The result of this "_grande combinacion_" turned out, however, to be that the Marshal effected the passage of the mountains between Guadiz and Granada, ere the Spanish captain general had yet fully explained the impossibility of his escaping from the strategical toils _about to be_ spread for him.
Return we now to Granada--from which city, having announced at Madame Martinez' tertulia that it was our intention to depart on the following morning, taking the road to Cordoba, certain symptoms of uneasy curiosity were manifested, attended with sundry mysterious hints, that led us to fancy some extraordinary perils were to be encountered on that particular road. Less communicative than the Spanish captain general, however, the utmost we could elicit from our various acquaintances was, that the country round about the city whither we were about to proceed, was in a very _volcanic_ state, and that a political explosion might be daily expected.
As none of our party had professed an over-boiling admiration of the existing state of things, I believe we were set down as aiders and abettors in the revolt of the troops which shortly afterwards took place--though not until we had safely returned to the shelter of the British fortress.
We left Granada as proposed, taking the direct road to Cordoba, by Alcalà la real. As far as that town, the road, at the period of which I write, was the only carriage route leading from Granada towards Madrid. Another by way of Jaen has been opened within the last few years. If ocular demonstration of this first-named road being practicable for carriages had not, however, been afforded us, we should certainly have doubted the possibility of any thing less fragile than a bullock's cart getting over some parts of it; but as far as Piños de la Puente, that is, for the first twelve miles, it is tolerably good, traversing the north-eastern portion of the _Vega_, and leaving the Sierra de Elvira at some little distance on the right. The village of Piños stands on the right bank of the river Cubillas, and inscriptions, which have been found and are preserved there, prove it to have been the town of Ilurco, mentioned by Pliny. It is celebrated, in more recent times, as a spot where many a fierce struggle took place between the Moors and Christians; for, in their forays into each other's country, the bridge of Piños was generally the point chosen for effecting a passage across the impracticable little stream that, in this direction, bounds the _Vega_.