alarm the country by signals--probably by a fire. Resolute men
might have defended themselves in this little fastness against many
assailants, who must have been completely exposed to their arrows
or musketry in the ascent.

Being about to leave the place, I heard a strange cry behind a part
of the wall which I had not visited, and hastening thither, I found
a miserable object in rags, seated upon a stone. It was a maniac--
a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb; there
he sat, gibbering and mowing, and distorting his wild features into
various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object
to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy
desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping. But the
maniac, on his stone, in the rear of the wind-beaten ruin,
overlooking the blasted heath, above which scowled the leaden
heaven, presented such a picture of gloom and misery as I believe
neither painter nor poet ever conceived in the saddest of their
musings. This is not the first instance in which it has been my
lot to verify the wisdom of the saying, that truth is sometimes
wilder than fiction.

I remounted my mule, and proceeded till, on the top of another
hill, my guide suddenly exclaimed, "there is Elvas." I looked in
the direction in which he pointed, and beheld a town perched on the
top of a lofty hill. On the other side of a deep valley towards
the left rose another hill, much higher, on the top of which is the
celebrated fort of Elvas, believed to be the strongest place in
Portugal. Through the opening between the fort and the town, but
in the background and far in Spain, I discerned the misty sides and
cloudy head of a stately mountain, which I afterwards learned was