season. They go
on the same basis as some trades' unions we are acquainted
with--reduction of hours of labour and increase of wages. "Will you give
in to them?" I asked of an English settler, in the wine trade. "Give
in------" but it is unnecessary to repeat the expletive; "I'll quietly
shut up my bodega."

CHAPTER II.

The Charms of Cadiz--Seville-by-the-Sea--Cervantes-Daughters of
Eve--The Ladies who Prayed and the Women who Didn't--Fasting
Monks--Notice to Quit on the Nuns--The Rival Processions--Gutting a
Church--A Disorganized Garrison--Taking it Easy--The Mysterious
"Mr. Crabapple"--The Steamer _Murillo_--An Unsentimental
Navvy--Bandaged Justice--Tricky Ship-Owning--Painting Black White.

THE man who pitched on Cadiz as the site of a city knew what he was
about. Without exception it is the most charmingly-located place I ever
set foot in. Its white terraces, crowded with white pinnacles,
belvederes, and turrets, glistening ninety-nine days out of the hundred
in clear sunlight, rise gently out of a green sea necked with foam; the
harbour is busy with commerce, crowded with steamers and sailing ships
coming and going from the Mediterranean shores, from France, from
England, or from the distant countries beyond the Atlantic; the waters
around (for Cadiz is built on a peninsula, and peeps of water make the
horizon of almost every street) are dotted with fishing craft or
scudding curlews; the public squares are everlastingly verdant with the
tall fern-palm, the feathery mimosa, the myrtle, and the silvery ash,
which only recalls the summer the better for its suggestive appearance
of having been recently blown over with dust; the gaze inland is repaid
with the sight of hills brown by distance, of sheets of pasture, and
pyramidal salt-mounds of creamy grey; and the gaze upwards--to lend a
glow to the ravishing picture--is delighted by such a cope of dreamy
blue, deep and pure, and unstained by a single cloudlet, as one seldom
has the happiness of looking upon in England outside the doors of an
exhibition of paintings. The climate is dry and genial, and not so hot
as Seville. The Sevillanos know that, and come to Cadiz when the heats
make residence in their own city insupportable. Winter is unknown;
skating has never been witnessed by Gaditanos, except when exhibited by
foreign professors, clad in furs, who glide on rollers over polished
floors; and small British boys who are fond