Impatient at the delay, I cried out, as I had received authority to do so, "In the name of the King, open to us!" They obeyed an order thus given; we entered pell-mell, and in the greatest haste, men and mules, into the kitchen, which was on the ground-floor; and we hurried to extinguish the lights, in order not to awaken the suspicions of the bandits who were seeking for us. Indeed, we heard them, passing and repassing near the house, vociferating with the whole force of their lungs against their unlucky fate. We did not quit this solitary house until broad day, and we continued our route for Tortosa, not without having given a suitable recompense to our hosts. I wished to know by what providential circumstance they happened to have a lamp burning at that unseasonable hour. "We had killed a pig," they told me, "in the course of the day, and we were busy preparing the black puddings." Had the pig lived one day more, or had there been no black puddings, I should certainly have been no longer in this world, and I should not have the opportunity to relate the story of the robbers of Oropeza. Never could I better appreciate the intelligent measure by which the constituent assembly abolished the ancient division of France into provinces, and substituted its division into departments, than in traversing for my triangulation the Spanish border kingdoms of Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon. The inhabitants of these three provinces detested each other cordially, and nothing less than the bond of a common hatred was necessary to make them act simultaneously against France. Such was their animosity in 1807 that I could scarcely make use at the same time of Catalonians, Aragons, and Valencians, when I moved with my instruments from one station to another. The Valencians, in particular, were treated by the Catalonians as a light, trifling, inconsistent people. They were in the habit of saying to me, "_En el reino de Valencia la carne es verdura, la verdura agua, los hombres mugeres, las mugeres nada_"; which may be translated thus: "In the kingdom of Valencia meat is a vegetable, vegetables are water, men are women, and women nothing." On the other hand, the Valencians, speaking of the Aragons, used to call them "_schuros_." Having asked of a herdsman of this province who had brought some goats near to one of my stations, what was the origin of this denomination, at which his compatriots showed themselves so offended: