outstretched arms of these crosses over-hearty, albeit they are
sometimes hung with flowers, which mock the dead. Nor are all sermons
more eloquent than these silent stones, on which such brief emblems are
fixed. The Spaniards, from long habit, are less affected by them than
foreigners, being all accustomed to behold crosses and bleeding
crucifixes in churches and out; they moreover well know that by far the
greater proportion of these memorials have been raised to record
murders, which have not been perpetrated by robbers, but are the results
of sudden quarrel or of long brooded-over revenge, and that wine and
women, nine times out of ten, are at the bottom of the calamity.
Nevertheless, it makes a stout English heart uncomfortable, although it
is of little use to be afraid when one is in for it, and on the spot.
Then there is no better chance of escape, than to brave the peril and to
ride on. Turn, therefore, dear reader, a deaf ear to the tales of local
terror which will be told in every out-of-the-way village by the
credulous, timid inhabitants. You, as we have often been, will be
congratulated on having passed such and such a wood, and will be assured
that you will infallibly be robbed at such and such a spot a few leagues
onward. We have always found that this ignis fatuus, like the horizon,
has receded as we advanced; the dangerous spot is either a little behind
or a little before the actual place--it vanishes, as most difficulties
do, when boldly approached and grappled with.
[Sidenote: BANDITTIPHOBIA OF FRENCH TOURISTS.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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