mitted to this process of decoration, held by as many young Gipseys in as many different directions, whilst the old crone their mother divested him of his fleece. These people are almost universally tall and well made, their figures and carriage having in a rare degree the air of freedom and unconstraint. The women are very beautiful, their features, as well as those of the men, being very regular; with an Asiatic complexion and cast of countenance; long, straight, and very black hair; full dark eyes, and teeth of pearly whiteness. They are all fond of appearing in the worn out finery of the Andalusian dandies, and have a taste for elegance, though it be even in rags. Their pranks are often exhibited on the Spanish stage to the great delight of the audience, who receive their quaint practical jokes and less innocent rogueries with the greatest glee. Indeed they have the character of being a light hearted and happy race, and, notwithstanding their vicious propensities, are looked on with an extra share of that indulgence which is extended to vagrants of all classes in Spain.
There is much in the cast of countenance, complexion, and unfettered conformation of these Gipseys, in connection with their mendicant air and the distinctness of their appearance, character, and sympathies, from those of the Spaniards around them, to remind an American of the vagrant Indians whom he has seen loitering about the frontier settlements of his native country. The Gipseys of Spain do not, however, excite the same sympathy as our unhappy aborigines. They came to that country of their own accord, and with a view to better their condition, bringing their vices with them, and making them instrumental to self support and to the preservation of their identity. But the Indians, instead of dispossessing, are the dispossessed; their degradation, instead of being derived from their savage state, has supplanted the wild virtues that adorned it, and is at once the result of civilized encroachment and the efficient cause of their ruin.
It was in order to see something of the domestic economy of this strange race, of whom we daily met many in the streets of Granada, that we one morning took a walk to the caves of the Albaycin, where they have their subterranean habitations. Crossing the ravine of the Daro, and passing through the more populous portion of the Albaycin, whose houses are often incorporated with the ruins of walls, that mark the gradual expansion of Granada, as it augmented its population in the days of the Saracens, we began at length to ascend the more
