A journey in Spain is still a perilous and romantic affair. You must risk your life, and possess courage, patience, and strength. You are exposed to danger at every step you take. Privations of all kinds, the absence of the most indispensable articles, the wretched state of the roads, that would offer insurmountable difficulties to any but an Andalusian muleteer, the most horrible heat, with the sun darting its rays upon you as if it were about to split your skull, are the most trifling inconveniences. Besides all this, there are the _factions_, the robbers, and the innkeepers, all ready to plunder and ill-treat you, and who regulate their honesty by the number of carbines that accompany you. Peril encircles you, follows you, goes before you, is all around you. You hear nothing but terrible and mysterious stories discussed in a low, terrified tone. Yesterday the bandits supped in the very _posada_ at which you alight. A caravan has been attacked and carried off into the mountains by the brigands, in the hope that their prisoners will be ransomed. Pallilos is lying in ambush at such and such a spot, which you will have to pass! Without doubt there is a good deal of exaggeration in all this, but however incredulous you may be, you cannot avoid believing something of it, when, at each turn of the road, you perceive wooden crosses with inscriptions of this kind--_Aqui mataron à un hombre, Aqui murio de maupairada_. We had left Granada in the evening, and were to travel all night. It was not long before the moon rose, frosting with silver the precipitous rocks exposed to her beams. These rocks threw their long strange shadows over the road we were following, and produced some very singular optical effects. We heard in the distance, like the notes of an harmonica, the tinkling of the asses' bells, for the asses had been sent on beforehand with our luggage, or some _mozo de mulas_ singing some amorous couplets with that guttural tone and peculiar far-sounding pitch of voice, so poetical when heard at night and in the mountains. The song was delightful; and the reader will perhaps thank us for giving two stanzas, which were probably improvised, and which, from their graceful quaintness, have ever since remained engraved on our memory: Son tus labios dos cortinas De terciopelo carmesi; Entre cortina y cortina, Niña, dime que se. Atame con un cabello A los bancos de tu cama, Aunque el cabello se compa Segura esta que no me vaya. Thy lips are two curtains Of crimson velvet; Between curtain and curtain, Dear girl, say to me, Yes. Fasten me with a hair To the frame of your couch, Even if the hair should snap, Be sure that I would not leave you.