This bright October weather is like the finest July days in England, tempered by a fresh, gentle, and wholesome breeze. We stop at little stations in the midst of the wilderness; in fact, it seems that we stop pretty nearly as often as it suits the guards or engine-drivers, for the stoppages are not confined to stations or villages, but sometimes take place in the middle of fields, where there is no sign of habitation. Some woman, perhaps, may rise from the border of a ditch, where she has been resting, with a child in her arms, and all the officials will get down and have a chat with her, while the good-natured passengers, who take the stoppage as a matter of course, get out and smoke cigarettes. When some lone station, which is represented by one small house, is reached, the carriage windows are immediately surrounded by tottering old men in ancient velvet hats with very broad brims, and with little silk balls dangling therefrom. They are all swathed in a wonderful collection of rags, pinned, sewed, nailed, and tied on to their bodies anyhow, while their legs are bound up in pieces of sacking, and their feet apparently encased in poultices. Where they come from none can tell, nor can man's ears divine their speech--some patois which even native Spaniards can hardly understand. Amongst the specimens of drapery composing the toilet of one poor old man, whose face was simply black from dirt and sun, who seemed actually rotting alive, and who appeared to think there was nothing in his condition to regret, there were two triangular patches of green damask, with roses worked thereon, fastened somehow on to his back, together with a remnant of a sail-cloth shirt. One sleeve of the latter was of yellow cotton, while the other arm was concealed from view by a short mat of horse-hair and a piece of carpet sewn together. A sash of faded scarlet encircled his waist, and his lower extremities were enclosed in inexpressibles made of goat-skin with the hair outside. He had a long stick in his hand, and was accompanied by a lynx-like dog, who devoured greedily grape-skins as they fell from a carriage window. This poor old man had no teeth, only one eye, and was very much bent. He and the other ancients were such masses of dirt that they must have been designed by Providence as places of refuge for destitute insects. These beggars are generally seen in small companies, and it is not advisable to approach them too nearly, as there is a deal of _esprit de corps_ amongst them. Whence the poor wretches come, and where they live, no one can tell, for there is not even one of those decaying old towns, with the big church before mentioned, near their usual haunts. They seem to exist simply--because they don't die--from mere force of habit. There are beggars, of course, in all countries; but such degraded, miserable beings as we meet in beautiful Italy and brilliant Spain, are to be seen in no other part of the world.