The calamity which has afflicted this town and swept away eighteen thousand of its inhabitants,[24] will more than sufficiently account for my long silence. But, during the interruption of my correspondence, there is a former period for which I owe you a more detailed explanation. [24] The yellow fever in 1800. My travels in Spain have hitherto been as limited as is used among my countrymen. The expense, the danger, and the great inconvenience attending a journey, prevent our travelling for pleasure or curiosity. Most of our people spend their whole lives within their province, and few among the females have ever lost sight of the town that gave them birth. I have, however, brought home some of your English restlessness; and, as my dear friend, the young clergyman, whose account of himself is already in your hands, had to visit a very peculiar spot of Andalusia, I joined him most willingly in his excursion, during which I collected a few traits of our national manners, with a view to add one more to my preceding sketches. My friend’s destination was a town in the mountains or Sierra de Ronda, called Olbera, or Olvera, for we make no difference in the pronunciation of the _b_ and the _v_. A young man of that town had been elected to a fellowship of this _Colegio Mayor_, and my friend, who is a member of that body, was the appointed commissioner for collecting the _pruebas_, or evidence, which, according to the statutes, must be taken at the birth-place of the candidate, concerning the purity of his blood and family connexions. The badness of the roads, in that direction, induced us to make the whole journey on horseback. We were provided with the coarse dress which country gentlemen wear on similar occasions--a short loose jacket and small-clothes of brown serge; thick leather gaiters; a cloak tied up in a roll on the pommel of the saddle; and a stout spencer, ornamented with a kind of patchwork lace, made of pieces of various colours, which is a favourite riding-dress of our Andalusian beaux. Each of us, as well as the servant, whose horse carried our light luggage, was armed with a musket, hanging by a hook, on a ring, which all travelling-saddles are furnished with for that purpose. This manner of travelling is, upon the whole, the most pleasant in Andalusia. Robbers seldom attack people on horseback, provided they take care, as we did, never to pass any wooded ground without separating to the distance of a musket-shot from each other.