that was left of the good man, to whom they owed their own lives and those of their husbands. The corner-stone of a monument was laid, to which the towns composing the province of Alicante contributed. It stands a little without the northern gate of the city, a four-sided tapering shaft, inscribed with the names of the grateful towns which he succored-Alicante, Alcoy, Montforte, Elche, and others—resting on a pedestal which bears a medallion head of Quijano and inscriptions in his honor. May it stand as long as the world.

I love and honor Spain for having produced such a man as Quijano. A pamphlet is before me, consisting of the addresses made and poems recited on laying the corner-stone of the monument under which he was again committed to the earth-florid prose and such verse as is easily produced in the harmonious language of Castile. I only wish that in some part of it a plain recital had been given of his numerous acts of beneficence, that I might have made this brief account more particular, and, of course, more interesting.

A SPANISH GALERA.

173

LETTER XVI.

A JOURNEY FROM ALICANTE TO MURCIA.

MALAGA, December 2nd, 1857.

I HAD become quite tired of waiting at Alicante for a steamer bound for the southern ports of Spain; yet the roads were so bad that none of our party but myself would venture to perform any part of the journey by land. I therefore determined to proceed by myself to the city of Murcia, taking Elche in my way, and thence to Carthagena, on the coast, where the others were to join me. At three o'clock in the morning of the 25th of November I was waked and conducted through the miry and silent streets to the office of the diligence. Here I was told that, on account of the badness of the roads, the passengers were not to be sent forward as usual in a coche, but in a galera, which means a sort of market-wagon without springs, running on a large pair of wheels behind, and a small, low pair next to the horses. In taking my passage, I had paid for a seat in the berlina, or coupé, as the French call it, and as the galera has no berlina, I was told that I was entitled to receive twelve reals back. I took the change, and soon found myself packed in the wagon with eight other passengers, who did not seem in the best humor;

174

CIGARRITOS.

MATCHES.

possibly on account of the change in the mode of conveyance -nor did they quite recover their spirits during the whole journey. They consoled themselves with rolling up small quantities of finely-chopped tobacco in little bits of paper, to make cigarritos, and quietly smoking them out. For this purpose every true Spaniard carries with him a little unbound volume of half the size of a pocket almanac, composed of thin leaves of blank paper, one of which he tears off every time he has occasion to make a cigarrito, and drawing a quantity of chopped tobacco from a small bag, folds it with quick and dexterous fingers into a compact cylinder, and lighting a lucifer match with a smart explosion, raises a smoke in as little time as is needed to read these lines. There is one respect in which Spanish industry takes the lead of the world-the making of lucifer matches for smokers. A slender wick of two inches in length is dipped in wax of snowy whiteness, and tipped with a little black knob of explosive matter, looking like the delicate anther of some large flower. Struck against the gritty side of the little box which contains it, the Spanish match starts into a flame which requires more than a slight puff of wind to blow it out, and which lasts long enough for a very deliberate smoker to light any but the most refractory cigar.

Our galera was dragged out of town in the glare of two torches, by eight mules, going at a pretty smart trot; but when the light of morning became so strong that the snap of a lucifer match was no longer followed by an illumination of the inside of our wagon, we saw that we were travelling in what

ELCHE AND ITS PALM GROVES.

175

could not be called a highway but by a gross misapplication of terms. It was from three to five rods in width, and worn considerably lower than the fields through which it passed, so that the rain-water flowed readily into it, and found no passage out, making it a long, narrow quagmire. Yet we were in the midst of a pleasant huerta, for here were groves of olive trees, full of fruit, and rows of the dark green lentisk, from which the fleshy pods had been gathered, and lines of mulberry trees, already bare, and sallow pomegranate bushes, and fig trees beginning to drop their foliage. Above these towered here and there a giant palm, and, finally, at a distance, appeared a great wood of palm trees, which seemed to fill half the horizon, like those which in Egypt overshadow the mounds that mark the site of Memphis, or those through which the traveller passes on his way from Cairo to Heliopolis. We were approaching Elche, the inhabitants of which have tended their groves of palm, refreshing the trees with rills of water guided to their roots in the dry season, and gathering their annual harvest of dates in the month of November, ever since the time of the Moors. I seemed to have been at once taken from Europe, and set down in the East. The work people whom I saw beginning their tasks in the fields, or going to them along the road, reminded me of the Orientals. The Majo cap which they wore, without being a turban, imitates its form in such a manner, that at a little distance it might be easily taken for one; and their gay-colored sashes worn around the waist, their wide white drawers reaching just below the knee, and their hempen sandals, the next thing

176

INHABITANTS OF ELCHE.

to slippers, heightened the resemblance. In our journey from Almansa to Alicante we had often, as we approached the seacoast, met with cartmen and wagoners dressed in this half Oriental garb; but now we were on the spot where it was the household costume, and where the needles were plied by which it was shaped.

Passing by a large plantation of young palms, just beginning to rise from the ground, with trenches from one to another along the rows, leading the water to their roots, we entered the great wood. There were palms on both sides of the way, standing as near to each other as they could well grow; some of them tall, the growth of centuries, others short, though equal in breadth of stem and reared within the last fifty years. They hung out in the morning sunshine their clusters of dates, light green, yellow, or darkening into full ripeness; clusters large enough to fill a half bushel basket, while their rigid leaves rustled with a dry hissing sound in a light wind.

Our vehicle staggered on in the miry streets, between low stone walls, and amidst a crowd of men and women going forth to the labors of the day, entered the streets of Elche, embowered in this forest. I saw that all the houses had flat roofs-another resemblance to the towns in the East. I looked around me for similar resemblance in the people by whom the place is inhabited, and fancied that I found them. The people have dark complexions, bright, dark eyes, narrow faces, and for the most part high features and peaked chins, and slight and slender figures; such, at least, was the sum of observations made in the slight opportunity afforded