Upon landing we were immediately surrounded by a crowd of miserable-looking beggars of all ages and descriptions. Most of the children squinted, and many were blind in one eye; several were blind in both. Many were terribly maimed, and had difficulty in following us upon their remaining limbs--but follow us they would and did, some on all fours, till we drove off to an hotel and left them behind. It was some time, however, before we could drive off, as we had the misfortune to arrive at four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. The Custom-House officer had gone off for his week-end, and we were gravely informed by the assistant that we must leave all our luggage on the quay, and return to have it examined on the following Monday morning, when the head Custom-House official would attend in person. “What!” we cried, “may we not at least take a valise to the hotel with our night apparel?” “No, you can take nothing till Monday,” was the stolid reply. At this we became desperate, and assured the official that it would be an unheard-of thing to force English people to sleep for two nights in their travelling clothes simply because they had landed on Saturday. For a long time they continued to shake their heads; but finding at last that we were quite determined not to budge without the valise, they reluctantly handed it into our cab, and we drove off to an hotel. Our room at _Hotel Francia_ had the usual glass-fronted verandah, the glass consisting of small panes let into a wooded framework which was painted white. Our host told us that if we kept the verandah windows open when the sun shone, closing them about four o’clock, we should find the room as warm in the evening as if we had a fire. To a certain extent this was correct; but on one occasion we forgot to shut the windows at sunset, and all the warmth that the glass had gathered during the day fled the way it had come, and in the evening the atmosphere of our room was that of a refrigerator. From that verandah we took our first survey of the Coruña thoroughfares. Cabs, whose tops consisted of canvas awnings, passed continually below us, and donkeys were so numerous as beasts of burden that they gave the place quite an Eastern touch. The trams and most of the carts were drawn by mules, and nearly every woman carried some burden on her head.