The following morning was warm and cloudless, though in the middle of February. The _tartana_ came at ten o’clock—a wagon with a hood, drawn by three stout mules—and we set off with two men and three women, all Spanish, and all as gay as the crickets on the wayside. If their forefathers ascended the mountain with streaming eyes and unshod feet, they, at least, went up on stout wheels, and with many a song and quirk, though perfectly innocent withal. They were light-hearted laborers, released from toil, going with their lunch to spend a holiday at Our Lady of Montserrat’s. Just after starting we passed the little chapel of the Santísima Trinidad, built, as the tablet on it says, to commemorate the happy ending of the African war in 1860. We soon left Monistrol below us. The view at every moment became more extended as we wound up the steep sides of the mountain. At the right was always the towering wall of solid rock, while the left side of the road was often built up, or at least supported, by masonry. Vines and olives clung to the crags as long as they could find foothold, and here and there was an aloe on the edge of the precipice. The bells of Monistrol could be heard far below. The plain began to assume a billowy appearance, swelling more and more to the north till lost in the mountains. The air grew more exhilarating. In two hours’ time we came to a chapel with a tall cross before it, and nearly opposite suddenly appeared the abbey of Our Lady of Montserrat, seven or eight stories high, with a cliff rising hundreds of feet perpendicularly behind, divided by deep fissures, and terminating in needles that looked inaccessible, but where we could see a hermitage perched on the top like the nest of an eagle. There is no beauty about the convent, or pretension to architecture, but there is a certain austere simplicity about it that harmonizes with the mountain. The narrowness of the terrace has prevented its extending laterally, so it has been forced to tower up like the peaks around it. The mountain, as M. Von Humboldt says, seems to have opened to receive man into its bosom. But nearly everything is modern, and everywhere are ruins and traces of violence left by the French in their ravages of 1811. Passing through an arched gateway, we found ourselves in a close, around which stood several large buildings for the accommodation of pilgrims. These are of three classes, according to the condition of the visitor, and named after the saints, such as Placido, Ignacio, Pedro Nolasco, Francisco de Borja, etc. The poor have two houses for the different sexes, where they are lodged and fed gratuitously. Bread is distributed to them at seven in the morning; at noon, more bread with olla and wine; and at night the same. Pilgrims of condition sometimes go to receive the bread of charity, which they preserve as a relic. No one, rich or poor, is allowed to remain over three days without special permission. Even