From this time I had frequent interviews with Jasper, sometimes in his tent, sometimes on the heath, about which we would roam for hours, discoursing on various matters.  Sometimes mounted on one of his horses, of which he had several, I would accompany him to various fairs and markets in the neighborhood, to which he went on his own affairs, or those of his tribe.  I soon found that I had become acquainted with a most singular people, whose habits and pursuits awakened within me the highest interest.  Of all connected with them, however, their language was doubtless that which exercised the greatest influence over my imagination.  I had at first some suspicion that it would prove a mere made-up gibberish; but I was soon undeceived.  Broken, corrupted, and half in ruins as it was, it was not long before I found that it was an original speech; far more so indeed than one or two others of high name and celebrity, which up to that time I had been in the habit of regarding with respect and veneration.  Indeed, many obscure points connected with the vocabulary of these languages, and to which neither classic nor modern lore afforded any clue, I thought I could now clear up by means of this strange broken tongue, spoken by people who dwelt amongst thickets and furze bushes, in tents as tawny as their faces, and whom the generality of mankind designated, and with much semblance of justice, as thieves and vagabonds.  But where did this speech come from, and who were they who spoke it?  These were questions which I could not solve, and which Jasper himself, when pressed, confessed his inability to answer.  “But whoever we be, brother,” said he, “we are an old people, and not what folks in general imagine, broken gorgios; and if we are not Egyptians, we are at any rate Romany Chals!”

A MEETING

From ‘The Bible in Spain’

It was at this town of Badajoz, the capital of Estremadura, that I first fell in with those singular people, the Zincali, Gitanos, or Spanish gipsies.  It was here I met with the wild Paco, the man with the withered arm, who wielded the cachas with his left hand; his shrewd wife, Antonia, skilled in hokkano baro, or the great trick; the fierce gipsy, Antonio Lopez, their father-in-law; and many other almost equally singular individuals of the Errate, or gipsy blood.  It was here that I first preached the gospel to the gipsy people, and commenced that translation of the New Testament in the Spanish gipsy tongue, a portion of which I subsequently printed at Madrid.

After a stay of three weeks at Badajoz, I prepared to depart for Madrid. 
Late one afternoon, as I was arranging my scanty baggage, the gipsy
Antonio entered my apartment, dressed in his zamarra and high-peaked
Andalusian hat.

Antonio—­Good evening, brother; they tell me that on the callicaste you intend to set out for Madrilati.