attempt to cheat us in the weight of our trunks, as there often is in
Italy, and the _mozo_ who put us and our hand-bags into the train was
content with his reasonable fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who
were to go with us, they were of an insurpassable beauty and propriety,
and we felt it a peculiar honor when one of them got into the
compartment beside ours.

We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the _correo_ is
next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of
Peninsular railroading. Our _correo_ had been up all night on the way
from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a
bedchamber, with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied
by a whole family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of
the seats, and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, and
the cigarette ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various
liquids, as well as some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But
when it was dried and aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather,
it was by no means a bad compartment. The broad cushions were certainly
cleaner than the carpet; and it was something--it was a great deal--to
be getting out of Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this
distance so bad as it seemed on the ground. If we could have had the
bright Monday of our departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay
there we might have wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours'
run to Seville was delightful, largely because it Was the run from
Cordova.

We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank
in larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us
all the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains
always walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark,