A still wilder scheme was broached, to connect Aviles on the Atlantic with Madrid, the Asturian Alps and the Guadarrama mountains to the contrary notwithstanding. The originator of this ingenious idea was to receive 40,000_l._ for the cession of his plan to the company, and actually did receive 25,000_l._, which, considering the difficulties, natural and otherwise, must be considered an inadequate remuneration. Although the original and captivating prospectus stated “_that the line had been surveyed, and presented no engineering difficulties_,” it was subsequently thought prudent to obtain some notion of the actual localities, and Sir _Joshua_ Walmsley was sent forth with competent assistance to spy out the land, which the Jewish practice of old was rather to do before than after serious undertakings. A sad change soon came over the spirit of the London dream by the discovery that a country which looked level as Arrowsmith’s map in the prospectus, presented such trifling obstacles to the rail as sundry leagues of mountain ridges, which range from 6000 to 9000 feet high, and are covered with snow for many months of the year. This was a damper. The report of the special meeting (see ‘Morning Chronicle,’ Dec. 18, 1845) should be printed in letters of gold, from the quantity of that article which it will preserve to our credulous countrymen. Then and there the chairman observed, with equal _naïveté_ and pathos, “that had he known as much before as he did now, he would have been the last man to carry out a railway in Spain.” This experience cost him, he observed, 5000_l._, which is paying dear for a Spanish rail whistle. He might for five pounds have bought the works of Townshend and Captain Cook: our modesty prevents the naming another red book, in which these precise localities, these mighty Alps, are described by persons who had ridden, or rather soared, over them. At another meeting of another Spanish rail company, held at the London Tavern, October 20, 1846, another chairman announced “a fact of which he was not before aware, that it was impossible to surmount the Pyrenees.” Meanwhile, the Madrid government had secured 30,000_l._ from them by way of _caution_ money; but caution disappears from our capitalists, whenever excess of cash mounts from their pockets into their heads; loss of common sense and dollars is the natural result. But it is the fate of Spain and her things, to be judged of by those who have never been there, and who feel no shame at the indecency of the nakedness of their geographical ignorance. When the blind lead the blind, beware of hillocks and ditches. [Sidenote: POST-OFFICE.] CHAPTER VI. Post-Office in Spain--Travelling with post-horses--Riding post--Mails and Diligences, Galeras, Coches de Colleras, Drivers, and Manner of Driving, and Oaths.