At Santa Cruz we were offered for sale all sorts of small knives and _navajas_: Santa Cruz and Albacete are renowned for this fancy cutlery. These _navajas_, of Arabian and very characteristic barbarous taste, have brass handles, which are cut through, and in the perforations of which are seen red, green, and blue spangles. Coarse enamel work, but cleanly executed, decorates the blades, which are made in the form of a fish, and are always very sharp; most of them bear some such motto as the following: _Soy de uno solo_, "I belong to one only;" or _Cuando esta vivora pica, no hay remedio en la botica_, "When this serpent stings, there is no remedy in medicine." Sometimes the blade has three parallel lines cut down it, the hollows of which are painted red, and then it presents a truly formidable appearance. The length of these _navajas_ varies from three inches to three feet; a few _majos_ (smart peasants) have some which, when open, are as long as a sabre; the blade is kept open in its place by a jointed spring, or a sliding ring. The _navaja_ is the favourite arm of the Spaniards, especially of the people of the lower class; they handle it with wonderful dexterity, and form moreover a shield by rolling their cape round their left arm. This is an art which, like fencing, has its laws, and _navaja_-masters are as numerous in Andalusia as fencing-masters are at Paris. Every one who uses the _navaja_ has his secret thrusts, and his particular ways of striking: adepts, they say, can, on viewing a wound, recognise the _artiste_ who has inflicted it, as we recognise a painter by his touch. The undulations of the ground now began to be more marked and more frequent--in fact, we did nothing but ascend and descend. We were approaching the Sierra Morena, which forms the limits of Andalusia. Behind that line of violet-coloured mountains lay hidden the paradise of our dreams. The stones already began to change into rocks, and the hills into towering mountains: thistles, six or seven feet high, rose up on the sides of the road, like the halberds of invisible soldiers. Though I have no pretensions to being an ass, I am very fond of thistles (a taste which is common both to myself and butterflies), and those I saw here surprised me. The thistle is a superb plant, which can be most advantageously studied for the production of ornamental designs. No piece of Gothic architecture possesses cleaner or more delicately-cut arabesques or foliage. From time to time we perceived in the neighbouring fields large yellow-looking patches, as if sacks of chopped straw had been emptied there; but this straw rose up in a cloud when we approached, and noisily flew away. What we mistook for straw was shoals of locusts, and there must have been millions of them: this reminded one strongly of Egypt.