JOURNEY FROM MALAGA TO GRANADA.--GRANADA. Different Routes to Granada; Ascent of the Malaga Mountains; an Anecdote illustrative of Spanish Morals; Picture of a Venta and its Inmates; Night Arrangements; beautiful situation of Loxa; the Venta de Casin; first View of Granada; Reflections; the Situation of Granada and its Vega; the Alhambra; St. Michael’s Mount, and its Singularities; excavated Dwellings; View from the Mount; extraordinary Changes in Temperature; a Fire in Granada, and the curious means resorted to for extinguishing it; Superstition; the Cathedral; the Convents; the Archbishop; Husbandry in the Vega of Granada; State of Agriculture; the Duke of Wellington’s Estates; Effects of the Loss of the Colonies; the Paseos of Granada; the Population; the Market; Usages; the Italian Opera. From Malaga to Granada, there are two roads; one by Velez Malaga, the other by Loxa. The former of these roads lies a great part of the way along the sea shore, and then turning to the left, leads through Alhama to Granada. By sleeping at Velez Malaga the first night, and at Alhama the second, tolerable accommodation may be had all the way to Granada. The other road, on leaving Malaga, strikes at once into the heart of the mountains, and leads to Granada by way of Loxa. By this road, it is necessary to sleep at ventas of the very worst description,--for Loxa does not make a convenient halting place,--and although neither of these roads are safe from robbery, the latter is by far the most celebrated for the crimes that have been committed upon it. I resolved to travel by the Loxa road; chiefly, because the scenery upon it was reported to be greatly more attractive than upon the road by Velez Malaga; and learning that a gallera was about to leave Malaga for Granada by the road which I had selected, I engaged a place in it, for which I paid two dollars and a half,--a very moderate charge for so long a journey. I took my seat in the gallera at seven in the morning, and found my fellow travellers to consist of a middle-aged woman, the wife, as I afterwards learned, of a respectable shopkeeper in Malaga: her daughter, a sprightly, intelligent, and remarkably pretty girl of nineteen, two years married to a wine grower of the neighbourhood: a young woman of two or three and twenty, comely, and finely formed, on her way to Granada on speculation,--for she was one of those unhappy persons, whose temporary home depends upon the caprice of her temporary master; and another woman, who travelled openly as the mistress of the muleteer. Such was the company in the gallera.