_Hostess_.—There are several, both on this side of Cordova and the other. The nearest is Luisiana, about two leagues from hence, from which place both my husband and myself come; the next is Carlota, {226} which is some ten leagues distant, and these are the only colonies of our people which I have seen; but there are others farther on, and some, as I have heard say, in the very heart of the Sierra Morena. _Myself_.—And do the colonists still retain the language of their forefathers? _Hostess_.—We speak Spanish, or rather Andalusian, and no other language. A few, indeed, amongst the very old people, retain a few words of German, which they acquired from their fathers, who were born in the other country; but the last person amongst the colonists who could understand a conversation in German was the aunt of my mother, who came over when a girl. When I was a child I remember her conversing with a foreign traveller, a countryman of hers, in a language which I was told was German, and they understood each other, though the old woman confessed that she had lost many words: she has now been dead several years. _Myself_.—Of what religion are the colonists? _Hostess_.—They are Christians, like the Spaniards, and so were their fathers before them. Indeed, I have heard that they came from a part of Germany where the Christian religion is as much practised as in Spain itself. _Myself_.—The Germans are the most honest people in the world: being their legitimate descendants, you have of course no thieves amongst you. The hostess glanced at me for a moment, then looked at her husband and smiled: the latter, who had hitherto been smoking without uttering a word, though with a peculiarly surly and dissatisfied countenance, now flung the remainder of his cigar amongst the embers, then springing up, he muttered, “_Disparate_!” and “_Conversacion_!” and went abroad. “You touched them in the sore place, _Signore_,” said the Genoese, after we had left Moncloa some way behind us. “Were they honest people they would not keep that _venta_; and as for the colonists, I know not what kind of people they might be when they first came over, but at present their ways are not a bit better than those of the Andalusians, but rather worse, if there is any difference at all.”