The neighbourhood of the hotel continued to be the point of attraction to the inhabitants of Vittoria all the evening; an Infante is a rarity in the provincial towns of Spain, and the citizens testified their sense of the honour of a visit, by assembling in the street opposite to the hotel, and by hanging cloths and mattings of various colours from the windows: a mark of respect, which in Spain is always considered due to royal, or religious processions. Deputations of the principal inhabitants also arrived,--among others, one of Capuchin friars; and to my great annoyance, a band of indifferent music continued to entertain the Infante till after midnight. There was nothing to detain me long in Vittoria, and I hired a cabriolet and two mules, to carry me to Bilbao, the capital of Biscay; the distance is eleven leagues of the country, or something more than fifty English miles, and for this I paid 200 reals; and as I may probably have frequent occasion to mention the expense of travelling, and the value of different articles, the following few explanations will be found of use. Generally speaking, every thing in Spain is calculated by reals, from the price of a ticket to the bull-fight, up to the State expenditure. The value of a real is nearly 2½_d._,--so that four reals are equal to a French franc, or 10_d._ English; all accounts in reals may therefore be easily understood by dividing by four. But in small values, the calculation is made in quartos, eight and a half of which are equal to a real, or 2½_d._ In stating prices, I shall always make use of these two denominations of money, so that the reader may at once be able to substitute English value. From Bayonne, into Biscay, the nearest road is not by Vittoria, but along the sea shore by St. Sebastian; but the muleteers considering the coast road unsafe, from the chances of robbery, I was obliged to take the more circuitous line by Vittoria, which I left about five in the morning, after the usual _refresco_. Chocolate in Spain, is very different from chocolate in England: it is served in a very small cup, about the size of the old India china coffee cup; it is about the consistence of thick cream, and is highly spiced with cinnamon: the traveller in Spain who dislikes chocolate, will often find himself exposed to great inconvenience.