The Revolver 



education, to hear them flow naturally from the mouth of a 

 peasant ; but to the Spaniard, the Latin is what the Saxon 

 in our language is to our own peasantry — the ground-work 

 of his language, and the pabulum f^qm which all his most 

 homely and household words are fashfbned ; whereas the 

 Latin element with us is an after-polish, glazed on by 

 education. 



We now trotted forward, and shortly reached a venta^ 

 where some clumsy carts and oxen were standing before the 

 gateway. Entering, we put up our ponies. The host took 

 very little notice of us — a lazy varlet, smoking the cigarillo 

 of tranquility in the sun ; we could hardly persuade him 

 to get us out the barley we asked for. He shortly began to 

 eat a hunch of bread, with a slice of raw ham laid on it ; 

 and we, being very hungry, and finding there was nothing 

 better to be had, got some too. It rather went against my 

 stomach, but Harry said the salting was nearly the same 

 thing as cooking, and he had eaten a great deal of raw ham 

 on the plains in America. 



Afterwards, as we sat smoking, it occurred to us to fire 

 off our pistols, to see if they would go off, and to charge 

 again, so that robbers should find us in an efficiently explo- 

 sive state of preparation, in case they came, though we have 

 now almost given up all hopes of having any more adven- 

 tures of that kind. 



A considerable number of men were attracted to the spot 

 by the report of our pistols, which we fired at the swallows 

 on the rafters of the shed beneath which we were sitting. 

 They (not the swallows) were particularly struck with the 

 revolver, and one of them said, — 



" Carajo^ it is already evident that it would be a bad 

 speculation to rob these men " ; showing plainly that his 

 sympathies were all on the side of the thieves, whose fatal 



239 



