CASTILIAN BEGGARS.

87

stopped we were surrounded by a swarm of beggars, old and young, male and female, wrapped in yellow-brown rags, and with yellow-brown faces. I must do the Castilian beggar, however, the justice to say that, generally speaking, he does not whine like a French beggar. He first seeks to attract your attention, and then prefers his petition. Here, at Miranda, I was accosted with the epithet Caballero! Caballero! and once or twice I was touched on the elbow, but if I paid no attention, they went no further; the beggars of Miranda are too proud to ask alms of one who will not look at them.

At Miranda de Ebro, all baggage of travellers coming from the Basque provinces into Old Castile undergoes as strict an examination as when they cross the Spanish frontier from France. Besides opening and rummaging our trunks and travelling bags, a custom-house officer crawled into our carriage, and almost turned it inside out, looking into the boxes and pockets, peeping under the seats, and feeling all over the lining. At Miranda, miserable as the place appears, is a tolerable inn, where we got a good breakfast and some excellent pears, and after an interval of two hours, set out quite refreshed. At a little distance from our stopping place we descended into a little valley, so finely varied with gentle and graceful slopes, and overlooked by rocky mountain summits, so jagged, and toothed, and blue, that we involuntarily exclaimed: "How beautiful would all this be, if there were but a little green turf and a few trees!" Close by was the village of Ameyugo, and a little stream with a pretty

88

A CASTILIAN

TRAVELLER.

name, the Oroncillo, flowed through the valley, on the brink of which grew several elms; but the peasants had stripped them of their side branches, and forced them to shoot up in slender columns of small twigs, like cypresses.

We were entertained by the sight of a man, who followed on horseback close to our carriage, as if to shelter himself from the wind, that blew a drizzling rain into his face. He wore the black velvet cap of the Castilian, with its two worsted tassels; an ample cloak made of black sheep's wool, which, having faded into a dull brown, had been refreshed by an enormous patch of the original color; knee breeches, and below them a pair of leathern gaiters, half open at the sides, to show the stockings. His complexion was that of the faded part of his cloak. His feet rested in a pair of heavy stirrups, which were studded along the edge of the sole with brass nails. Once or twice he leaned forward over the pommel of his saddle, and laid himself down on his horse's mane; it was his mode of taking his siesta; in short he was asleep, as was evident by the passive manner in which his body swayed from side to side. At length, as we were entering a rocky pass beyond Ameyugo, he sat upright, and entered into conversation with us.

"A poor country," said he—" a poor country. They get little wheat from these rocks; but these are nothing to what you will see a little further on." He was right. A little further on we entered the pass of Pancorvo. I had not seen, in the Alps or the Pyrenees, any passage between mountain walls so wild and savage, and surrounded by rocks piled in such

THE PASS

OF PANCORVO.

89

strange and fantastic forms; perpendicular precipices of immense height; loose masses so poised that they seemed ready to topple on our heads; twisted ribs, beetling crags, and sharp needles of rock. I thought of the lines in Shelley's translation of Faust:

"The giant-snouted crags, ho, ho!

How they snort and how they blow—”

and almost expected these strange horned masses to move with life, and utter voices as strange as their forms. In this pass, the French boast that in the War of the Peninsula a small body of their soldiers held Wellington at bay, and compelled him to turn aside from the great highway to Biscay. There is nothing said of this in the English guide-books.

From the pass of Pancorvo our mules were flogged and shouted through smooth, bare, wintry-looking valleys, along which a railway route had been surveyed, as a channel of communication between Bayonne and Madrid; the signal posts were still standing. We alighted at Briviesca, pleasantly situated on the Oca, with a decent and spacious inn, full of guests. Some of our party were a little concerned at being told that there was neither milk, butter, nor cheese in the place; but we made a comfortable meal notwithstanding. I had heard much of Castilian gravity, but there was none of it in the inn at Briviesca; it rang with laughter nearly the whole night. I walked over part of Briviesca the next morning, before setting out, and found it a dirty place, badly paved and apparently in decay. I saw a good many brown

beggars, but half the rest of the population resembled them in looks and attire. The next day we climbed a dreary height, to what our coachman told us was the highest tableland in Spain: a cold, bleak, bare region of pasturage, rough with pale, hoary furze and greener juniper bushes, and here and there a stubble-field. Descending from this, we descried at a distance the citadel of Burgos on a hill, and near it the towers of the majestic cathedral. We entered the town and obtained lodgings at the Fonda de las Postas, one of the best hotels in Spain, with a civil hostess, clean rooms, and most attentive handmaidens.

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BURGOS.

LETTER IX.

THE CITY OF BURGOS-ITS CATHEDRAL-THE CONVENT OF LAS

HUELGAS.

BURGOS, October 14, 1857.

THE first aspect of Burgos, the ancient city of the Cid and the chief city of Old Castile, is imposing. As the traveller looks at the castle on its hill, with its surrounding fortifications; the massive remains of its ancient walls; its vast cathedral, worthy, by its magnificence, to have exhausted the revenues of an empire; its public pleasure-grounds, stretching along the banks of its river, almost out of sight; the colossal effigies of its former kings, standing at the bend of the stream called the Espolon; and its stately gate of Santa Maria, where the statues of the Cid and other men of the heroic age of Spain, frown in their lofty niches, he naturally thinks of Burgos as the former seat of power and dominion. Another look at the city, consisting of a few closely-built streets around its great cathedral, produces the effect of disappointment. Yet the town is much more populous than the guide-books represent it to be; they put down its population at twelve thousand, while the recent enumeration makes it thirty-two thousand.