On the plateau of this province (Albacete) are found (Salinas) salt-lakes formed by evaporation, the only examples of this kind in Western Europe. The only other town of any importance in the province is Almanza (9000), on the edge of the plateau before making the descent into Valencia. The numerous names compounded of "pozo," well, and "fuente," fountain, in this province, attest its arid character, where fresh water is scarce enough to make its presence a distinguishing mark to any spot. ANDALUSIA embraces the whole of southern Spain from Murcia to the frontier of Portugal. Its seaboard includes both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In Cabo de Gata, 2 deg.10' W., it has the extreme south-easterly point of Spain; and in Cabo de Tarifa, 36 deg.2' N., the extreme southerly point, not only of Spain, but of Europe. One chain of its mountains, the Sierra de Nevada, contains the highest summits of the peninsula; and its river, the Guadalquiver, from Seville to the ocean is the only stream of real service for navigation in the whole of Spain. Its wines and olives, its grapes and oranges, and fruits of all kinds, are the finest, its horses and its cattle are the best, its bulls are the fiercest, of all Spain. The sites of its cities rival in their entrancing beauty those of any other European land; while, wanting though they may be in deeper qualities, its sons and daughters yield not in wit or attractive grace or beauty to those of any other race. The Moor has left a deeper mark here than elsewhere, even as he kept his favourite realm of Granada for centuries after he had lost the rest of Spain. And when the sun of Moorish glory set, it was from Andalusia that the vision of the New World rose upon astonished Europe. The year of the conquest of Granada (1492) was also that of the discovery of America. All things take an air of unwonted beauty and of picturesque grace in this land of sun and light; even the gipsy race, avoided and abhorred in other countries of Europe, at Granada, as at Moscow, becomes one of the attractions of the tourist. The province is not entirely of one type. It unites many kinds of beauty; even in Andalusia are "_despoblados_" and "_destierros_," dispeopled and deserted wastes, under Christian hands, but once fertile and inhabited under Moorish rule. Savage wildness and barrenness reign in its lofty mountain chains as much as softer beauty does in the "_huertas_" and "_vegas_." But from the minerals the one district is equally valuable as the other. The province possesses the richest mines, as well as the richest fruits and wines, of the whole of Spain. ANDALUSIA, is divided into the provinces of _Almeria_, _Granada_, _Malaga_, on the Mediterranean; _Cadiz_, _Seville_, _Huelva_, on the Atlantic coast; and _Cordova_ and _Jaen_ inland, along the upper waters of the Guadalquiver. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF GRANADA, WITH THE ALHAMBRA. _Page 110._]