horse or mule when it had been flogged to his heart’s content, he picked up a pocket-full of flintstones – doing everything on the run, and then ascending his seat, from that he would fling the stones with wonderful precision at the tenderest parts of the erring quadruped, while the vehicle continued at a pace that was frightful for the unaccustomed English to behold. The team of the largest diligences consisted of 12 horses and mules, harnessed indiscriminately, the “mayoral” having reins only to the two wheelers, the rest of the animals being simply connected with the leaders by loose traces. A lad or small man rode the foremost animal and thus kept the long galloping train in the proper direction. They would go on an average of about six miles an hour, always galloping down-hill and traveling slowly up-hill. – A word about inns. It should not be supposed that the genial accommodation found in England would also be met with there. The Spanish landlord, whether at a first-rate fonda in Madrid or Seville or at the venta of some petty village, was an independent sort of person and was brusque to a fault. You might occupy a room if you found one vacant, and you would get anything that there was in the house to eat; but you would rarely find any furniture in the room, and not often food in the kitchen. This would not apply to the cities on the southern coast, such as Seville or Malaga, but to the interior and mountain districts; as there one could find only such bare accomodation as he had described, and often at such absurd prices that one had to dispute the bill next morning. In one instance he remembered, at a small village on the Ronda mountains, the landlord charged them much more than Madrid prices, and when they remonstrated, very cooly(sic) declared he would throw them out of the window if they did not immediately produce the cash. His colleague in the argument was an intelligent Russian gentleman, who produced a revolver, and the landlord, after saying that two could play at that game, cheerfully took a fair rate of pay, assisted them to mount their horses, with great civility, and when they met him afterwards going to his farm – for he was a farmer as well – welcomed them with much good humour and with that almost invariable courtesy which distinguished a Spaniard. But in dealing with them it is absolutely necessary to show great determination, when they at once become reasonable. In dilating on the facilities for inter-communication, Mr. North said the only railway was that from Alicante on the east to Madrid. Some others were in progress under the superintendence of foreign engineers and by the aid of foreign capitat(sic). There -
