Canopus 



Algeciras, November i. 



Left Carthagena towards evening ; slept on deck for fear 

 of the bugs, with which my berth abounds. In the morn- 

 ing we arrived at Almeria, where I lost my friend Don 

 Alonzo. His wife and family came aboard the steamer to 

 meet him, and seemed very glad to get him back. He had 

 been to Marseilles with Don Manuel, to see after a ship 

 they had chartered for that port. 



I now fell in with an English wine-merchant on his way 

 to Malaga, and a priggish little Portuguese. Together we 

 marched up to the citadel, which we entered at the point 

 of the cigar. It is an old ruined fortress of the Moors, full 

 of "stones of emptiness," and prickly pears, garrisoned with 

 a single sentry. 



Leaving Almeria, we skirted along the rocky coast, above 

 which, far inland, rose the gleaming ridges of the Sierra 

 Nevada, mantled in their eternal winding-sheet of snow. 

 I slept on deck again. The night was windy and cold. 

 Towards morning, a large star rose in the south, in a line 

 from the lower horn of the Bull, through the belt of Orion, 

 produced to about thrice the distance between them. I 

 have never seen so far into the southern heaven before, but 

 I suspect the star is Canopus. The fore-horse of Charles's 

 team nearly dips his nose into the sea as he wheels his wain 

 round the sunken pole. 



Malaga is a dull place, celebrated only ror sweet wine 

 and invalids. It has a clumsy cathedral, handsomer inside 

 than out. In one part the stonework is gilt, and the 

 churchwardens have probably only been prevented by their 

 poverty from defacing it all in the same expensive way ; 

 at least to us, gilding and paint detract from the idea of 

 simple magnificence which belongs to highly-wrought 



62 



