shot, the plenty of excellent fuel, and the red earth of the soil, which, by its resistance to fire, makes very good furnaces, have induced several attempts to establish iron founderies, but none of them have hitherto succeeded, and the projectors have desisted after considerable losses. One nobleman, the Count de Pilar (father to that gentleman I met on Christmas-day at Chiclana), expended on one of these founderies nearly seventy thousand pounds, and was at last forced to abandon an undertaking by which he was almost reduced to ruin.

The most abundant of all the mineral productions in these mountains is the amianthus, or asbestos, from which the fossil cloth was made by the ancients, which, as it resisted the power of fire, was used to envelope the bodies of distinguished persons, and preserve their ashes entire. Pliny describes it inventu rarum textu difficillimum, and says he has seen napkins of it, which, being taken from table after a feast, were thrown into the fire, and were better scoured by burning, than those made of other substances were by washing. And it is related of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that he had a complete service of linen made from this substance, and surprised the ladies of his court who were unacquainted with its peculiar property, by ordering them all to be thrown into the fire by way of cleaning them. The amianthus is so very abundant, that I have been assured there are large rocks entirely composed of it in these mountains; it is, however, a matter more of curiosity than of benefit, and if the art of spinning it be now lost, it is only because it is an art not worth retaining. Several attempts to convert it into cloth were made in

Italy, about an hundred years ago, and with such success, that Ciampini, in a pamphlet published in Rome in 1699, describes the process for making both cloth and paper of it. Paper of an incombustible substance is certainly a desideratum; but unless an ink could be discovered equally durable, it would prove of little service. The specimens I have met with in this place are soft and flexible, and the fibres from three to five inches in length. When it is burnt, it does not appear to diminish in bulk, but it loses part of its weight every time that it is set on fire.

Mines of lead (plumbago) were formerly worked about half a league from this city, and also a mine of silver, which is said to have been opened by the Phoenicians: these mines, however, like those of iron, tin, and black lead, are now totally neglected.

Among the various things which have attracted my attention in Spain, none have excited so much admiration as the singular situation of this city, the river Guadiaro which encircles it, and the bridges which connect it with its suburbs. It is placed on a rock, with cliffs, either perpendicular and abrupt towards the river, or with broken craggs, whose jutting prominences, having a little soil, have been planted with orange and fig trees. A fissure in this rock, of great depth, surrounds the city on three sides, and at the bottom of the fissure the river rushes along with impetuous rapidity. Two bridges are constructed over the fissure; the first is a single arch, resting on the rocks on the two sides, the height of which from the water is one hundred and twenty feet. The river descends from this to the second bridge, whilst the rocks on each side as rapidly increase in height;

so that from this second bridge to the water, there is the astonishing height of two hundred and eighty feet. The highest tower in Spain, the Giralda in Seville, or the Monument near London Bridge, if they were placed on the water, might stand under this stupendous arch, without their tops reaching to it.

The mode of constructing this bridge is no less surprising than the situation in which it is placed, and its extraordinary elevation; it is a single arch of one hundred and ten feet in diameter; it is supported by solid pillars of masonry, built from the bottom of the river, about fifteen feet in thickness, which are fixed into the solid rock on both sides, and on which the ends of the arch rest; other pillars are built to support these principal ones, which are connected with them by other small arches. But as it is difficult to describe such an edifice, I must refer to the sketch I have made of it.

A bridge was built on this spot in 1735, but the key-stone not having been properly secured, it fell down in 1741, by which fifty persons were killed. The present bridge was finished in 1774, by Don Joseph Martin Aldehuela, a celebrated architect of Malaga; and appears so well constructed as to bid defiance almost to time itself: it seems an erection

Quod non imber edax: non aquilo impotens

Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series et fuga temporum.

ap

It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of it: from below it pears suspended in the air; and when upon the bridge, the river beneath appears no longer a mighty torrent, but resembles a rippling