text:  The wars and rumours of wars revolutions rebellions skirmishes and _pronunciamentos_ that newspapers have recorded during the last ten or twelve years with an occasional particularly bloody and barbarous execution by way of interlude have certainly not been calculated to reassure timid travellers; nor can we well wonder that at the mere mention of an excursion beyond the Pyrenees tourists are seized with a vertigo; and that visions not only of rancid _gaspachos_ and vermin-haunted couches but of chocolate-complexioned ruffians with sugar-loaf hats button-bedecked jackets fierce mustaches and lengthy _escopetas_ peering out of the gloomy recesses of a cork wood or from among the silvery foliage of an olive grove pass before the eyes of their imagination