Rattling on, we burst once more into a wide, busy market-place, with town-hall, tower, and church, all elaborately sculptured, and with low, dark arcades burrowing beneath the houses. The open space was gay with the coloured awnings of merchants' stalls, and alive with buyers and sellers. The hum of many voices and the cries of water-carriers were heard all around us. In a word, the market-scene from Masaniello was before us. Here were piles of magnificent fruit and vegetables from the fertile _campana_ around the city; there vast heaps of oranges and melons, with great bunches of yellow dates and purple grapes, were heaped upon the ground. Fish from the near Mediterranean were exposed for sale, and assortments of large earthen vases, made in the neighbourhood, were still hardening in the sun. We saw on all sides groups of stately long-eyed women, glancing out from beneath the shade of the mantilla, with classic features and luxuriant blue-black hair; others, robed in dresses of fantastic dye, pressing naked brown infants to the breast as they talked and sold at their stalls. Whole caravans, drawn by large mules dressed in trappings, and tinkling with bells, stalked past us; and strong oxen, yoked together by the head, drawing heavily-laden carts by the sheer force of their necks and horns alone, made their way slowly over the place, while some semi-wild dogs snatched at their heels as they were disturbed during their bask in the sun. There was the trim, upright _torero_[22] with shaved lip and short crisp whiskers, dressed in his every-day suit of braided jacket, red sash, tight trouser, pigtail, and velvet hat, while the swinging forms of the mountaineer in his goat-skin, and of the stalwart peasant, with his coloured _manta_ sweeping from his shoulder, and his feet in sandals, passed through the midst. The everlasting _cigarillo_ was smoking from their lips, and the gaudy kerchief hung down upon their necks from beneath the black velvet bonnet. Beautiful fountains grace the streets, and rows of acacias wave like feathers in the breeze. Nothing, in fact, can be conceived more picturesque than the narrow streets, with church and palace, with coloured houses, with balconies and banner-like awnings; nothing more calm than the climate, nothing more brilliant than the ever-changing scenes in the _plazas_, nothing more interesting than the motley cigarette-smoking crowds, so different from the dingy mob of a London street; finally, nothing more Spanish than the entire picture.