However confidently we have relied on past experience that such would not be our fate, yet these sorts of Spanish milestones marked with memento mori, are awkward evidences that the thing is not altogether impossible. It makes a single gentleman, whose life is not insured, not only trust to Santiago, but keep his powder dry, and look every now and then if his percussion cap fits. On these occasions the falling in with any of the nomade half-Bedouin natives is a sort of godsend; their society is quite different from that of a regular companion, for better or worse until death us do part, as it is casual, and may be taken up or dropped at convenience. The habits of all Spaniards when on the road are remarkably gregarious; a common fear acts as a cement, while the more they are in number the merrier. It is hail! well met, fellow-traveller! and the being glad to see each other is an excellent introduction. The sight of passengers bound our way is like speaking a strange sail on the Atlantic, _Hola Camara!_ ship a-hoy. This predisposition tends to make all travellers write so much and so handsomely of the lower classes of Spaniards, not indeed more than they deserve, for they are a fine, noble race. Something of this arises, because on such occasions all parties meet on an equality; and this levelling effect, perhaps unperceived, induces many a foreigner, however proud and reserved at home, to unbend, and that unaffectedly. He treats these accidental acquaintances quite differently from the manner in which he would venture to treat the lower orders of his own country, who, probably, if conciliated by the same condescension of manner, would appear in a more amiable light, although they are inferior to the Spaniard in his Oriental goodness of manner, his perfect tact, his putting himself and others into their proper place, without either self-degradation or vulgar assumption of social equality or superior physical powers. [Sidenote: FRIENDSHIPS.]