We spent the night at Medina, and departing early next morning, passed through much the same country as the day before, until about noon we reached a small _venta_, distant half a league from the Duero; {293a} here we reposed ourselves during the heat of the day, and then, remounting, crossed the river by a handsome stone bridge, and directed our course to Valladolid. The banks of the Duero in this place have much beauty: they abound with trees and brushwood, amongst which, as we passed along, various birds were singing melodiously. A delicious coolness proceeded from the water, which in some parts brawled over stones or rippled fleetly over white sand, and in others glided softly over blue pools of considerable depth. By the side of one of these last sat a woman of about thirty, neatly dressed as a peasant; she was gazing upon the water, into which she occasionally flung flowers and twigs of trees. I stopped for a moment to ask a question; she, however, neither looked up nor answered, but continued gazing at the water as if lost to consciousness of all beside. “Who is that woman?” said I to a shepherd, whom I met the moment after. “She is mad, _la pobrecita_,” said he; “she lost her child about a month ago in that pool, and she has been mad ever since. They are going to send her to Valladolid, to the _Casa de los Locos_. {293b} There are many who perish every year in the eddies of the Duero; it is a bad river; _vaya usted con la Virgen_, _Caballero_.” {293c} So I rode on through the _pinares_, or thin scanty pine forests, which skirt the way to Valladolid {293d} in this direction. Valladolid is seated in the midst of an immense valley, or rather hollow, which seems to have been scooped by some mighty convulsion out of the plain ground of Castile. The eminences which appear in the neighbourhood are not properly high grounds, but are rather the sides of this hollow. They are jagged and precipitous, and exhibit a strange and uncouth appearance. Volcanic force seems at some distant period to have been busy in these districts. Valladolid abounds with convents, at present deserted, which afford some of the finest specimens of architecture in Spain. The principal church, though rather ancient, is unfinished: it was intended to be a building of vast size, but the means of the founders were insufficient to carry out their plan. It is built of rough granite. Valladolid is a manufacturing town, but the commerce is chiefly in the hands of the Catalans, of whom there is a colony of nearly three hundred established here. It possesses a beautiful _alameda_, or public walk, through which flows the river Escueva. The population is said to amount to sixty thousand souls.