“The driver and postillions had their hands bound behind with strong cords; these necessary precautions were soon exercised on us. The clown’s hands were tied—and so were his legs; and in addition to tying the hands of the old lady and her maid, a couple of gags were obliged to be put into their mouths to prevent their ‘sweet voices’ from disturbing the harmony of the scene. The captain of the band, a fine handsome fellow, with beard enough to stuff a sofa, called upon us, in very bad Castillian, to declare what money we had, and where it was—adding, that if we did not tell the truth, we should be cut-throated or burned. He interrogated us with all the acuteness of Mr. Pegler, (one of the best detectives, and also one of the best of men), frequently changing his tone and accent. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Whence do you come?’ ‘Where are you going?’ were questions put to us, and if we had the misfortune to belong to any place near the haunts of the brigands, or had happened to know the person of any of them, we should have been inevitably assassinated. In fact, a poor postillion was so served only three months before by these very identical brigands, because he happened to be acquainted with one of them. “They inquired of us whether we were Englishmen, or Americans, for if we had been the former, we should have been completely stripped. The Spanish lower order of people imagine that the clothes of the English and Americans are stitched with gold thread. The lady with the lap-dog, and her maid, unwittingly said they were English, and I, scorning to tell a lie, even in such a case, said that I was from Middlesex, which the chief brigand, whose geography was something like that of the pope, seemed to think an outlandish place, somewhere in the extreme corner of the earth. All these necessary preliminaries being gone through, the picturesque gentlemen began plundering the coach, throwing down and breaking, or ripping open with their long knives, all the boxes, trunks, bags, and packages. Knowing that they could not get at mine without a great deal of trouble, I looked up and told them that I would open my trunk and give them all the money it contained, if they would unbind my hands, for they had drawn the cord so tight that I was in great pain. They consented, and brought my trunk to me. The money they found in it did not satisfy them. They left me in the hands of one of their band, a young man not more than twenty years of age, who continued to search my trunk, while an older and fiercer brigand watched my looks with his carbine levelled at me. The young man, although he made use of the coarsest oaths and other expressions, which beautifully illustrates the fact, that every variety of human speech can be adapted to blaspheme the ”good God who made us,“ was not so savage as the rest, and this was evidently his first expedition. He carried neither carbine nor sword, and the only weapon he had was a Catalonian knife stuck in his belt. Everything he saw in