no benches at all, and your only hope is to get a corner of a wall against which you can lean and be sheltered from the bitter wind. The arrival of the up train brought, therefore, unmixed joy to our party, who managed to secure a compartment to themselves without any smokers (a rare privilege in Spain), and thus got some sleep for a few hours. At six o'clock the train stopped, the railroad went no further; so the passengers turned out somewhat ruefully, in the cold, and gazed with dismay at the lumbering dirty diligences, looking as if they had come out of the Ark, which were drawn up, all in a row, at the station door, with ten, twelve, or fourteen mules harnessed to each, and by which they and their luggage were to be conveyed for the next eight hours. The station master was a Frenchman, and with great civility, during the lading of the diligences, gave up to the ladies his own tiny bedroom, and some fresh water to wash themselves a little, and make themselves comfortable after their long night journey, for there was no pretence of a waiting-room at this station. Reader, did you ever go in a Spanish diligence? It was the first experience of most of our party of this means of locomotion, and at first seemed simply impossible. The excessive lowness of the carriages, the way in which the unhappy passengers are jammed in, either into the _coupé_ in front, or into the square box behind, unable to move or sit upright in either; while the mules plunge and start off in every direction but the right one, their drivers every instant jumping down and running by the side of the poor beasts, which they flog unmercifully, vociferating in every key; and that, not at first starting, but all the way, up hill and down dale, with an energy which is as inexhaustible as it is despairing, till either a pole cracks or a trace breaks, or some accident happens to a wheel, and the whole lumbering concern stops with a jerk and a lurch which threaten to roll everything and everybody into the gorge below. {171} Each diligence is accompanied by a "mayoral," or conductor, who has charge of the whole equipage, and is a very important personage. This functionary is generally gorgeously dressed, with embroidered jacket, scarlet sash round the waist, gaiters with silver buttons and hanging leather strips, and round his head a gay-colored handkerchief and a round black felt hat with broad brim and feather, or else of the kind denominated "pork pie" in England; he is here, there, and everywhere during the journey, arranging the places of the passengers, the stations for halts, and the like. Besides this dignitary, there is the "moto" or driver, whose business is to be perpetually jumping down and flogging the far-off mules into a trot, which he did with such cruelly that our travellers often hoped he would himself get into trouble in jumping up again, which, unfortunately, he was always too expert to do. Every mule has its name, and answers to it. They are