After this purposeless stoppage, our express train moves on again at a good six miles per hour, and there is no further halt till we reach the ancient city of Avila, founded by Hercules, and the birth-place of St. Theresa. Its decaying old streets, its high mouldering castle, its Gothic houses, and its large churches, have all a very forsaken aspect. It is surrounded by great military walls, lofty, massive, and grey,[6] through which the listless-looking natives have egress from the city into the wilderness around by means of gateways of enormous thickness. There is something sad and impressive in seeing this ancient city, in which there are so many remains of power and grandeur, now given up to the inexorable hand of time and the cold blight of desolation. What a sermon might be preached from such a text on the mutability of all earthly grandeur! As if to make the solemnity of the scene more complete, while we were sauntering during our hour's halt through the dark old streets of Avila, a funeral procession came by, preceded by a troupe of ghoul-like creatures, bearing their stiff and soul-less burden, hooded in black from crown to sole, with scarce a semblance of humanity in them, save the unholy-looking eyes, which, amidst the deep drapery, glanced furtively at us from out the cavernous eyeholes in the masks which they wore. The mournful procession consisted, as usual, of shaven priests, attendants bearing flambeaux, and children singing the Miserere; in a word, there was all the empty pageantry with which the Catholic Church deposits the dead in their last earthly home. The coffin was painted a bright crimson colour, and a key was fastened near the lock by a chain, to be in readiness at the Day of Judgment. When we had taken our places in the train again, the steam was put on, and we moved off, gradually increasing our speed till it reached the unprecedented velocity of nine miles an hour. This greatly alarmed a lady in the carriage, who, no doubt, was of that Spanish Conservative party which prefers things as they are. People in America, even the ladies, take matters much more quietly. An ancient dame was travelling by rail for the first time in her life, and when the "smash up," which is almost a matter of course among our go-a-head friends, came, and fatigue-parties arrived to carry her off with the other wounded on a stretcher, she was quite astonished when told that it was an accident, as she had thought the whole thing a regular pre-arranged part of the business of every-day railway travelling, and took it all quite comfortably. In fact, she was rather interested than otherwise in her initiation into one of those stirring incidents which it is the fortune of travellers to encounter more frequently in America than elsewhere.