The interior of Murcia surprised me as much as the approach to it. I found clean pleasant streets, like those of Seville, and a population not remarkable for poverty and rags. The best commentary upon this assertion, is the fact, that I was not accosted by a beggar during the three days I spent in Murcia. Like Seville too, the convent gardens often skirt the streets, and the walls are over-topped by the heavily laden orange trees, and by the branchy palm. In walking towards the cathedral, I chanced to follow a friar carrying an image of St. Anthony, which the children crowded to kiss; and some of the lower orders to whom he held it, also bestowed upon it this mark of attention. The cathedral is not equal to many in Spain, but it is fine nevertheless:--the architecture is mixed,--there is much fine marble, and several of the Gothic chapels are worthy of a visit, from the excellence of the workmanship found in them. There are no pictures in the cathedral; and the riches in which it formerly abounded were almost all carried off by the French. But the chief object of attraction is the tower, which is ten feet higher than that of Seville; and like it, is ascended by inclined planes. The prospect from the summit at once lays open the character and extent of the celebrated vale. It is about sixteen miles long, and eight wide, and is bounded on both sides by mountain ranges. The whole of this expanse is one sheet of variegated green, thickly dotted with mulberry trees, and sprinkled with clumps of palms, and copses of orange trees. The whole of the vale is divided into fields, separated from each other by small embankments about eighteen inches high, to assist the process of irrigation, and by rows of mulberry trees or shrubs of some sort, which give to the landscape a lighter effect than that which is produced by the dark thorn hedges of England. Towards the east, four leagues distant, where the vale contracts into the narrow opening through which Alicant lies, I could distinguish the spires of Orihuela. An isolated rock, crowned by a Moorish castle, and a village beneath it, called Monte Agudo, and another village charmingly situated under the mountains, called Algesarez, were agreeable features in the landscape; while the cottages and houses thickly strewing the plain, gave life and animation to it.