use, we found
two roads to that city, one on the side of the Mediterranean Sea, the
other inland. He advised us to take the former, which exactly tallied
with my inclination, for wherever the sea-coast affords a road in hot
climates, that must be the pleasantest; and I was very impatient till we
got here.

After we had left the high inland road, we had about three leagues to
the sea side, and the village on its margin where we were to lie; this
road was through a very wild, uncultivated country, over-run with
underwood and tall firs. We saw but few houses and met with fewer
people. When we came near the sea, the country, however, improved upon
us; and the farms, churches, convents, and beacons, upon the high lands,
rendered the prospects every way pleasing. We crossed a shallow river
several times, adorned on both sides with an infinite quantity of tall
beeches, on one of which trees (boy like) I cut my name, too high for
_other boys_, without a ladder, to cut me _out_ again. At length we
arrived at the village, and at a _posada_, than which nothing could be
more dreadful, after the day-light was gone; for beside the rudest
mistress, and the dirtiest servants that can be conceived, there lay a
poor Frenchman dying in the next room to us; nay, I may almost say, in
the same room with us, for it could hardly be called a door which parted
us. This poor man, who had not a shilling in his pocket, had lain twenty
days ill in that house; but was attended by the priests of the town with
as much assiduity as if he had been a man of fashion: he had been often
exhorted by them, it seems, to confess, but had refused. The night we
came, he feared would be his last, and he determined to make his
confession; I was in the room when he signified his desire so to do; and
all the people were dismissed by the parish priest. I returned to my
room, and could now and then hear what the priest said: but the sick
man's voice was too low: his crimes however, I fear, were of an high
nature, for we heard the priest say, with a voice of impatience and
seeming horror, _Adonde--adonde--adonde_?--Where--where--where?

You may imagine, a bad supper, lighted by stinking oil, burning in an
iron lamp hung against the side of a wall, (for there were no candles to
be had) and while the sick man was receiving the last sacrament, would
have been little relished had it been good; that our dirty straw beds
were no very comfortable retreat; and that day-light th