The journey from Cordova to Malaga lasts from six in the morning till five in the afternoon. You are, of course, aroused at four and carried off to the station at five; so that you are really on the way much longer. But the scenery of Andalusia is so varied and beautiful that you are almost sorry when the train reaches its destination.

Beautiful Andalusia! so quaintly called by a lover of it, “the sweetest morsel of the Peninsula.” Who can forget or over-praise its voluptuous southern sky, its rich brown plains, its glistening white villages peeping amid groves of the cistus, the ilex, and the cork-tree, its green slopes crowned with Moorish towers and palaces, its delicious climate, its trickling streams, its sweet-smelling flowers?

The railway is new and carries one through a most astounding bit of country. After passing leagues of olive orchards, we found ourselves suddenly in a wholly different world. First came range after range of cold grey mountains, then perpendicular columns of limestone of gigantic size, evidently thrown up by volcanic action. These rocks and their counterparts have been admirably drawn by Gustave Doré in his splendid Don Quixote, and are quite awful in their height and barrenness.

The train went at a snail's pace right through the heart of the gorge, and during this part of the journey, most of the passengers got out and walked! I suppose the line was not quite safe, and indeed the soil is so light and sulphurous that it seems impossible ever to make it so.