This venta was a bad specimen of the accommodation I was likely to find on the road. Although only four leagues from Granada, I should have been obliged to go supperless to bed, unless for the provision I had wisely made against such an event. I superintended the boiling of some water, infused my tea, got my bread and little jar of Dutch butter from my basket, and cut into a most delicious ham, which had been presented to me, and prepared at Granada. Sugar was the only thing I had forgotten; but this the good people of the venta undertook to supply from the village; and it was soon brought, in four separate papers, wrapped up like powders received from an apothecary. Having made a comfortable meal, I next went in search of a bed, and succeeded in finding a mattress, which I laid upon six chairs; and, covering myself with my cloak--of course, without undressing--I slept tolerably well till roused by the muleteer, although the wind and rain beat in at the open window half the night. When I went in search of the tartana, I found no fewer than sixty-nine mules in the venta, some ready to set out, and others standing in their places--the muleteers sleeping beside them: all these were going to Granada, laden with the Esparto rush, which is extensively manufactured into baskets. After the night’s rain, the morning was hazy; but it gradually cleared away, and fine weather succeeded. On the outskirts of the village, I noticed these words inscribed upon a house in large letters, _Viva el Rey absoluto_, “Long live the absolute King:”--and soon after, in a little hollow, I passed a cross which recorded a murder, committed there five months before, upon a traveller who had been so rash as to offer resistance to banditti. When we left the village behind us, we left the road behind us also: it was now no longer a road, but only a track of the rudest kind, winding among the ridges of the Sierra; the ground was entirely without cultivation. Mingled with the Esparto rush, lavender, sweet marjorum and thyme, covered the lower part of the mountains; which, higher up, were bare and stony; and the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, bounded the horizon. At a wild and desolate spot, where enormous rocks were strewn around--a secure and admirable retreat for thieves--we suddenly came upon two men seated in a hollow of the rocks, armed with guns, and with pistols stuck in their girdles; and when I saw them leave their places, and hasten down the rock towards us, I began to think of feeling for the purse of twenty dollars. They, however, adopted a different mode of supplying their needs,--thinking it safer to ask for money, as guards of the road, than as robbers. I gave them a dollar betwixt them, with which they appeared to be contented; and, giving me in return, “_Muchas gracias_,” and the parting salutation, “_Vaya Vd. con la Virgen_,” they scrambled up among the rocks. The salutation differs in different provinces: before reaching Granada, it had always