The rising sun dispersed the mist as if it had been so much smoke; the sky and the sea recommenced their azure struggle, in which it is impossible to say which of the two is victorious; the cliffs reassumed their varied tints of reddish-brown, shot-colour, amethyst, and burnt topaz; the sand began once again to rise in small thin clouds, and the water to glisten in the intensity of the sunshine. Far, far away, almost on the line of the horizon, the sails of five fishing-boats palpitated in the wind like the wings of a dove. The declivities now became less steep; from time to time, a little house appeared, as white as lump-sugar, with a flat roof, and a kind of peristyle formed by a vine clustering over trellis-work, supported at each end by a square pillar, and in the middle by a massive pylone, that presented quite an Egyptian appearance. The _aguardiente_ stores became more numerous; they were still built of reeds, but they were more natty, and boasted of whitewashed counters daubed with a few streaks of red. The road, which was now distinctly marked out, began to be lined on each side with a line of cactus and aloe-trees, broken now and then by gardens and houses, before which women were mending nets, and children, completely naked, playing about. On seeing us pass by on our mules, they cried out, "_Toro! Toro!_" taking us, on account of our _majo_ costume, for proprietors of _ganaderias_, or for the _toreros_ belonging to the quadrille directed by Montes. Carts drawn by oxen and strings of asses now followed at shorter intervals, and the bustle which invariably marks the neighbourhood of a large town became every moment more apparent. On all sides, convoys of mules, carrying persons who were on their way to witness the opening of the circus, made their appearance: we met a great number in the mountains coming from a distance of thirty or forty leagues. The _aficionados_ are as superior, by their passionate and furious love of their favourite amusement, to our dilettanti, as the interest excited by a bull-fight is superior to that produced by the representation of an opera: nothing stops them; neither the heat, nor the difficulty or danger of the journey; provided they reach their destination and obtain a place near the _barrera_, from which they can pat the bull on the back, they consider themselves amply repaid for whatever fatigue they may have undergone. What tragic or comic author can boast of possessing such powers of attraction? This, however, does not prevent a set of namby-pamby sentimental authors from pretending that the taste for this _barbarous amusement_, as they term it, is every day gradually dying away in Spain.