; of that there can be no doubt, and it looks warlike. God help poor fallen Spain! The cholera and a French army marching in at once, and the plentiful crop of weeds which will sprout up out of the earth, like the armed men of Cadmus. The Liberals and discontented are overjoyed; they are like Mother Cary’s chickens, which only come out when there are symptoms of foul and dirty weather.

I wish Dom Pedro was hung in the Tripas of Dom Miguel, as the Spaniards say of the English and French.

Many thanks for your passport for Don Luis. He has written a letter to me, full of thanks for your good nature to him, and will no doubt draw your portrait gratis.

We have nothing new here. Colonel Buller talking incessantly and unceasingly of his uniform; if he does not make haste, they will declare war before he gets it. His friend Mr. Horner sits in a corner.

There have been magnificent doings at the Alhambra, and I hear that Dionysia’s dress and magnificence are the talk of the town. Travelling is quite safe, as José Maria is looking after the robbers instead of being looked after.

Sevilla, Sept. 19 [1832].

By desire of Don José I enclose you an account of the gay doings in the Alhambra in honour of His Serene Highness Don Francisco de Paula. You may depend upon it that, in knocking up their trumpery lamps and chandeliers, they have cruelly injured the beautiful Moorish stucco, and probably have whitewashed over the little remnants of its former gilding.

We have the supreme felicity of being honoured by the royal presence, and have had a grand bull-fight (the cause and effect), given by the Maestranza,[32] in which Don Rafael Gusman (a descendant of Gusman el Bueno) killed a bull, who, in his dying spring, bounded over the barrier and died between it and the spectators, a lance [a lucky event] considered by the aficionados [enthusiasts] as algo raro [somewhat unusual], and much applauded by His Highness and the Majos of Seville. This occupies much conversation, of course, and Dom Pedro and the cholera are at a discount. As to Doms Miguel and Pedro, even the Spaniards are disgusted at their want of fight. What two blackguards, to disturb the peace of the Peninsula!

Everybody here is satisfied that the King is to spend the winter in Seville, and to set out as soon as he can be moved, as they make him out to be very ill. Meantime Gutierrez the painter, who is in high favour in Court (drawing two hundred heads of the servants, attendants, etc., in a blank book of the Queen’s), describes the King as coming in and being very affable and good-humoured.

We have no news whatever. Colonel Buller’s uniform is arrived, and both are still remaining at Seville. Otherwise, God be praised! there are no British subjects here. The weather perfectly delicious; the walks of an evening and at night charming. My wife has been very unwell, feverish, and relaxed. As soon as she is confined, which I hope will be early next month, we think of starting for Malaga to eat raisins and be under the protection of Mark.

Our great visitors are all to go the 24th, and say they shall return next year much earlier. The people are so poor that they have not been able to give them a ball. In the town they said I was going to do so. You see how we apples swim, and what a great place this is for little people; however, I prefer counting my dollars in my box, nummos in arcâ.

Sevilla, Saturday [29 Sept. 1832].

As you have been so long “in at the death,” I will give you a little birth by way of a change. On Wednesday my wife was safely brought to bed of a little girl, both mother and child doing perfectly well. The birth was premature by three weeks, and brought on by a severe illness which my wife has had, and which has thrown her back sadly. I am in hopes that she will now recover her strength for the journey to Malaga.

They say, first, that the King is dead, and that he died on the 17th; next, that he is eating chickens and smoking cigars, on the 20th; and that he is coming here to a dead certainty.

The furniture of the Alcazar, provided for the Infante, which was to have been sold, is ordered to be put away in case of being shortly required. How is all this? Is there really any chance of the King’s coming? If so, pray let me know (quite privately), as I in that case would remain the winter, having the largest and best house in the town, which I need not say is at the Disposicion de V.E., and where I can give you a nice little apartment, with a fireplace, and with no chickens to sing ovations on your arrival.

Don Lewis is drawing the Alhambra, and Don José is speculating on politics, about three weeks more behindhand than we are, which might be expected, as he lives in an out-of-the-way mountainous kingdom.

I suppose you have had a rare time of it at the Granja. The running up and down stairs and the stir of diplomacy will keep your feet free from chilblains in that Mountain Court. The weather here is beyond expression delicious.

November 10, 1832: Sevilla.

I have moved out of O’Neill’s house to the one I formerly occupied, which is warmer and smaller, and have just laid in 1500 cwt. of dry olive wood, which I wish I could present you with. O’Neill’s administrador, who is a regular skinflint, has taken to his bed, in consequence of the loss of a tenant who paid 35 reals a day for a Caseron which will never again be relet. Here they say that he is coming to Seville for his Quartel.

Amarillas has been well received at Granada, where the joy at having got rid of that scoundrel Moreno is unbounded; above 500 prisoners have been let out of the dungeons there. In spite of his passport, he ordered Mr. Lewis out of Granada at two hours’ notice, but relented on an application of Don José.

Mark, who is always the conqueror, has got all the original correspondence between Torrijos and Moreno, which I hear beats cockfighting. They say Moreno has fled into Portugal.

Quesada is making rare reforms in the police, and the Andalucians are dancing Fandangos with delight.

I am expecting Mr. Lewis from Granada, and am going to take him into my house. I look forward to his Alhambra drawings, and hope my wife will make some good copies of them. She is, I am very sorry to say, in a most delicate state, and cruelly pulled down. People are all in high spirits and looking forward to changes and improvements which they will never see realised. The Queen very popular, and, if the King exchange a terrestrial for an immortal crown, she will here have a strong party.

Sevilla, Saturday, 15 [December 1832].

As soon as I received your Walter Scott[33] prospectuses I sent one to Arjona, the assistente, another to Quesada, and another to the editor of the Diario. If you send any more, it will be as well to add a postscript, saying who Walter Scott was, whether he was a Frenchman or a German, whether he wrote Verses or dealt in Bacalao [dried cod-fish], as there is no one here who has yet heard of him, and all, like Lord Westmorland when asked to subscribe to the monument of Watt, are asking what’s what. However, if he had written the Song of Solomon, and been as notorious as the Cid, the devil a cuarto would any Spaniard subscribe, and I do not expect one peseta from Andalucia. The Major is occupied in buying a horse; Colonel Buller in buying cloth for new trousers, on which he descants till even tailors cry ohe! jam satis est. I am buying meat and drink for my family. All these matter-of-fact expenses militate against handing over dollars for the decoration of a bleak northern capital.

We are about to lose Quesada, who goes to Madrid; but he is replaced by a better officer and a far higher-bred gentleman, Amarillas; so that, as far as we are concerned, we rather gain. Madame Quesada is one of the most agreeable, graciosas y chistosas [gay] of all Gaditanas, and, if you fall in her way, pray become acquainted with her.

We are all going on here in our usual humdrum manner, my wife certainly much better. I have just bought her a horse, and she is having a splendid Maja riding-habit made, which will make the Andaluças die of envy; black, with innumerable lacing and tagging, and a profusion of silver filigree buttons.

I have Don Luis staying in my house, he has made some beautiful sketches of Granada, and is very busy with Sevilla.

The wall of the Alhambra is not yet built up. Remember me and mine to O’Lawlor, who, I hope, will pick up something in these times of scramble and change.

Sevilla, Saturday, January 12 [1833].

I did not answer your letter last post, as I was then in the Sierra Morena, near Alcolea, on a shooting excursion.

You will find a large engraving of the tomb of the Catholic kings in the folio work published at Madrid in 1804 by Don Pablo Lorano, and called Antiquedades arabes in España.

Lewis, who is here, says, if you are not satisfied with that print, that he will make a drawing of the chapel and tomb at Granada when he returns. There are portraits of Fernando and Isabella in the Generalife; but they are bad, and certainly not so old as the period those personages lived in. At the Cartuja convent, near Burgos, is a genuine and beautiful small portrait of Isabella, which struck me very much when I was there, and is certainly of the time, and in the manner, of Holbein.

If you are acquainted with a brother of General Sⁿ. Martin, who has just been named Bishop of Barcelona, he will probably be able to put you in the way of getting a copy made of this portrait by some artist at Burgos. The newly-elected Bishop was treasurer of the cathedral at Burgos, and is a most worthy and good man.

Don José O’Lawlor could get you copies made of the portraits at the Generalife and of the tomb of Granada, and that musical artist Muriel will do the job in a manner that no one will recognise them.

So much for your Excellency’s commissions.

We are all agog here with the arrival of Amarillas from Granada, who will make an excellent Captain-General, quite as honest and firm as Quesada, and much better and higher bred. If you see Madᵉ Quesada, who is a most agreeable, charming, fat old lady, pray lay me most devotedly at her feet.

My wife has been far from well lately—a bad cough, pain in her chest, and palpitations of the heart. I am not quite comfortable about her, and have some thoughts of going to Madeira. The Colonel is here as usual, and has lately set up a waistcoat, which he has eulogised to all Seville.

My wife wishes to know if you would like to have a very, very fine Pajes guitar. There was a talk of one being to be sold, and it was mentioned to her.

I have this instant seen the Gazetta, and that Don José is appointed Captain-General of Mallorca. I suspected something was in the wind when so prudent a gentleman undertook the journey to Madrid. I am sorry for it, as I had eyes on the Alhambra for next summer.

Sevilla, March 6 [1833].

I have been resisting during these last six weeks an empeño [favour] of my wife’s, but have at length yielded, as most men, whether single or married, must to the constant battery of female determination. She has bought a small silver filigree box, about half a foot long and six inches high, which she is very anxious to send to England, and to get it in without being broken up. She wants to know whether you can or will help her in this matter. It is a favour to be bestowed on her, and for which she will ever remain your handmaid or handwoman. I have told her that I do not ask you, because you would say no slap, and there would be an end of it. As the box is so small, will it be possible to get Lady S. Canning to take it back with her? I hardly like writing to Lord Althorp about it, as the Whigs, of course, will never do a job. So the matter stands. If you can do it, it will be a great favour to her, as the nicknack is a very pretty one. If you cannot, then she must bear it patiently—no tiene remedio. You will have heard of us and of our masquerading from a tall major, who was as high as a hill; he passed through with a stammering gentleman, who, I hope, was not the talebearer, or it is not told yet.

We are expecting a flock of Consuls from Europe and Africa—the Brackenburys and the Drummond Hays, who are going to spend the Holy Week, and a rare unholy one will they make it; as, where two or three English are gathered together, there is envy, hatred, and uncharitableness amongst them, and still more with that great class of people His B.M. Consuls. The Hays, I hear, are the greatest men alive. I am thinking of being off to escape the Consular deluge, and to retire to the polished cities of Tangier and Tetuan. Mr. Hay has made me offers for my house, and probably I shall make hay while the sun shines.

We have applied for the Alhambra, and, as soon as I can get an answer, we shall prepare to set forth for Granada, having no fear now of José Maria, who came to Seville and paid me a visit of which the whole town is talking. I received him as a man of his merits deserves, and gave him a present of a pistol, with which probably, if he meets me on the high road, he will shoot me. Lewis, who is with me still, made a drawing of him—a fine handsome fellow, and fit to be absolute king of Andalucia.

If you have time to write, pray tell us what is really known about the cholera. Is it at Lisbon? What are you about at Madrid, making the exchange to rise so? I am ruined by it.

My wife begs to be remembered to you, and that her empeño may be remembered by you.

Poor Don José! What a mess he made of his trip to Madrid, where his Dionysia nearly miscarried, and he has completely. As far as we are concerned, I am delighted to see him again at Granada.

Sevilla, April 3 [1833].

My wife begs me to thank you a thousand times for offering to send her box. The size is 5 inches wide, 6 inches high, 8 inches long.

If you think fit, I will send it to you, and you shall dispose of the matter as you like. It contains a few odd Spanish trinkets, about £50 worth, in which materiam superavit opus, and which she wishes not to lose on account of the recollections attached to them, being memorials of her travels. I am really quite vexed at giving you all this trouble, thinking on the subject exactly the same as you do, and wishing all ladies and their empeños at the devil.

We are full of Misereres, Custodias, Pagos, and processions, all the night and day work of the Holy Week, all unction, the fruits of which will duly make their appearance, this day nine months, in a plentiful crop of bastards for the Casa de los Expositos. Lots of English from the Rock, of the regiment called The Tiger; Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and Consuls-General, as thick as blackberries, and quite as insipid. I am dying to be lodged again in the Alhambra, and hear the ovation of the Tia’s chickens. Will the troubled times permit your Excellency to come and see us again this summer, when we will ride to Alhama and on to the Consul Mark, el siempre Vencidor, El Galib?

We are all at a nonplus at what is going on in the Corte. His Majesty’s letter to the Captain-Generals is a poser, and means in English, “I want nobody but my little Cea Bermudez.”[34] However, I am delighted to see that his Majesty is so well, as these decrees speak more clearly than any bulletins, that he has no thoughts of dying, and cares no more for Isabel than George the Fourth did for Charlotte. I wonder you can have any doubts whatever as to what will happen next. You will see the next word of command will be “As you were.”

It would be a pity that the march of intellect should get into the Peninsula, or that Africa should cease to begin at the Pyrenees.

Sevilla, Wednesday, 17 [April 1833].

I enclose you the receipt of the diligence for the small box I sent you, in consequence of your kind offer to send it home for my wife. Mind, I should never have ventured to bother you on such a subject. The diligence will arrive on Monday morning. If you will send your whiskered Chasseur with the enclosed paper, no custom-house officer will dare to open it.

I suppose Brackenbury will send you the news of the two packets, up and down, which have met at Cadiz. The one from Malta brings the news that the Russians have 7 sail of the line at Constantinople, and 40 transports full of troops in the Bosphorus, and that Mehemet Ali’s fleet, 5 sail, have hoisted the flag of independence.[35]

The Hermes from England, sent off at an hour’s notice by the Admiralty, touched at Oporto, Vigo, Lisbon, with orders to all the English ships of war to proceed directly to Constantinople, without anchoring at Gibraltar. The Malabar, Captain Percy (with Sir William Eden on board), is at Cadiz, and, ere this, in the Mediterranean. Other English ships are in sight. Private intelligence to “the Proconsul” says that the cholera is at Lisbon.

Will you be so kind, if you have time, to let me know when the box arrives, and, if it goes to England, how and when? It contains £50 or £60 of trinkets, the honey collected by my Queen Bee.

Shirreff is uncertain as to his motions. He is agog at the thoughts of a war and a three-decker. It is probable that he will turn off at Ossuna and proceed directly to Gibraltar by Ronda.

I hope to arrive at Granada next Wednesday, where, in case of seizure or squalls, you have a house at your disposicion to retire to.

Tetuan, Saturday, May 25 [1833].

Do not be alarmed at a letter from this land of lions, tigers, deserts, and cannibals, for I assure you it is a paradise compared to the garrison and gunfire of Gibraltar, almost as beautiful as Granada, quite as civilised as Spain, and abounding with comforts and accommodations, seeing that the houses of the Jews are more handsomely and abundantly furnished than those of the grandees of Seville.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that there is any difficulty or danger in travelling in Barbary, or that the condition of the Jews or Christians here is so deplorable as gentlemen on their travels have printed and published for the benefit of Mr. Colburn and edification of the British public. Both are treated with great kindness, and the proof of the substantial prosperity of the sons of Israel is in the silks and jewels, domestic comforts and luxuries, which are to be met with even among the poorest of them.

I must go back a little in my letter. We left Seville in April, and reached Granada in due time, in spite of the wind and the rain. We thence proceeded to the town called by the English Gib, by the way of Alhama ay de mi![36] Loja, Antequera, and Ronda, a fine mountain ride, full of Moorish castles and fastnesses, the scene of many a desperate conflict, all of which are written in the book of Washington Irving. From Gibraltar we were conveyed by Shirreff to Tangiers, a pretty little town situated in a sheltered bay. I need not tell you how great is the change on landing, greater than that between Dover and Calais. I will not say that, on coming from Spain, it is coming from civilisation to barbarism, it being well known that Africa begins at the Pyrenees; but still the change of turbans for hats, haiks for capas, camels for mules, wild Arabs in their peaked jellibeas for monks, is sufficiently striking. The interior of the town is like a Spanish one—all dirt, ruin, and bad pavement, the houses, low and windowless, looking like whitened sepulchres; and the women, in their haiks and muffled-up faces, look like the ghost in Semiramis—a very appropriate population for so sepulchral a city. From under the shroud, however, peep out certain black, soft eyes, so full of life that a gentleman would have no objection to be haunted in the night-time by one of these spectres.

The Jewesses do not hide their faces, and it would be a sin to do so, as they are truly beautiful. Their costume is most fanciful and oriental—a mass of brocade, golden sashes, handkerchiefs, and jewelry, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, by no means the trappings of a people said to be stripped to the skin by the Moors. If they have any “old cloes,” they buy and sell them and do not wear them. They are highly pleased at being visited, and show their finery with great complacency. My wife has been admitted into the interior of divers houses of the Moors, but does not give so favourable an account of them as of the Jewesses. The newly-married women paint their faces very much as we remember, in the days of our youth, that facetious gentleman Grimaldi did.

There is a very decent inn, much cleaner and better provided than those in Spain. We were lodged at His B. Majesty’s Consulate-General, and so changed houses with the Hays. From Tangiers we rode to Tetuan, a pleasant ride through a rich country, well cultivated, of about eleven hours. Here we have put up in the oriental dwelling of a respectable Jew, who has two daughters, who make me think every day better of Moses as a legislator—fair complexions, dark black hair, and soft, mild, large, almond-shaped eyes, rendered more oriental by a dark powder, with which the lids are slightly blacked, which gives an indescribable soft expression to them. We have been received by the Pasha in oriental state, turbaned guards, Ethiopian slaves, cushions and couches, and much green tea, almond cakes and sweetmeats. My wife was presented to his lady, and presented by her with a scarf value ten shillings, for which she gave her a musical snuff-box.

The situation of the town delightful, on the slope of a hill commanded by an embattled castle, and overlooking a valley of gardens bounded to the north-east by the blue sea, and to the south by a magnificent chain of mountains. It is a second Granada, and the original founders who fled from Granada brought with them all their love for agriculture and gardens, which are here the delight of the Moors. The hills supply them with an abundance of water, which under African sun and a fertile soil covers the earth with the most luxuriant vegetation and every kind of fruit given to man to eat. The town is like that of Tangiers, impressive when seen from the distance, but ruined in the interior. The bazaars, and especially the corn and vegetable markets, very African. Lines of camels laden with dates from Tafilet, silks from Fez, Ethiopians, wild Arabs, and muffled women, naked legs and covered faces, all talking a guttural idiom which beats German to nothing. The wares they deal with are as singular as the people: painted couskousu dishes from Fez, odd brown zebra-looking carpets from Rabat, tricolour clothes for the Ethiopians, velvet embroidered cushions, slippers and sashes from Algiers. Then the jewelry of the women. My wife represents the Moorish women as one mass of pearls and precious stones. I have seen the collection of a Jewish woman which filled a decent-size box, about four times as big as the one my wife troubled you with, and which I hope started safely for England. Huge uncut emeralds seem to be the favourites. The houses are full of small patios, arches, arabesque work, and tesselated pavement, like the Alhambra, and the palace of the Governor, which is in high order, gives one an idea of what the Alhambra must have been once upon a time. We hope to set out to-morrow for Gibraltar, and thence to Granada viâ Malaga, and, having embraced His B. M. Consul in that city, to get back to the Alhambra by the 6th of June, el dia de Corpus, which is celebrated with great pomp in Granada. Adios ever, here and everywhere.

Gibraltar, Thursday, 30 [May, 1833].

We have arrived here quite safely from Tetuan, and hope to be back at Granada by the 6th of June for el dia de Corpus.

Malaga, June 2 [1833].

If you do not repent you of your hospitable offer of giving me a bed, during the approaching shows and ceremonies, I should be delighted to run up for a few days. As I should come alone, any hole or corner in your house would be perfectly good enough, and I should put you by no means out of your way.

I hope to be at Granada by Thursday, and will consult Don José’s tailor on the subject of a coat, something blue, turned up with red and a few dollars of gold lace; you can pass me, in this decent livery, as an attaché extraordinary from the Pacha of Tetuan, or a proconsul from his B.M. Consul-General at Tangiers. I hope in this disguise to be allowed to stand behind your Excellency’s chair at the different ceremonies, bull-fights, rows (si Dios quiere), and hold your dress cocked hat.

My wife is not well, and much knocked up by this last journey, and will do quite well to remain quiet in the Alhambra. Indeed, some repose is absolutely necessary to her, both bodily and mentally.

This is a warm spot; and having dined with the consul, eaten the raisins, drunk the Malaga, and looked at the clay figures, nought remains but to pack up the Alforjas [saddle-bags] and be off to Granada.

I wrote you a letter from Tetuan, which I hope reached you, and was less tedious than one of sixty pages from Mr. Edward Drummond Mortimer Auriol Hay.

I hear there will be no time for an answer to reach me at Granada, as I must set out about the 10th to arrive the 16th. All sorts of conveyances will no doubt be occupied, and I shall have to ride over the interminable plains of Castille, and shall arrive as brown as the Plenipo from Algiers.