From Zamora, cheered by the recollection of perhaps the most gorgeous sunset and the clearest moonlight that I ever saw, I made my way across country to Benavente. It is a ten hours’ drive over fields, through streams and ditches, and nowhere on a road upon which any pains have ever been bestowed; and when I say that the country is flat and uninteresting, the paternal benevolence of the government which leaves such a district practically roadless will be appreciated. Beyond Benavente the case is still worse, for the broad valley of the Esla, leading straight to Leon, is without a road along which a tartana can drive, though there is scarcely a hillock to surmount or a stream to cross in the forty miles between a considerable town and the capital of the province! Soon after leaving Zamora some villages were seen to the right, and one of them seemed to me to have a church with a dome; but my view of it was very distant, and I cannot speak with any certainty. From thence to Benavente no old building was passed. [Illustration: No. 12. BENAVENTE. EAST END OF STA. MARIA. p. 102.] Benavente is the most tumble-down forlorn-looking town I have seen. Most of the houses are built of mud, rain-worn for want of proper thatching, of only one story in height, and relieved in front by a doorway and usually one very small hole for a window. There is, however, a church--Sta. Maria del Azogue--which made the journey quite worth undertaking. It is cruciform, with five apses projecting from the eastern wall, that in the centre larger than the others.[110] The apses have semi-domes, the square compartments to the west of them quadripartite vaulting in the three centre, and waggon-vaults in the two outer bays. The transepts and crossing are vaulted with pointed barrel-vaults at the two ends, and three bays of quadripartite vaulting in the space between these two compartments; and the internal effect is particularly fine, owing to the long line of arches into the eastern chapels and the rich character of most of the details. The nave and aisles no doubt retain to some extent their old form and arrangement, but most of the work here is of the fifteenth century, whilst that of the eastern part of the church is no doubt of circa A.D. 1170-1220. The west front is quite modernized. The transept walls are lofty, and there is a simple pointed clerestory above the roofs of the eastern chapels, and a rose window over the arch into the Capilla mayor. The smaller chapels have each one window, the centre chapel three windows with the usual three-quarter engaged shaft between them, finishing in the eaves-cornice. The south transept has a fine round-headed doorway, but all its detail is that of early-pointed work. It has an Agnus Dei surrounded by angels in the tympanum, the four Evangelists with their emblems in one order of the arch, bold foliage in the next, a deep scallop ornament in the third, and delicate foliage in the label. The