Volume 58: Sir George Macleay correspondence, 1848-1880: No. 046

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[Page 46]

where I arrived four days after the Peace which however was so little understood that 24 men had in the interim been murdered by the Moors.  so that I was in consequence of this state of things now able to move easily along the line of Videttes.  I was most hospitably & kindly treated by the Guards to whom I had introductions, but at the same time have continually have to understand that they did not love my country, in fact they did not hesitate to say that in case of war breaking out between France & England, they wd side with the former.  I did not tell them what I thought that it would be a matter of very little consequence from what I saw of those in camp.  I entertain the formed possible opinion of them as Soldiers and I was informed by Englishmen who were present in the action that had the Moors had any artillery or the least notion of discipline, they would have thrashed them over and over again.  The truth is they think that we aided the Moors and the possession of Gibraltar rankles as it well may in their very gizzards.  They were dying at the rate of 60 men per day of cholera when I was in the camp & one day in Tetuan I came in contact with the long line of unutterably defiled stretchers in which they were carrying the departed [?] to their graves.  Oh what a sublimely dirty place Tetuan is.  When the old Alcalde was told to have it cleared in 6 days, he threw up his hands exclaiming Oh Allah, how can I clean old in six days the defilement of 300 years!   From Cadiz we returned to Seville & from there we went to Madrid which tho an eminently unSpanish city is not a bad place at all.  Its picture gallery the finest in the world held two in incomparable Murillos & Velasquez beyond all the other galleries in the world existed is alone worth a pilgrimage twice as long.  From Madrid we made excursions to Aranjuez, Toledo, Escorial etc.  From there we went by way of Avila, Salamanca to Burgos to St Sebastian [San Sebastian].  At Salamanca Mrs Macleay had lost 2 brothers & 2 Uncles all in the same regiment.  We did not go to the [indecipherable] as it was all covered with
 

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