When light once more shone on our path, we looked up and beheld high overhead beetling crags and detached boulders of rock, suspended apparently so insecurely that a breath might dislodge them from their lofty shelves, and dash them down in ruin upon the passing pigmies beneath. On that spiring pinnacle sits a mouldering castle, where Roderick, last of the Goths, transported the lovely La Cava, who cost him his sceptre and his life. The plains of Vittoria at last appeared spread before us, indistinctly seen in the darkening twilight, with a lunar rainbow hanging over them. Oh! the oppressive heat of Spain! Oh! the suffocating and sultry air! But the Spanish climate is often subject to great changes, and we can only say right glad were we that we took a fool's counsel, viz., our own, and had brought no end of wrappers. Like Job, we had our comforters, and fortunately had carried with us a stout great-coat to this broiling land! FOOTNOTE: [2] Man is naturally a benevolent creature.--ANTONIN. [Illustration: [++] Decorative Image] [Illustration: [++] Decorative Image] CHAPTER IV. BURGOS.--THE FONDA DEL NORTE.--THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY.--SPANISH CHARACTERISTICS.--SCENES IN THE STREETS.--THE CONVENT OF LA CARTUJA.--TOMB OF JUAN AND ISABELLA.--THE CASTLE.--THE CID.--THE CATHEDRAL.--HOW PRIESTS MAKE MONEY. We arrived at Burgos in the midst of a hurricane of piercing wind--wind that was more easily felt by us than it will be understood by our friends in England, who cling to the obstinate notion of the incessant heat of Spain. The cold of that October night, far more intense than an ordinary mid-winter night in England, was made more severe by the utter absence of all comforts, and by the piteous appearance of the natives who shiver and shake all over the country, rolled up into peripatetic bundles of drapery, like denizens of frozen regions. There are people who leave off fires and flannel waistcoats in England because it is the first of April, although, snow may be on the ground; and we have no doubt that several of our friends would have had us array ourselves in white jane pantaloons and linen jackets because we were in Spain. No, there is no reason that, because a man is clever and _au fait_ at all that concerns that state of life to which God has called him in the British metropolis, his meteorological and thermal assertions respecting other countries are to be believed in unreservedly by his friends.