By attending to a few simple rules, a tour of some months’ duration, and over thousands of miles, may be performed on one and the same horse, who with his rider will at the end of the journey be neither sick nor sorry, but in such capital condition as to be ready to start again. We presume that the time will be chosen when the days are long and Nature has thrown aside her wintry garb. Fine weather is the joy of the wayfarer’s soul, and nothing can be more different than the aspect of Spanish villages in good or in bad weather; as in the East, during wintry rains they are the acmes of mud and misery, but let the sun shine out, and all is gilded. It is the smile which lights up the habitually sad expression of a Spanish woman’s face. The blessed beam cheers poverty itself, and by its stimulating, exhilarating action on the system of man, enables him to buffet against the moral evils to which countries the most favoured by climate seem, as if it were from compensation, to be more exposed than those where the skies are dull, and the winds bleak and cold. As in our cavalry regiments, where real service is required, a perfect animal is preferred, a rider should choose a mare rather than a gelding; the use of entire horses is, however, so general in Spain, that one of such had better be selected than a mare. The day’s journey will vary according to circumstances from twenty-five to forty miles. The start should be made before daybreak, and the horse well fed at least an hour before the journey is commenced, during which Spaniards, if they can, go to church, for they say that no time is ever lost on a journey by feeding horses and men and hearing masses, _misa y cebada no estorban jornada_. [Sidenote: TRAVELLING PACE.]