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WITH COTTAGERS IN MOUNTAINS 161
stupid thing. It costs you money and diminishes the
excitement of traveling, by annihilating every possi-
bility of an unusual adventure; for if you have a pass-
port, all the boring police officials on earth are your
protectors. I, therefore, ignored all passports when
we set forth, taking with me instead two vaccination
certificates which remained to us from the days of our
childhood. I thought it would be interesting to learn
what such a scrap of paper really was worth in a pinch,
and I must admit that my certificates stood the test
very well. Although smallpox was in the virulent stage
at most of the towns of Andalusia at which we stopped,
we remained quite immune from it.
Since we planned to travel on foot a passport would
be indispensable for us, so every one told us, including
a consul in one of the seaport towns; but this consul
had no authority to issue a passport. I wrote home to
a friend to go to the passport office for me, where he
obtained the sage answer that it would be necessary
for me to go back home myself and present my person
to the high authorities.
All in all, these high authorities are really quite
superfluous—like all things that exist by the grace of
God. I went aboard the Danish ship that lay in the
port of Cadiz and borrowed some Russian clearance
papers from the captain. These papers identified me
as a bark with a tonnage of 530 tons register, bearing
the name ‘‘Marianne,” and sailing in ballast from Riga
to San Fernando to call for a cargo of salt. Whenever
we meet a gendarme, I begin to unbutton my coat long
before we reach him, and since they never show any
inclination to demand our papers, I force these clear-
ance documents on his attention. ‘Thereupon he sets
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