Baza and Jlhama. 343 



In the preceding cultivated slope near to Baza, they were not 

 noticed ; in all probability, however, they constitute the un- 

 der stratum. A powerful stream, called the Guardal, rising in 

 mountains north of Huescar, passes close below Benamaurel, at 

 the bottom of a high perpendicular escarpment of the horizontal 

 beds of marl and gypsum, and joining subsequently the rivulet 

 of Baza, Avhich flows in an opposite direction, their united waters 

 taking first a westerly, and afterwards a northerly course, finally 

 enter the Guadalquivir*, in the neighbourhood of Uveda. 



The Suhterrancan Village of Benamaurel. — The total num- 

 ber of inhabitants in Benamaurel, as I was informed, amounts 

 to about three hundred, three-fourths of whom live in capa- 

 cious caves excavated in the mass of gypsiferous marl, which 

 constitutes the surrounding tract. I entered several of these, 

 and was gratified to remark the neatness and cleanliness they 

 exhibited. Their owners appeared to be perfectly content in 

 these grotesque habitations, and assured me that they were 

 not only extremely durable, but warm in winter, and, from the 

 freshness and coolness pervading them in summer, much prefer- 

 able to common built cottages. Those I visited indeed far sur- 

 passed the expectations I had formed from their external ap- 

 pearance. They were generally divided into three compart- 

 ments; a large room in good proportion and of considerable 

 height was the general rendezvous of the family, and adjoining 

 to this, on one side was a small bed-room, and on the other, the 

 kitchen. The greater number of these subterranean dwellings 

 are situated on the acclivity we ascended after crossing the de- 

 nuded hollows above mentioned, and the church and a few 

 mud-built houses crown its summit. That in which I was 

 lodged for the night I passed there, in part belonged to the 

 latter class ; but from the manner of its construction, in which 

 art and nature mutually assisted each other, it might be said 

 to possess a sort of amphibious character. It was two stories 

 high, and consisted of various apartments excavated out of a 

 considerable insulated projecting mass of gypsiferous marl ; but 

 in the second story there were joists and beams stretched 

 from wall to wall, which gave greater strength to the natural 



• This river, as every one knows, falls into tlie Atlantic Ocean, in the 

 beautiful Bay of Cadiz. 



