The aspect of Cartagena differs entirely from that of Malaga. Buried in its crown of bare and sterile rocks, which are as dry as the Egyptian hills of the ancient Pharaohs, Cartagena is as dull and grim as Malaga is gay, cheerful, and animated. You no longer see whitewashed walls, for they are all dark-coloured, and the windows are grated with a complication of iron-work; while the houses, still more ill-looking, possess that prison-like appearance which distinguishes all Castilian mansions. Yet, as we do not wish to fall into the error of that traveller who wrote in his note-book, "All the women at Calais are cross, red-haired, and hump-backed," because the landlady of his inn united in herself these three defects, we must own that we perceived at these barred windows none but charming features and angelic faces: it is perhaps on this account that they are grated so carefully. While waiting for dinner, we went to visit the naval arsenal, an establishment of the grandest proportions, but at present in a state of grievous dilapidation; its vast basins, its stocks and idle dockyards, in which another armada might be built, are used for nothing now. Two or three half-constructed hulls, looking like the stranded skeletons of so many cachelots, are rotting unheeded in a corner; thousands of crickets have taken possession of those large deserted vessels, and you cannot make a step without crushing some of them; the noise they make, too, with their little rattles, is so great, that you can hardly hear yourself speak. In spite of the love I profess to have for crickets, love which I have expressed both in prose and verse, I must frankly own that here there were somewhat too many for me. From Cartagena, we went as far as the town of Alicant, of which I had mentally formed, from a verse in the _Orientale_ of Victor Hugo, a much too denticulated sketch: "Alicante aux clochers mêle les minarets."