The first stage across the valley of the Guadalquivir took us to the town of Alcala, which lies in the lap of the hills above the beautiful little river Guadaira.  It is a picturesque spot; the naked cliffs overhanging the stream have the rich, red hue of cinnabar, and the trees and shrubbery in the meadows, and on the hill-sides are ready grouped to the artist’s hand.  The town is called Alcala de los Panadores (of the Bakers) from its hundreds of flour mills and bake-ovens, which supply Seville with those white, fine, delicious twists, of which Spain may be justly proud.  They should have been sent to the Exhibition last year, with the Toledo blades and the wooden mosaics.  We left the place and its mealy-headed population, and turned eastward into wide, rolling tracts, scattered here and there with gnarled olive trees.  The soil was loose and sandy, and hedges of aloes lined the road.  The country is thinly populated, and very little of it under cultivation.

About noon we reached Carmona, which was founded by the Romans, as, indeed, were nearly all the towns of Southern Spain.  It occupies the crest and northern slope of a high hill, whereon the ancient Moorish castle still stands.  The Alcazar, or palace, and the Moorish walls also remain, though in a very ruinous condition.  Here we stopped to dinner, for the “Nueva Peninsular,” in which I was embarked, has its hotels all along the route, like that of Zurutuza, in Mexico.  We were conducted into a small room adjoining the stables, and adorned with colored prints illustrating the history of Don John of Austria.  The table-cloths, plates and other appendages were of very ordinary quality, but indisputably clean; we seated ourselves, and presently the dinner appeared.  First, a vermicelli pilaff, which I found palatable, then the national olla, a dish of enormous yellow peas, sprinkled with bits of bacon and flavored with oil; then three successive courses of chicken, boiled, stewed and roasted, but in every case done to rags, and without a particle of the original flavor.  This was the usual style of our meals on the road, whether breakfast, dinner or supper, except that kid was sometimes substituted for fowl, and that the oil employed, being more or less rancid, gave different flavors to the dishes, A course of melons, grapes or pomegranates wound up the repast, the price of which varied from ten to twelve reals—­a real being about a half-dime.  In Seville, at the Fonda de Madrid, the cooking is really excellent; but further in the interior, judging from what I have heard, it is even worse than I have described.

Continuing our journey, we passed around the southern brow of the hill, under the Moorish battlements.  Here a superb view opened to the south and east over the wide Vega of Carmona, as far as the mountain chain which separates it from the plain of Granada.  The city has for a coat of arms a silver star in an azure field, with the pompous motto:  “As Lucifer shines in the morning, so shines Carmona in Andalusia.”  If it shines at all, it is because it is a city set upon a hill; for that is the only splendor I could find about the place.  The Vega of Carmona is partially cultivated, and now wears a sombre brown hue, from its tracts of ploughed land.