Malaga 



Before reaching Malaga we sat down to eat some bread 

 and cheese by the road-side, and were much stared at by 

 some evident Englishmen riding out of Malaga. The hedge- 

 rows hereabouts are peculiarly luxuriant ; great aloe-spikes, 

 like elephant's tusks, ten or twelve feet long, waving bul- 

 rushes bigger than pike-rods, and prickly pears, like gro- 

 tesque aerial battles of huge green-winged toads, the great 

 flat cactus-leaves growing out of one another in the most 

 fantastic combinations. We overtook a man travelling with 

 a heavy-panniered ass, who, to help himself along in the 

 noonday heat, was holding on to the tail, and I drew him in 

 my pocket-book as a sample of Andalusian industry. 



Malaga is an uninteresting town, famous for its wine 

 (which is to my taste sweet and nauseous), and for its 

 climate, to which invalids come in numbers, though they all 

 say the place bores them to death. The harbour is full of 

 wrecks, half sunk, and full of water ; some of them with 

 their decks torn off and floating loose. We climbed to the 

 castle, very steep, and with a good view of the town and 

 harbour. 



In a courtyard, at the top, some soldiers were pitching a 

 32-pound shot from a scratch on the ground, and could throw 

 it about eight or nine yards. They did it something in the 

 manner of roundhand bowling, and we were rash enough to 

 try, but failed signally. I was very hot, and as I have had a 

 Niagara of sneezes since my damp ride on the beach yester- 

 day, I thought it a good opportunity to rush down violently 

 into a cold bath, which Harry said would probably kill me 

 on the spot. Natheless, being an hydropathist in some 

 degree, I persevered, and my cold has stopped at once. 



As I was coming to the hotel I saw some silver buttons 

 (Cordovese filigree), which I had seen and wished for in the 

 same shop, as I passed through Malaga coming out to 



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