Fine Oranges ! 



Harry and I performed a vahe a deux temps^ which appeared 

 to them still more eminently absurd. After which the old 

 mother struck up on the guitar, and all the company danced 

 the fandango. 



We slept in our clothes across a very pulicious mattress, 

 and woke with the sun, as he lifted his broad face from the 

 mountain-pillowed horizon. We breakfasted, and departed 

 by a road which seemed a combination of broken pig-troughs 

 filled with melting snow. It soon narrowed to a path not 

 above a foot wide, and my pony took the occasion to slip 

 off backward, and roll with me, end over end, down a drop 

 of about nine feet (it might just as easily have happened to 

 be ninety). I was luckily no worse, and managed to 

 scramble up to the road again at an easier place a little 

 farther on. It is rather a happy accident, as it will pro- 

 bably make the Moor more cautious. He is very clumsy 

 with his feet, and unused to mountain roads. The day 

 before, when we were scrambling on the rocks, off the road 

 which we had lost, both he and I fell head over heels 

 into a small chasm, which luckily had bushes at the 

 bottom. 



At last, we got into the regular road from Ronda to 

 Caucin, from which there was another splendid view of 

 Gibraltar and Africa. A league or so after passing the 

 latter place, the road descended suddenly to the valley of 

 the Guadiaro. At the bottom grew some orange-trees, 

 thirty or forty feet high, and thickly laden with gigantic 

 fruit. We had not had any good oranges among the moun- 

 tains, where only the refuse come in a bruised state, so we 

 called the man who was up a ladder among the branches. 

 He brought us as many as we could stuff into the vacant 

 capacities of our alforjas^ and we gave him a few cuartos.^ 



' The cuarto is a shade more than a farthing. 



158 



