But there is nothing rapid in Spain just yet. Opposite the hotel in Madrid where I was staying, an old building had been torn down to make room for another. Workmen were engaged in removing the debris to renew the foundation. You would suppose that horses and carts, or wheelbarrows and shovels, would be in use. Such modern improvements had not reached the capital of Spain. One man with a broad hoe hauled the dirt into a basket made of grass, holding half a bushel; another man took the basket and carried it a rod to another man, who handed it to another a few feet above him, and he emptied it on a pile of dirt up there, and sent the basket back to be filled again. And so, day after day, a job that with our tools and appliances would be done in a few hours, was here spun out indefinitely. Yet the palaces and cathedrals and fortresses of the southern climes have all been erected at this snail’s pace, numbers and cheapness making up for enterprise and force. In Paris, in the street, a small steam-engine was at work to mix mortar, and the ease with which the process was put through revealed the secret of the wonderfully rapid transformations going on in that ever increasingly beautiful city. Here in Spain, to this day, where there are smooth, good roads for wheels, they still put a couple of baskets across the back of a donkey, and fill them with dirt or brick or stones, and so transport them, even when they are putting up the largest buildings. The architecture of Spain is more imposing than that of any other country in Europe. It is the climate that makes men differ so much in their physical as well as mental manifestations.