At a dreary broken-down village called Amplora, at eleven at night, in pitch darkness and drizzling rain, the Barcelona railway came to an end. We were aroused from a feverish sort of sleep by the light of a strong lantern turned full upon our faces. Having undoubled, and stretched ourselves out from a sort of patent boot-jack position, we were hastily packed up tightly, like figs in a drum, with a snuff-coloured gentleman, and stowed away within the fragrant recesses of the _coupé_ of what was confidently supposed by the misguided natives of those regions to be a _diligence_. With our heads touching the ceiling of the _coupé_, and knees protruding through the front windows, while our luggage, boxes, parcels, and cloaks were thrown on the top of us, as if they had been heaped there with a pitch-fork, we found ourselves, it need scarcely be remarked, in a very uncomfortable position. It was not long before a collision took place between us and the Moorish-looking gentleman, our companion, whose chief characteristics appeared to be a profuse abuse of snuff, unchanged clothes, an unwashed skin, and an eagle eye. He said he was unwell, and had been told to avoid fresh air. The Anglo-Saxons said they also were unwell, but as a renewal of the oxygen in the atmosphere was considered beneficial to health, they had been advised to avail themselves of the fresh air as much as possible. We were pressed so tightly into our seats, that we looked like owls in an ivy bush, except that those luckier birds rarely have several hundredweights of luggage piled upon their bodies, so as to leave only their heads visible inside a Spanish _diligence_. We do not suppose either that the owls, which are generally considered partial to the fresh night air, would much like travelling with a gentleman who preferred to be cooped up during his journeys in an exhausted receiver. We were actually packed like preserved sprats in a barrel, and the Moor, who had grumbled until he could grumble no more, was seized with a violent fit of shivering and sneezing, which on the whole was very creditably played by him, and might have established for him a second-rate notoriety in low comedy at a minor theatre. He caught hold of all the rugs and cloaks he could lay hands upon, and, utterly careless of the proprietorship of the same, built a wall thereof between himself and the deadly open windows on our side of the _coupé_, and so subsided into a sort of angry slumber, broken by constant snorts and groans.