The shrine of the saint is still visited by innumerable pilgrims, and perhaps more arrive in Santiago than any other city of Spain. In olden days so great was the number that "El Camino de Santiago"--"The road to Santiago," gave rise to the Spanish term for the "milky way." I have watched them in the Cathedral, peasants, men and women, come from afar, to judge by their dress. They each carried a staff decorated with tufts of herbs and little star-shaped pieces of bread tied on with gay ribbons. I have seen women making the round of the altars in the different chapels with great bundles of clothes, through which were thrust umbrellas, balanced on their heads. They never lost the poise of their burden as they knelt and rose again. But of all the pilgrims I saw, one who might have stepped out of Chaucer's pages carried me back to the days of long ago. She wore a short skirt of thick brown material, sandals protected her stockinged feet, from her girdle hung rosary, scallop shells and a stoneware pilgrim's bottle, a hooked staff lent support to her bent, travelled-stained figure. Her leather wallet was stuffed with bread, and covering her short cropped hair was a grey felt hat, mushroom shaped. A little black dog entered the Cathedral with her, and squatted silently by his mistress's side as she knelt praying in the dim light of a grey day. Chaucer's "Wyt of Bath" had made a pilgrimage to "Seynt Jame," and my pilgrim with her little lame companion might very well have been with him too. The Cathedral, founded in 1078, was built on the site of one destroyed by Almanzor in 997. The legend of the destruction of the first church, which had been standing for just one hundred years, was thus--Almanzor, after sacking Leon and Astorga, swept all the country westwards with his Moorish hosts until he reached Santiago. So great was his fame and in such terror was his name held that no one had the courage to face him and fight for saint and city. Riding through its deserted streets he came to the church, and to his surprise at last espied a solitary Christian, a monk, praying alone at the shrine of the saint. "What dost thou here?" inquired the haughty Moor. "I am at my prayers," curtly answered the holy man, continuing his devotions. This reply and the courage of the single enemy so called forth the admiration of Almanzor, that his life was spared and an infidel guard set over the tomb. [Illustration: SANTIAGO. SOUTH DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL] The west façade, a Renaissance outer covering, so to speak, of the older façade, would not look so imposing as it does if granite had not been used in its construction. The grey tones of the lichen-covered stone redeem the somewhat overdone florid design, and it stands well above a double flight of steps on the east side of the huge Plaza Mayor.