in the cabin, and relieving his mind by swearing
at them in English, which offended nobody.
What wonderful changes we passed through
in that day's progress from the cold, steaming
dank fog at daybreak—that put the English
engineer quite in spirits; he hating your
blue sky—to the violence of a heat, that glared
at us with desert intensity reflected from
the sandbanks on the shore. On one
bank-side of us stretched a forest of low, shelving,
stone pines, green, and tabular, under whose
red shadowing wild boars were said to
root and grunt; on the other, a barren
plain, where the mirage sometimes mocks
the eye, and where perennial fevers torture
the hall-naked herdsman. And now we
pass some boys, sitting with their naked legs
dangling over the low, chapped, baked-looking
earth-banks, and hear them shout as we
plough onward to Saint Lucar. Now we see a
fellow driving horses round a ring trampling
out wheat, and sturdy, savage-looking men
throwing up wheat in broad shovelfuls to the
winnowing wind. Now the river splits and
winds, so that the distant dim blue mountains
seem now this side of us, now that. There is
always some object of interest; now a group
of Wouvermans-looking horsemen on the
shore; now a truant bull broken from the
herd and swimming across the strong tidal
river, pursued by shouting mulattos in
boats. There is great ringing of bells as we
touch at Saint Lucar and take off a motley
band of soldiers with yellow dirty jackets,
raw leather powder pouches, and hempen
sandals, just covering the tips of their bruised
and naked toes: now a party of peasant
women, hearty and chattering; bright, in
yellow and scarlet bodices and gold-earrings,
laden with cheap pictures of saints, their last
new purchases at the town. Now hacienda,
bushed with orange-trees, a turnpike tower or
two, old as the Moors, with spiked battlements:
then the Torre d'Oro (golden tower),
and we are at Seville. It is nearly dark.
We snort off our steam, and a dense
phalanx of black turban-capped men board us,
as we stretch great poles from the ship's
side to keep us in deep water. The bank is
of crumbling earth. We break through porters,
touters, and cabmen, who all but tear us limb
from limb, and mount a grand barouche, which
is the Sevillian form of fly. The coachman is
in livery, and a brown-faced tiger tucks
us up, and shuts the door. We tear across the
Rotten Row of Seville, jammed full of
equipages parading slowly between young trees
and lamps, down the river-side Alamedas, or
Delicias, and pass the great cathedral, where
high up, round some saints' niches, votive
lamps shine. Tear down the Street of Oranges,
across the new square where the band plays,
and reach the Hôtel de Minerva. Bare-legged
sturdy porters, just like the hammels of
Constantinople, with immense boxes, slung by
ropes to poles passing across their shoulders,
stagger past us, and now an Andalucian dandy,
gay and hectoring, in his high and
demi-peaked war-saddle, rides by on a horse
trapped with netted and tasselled housings.

We get to the hotel, with its door ever
open, its curtained windows, and smoking
loungers. The landlord bows, rubs his hands
and reads the directions on our trunks, under
pretence of directing the perspiring porter—
who could carry Primrose Hill on his head, if
it only had handles to it, and who now swinging
off his charge—worries the cord-knots with his
black teeth, smiles,and watches my purse. The
landlord looks at a black square board, with
figures painted on it, and cries out, siete (seven),
the number of my room. I give a look at the
hall I am in, and approve the chirruping
kisses the water-drops keep giving each other,
in the central fountain, where the nosegays
lie ready for the table d'hôte dinner
tomorrow. I observe the great maps that look
like venous dissections framed, and give in my
name for the police to the landlord; who
now sits like Rhadamanthus at his book at
the small-side table in the hall. I look at
the names of new arrivals written up at the
hotel door, and at the letters stuck up
ready for stuck-up people who are expected.
Amongst all the Dons and Quixotes, there
is sure to be some stubborn upstart, who
prefers going wrong with Murray, to going
right by asking a native. Some guides from
Gibraltar are hanging about the door ready to
plunge you into incredible dangers for the
small sum of a dollar a day. I look in at the
door to the right, find the windows shut-to,
and the windows of the table d'hôte-room
closed, to keep out the torment of the sun. The
bare table—laid out with craggy melons under
wire-covers, and water-bottles perpetually
in a cold sweat—looks depressing in spite of
the little napkins of Sevillian papers, and a
spoonful of red Catalonian wine left in some
late visitor's tumbler. I go up the broad
marble stairs to reconnoitre my bed-room and
sitting-room; for, in Spain, you cannot get a
single room, however humbly you travel. I
walk round the corridor that, from each of its
four sides, looks down on the nosegays and the
fountains, the maps, the smoking loungers,
the cloth-brushes and distant Columbus.
I turn a huge key that Tubal Cain might
have fashioned, and open one-half of the
folding-doors that lead into my bed-room,
which is floored with glazed tiles, cool and
hard to the feet; a singing whine, faint and
far, tell me that there are mosquitoes. I
tremble for the night, and look to the
mosquito curtains, for fear of man's smallest
and most dreadful enemy. In doing so I
examine the room, which is light and
transparent; for the bed is iron and painted green,
and has no dusty funereal vallance or dark
tester. I become aware of an eye watching
me from the wall which is papered. It follows
me about in a scaring way, but as I approach
it disappears. I found it to be a round
peep-hole, about as large as the top of a bodkin,