We soon passed Cacin, where we forded a pretty little torrent some inches deep. The clear water glittered on the sand like the scales on the belly of a bleak, and then streamed down the steep mountain-side like an avalanche of silver spangles. Beyond Cacin, the road becomes most wretchedly bad. Our mules sunk up to their girths in the stones, while they had a shower of sparks round each of their hoofs. We had to ascend and descend, to pass along the edges of precipices and to proceed in all sorts of zigzags and diagonals, for we had entered those inaccessible solitudes, those savage and precipitous mountain-chains, the Alpujarras, whence the Moors, so runs the report, could never be completely expelled, and where some thousands of their descendants live concealed at the present day. At a turn in the road, we experienced a very tolerable amount of alarm. We perceived, by the light of the moon, seven strapping fellows, draped in long mantles, with peaked hats on their heads, and _trabuchos_ on their shoulders, standing motionless in the middle of the way. The adventure we had so long panted for, was about to be realized in the most romantic manner possible. Unfortunately, the banditti saluted us politely with a respectful _Vayan Ustedes con Dios_. They were the very reverse of robbers, being Miquelets, that is to say, gendarmes! Oh, what a cruel disappointment was this for two enthusiastic young travellers, who would willingly have lost their luggage for the sake of an adventure. We were to stop for the night at a little town called Alhama, perched like an eagle's nest upon the top of a mountain peak. Nothing can be more picturesque than the sharp angle which the road conducting to this eyrie is obliged to make, in order to adapt itself to the unevenness of the ground. We reached our destination about two in the morning, half dead with hunger and thirst, and worn out with fatigue. We quenched our thirst by means of three or four jars of water, and appeased our hunger by a tomato omelette, which, considering it was a Spanish one, did not contain too many feathers. A stony kind of mattress, bearing a strong family likeness to a sack of walnuts, was given us for a couch. At the expiration of two minutes, I was buried in that peculiar sleep attributed to the Just, and my companion religiously followed my example. The day surprised us in the same attitudes, as motionless as lumps of lead.