It would be impossible to imagine anything more picturesque or grand than this entrance to Andalusia. The defile is cut through immense rocks of red marble, the gigantic layers of which rise one above the other with a sort of architectural regularity. These enormous blocks, with their large transversal fissures--those veins of mountain marble, a sort of terrestrial subject, deprived of skin, on which to study the anatomy of the globe--are of such proportions, that they make the largest granite of Egypt appear microscopical by their side. In the interstices are palm oaks and enormous cork-trees, which do not appear larger there than do tufts of herb on an ordinary-sized wall. On reaching the bottom of the defile, you perceive that the vegetation increases in richness, and forms an impenetrable thicket, through which you see, sparkling in different places, the bright water of the torrent. The edge is so rugged on the side of the road, that it has been judged prudent to place a parapet along it, without which the diligence, which is always going very fast, and which it is very difficult to drive, on account of the frequent bends, might easily turn a somersault of some five or six hundred feet. It was in the Sierra Morena that the knight of the rueful countenance accomplished, in imitation of Amadis on the rock, that famous act of penance which consisted in tumbling about in his shirt on the sharpest rocks, and that Sancho Panza, the positive man, the representative of vulgar reason by the side of noble madness, found Cardenio's portmanteau so well filled with ducats and fine shirts. You cannot make a step in Spain without meeting with something to remind you of Don Quixote; so truly national is the work of Cervantes, and so true is it that these two personages sum up in themselves the whole Spanish character--chivalrous exaltation of mind, and an adventurous spirit joined to great good practical sense, and a sort of goodnature full of _finesse_ and causticity. At Venta de Cardona where we changed mules, I saw a pretty little child with a complexion of the most dazzling whiteness, lying in his cradle, and resembling a wax Jesus in his manger. The Spaniards, when they are not burnt by the sun, are in general exceedingly fair.