It is impossible to conceive anything more picturesque and strange than the environs of Malaga. You appear to be transported to Africa: the dazzling whiteness of the houses, the deep indigo colour of the sea, and the overpowering intensity of the sun, all combine to keep up the illusion. On each side of the road are numbers of enormous aloe-trees, bristling up and waving their leafy cutlasses, and gigantic cactuses with their green broad foliage and misshapen trunks, writhing hideously like monstrous boa-constrictors, or resembling the backbones of so many stranded whales; while here and there a palm-tree shoots up like a column, displaying its green capital by the side of some tree of European parentage, which seems surprised at such a neighbour, and alarmed at seeing the formidable vegetation of Africa crawling at its feet. An elegant white tower now stood out upon the blue sky behind; it was the Malaga lighthouse; we had reached our destination. It was about eight o'clock in the morning; the town was already alive and stirring: the sailors were passing and re-passing, loading and unloading the vessels anchored in the port, and displaying a degree of animation which was something uncommon in a Spanish town; the women, with their heads and figures enveloped in large scarlet shawls, which suited their Moorish faces most marvellously, were walking quickly along, and dragging after them some brat, who was entirely naked, or who had only got on a shirt. The men, with their cloaks thrown round them, or their jackets cast over their shoulders, hurried on their way; and it is a curious fact, that all this crowd was proceeding in the same direction,--that is, towards the _Plaza de Toros_. What struck me most, however, in this multicoloured concourse of people, was the sight of the negro galley-slaves, dragging a cart. They were of gigantic stature, with such monstrously savage faces, possessing so little of anything human, and stamped with such an expression of ferocious brutality, that on beholding them I stopped motionless with horror, as if they had been a team of tigers. The kind of linen robe which constituted their dress rendered their appearance still more diabolical and fantastic. I do not know what crime had brought them to the galleys; but I should certainly have sent them there merely because they were villains enough to have such faces. [Illustration: MALAGA FROM THE ALAMEDA.]