DOMESTIC.- Cavalier, you appear to be a decent gentleman, and I will tell you our history.We are from Andalusia, and his worship was last year receiver-general for Granada: his salary was fourteen thousand rials, with which we contrived to live very commodiously - attending the bull funcions regularly, or if there were no bulls, we went to see the novillos, and now and then to the opera.In a word, sir, we had our diversions and felt at our ease; so much so, that his worship was actually thinking of purchasing a pony for the young gentleman, who is fourteen, and must learn to ride now or never.Cavalier, the ministry was changed, and the new corners, who were no friends to his worship, deprived him of his situation.Cavalier, they removed us from that blessed country of Granada, where our salary was fourteen thousand rials, and sent us to Galicia, to this fatal town of Lugo, where his worship is compelled to serve for ten thousand, which is quite insufficient to maintain us in our former comforts.
Good-bye, I trow, to bull funcions, and novillos, and the opera.Good-bye to the hope of a horse for the young gentleman.Cavalier, I grow desperate: hold your tongue, for God's sake! for I can talk no more."On hearing this history I no longer wondered that the receiver-general was eager to save a cuarto in the purchase of the oil for the gaspacho of himself and family of eleven daughters, one son, and a domestic.
We staid one week at Lugo, and then directed our steps to Coruna, about twelve leagues distant.We arose before daybreak in order to avail ourselves of the escort of the general post, in whose company we travelled upwards of six leagues.There was much talk of robbers, and flying parties of the factious, on which account our escort was considerable.At the distance of five or six leagues from Lugo, our guard, in lieu of regular soldiers, consisted of a body of about fifty Miguelets.They had all the appearance of banditti, but a finer body of ferocious fellows I never saw.They were all men in the prime of life, mostly of tall stature, and of Herculean brawn and limbs.They wore huge whiskers, and walked with a fanfaronading air, as if they courted danger, and despised it.
In every respect they stood in contrast to the soldiers who had hitherto escorted us, who were mere feeble boys from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and possessed of neither energy nor activity.The proper dress of the Miguelet, if it resembles anything military, is something akin to that anciently used by the English marines.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, Idetermined to brave all risk, and to push forward.In this, however, I was guilty of no slight imprudence, as by so doing Iwas 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 way-side; 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.
