In Valencia cows' milk is as great a luxury as ginger-beer in Yucatan. The milk of goats and mares is the staple commodity--that of cows, when it is to be procured, being advertised about the town on placards at a heavy price to tempt the rich, in the same manner as one sees rare wines announced in London. In fact, to the common herd of mortals, Spain is not a land flowing with milk and butter. Oil, however, is universal, being found in cakes, in pastry, in soup, in fact in every dish, betraying its presence even in the very air itself. Amongst the rules of etiquette in vogue with the lower classes in Spain, is the custom of offering you a mouthful of whatever they may be eating while you are holding intercourse with them. We are happy to add, however, that it is equally the custom to refuse. It is bad enough to have to astonish our organs of digestion by eating all the strange compounds we do eat at _la mesa redonda_, or _table d'hôte_, in the hotels of Spain. What a doom must it be for a member of the Reform Club to travel for a few weeks in the Peninsula! The very idea would make Soyer turn in agony in his tomb in that country whose stomach he left his native land on purpose to benefit. After landing at El Grao from our swim, we again jumped into the "taratana," and once more were bumping through the dust, stones, and ruts of that ridiculously bad road under the acacias, towards the pest-house hotel, where we supposed the one-eyed beggars would be awaiting us, not only on the stairs, but at the very doors of our bedrooms. On we went through the green avenue, past the battalions of red-legged, white-capped soldiery, drilling on the broiling sand and under a vertical sun. We crossed the yellow bridge of the Guadalaviar, with the statues of virgin and saint with tin hats on their marble brows. Again we were in the midst of the long, dark, cool streets, in which resounded the clanging of church bells, and looking up at houses behind the coloured awnings and blinds of which dark, laughing, wicked eyes gleam like those of snakes from the obscurity within the half-curtained windows. We rode quickly past the arabesque buildings, the rich Gothic churches, the sculptured palaces, and the Moorish courts, through the gaudy, noisy market-place, with its stirring crowd, in garb as bright and various as that of a harlequinade, and out into the blazing white squares and sunny gardens, until the cool dim vault of the old cathedral once more hung over us like a grey cloud of stone. In the interior of the cathedral are hung the spurs and horse-bit of the Cid. When Valencia was conquered from the Moor, those pieces of rusty iron were placed there by the hero's hand hundreds of years ago, and remain till now as witnesses of his immortal chivalry. He died in Valencia in 1099.