When we went into the church again the service had been commenced, the _Capilla Mayor_ was hung with crimson and gold, candles were distributed to the canons, who, in their purple robes, made the round of the church, the wax dripping on the tombstones that paved the aisles, and the arches resonant with the dying strains of the aged Simeon: _Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!_ For it was Candlemas-day. The cathedral of San Salvador was begun in 1091, on the site of a former church. The pope, at the request of Alonso VI., granted indulgences to all who would contribute to its erection. Contributions were sent, not only from the different provinces of Spain, but from France and Italy. More than a thousand stone-cutters and carpenters were employed under the architect Garcia de Estella, of Navarre, and the building was completed in less than sixteen years. After breakfast we left the city walls and came out on the Square of San Pedro, where women were filling their jars at the well in true Oriental fashion, the air vocal with their gossip and laughter. Groups of peasant women had come up from the plains for a holiday, and were sauntering around the square or along the arcades in their gay stuff dresses, the skirts of which were generally drawn over their heads, as if to show the bright facings of another color. Yellow skirts were faced with red peaked with green; red ones faced with green and trimmed with yellow. When let down, they stood out, in their fulness, like a farthingale, short enough to show their blue stockings. Their hair, in flat basket-braids, was looped up behind with gay pins. We saw several just such glossy black plaits among the votive offerings in the oratory of St. Teresa’s Nativity.