Next morning, I left this place with the intention of dining in Murcia. We travelled along an execrable road, but through a country susceptible of the finest cultivation, though totally uncultivated, to the little village of Pedrilla; where at an enormously large posada we stopped to refresh the mule and take chocolate; and immediately after leaving Pedrilla, I descried at a distance the tower of the cathedral of Murcia. Yet for three leagues the country continued wild, and but very partially under cultivation; and then, at about a league from Murcia, we entered its celebrated vale. I was delighted and surprised with the prospect before me: a wide avenue, bordered by trees, stretched four miles, terminating in the two lofty towers of one of the churches. On both sides of this avenue, as far as the eye could reach, it rested upon a carpet of that perfect green that is produced by irrigation,--but there was variety too,--for the shades of the green were different; there was the green of the young wheat, that in a thick crop had reached the height of eight or ten inches; and the still brighter green of the flax; and the green of the many beds of the various vegetables for the market of Murcia; and over all the vale, fig-trees and mulberries were thickly strewn; luxuriant groves of blood-coloured oranges speckled the fields; and stately palms here and there lifted up their broad canopy. It was altogether a most captivating prospect, and realized more than any thing I had ever yet seen,--the idea of a continued garden and eternal summer. The scene was animated too; for many country people, with their short white trowsers, crimson girdles, and Montera caps, were crossing the fields, returning from labour. Many carts, waggons, carriages, and horsemen, filled the road; and every hundred yards, or less, we passed a neat cottage, half hid in its own little orangery. All this was very different from what I had been led to believe. I expected to have found nothing but silence and poverty in the neighbourhood of Murcia; and in place of these, the approach to it more resembled the neighbourhood of a large and flourishing city, than any thing that I had yet seen in Spain. At the entrance to the city the custom-house officers, of course stopped the tartana, and I was prepared with the usual bribe of a peceta to save myself from the inconvenience of a search: but here the officers were more ambitious, they would take nothing less than half a dollar; and rather than submit to this imposition, I allowed my portmanteau to be tumbled inside out, and thus saved my peceta. I arrived at the Fonda de las Diligencias at five o’clock, much pleased that my purse of twenty dollars might now be applied to some better purpose than to fill the pockets of banditti.