ome from Madrid, and for the victory gained by
Castanos over the French forces under Dupont, which occasioned the flight
of Joseph Buonaparte from Madrid, and the temporary liberation of Spain
from the French yoke. Castanos, who received the title of Duke de Baylen,
and is compared by the Spaniards to Wellington, died about three months
ago. The battle-field I passed in the night; the palm-tree I found, but it
is now a mere stump, the leaves having been stripped off to protect the
houses of the inhabitants from lightning. Our posada had one of them hung
at the window. At last, the diligence came, and at three P.M., when I
ought to have been in sight of Granada, I left the forlorn walls of
Baylen. My fellow-passengers were a young sprig of the Spanish nobility
and three chubby-faced nuns.

The rest of the journey that afternoon was through a wide, hilly region,
entirely bare of trees and habitations, and but partially cultivated.
There was something sublime in its very nakedness and loneliness, and I
felt attracted to it as I do towards the Desert. In fact, although I have
seen little fine scenery since leaving Seville, have had the worst of
weather, and no very pleasant travelling experiences, the country has
exercised a fascination over me, which I do not quite understand. I find
myself constantly on the point of making a vow to return again. Much to my
regret, night set in before we reached Jaen, the capital of the Moorish
kingdom of that name. We halted for a short time in the large plaza of the
town, where the dash of fountains mingled with the sound of the rain, and
the black, jagged outline of a mountain overhanging the place was visible
through the storm.

All night we journeyed on through the mountains, sometimes splashing
through swollen streams, sometimes coming almost to a halt in beds of deep
mud. When this morning dawned, we were ascending through wild, stony
hills, overgrown with shrubbery, and the driver said we were six leagues
from Granada. Still on, through a lonely country, with now and then a
large _venta_, or country inn, by the road-side, and about nine o'clock,
as the sky became more clear, I saw in front of us, high up under the
clouds, the snow-fields of the Sierra Nevada. An hour afterwards we were
riding between gardens, vineyards, and olive orchards, with the
magnificent Vega of Granada stretching far away on the right, and the
Vermilion Towers of the Alhambra crowning the heights before us.