of drinking from the goat-skin or pig-skin sacks in which liquids were carried, as well as from their tea-pot like vessels [a specimen of which was shown]. Not only would they pour the contents of one skin to another, but also down their own throats by untying the legs of the animal’s skin, and thus allow it to pour into their pharynx in a stream without their lips touching the orifice at all. In Catalonia the drinking vessels of the grog-shops were made so as to enable the drinker to pour a stream into his throat in a similar manner. The Pyrenees extended the whole length of the frontier, and his entrance was made at the extreme Mediterranean end of this chain. There were carriage roads from Bayonne on the north and Perpignan at the South, otherwise throughout the whole chain from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean no carriage-roads existed for wheeled vehicles, and the only possible communication between France and Spain was by mule tracks, and often only by men’s foot-tracks. Of these there were about fifty in the 800-mile chain of mountains, their main use being to give passage to the smugglers. In those districts smuggling was not a mere habit of the people, but a profession, and the contrabandista occupied a place in society of some estimation (the value of which in Hastings fifty years ago the lecturer’s audience could easily imagine). One could hardly wonder at it; for, the Spanish laws were of the most prohibitory character, whilst their officers were ill-paid and venal to the highest degree. His mode of entering Spain was by the diligencia or public carriage. Beside that no other mode of traveling existed but riding on horseback. The public carriages were maintained by Government and by great companies. A grandee of Spain would travel by no other conveyance. They were of various sizes, and he traveled in one of the largest. To realise it they must imagine a centre body about equal to a first class railway carriage; in front a coupé, which they called berlina, and behind, a large slice of a London omnibus that held – he would not say accommodated – six passengers. Over the coupé a sort of cabriolet body was devoted to the mayoral or conductor and three passengers; behind him was a strange erection like the tilt of a waggon, in which heavy luggage was generally packed, and this, on hilly roads, going at speed, communicated a somewhat alarming motion to the whole machine. In one instance he had seen a diligence carrying 29 persons, besides the postillion or monkey who rode the leader, and a strange anomalous kind of horse-keeper, who jumped up and down to encourage the intermediate cattle; flogging them and calling them by names of endearment, alternately. This individual had a particularly vicious mode of punishment for a refractory -
