116 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. | 
had travelled, were such that one would have supposed they 
could scarcely have had strength to stand; but no sooner 
did they find themselves in a country with which they were 
acquainted, than they galloped off with us wherever the road 
would possibly allow, and by nightfall we were lodged in the 
Spanish Hospice de Benasque. Here I slept soundly on the 
stone floor, in a hovel about sixty feet long, fifteen broad, 
and six or seven feet high in the middle, along with twenty- 
two Spaniards, smugglers, custom-house eavubiniecss char- 
coal and lime-burners, labourers, and shepherds, together 
with two women, three children, four horses, two mules, 
three asses, poultry, pigs, &c., &c. Fifteen of us men occu- 
pied the middle room, about fifteen feet square; we gathered. 
round the fire, which, as usual, was made in the centre of the 
floor, and the smoke hovered about us like a thick cloud, 
. down to three feet from the ground, before it escaped through. 
the roof, which, with the stone walls and floor, were, of course, 
as black as any chimney. And thus do many of the Span- 
iards live the whole summer, scarcely taking off their clothes. 
once a-month, and never having any thing more than a 
blanket cloak interposed bátwieap them and the stones on 
which they extend themselves at night. When a charcoal- 
burner came into this hovel from time to time during the 
night, and squatting before the fire, flung on it some branches 
of the Pinus uncinata, which is full of turpentine, the vivid. 
light, reflected on the ragged sleepers around me, bad an 
indescribably picturesque appearance, and almost made me 
forget the soreness of bones and watery eyes which were 
produced from the same cause. ; 
& Some other shorter excursions about fignra de Luchon 
were very unproductive, chiefly on account of the late unusu- 
ally severe drought. It has now at last rained; but 1 fear 
the change of weather has come too late to do any good either 
to Botanists or to the unfortunate inhabitants of these regions, 
who will gather but a miserable crop of maize, and whose 
cattle are perishing for want of vegetation and of water, on 
the mountains." 
