This condition of affairs, these dangers real or imaginary, and these precautions, existed principally in journeys by cross roads, or through provinces rarely visited, and unprovided with public carriages; if, however, such districts were reputed the worst, they often had the advantage of being freer from regular bands, for where there are few passengers, why should there be robbers, who like spiders place their nets where the supply of flies is sure?--and little do the humbler masses of Spain care either for robbers or revolutionists; they have nothing to lose, and are beneath the notice of pickpockets or pseudo-patriots. Their rags are their safeguard, a fine climate clothes them, a fertile soil feeds them; they doze away in the happy want and poverty, ever the best protections in Spain, or strum their guitars and sing staves in praise of empty purses. The better provided have to look out for themselves; indeed, whenever the law is insufficient men take it into their own hands, either to protect themselves or their property, or to administer wild justice, and obtain satisfaction for wrongs, which in plain Spanish is called revenge. An Irish landlord arms his servants and raises walls round his “demesne”--an English squire employs watchers and keepers to preserve his pheasants--so in suspected localities a Spanish hidalgo protects his person by hiring armed peasants; they are called “_escopeteros_,” people with guns--a definition which is applicable to most Spaniards. When out of town this custom of going armed, and early acquaintance with the use of the gun, is the principal reason why, on the shortest notice, bodies of men, whom the Spaniards call soldiers, are got together; every field furnishes the raw material--a man with a musket. Baggage, commissariat, pay, rations, uniform, and discipline, which are European rather than Oriental, are more likely to be found in most other armies than in those of Spain. These things account for the facility with which the Spanish nation flies so magnanimously to arms, and after bush-fighting and buccaneering expeditions, disappears at once after a reverse; “every man to his own home,” as of old in the East, and that, with or without proclamation. These “_escopeteros_,” occasionally robbers themselves, live either by robbery or by the prevention of it; for there is some honour among thieves; “_entre lobos no se come_,” “wolves don’t eat each other” unless very hard up indeed. These fellows naturally endeavour to alarm travellers with over-exaggerated accounts of danger, ogres and antres vast, in order that their services may be engaged; their inventions are often believed by swallowers of camels, who note down as facts, these tricks upon travellers got up for the occasion, by people who are making long noses at them, behind their backs; but these longer lies are among the accidents of long journeys, “_en luengas vias, luengas mentiras_.” [Sidenote: TALISMANIC DEFENCES.]