The hour fixed upon for our departure was approaching, and I returned to the _posada_ wet through with perspiration, just as if I had been out in a heavy shower of rain, but satisfied at having done my duty as a traveller, although you might have boiled eggs by the mere heat of the atmosphere. Our caravan again set out, proceeding through most abominable but highly picturesque roads, where no other creature but a mule could have stood without falling. I had thrown the bridle on the neck of mine, thinking that he was better qualified to direct his steps than I was, and leaving him all the responsibility of passing the dangerous points. I had already had several very animated discussions with him, in order to induce him to walk beside the mule of my companion, but I was at last convinced of the inutility of my efforts. I bow, in all submission, to the truth of the saying--_As obstinate as a mule_. Give a mule the spur and it will stand still; touch it with a whip, it will lie down; pull it up, and it will start off at full gallop: in the mountains, a mule is really intractable; it feels its importance and takes a most unfair advantage of it. Very often, right in the middle of the road, a mule will suddenly stop, raise its head, stretch out its neck, draw back its lips, so as to expose its gums and long teeth, and indulge in a series of the most horrible inarticulate sighs, convulsive sobs, and frightful clucking, resembling the shrieks of a child who is being murdered. During the time it is indulging in this system of vocalization you might kill it, without being able to make it move one step. Our path now lay through a veritable Campo Santo. The crosses erected where murders had been committed, became frightfully numerous: in the situations that were favourable to this kind of thing, we sometimes counted more than three or four crosses in less than a hundred paces; we were no longer on a road, but in a cemetery. I must own, however, that if it were the custom in France to perpetuate the memory of violent deaths by the erection of crosses, there would be quite as many of them in certain streets of Paris as there are on the road from Grenada to Velez-Malaga. The dates of a great number of these sinister monuments are already very old; it is very certain, however, that they keep the traveller's mind actively employed, rendering him attentive to the slightest noise, causing him to look very carefully about him, and hindering any feeling of _ennui_. At every turn of the road, he says to himself, if he sees a rock that looks at all suspicious, or a mysterious cluster of trees: "There is some vagabond concealed behind there, who is the act of taking aim, and is on the point of making me the pretext for another cross destined to edify the travellers of future generations who may happen to pass by the spot."