I

HERE I am once more in Madrid, after several months spent in roaming in all directions through Andalusia, that classic land of robbers, without having encountered even one. almost blush to own it. I had quite counted on an attack, not with any intention of showing fight against my assailants, but I longed for an opportunity of chatting with them, and questioning them very politely on their way of life. When I look at my well-worn and rather seedy coat, and my scanty baggage, I cannot but regret that I did not fall in with those gentry. The loss of a light portmanteau would have been no exorbitant price to have paid for the pleasure of such a meeting.

But if I saw no robbers, to make amends I heard tell of nothing else. The postilions and the innkeepers at every change of mules narrate to you dismal tales of travellers assassinated, and women carried, God knows whither: the time of the adventure is always the preceding evening, and the place somewhere on the road you are about to take. The traveller who is not yet well acquanted with Spain, and who has not had time to acquire the sublime apathy of Castile, la flema castellana, however incredulous he may be at first, fails not in the longrun to be worked on, to a certain extent, by all these tales. The sun sets, night closes in, and that much more rapidly than

in our nothern climates, there being but a very brief twilight. Then comes, particularly in the neighbourhood of the mountains, a wind, which would be thought mild and pleasant in London, but which here, after the burning heat of the day, strikes you as anything but agreeable. Whilst you are muffling yourself up in your cloak and pulling your travelling cap over your ears, you observe the guards (escopeteros) shaking the priming out of their muskets and not renewing it. Amazed at this singular manoeuvre, you ask the meaning of it, and your brave protectors make answer to you from the imperial where they are perched, that for all they are as courageous as lions they cannot alone resist a whole band of robbers. "If we are attacked, we shall have no quarter unless we can show we never intended to defend ourselves."

Then what is the use of these fellows and their unserviceable muskets?-Oh! they are capital against the rateros, that is to say, the amateur highwaymen, who practice upon travellers when they get a lucky chance, and who are never met with in bodies of more than two or three.

The traveller now repents of having carried so much money with him. He consults his gold watch for the last time he fears, and would be right glad to know that it was hung up quietly over his chimney-piece in London. He asks the mayoral (the conductor or guard)" Do the robbers usually strip those they plunder ?"

Sometimes, sir. Last month the Seville diligence was stopped near La Carlota, and all the passengers drove into Euja, like little angels."

"Little angels?-what do you mean?"

"I mean that the robbers took away all their clothes, and did not leave them even a shirt!"

"The deuce they did it!" exclaimed the traveller, buttoning up his surtout; but he plucks up his spirits a little, and even smiles on seeing his fellow-traveller, an Andalusian young lady, devoutly kissing her thumb, and ejaculating fervently under her breath, "Jesu! Jesu!" (It is well known that those who kiss their thumbs, after making the sign of the cross, never fail to be the better for it.)

It is now quite night, but fortunately a bright moon rises in a cloudless sky. There is now discernible in the distance the entrance of a fearful defile, at least a mile-and-a-half long. "Mayoral, is that the place where the diligence was stopped?" "Yes, sir, and a passenger killed.-Postilion, don't crack your whip, for fear they should hear it."

They, who?" the traveller enquires. "The robbers," replied the mayoral. "The devil!" exclaims the traveller.

"O, sir, look yonder, at the turn of the road,-

aint those men? They are hiding in the shadow of that great rock." Yes, indeed, madam,-one, two, three, six men, on horseback."

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"Ah! Jesu! Jesu! -" (crossing herself, and kissing her thumb.)

"Mayoral, do you see there?"

Yes."

"There is one with a great stick; perhaps it is a gun." "It is a gun."

"Do you think they are (buena gente) good people?" the fair Andalusian timidly enquires.

"Who knows?" replies the mayoral, shrugging his shoulders, and pulling down the corners of his mouth.

"Then, Lord, have mercy on us!" and she hides her face in the waistcoat of the doubly-agitated traveller.

trot.

The coach goes like the wind; eight stout mules, in full The horsemen halt; they draw up in line--to stop the way, no doubt. No, they divide; three take to the left side, three to the right side of the road: they mean to surround the coach."

"Postilion, pull up your mules, if those people bid you; don't bring down a volley upon us.'

"Make yourself easy, sir, for that; I have more reason for it than you."

At last the distance is so short that the large hats, the Turkish saddles, and the white leather garters of the six horsemen may be distinguished. If their features could be seen-what eyes, what beards, what scars they would display ! The matter is beyond a doubt, they are robbers, for they all have guns. The first robber touches the brim of his large hat, and says, in a grave and quiet tone of voice, "Vayan Vds. con Dios," (God be with you!) This is the customary salutation interchanged by those who pass each other on the roads. "Vayan Vds. con Dios," say all the other horsemen, politely making way for the diligence to pass; for they are honest farmers, who have been engaged till late at the market of Ecija, and who are returning to their village in a body, and armed, by reason of the prevailing alarm of robbers I have mentioned.

After some adventures of this kind, one soon ceases to believe at all in robbers. One gets so accustomed to the

somewhat savage aspect of the peasants, that real brigands would seem to you nothing but honest country-folks who had not shaved for a long while. A young Englishman with whom I made acquaintance in Grenada, had so long travelled all the worst roads in Spain without any accident, that he had come obstinately to deny the existence of the robbers. One day he was stopped by two ill-looking fellows, armed with guns, and he immediately took it into his head that they were peasants, who had a mind to divert themselves by frightening him. When they ordered him to give up his money he did nothing but laugh, and tell them that he was too knowing to be imposed on. There was no convincing him of his mistake, till one of the real brigands gave a blow on the head, with the but of his gun; the mark of which he showed, three months afterwards.

Except in very rare cases the Spanish brigands never maltreat those they rob. They often content themselves with taking whatever money the travellers may have about them, without opening their trunks, or even searching their persons. Their forbearance, however, must not be too confidently relied on. A young Madrid dandy was on his way to Cadiz, having with him a couple of dozen of handsome shirts he had procured from London. The robbers stopped him near La Carolina, and after politely easing him of all the ounces he had in his purse, not to speak of the rings, and chains, and lovetokens, which a man of his figure could not fail to possess,the captain of the band politely observed to him that the linen of his men, in consequence of their being obliged to avoid inhabited places, was sadly în need of washing. The London shirts were unfolded and admired; the captain slipped one or two into his wallet, then took off the grimed rags he had worn for six months, at least, and decked himself with his prisoner's handsomer cambric. Every one of the robbers did the same, so that the unfortunate traveller found himself, in a moment, despoiled of his whole wardrobe, and in possession of a heap of rags he would not have ventured to touch with the end of his cane. To make the matter worse, he had to endure the jokes of his plunderers. The captain, with that quizzical gravity which the Andalusians affect so well, told him, as he took leave of him, that he would never forget the service he had just received, and that he would make it a point to return the shirts he had been good enough to lend him, and to take back his own, as soon as he should have the honor to see him again. Above all," he added "don't forget to have these gentle

men's shirts washed; we will take them of you on your return from Madrid."

The victim in this case, who told me the story himself, declared he could more easily have forgiven the robbers for carrying off his shirts, than for their exasperating jokes.

The Spanish government has, at various periods, set itself earnestly to work to clear the highways of the robbers, by whom they have been infested from time immemorial; but its efforts have never produced any decided results. One band has been destroyed, but another has sprung up in its place. Sometimes a very active captain-general has succeeded in driving all the robbers out of his range of government; but this only made them swarm the more in the neighbouring provinces.

The nature of the country, bristling with mountains and destitute of roads, makes the entire destruction of the brigands a very difficult matter. In Spain, as in La Vendée, there are a great many isolated farm districts, (aldeas,) several miles distant from any inhabited place. Were garrisons placed in all these aldeas, in every little hamlet, the robbers would soon be forced to surrender, or die of hunger: but how is the necessary money, or the necessary number of soldiers to be procured?

The proprietors of the aldeas are interested, as will readily be supposed in keeping on good terms with the brigands, whose vengeance is much to be dreaded. The latter, on their part, relying on the proprietors for the necessaries of life, treat them well, pay them for whatever they have need of, and sometimes even allow them a share in their booty. Again, we must take into account the fact, that the profession of the robber is not generally regarded as infamous. Robbing on the highways is, in the eyes of many persons, equivalent to an opposition-line of politics, to a protestation against tyrannical laws. The man who, with nothing besides his good musket, has the boldness to set the government at defiance, is a hero whom the men respect, and the women admire.

A robber generally begins by being smuggler. His trade is interfered with by the officers of customs. Nine tenths of the population cry shame upon the injustice of harassing a good fellow, who sells at a cheap price better cigars than those of the king's manufactory, and who brings the women silks and English goods, and the gossip of the whole country round, within a sweep of thirty miles. If an exciseman kills or seizes the smuggler's horse, he is a ruined man; then he is