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Spain, especially the southern provinces, contains so many of these people, that they rove about in large troops, threatening to plunder and murder travellers whom they happen to meet in lonely places: at a distance from the cities, and where no place of refuge is near, danger is always to be apprehended. Swinburne rates their number very high; he asserts, that the loss of the Gipseys would immediately be perceived by the apparent diminution of population. Now as Spain contains eleven millions of people, how considerable a draft must there be to render it perceptible! Twiss also mentions a great many, but sums up a determinate number, 40,000; which is certainly considerable, but probably twice twenty, or even twice forty, thousand too few;—unless we charge Swinburne, and others, with having greatly exaggerated;—even admitting, that he means to be understood as speaking of the southern provinces only.

In France, before the revolution, there were but few, for the obvious reason, that every Gipsey who could be apprehended, fell a sacrifice to the police. Lorrain and Alsatia were indeed exceptions; they being very numerous there, especially in the forests of Lorrain. Here they seem to have met with milder treatment; yet, according to the assurances of a traveller, many of them were to be found in the gaols of Lorrain. They increased the more in this district, in consequence of their having been very assiduously looked after, and driven from the dominions of a late Duke of Deuxponts, whither his successor would not suffer them to return.