tment comfortably seated eight persons, four facing
the front and four the rear. This arrangement of seating allows general
conversation among the group, and, if the occupants are congenial,
promotes sociability.

A traveler speeding through the United States in a "Chicago Limited," at
the rate of sixty miles an hour, can merely catch glimpses of objects on
the way and receive only blurred and indistinct impressions of the
scenery; but when traveling in the "Spanish Express," at the more
moderate speed of twenty-five miles an hour, he can enjoy clear and
vivid pictures of the unfolding panorama. Let me try to describe some of
these pictures just as they appeared to us during the trip.

Looking back after leaving Algeciras, we saw the huge rock of Gibraltar,
almost an island, connected with the main land by a narrow, flat, sandy
isthmus. Across the "neutral ground," as the strip between the English
and Spanish possessions is called, a line of sentry boxes extended, and
red-coated British sentinels paced back and forth. Parallel to the
British line there was another line of sentry boxes, where the
soldiers of Alfonzo were on guard to prevent the smuggling of tobacco
and other forbidden wares into Spain.

[Illustration: TWELVE WEATHER BEATEN MARBLE LIONS UPHOLD AN ALABASTER
BASIN.]

"See those miserable little white plastered huts with roofs made of
straw," said one of our party. "I did not know that the people were so
poor."

This picture of poverty was our first impression of Spain. For some
distance the train had been running through a region apparently
unfertile, where fences of sharp spined cacti enclosed small fields. The
people were shabbily dressed, the houses straw-thatched and dilapidated,
and the little patches of land poorly cultivated. It seemed that Sunday
was a common wash-day; for at almost every cottage the family wash was
hanging in the sun on trees, shrubs, or cacti.

Within an hour, however, we were passing through a section of the
country entirely different in aspect, where the cork industry gives
employment to many people. For a distance of eight or ten miles groves
of cork-oak trees were in sight. At the station were bulky piles of cork
bark, cars stacked with cork were on the sidings, and great carts drawn
by oxen were on the roads bringing in still more of this valuable
commodity.

"Millions of bottles are made in our city," said a New Jersey girl, "and
there is enough cork here in sight t