coloured boats whose red oars cast red
reflections in the water as from flamingo's
wings, approach, but first of all, like a
conqueror, leaped on board this brown-faced
fencing master man; who might, for shrewd
daring and gallant mien, have been a younger
brother of the Don Quixote, or even third
cousin twice removed of the Cid himself.
He bowed to us all, and double bowed and
pirouetted to the ladies, who, at these moments
of approaching shore, turn out especially gay,
cheerful and unruffled, though, but yesterday,
wallowing victims of the sea malady.

"Good evening, sar. How you, sar, all
right, sar? Love England, sar, vary big
country, sar, vary good peoples, Inglis, sar.
I speak Inglis vary well, sar. I half past
two yar in Inglis, sar," says the young Don
to our fat captain with the coffee-coloured
eyes, who stands serene and indifferent at
the gangway, waiting for the Custom House
officer.

I stood watching the first native I had
seen, admiring his nimble dancing motion:
the perch-back ruffle of his shirt-front, his
light cassock waistcoat, his serge paletôt, and
his white leghorn planter's hat with the black
ribbon and sable lining. Suddenly the fat
captain makes a side spring at me, puts the
back of his hand to his mouth as a wall to
talk behind, and, in a speaking trumpet
whisper, says confidentially, "That is the
biggest thief in all Cadiz!"

"What, Higginos?" says the first mate,
the good man, "who carried away his funnel"
when captain of an Australian steamer. "The
dirtiest rascal in all Spain!"

"What's he up to now, Simmons?"

"Why, touting for the Fonda Europa—
the filthy little inn by the bull-ring
in Hamilcar Street."

"I should like to throw him overboard:
he once swindled me out of five shillings."

I might have heard further revelations;
but, just at this moment, a bare-legged boy,
clinging round the mast-head, has some
difficulty in reeving the P. and O. flag which is
to intimate our arrival. The boy scrambles
about as if he was bird-nesting; but the red
whip will not fling out its yard or two of
scarlet thread.

"Let a MAN go out!" cries the captain,
shouting himself into a crimson apoplexy,
laying the sort of contemptuous emphasis on
the word man that Queen Elizabeth did when
she said, "My father loved a man!" Out
goes a man, and out goes the flag; and at this
moment Higginos—Don Antonio Higginos
—seeing the angry stare of the first officer
at him, hastily deals out a pack of lying
hotel cards, and drops like a ripe or rotten
fruit precipitately into his boat which lay
alongside. And, seeing his sudden retreat,
a lady near me starts, and as she starts, I
start and drop myself and trunk into
Higginos's boat. He was counting some
shillings with a chuckle; when he had done
it, he arranged his blue-caped cloak on his
left shoulder, looked up the mate's red face,
which hung over at the vessel's side like a
full-blown rose over a black wall, and smiled
deprecatingly and innocently. He now stands
up and cries to him:

"You want any cigars, sar? Best
Havannahs, sar!"

I will not more than epitomise my first
impression on landing, of a lovely Spanish face
seen through the black convent-netting of a
mantilla, or of the crowds of leather-greaved
and bobbed and tasselled men I passed through
on my way to my hotel in the grand square.
I will not stop at the reed-thatched and
walled quay stalls, formed of maize stalks tied
together, where hot yellow tomatoes were for
sale; or where half-naked fishermen, with
brass charms hanging by dirty wet strings
from their brown, lean necks, sat before heaps
of some rough fishes that looked like purple
chestnuts in the husks. The great matted
bullock-carts, with the solid wooden wheels,
cumbrous and slow, shall not stop me; nor
the clinking and jangle of the perpetual
mule-bells; nor the crews of lateen-rigged
boats lying off the harbour, with their curved
and sweeping sails, white in the intense
sunlight. The heaps of chick peas on the quays
and the dry black kidney-bean pods of the
carob-trees detain me for a moment, but I
push on through a crowd of lounging porters,
who seem all armed with pink slices of melon
and brown ringcrab-shaped loaves of bread;
each stamped with a sort of talisman seal.
Everywhere sounds the bullying, angry cry
of the water-sellers; which has an oriental
flavour, and makes you feel thirsty whether
you will or no.

As for my hotel, all I need say of it is, that
it looked out on a public walk; was next
to a nobleman's house on the one side, and
to a blacksmith's shop on the other; where,
through the black frame of the door, I saw
all day, and half the night, the red sparks
flow upward, and the great orange-coloured
flame throb up and down like a living thing
eager to devour. Not far off was a nunnery;
and nearer, were some suspicious, thievish-
looking houses, where faces were always
watching me as I passed, from behind the
striped mat that was flung out, tent-wise,
over the strip of projecting balcony.

But I will begin with next morning;
when, before breakfast, I sallied out down
a side-street leading from the outer walks
on the wall, into the small trellised square
where the post-office stands, and where
the houses have all those curious little
badges of the figure of the Virgin, that may
be insurance records or religious memorials,
I quite forgot to ask which. How curiously
the different classes still nestle together—
noble and blacksmith, merchant and barber,
nuns, and I do not know what—I have
already mentioned. The same odd sort of
country town of the seventeenth century,