Notwithstanding these moral securities, if only by way of making assurance doubly sure, an Englishman will do well when travelling in exposed districts to be provided with a decent bag of dollars, which makes a handsome purse, feels heavy in the hand, and is that sort of amount which the Spanish brigand thinks a native of our proverbially rich country ought to have with him on his travels. He has a remarkable tact in estimating from the look of an individual, his equipage, &c., how much ready money it is befitting his condition for him to have about him; if the sum should not be enough, he resents severely his being robbed of the regular perquisite to which he considers himself entitled by the long-established usage of the high-road. The person unprovided altogether with cash is generally made a severe example of, pour encourager les autres, either by being well beaten or stripped to the skin, after the fashion of the thieves of old, near Jericho. The traveller should have a watch of some kind--one with a gaudy gilt chain and seals is the best suited; not to have one exposes him to more indignities than a scantily-filled purse. The money may have been spent, but the absence of a watch can only be accounted for by a premeditated intention of not being robbed of it, which the “_ladron_” considers as a most unjustifiable attempt to defraud him of his right.
The Spanish “_ladrones_” are generally armed with a blunderbuss, that hangs at their high-peaked saddles, which are covered with a white or blue fleece, emblematical enough of shearing propensities; therefore, perhaps, the order of the golden fleece has been given to certain foreigners, in reward for having eased Spain of her independence and Murillos. Their dress is for the most part very rich, and in the highest style of the fancy; hence they are the envy and models of the lower classes, being arrayed after the fashion of the smuggler, or the bull-fighter, or in a word, the “_majo_” or dandy of Andalucia, which is the home and head-quarters of all those who aspire to the elegant accomplishments and professions just alluded to. The next class of robbers--omitting some minor distinctions, such as the “_salteadores_,” or two or three persons who lie in ambuscade and _jump out_ on the unprepared traveller--is the “_ratero_,” “the rat.” He is not brought regularly up to the profession and organized, but takes to it on a sudden, and for the special occasion which, according to the proverb, makes a thief, _La ocasion hace al ladron_; and having committed his petty larceny, returns to his pristine occupation or avocation.