Wandering at hazard through the streets, we came out upon the market-place. Night had set in. The shops and stalls were lighted up by lanterns, or lamps suspended from the roof, and formed a charming scene, all spangled and glistening with spots of brilliancy. Watermelons, with their green rind and rosy pulp, cactus figs, some in their prickly shells and others ready skinned, sacks of _garbanzos_, monster onions, yellow, amber-coloured grapes, that would put to the blush those brought from the Land of Promise, alder wreaths, spices, and other violent products, were heaped up in picturesque confusion. In the small free passages left between the different stalls, country people passed and re-passed, driving their asses before them, as well as women dragging their brats. I noticed one especially. She was remarkably beautiful, with her jet black eyes glistening in her bistre, oval-shaped face, and her hair, that shone like satin or the raven's wing, plastered down on her temples. She walked along with a serious but happy expression, no stockings on her legs, and her charming foot thrust into a satin shoe. This coquetting with the feet is general throughout Andalusia. The courtyard of our inn, laid out as a _patio_, was ornamented by a fountain surrounded by shrubs, and inhabited by a whole population of chameleons. Just fancy a pot-bellied sort of lizard, six or seven inches long, or, perhaps, less, with a disproportionately wide mouth, out of which it darts a viscous, whitish tongue, as long as its body, and eyes, like those of a toad, when you chance to tread upon it; these eyes start out of the creature's head; they are enveloped in a membrane, and perfectly independent of each other in their movements, one looking up towards the sky while the other is turned upon the ground. These squinting lizards, who, according to Spaniards, live on air alone, but whom I very distinctly saw eating flies, have the power of changing colour, according to the place they happen to be in. They do not suddenly become scarlet, blue, or green, but, at the expiration of an hour or two, they imbibe the tints of the nearest objects. On a tree, they are a fine green; on anything blue, a slatish grey; and on scarlet, a reddish brown. If they are kept in the shade, they lose their colour, and assume a sort of neutral yellowish white hue. One or two chameleons would produce a fine effect in the laboratory of an alchemist, or a second Doctor Faustus. In Andalusia, it is the custom to hang a piece of rope of a certain length to the ceiling, and place the end between the fore-paws of a chameleon. The animal begins crawling up, until he reaches the roof, on which his paws have no purchase. He then comes down again to the end of the rope, and, rolling his eyes about, measures the distance between him and the ground. After having made his calculations he crawls up the rope again with the most admirable seriousness and gravity, and continues this manœuvre