246 LETTERS FROM SPAIN, delicious flavour. Another kind, called Guinda, is merely the com mon sweet wine of the mountains, with a mixture of the juice of cherries, and is not much valued here, but highly esteemed in other countries: and the Lagrima de Malaga, a sweet wine, resembling Constantia, though highly valued by Spaniards, is not agreeable to an English palate. These wines are rather cultivated by the curious than made an object of commerce, and the quantity produced of each is very small. Next to wine, the most important article is oil, for the making of which there are more than seven hundred mills in the district through which I have lately passed. In general, the oil partakes of the bad qualities I noticed at Seville, but in Velez more attention is paid to cleanliness than any where else, and the oil is by far the best I have tasted in Spain. The quantity of raisins exported hence is very great, indeed this is the principal market for that article. Besides what is sent over the mountains to Granada, and other places farther north, there is annually exported fifty thousand quintals by small vessels, which anchor near Torre del Mar, or by ships from the port of Malaga. The quantity of figs dried in this neighbourhood is very consider able, but is of less importance, as an object of foreign trade, than the raisins ; they are mostly sent into the mountains, or to the city of Granada, whence wheat and barley are brought in exchange; for, though some of the playas are capable of producing these grains in the greatest abundance, the quantity raised is not sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants.