This desert is said to be covered, in the spring, with a rich carpet of verdure, enamelled with wild flowers; broom, lavender and thyme, scent the air with their aromatic emanations; but at the time of year when we beheld it, all traces of vegetation had disappeared. The only thing we saw was, here and there, a little plot of dry, yellow, filamentous grass all powdered over with dust. This road, if we may believe the local chronicle, is very dangerous, being much infested by _rateros_, that is to say, peasants, who, without being professional brigands, avail themselves of the opportunity of taking a purse whenever they can, and never resist the pleasure of plundering any solitary traveller. These _rateros_ are more to be dreaded than real robbers, who always act with the regularity of an organized body, under the command of a chief, and who spare the travellers, in order to extort something more from them at some other time. Besides this, you do not attempt to resist a brigade of twenty or twenty-five on horseback, well equipped and armed to the teeth, whereas you will struggle with a couple of _rateros_, and get killed, or at least wounded. And then the _ratero_ who is about to attack you, may be that cowherd just passing, that ploughman who touches his hat to you, that ragged, bronzed _muchacho_ who is sleeping, or pretending to sleep, under a narrow strip of shade, in a cleft of the ravine, or even your _calesero_ himself who is taking you into some snare. You do not know where to look for the danger--it is everywhere and nowhere. From time to time the police cause the most dangerous and best known of these wretches to be assassinated in some tavern quarrel, got up expressly for the purpose by its agents. This is rather a summary and barbarous mode of justice, but it is the only one possible, on account of the absence of all proofs and witnesses, and the difficulty of apprehending criminals in a country where it would require an army to arrest each single man, and where a system of counter-police is carried out with such intelligence and passion by a people who entertain ideas with respect to _meum_ and _tuum_, hardly more advanced than those of the Kabyls of Africa. On this occasion, however, the promised brigands did not make their appearance, and we reached Jeres without the slightest accident.