All the way from Vittoria, the muleteer who drove the carriage, sung a remarkably beautiful, but somewhat monotonous air. I was greatly pleased with the muleteer’s song, and was anxious that I should not forget it; but I afterwards found that I need not have been apprehensive of this: every where throughout Castile I heard the same air, and in Madrid, nothing else was sung by the lower orders. I was anxious to purchase it, and applied at one of the music-shops, but they told me they dared not sell it; it was forbidden by the government. The air was old Arragonese, but it was revived to new words, in a little comedy that somehow slipped through the censorship a few months before, and related how a certain friar knew too well the road into a certain convent. As the road approaches Bilbao, the mountains that inclose the valley increase in height, make a curve, and run directly into the Bay of Biscay; and Bilbao is situated in their bosom: it is this that gives to Bilbao its peculiar character. Mountains generally diminish in height as they approach the sea; but here, this rule is reversed, and Bilbao possesses the singularity of being a sea-port, and of yet being all but surrounded by lofty mountains. Owing to this, nothing can be more striking and novel than the view of the city where it is first seen from the bridge that crosses the small river about a mile before entering it. I was obliged to leave the carriage at the entrance to the town, and walk to the posada; for it is the rule that no wheeled carriages of any kind are allowed to drive through the streets of Bilbao. This regulation has arisen from a praiseworthy desire to preserve the purity of the water, which is conveyed in a stone tunnel under the streets; all goods are therefore carried through the town either in panniers, on mules, or in sledges, which are provided with a contrivance by which they constantly moisten their path with water.