Passing onwards in our march, on the ninth day, we ascended a high hill on the summit of which stood Aronches, commanding an extensive prospect over a diversified sandy country, intersected with forests, vineyards, rocks, and small fields of Indian corn, and encompassed by dilapidated walls formed of loose stones carelessly heaped one on another without mortar. The streets of the town were narrow, and almost deserted, with huge shapeless rocks at every few yards, rearing their heads, and blocking up the way, whilst a solitary Portuguese was seen striking an old battered guitar with all his fingers (as on a tambourine) and hallooing forth some ditty loud enough to be heard in the distant valleys. The heat of the day was quite overpowering, the firmament was of heavenly blue, while the sun shone forth in full splendour, forcing us to retire to some shady spot from its scorching rays, and to take some repose after the fatigues of the march. Towards the close of the evening we again stood on the ramparts to inhale the cool and delicious air. The shades of night had scarcely hidden the face of the country from our view, when the moon, rising in all her grandeur, threw a pale light around, and tipped with silver the battlements of those venerable towers built by the Moors, which for centuries had endured, and had frowned defiance on the flitting shadows of many generations, gliding by their grey walls unheeded and forgotten. As we gazed in sweet contemplation on the surrounding scenery, all nature seemed hushed, and the universe sunk into slumber, when suddenly the bell of a monastery close at hand tolled loudly, and in the gentle breeze, at intervals, we heard the solemn dirge of a religious procession, which, by degrees, arose on the ear, and gradually encreasing became louder, and swelled into such an awful bass strain, as one might conceive to inspire reflection in the firm, horrors in the nervous, and all the terrors of purgatory in the dying. The long procession of monks passed us, wrapped in their sombre drapery, as if they had emerged from the very bowels of the earth. The scene was impressive. After we had retired, my slumbers were disturbed by the horrors of the nightmare; and, when the merry rays of the sun sparkled in at the windows the next morning, I felt as if delivered out of some dungeon, longed for the camp, and hoped that, should fate cut short my career, the sun and moon might alternately throw their rays over my expiring body, rather than that I should die a lingering death, surrounded by wax tapers and priest-craft, and then buried in satin and gold, and finally extinguished by a basket of quick lime.