They wear a peculiar kind of hat, and generally leggings, or gaiters, and their arms are the gun and bayonet.  The colour of their dress is mostly dark brown.  They observe little or no discipline whether on a march or in the field of action.  They are excellent irregular troops, and when on actual service are particularly useful as skirmishers.  Their proper duty, however, is to officiate as a species of police, and to clear the roads of robbers, for which duty they are in one respect admirably calculated, having been generally robbers themselves at one period of their lives.  Why these people are called Miguelets it is not easy to say, but it is probable that they have derived this appellation from the name of their original leader.  I regret that the paucity of my own information will not allow me to enter into farther particulars with respect to this corps, concerning which I have little doubt that many remarkable things might be said.

Becoming weary of the slow travelling of the post, I determined to brave all risk, and to push forward.  In this, however, I was guilty of no slight imprudence, as by so doing I was near falling into the hands of robbers.  Two fellows suddenly confronted me with presented carbines, which they probably intended to discharge into my body, but they took fright at the noise of Antonio’s horse, who was following a little way behind.  The affair occurred at the bridge of Castellanos, a spot notorious for robbery and murder, and well adapted for both, for it stands at the bottom of a deep dell surrounded by wild desolate hills.  Only a quarter of an hour previous I had passed three ghastly heads stuck on poles standing by the wayside; they were those of a captain of banditti and two of his accomplices, who had been seized and executed about two months before.  Their principal haunt was the vicinity of the bridge, and it was their practice to cast the bodies of the murdered into the deep black water which runs rapidly beneath.  Those three heads will always live in my remembrance, particularly that of the captain, which stood on a higher pole than the other two:  the long hair was waving in the wind, and the blackened, distorted features were grinning in the sun.  The fellows whom I met wore the relics of the band.

We arrived at Betanzos late in the afternoon.  This town stands on a creek at some distance from the sea, and about three leagues from Coruna.  It is surrounded on three sides by lofty hills.  The weather during the greater part of the day had been dull and lowering, and we found the atmosphere of Betanzos insupportably close and heavy.  Sour and disagreeable odours assailed our olfactory organs from all sides.  The streets were filthy—­so were the houses, and especially the posada.  We entered the stable; it was strewed with rotten sea-weeds and other rubbish, in which pigs were wallowing; huge and loathsome flies were buzzing around.  “What a pest-house!” I exclaimed.