Carthagena 



From Alicante to Carthagena we had cloudy and rough 

 weather, wind ahead ; indeed, the Spaniards say we were 

 in some danger. I slept while the tossing lasted ; but 

 about two in the morning, when we got into the still water 

 of Carthagena's harbour, I was waked up by the bustle of 

 arriving, and could not get to sleep again for the bugs, 

 which began biting furiously, as if they had been sea-sick, 

 and just recovered their appetites. 



At Valencia I had lost my greasy Andalusian, of whom I 

 was about tired, and fallen in at the Fonda del Cid (where 

 I breakfasted) with a Castillian — a dry, spare, high-featured, 

 polite little man, in every respect, contrasted with my 

 former companion. He talks more and better Spanish, 

 and understands less French, from which I get thus gradu- 

 ally weaned, as I have to mix with it all the Spanish I can 

 pick up, to make Don Alonzo understand. Sometimes I 

 venture on a sentence of Spanish neat, and am beginning to 

 understand a little of what is talked. To listen carefully 

 and to talk rashly is the way to get a language. 



Carthagena has a noble harbour, deeply sheltered beneath 

 mountain-barriers of rock. There is also a vast and splen- 

 did arsenal. In the first are a few fishing-boats ; in the 

 second, about enough material to set up a blacksmith, cord- 

 maker, and gunsmith in British private life. 



I next went up to the old ruined Moorish castle, and 

 coming down rather heated, took a boat and bathed in the 

 sea, at which the people on the pier were greatly surprised, 

 for the day was cold, as we might wonder at a Greenlander 

 bathing in a snow-storm. The water was warm enough. 

 Afterwards we dined ; the party consisting of Don Alonzo, 

 his friend Don Manuel (a grave man, something like pic- 

 tures of the Emperor Napoleon, who is rather deranged in 

 his stomach from our late rough work at sea), and myself. 



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