I Did Not Discover The Trick Until I Was
Across The Border, And Upon My Hurrying Back, The Culprit Was
Not
to be found; his priest, however, told me that he was just dead and
buried, which was of course
False, as I saw him laughing in the
corners of his eyes. I renounced the contraband trade from that
moment."
It is not my intention to describe minutely the various incidents
of this journey. Leaving at our right the mountains of Jaen, we
passed through Andujar and Bailen, and on the third day reached
Carolina, a small but beautiful town on the skirts of the Sierra
Morena, inhabited by the descendants of German colonists. Two
leagues from this place, we entered the defile of Despena Perros,
which, even in quiet times, has an evil name, on account of the
robberies which are continually being perpetrated within its
recesses, but at the period of which I am speaking, it was said to
be swarming with banditti. We of course expected to be robbed,
perhaps stripped and otherwise ill-treated; but Providence here
manifested itself. It appeared that, the day before our arrival,
the banditti of the pass had committed a dreadful robbery and
murder, by which they gained forty thousand rials. This booty
probably contented them for a time; certain it is that we were not
interrupted: we did not even see a single individual in the pass,
though we occasionally heard whistles and loud cries. We entered
La Mancha, where I expected to fall into the hands of Palillos and
Orejita.
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