It is the custom in Andalusia, when a person travels on horseback, and goes to the bull-fights, to put on the national costume. Accordingly our little caravan was rather picturesque, and made a very good appearance as it left Granada. Seizing with delight this opportunity of disguising myself out of Carnival time, and quitting, for a short space, my horrible French attire, I donned my _majo's_ costume, consisting of a peaked hat, embroidered jacket, velvet waistcoat, with filigree buttons, red silk sash, webbed breeches, and gaiters open at the calf. My travelling companion wore his dress of green velvet and Cordova leather. Some of the others wore _monteras_, black jackets, and breeches decorated with silk trimmings of the same colour, and yellow cravats and sashes. Lanza was remarkable for the magnificence of his silver buttons, made of pillared dollars, soldered to a shank, and the floss-silk embroideries of his second jacket, which he wore hanging from his shoulder like a hussar's pelisse. The mule that had been assigned to me was close-shaved halfway up his body, so that I was enabled to study his muscular development with as much ease as if he had been flayed. The saddle was composed of two variegated horse-cloths, put on double, in order to soften as much as possible the projecting vertebræ, and the sloping shape of the animal's backbone. On each side hung down, in the guise of stirrups, two kinds of wooden troughs, rather resembling our rat-traps. The head-trappings were so loaded with rosettes, tufts, and other gewgaws, that it was almost impossible to distinguish the capricious brute's sour crabbed profile through the mass of ornament fluttering about it.