The nearest mountain to Padron is green to its summit even in winter; while I was there some ladies climbed to the top in a little less than three hours. Below stretches the valley of the Ulla, one of the most fertile valleys in the province. Everything seems to thrive there,--flax, maize, wheat, the walnut, the filbert and the chestnut, the orange, the lemon, and almost every kind of European fruit tree; bamboos are also grown there; the trellis-work over which the vines are trained is mostly made of them, but the two things that are chiefly grown there are onions and flax. A great deal of linen is spun by the poor women of Padron, but all by hand, not by machinery. About half-way between Santiago and Padron we stopped to look at a church which faced the road, the church of _La Virgen de la Esclavitude_. We found its inner walls covered with pictures, or rather glaring daubs, representing sick people in bed. The bedsteads were of all kinds, wooden beds, iron beds, and children’s cots; all these were thank-offerings brought by people who had been cured in answer to prayer. One picture, representing a sick man in bed, had a prancing horse standing by the bed, because, I was told, the invalid had recovered after making the church a present of a horse; beside another bed three nuns were praying. People make pilgrimages to this church in such crowds that special trains have to be run for them. As we approached the town we passed comfortable-looking houses on both sides of the road with gardens attached. In the gardens we noted fine rhododendrons and tulip trees covered with blossom; the cherry and apple trees were also in blossom. Padron, lying much lower and being much more sheltered than Santiago, is nearly a month ahead in spring-time. We saw orange trees with oranges that looked ripe enough to pick.