Toledo was used to travellers in the days of her greatness for, near all the gates, Pisa tells us, there were inns for strangers. Not strangers only, but the bishops and great lords, and sovereigns even, seem to have patronised the inns of Toledo. Alfonso the Perfidious stayed at a posada near the town gates when he came to visit his old protector and host, Almenor, whom he invited to dinner here. More astonishing still than this hospitable provision for travellers, is the fact we learn that there was not only a foundling hospital for unclaimed children, but also several homes for lost or strayed animals. Spain was more advanced in this respect centuries ago than now, for it is pretty certain the race shows no concern that we know of on behalf of forlorn and unprotected brutes. If you would have some dim notion of the castellated and walled aspect of Toledo in Pisa's days, you have only to thread your way through his prolix geographical history of the town. He begins with the magnificent Puerta de Visagra, and when we examine this double gate in its present battered and defaced condition, we cannot carp at the word "sumptuous" which he applies to it. Sumptuous it must have been then, if now it is magnificent. It holds the imperial arms, two eagles and a crown, with castles and lions of middle size gilt, and an inscription. Outside this gate, which, Pisa tells us, was shut at night, there was a broad space, and another entrance without. Entering the city on this side, you came by the parish of Santiago and San Isidro, and the barrier of La Granja. The ascent was made by the old hermitage of the Cross to the Zocodover. Here were two gates in a strong wall, probably half Roman and half Gothic, and this was the entrance to the town. Pisa calls these gates intermediary. Between the Puerta de Visagra and this latter gate in the great tower, he describes another, smaller and less important, which was always closed, and was called the gate of Almohada. Beyond this was another called the gate of the twelve stones, descending from the monastery of the Carmen by the Bridge of Alcántara. Before Pisa's time, this gate was lower, and the twelve stones around obtained it the odd name of _Doce Cantos_, there being supposed twelve fountains once here. Another gate anciently called _Adabazim_, and afterwards _Hierro_, was near the bridge and the mills, on the limits of the lovely gardens of Alcurnia. Above the old hermitage of the Cross were the tower and gate of King Aquila, and above Santo Domingo el Real, the tower of Alarcon, with another intermediate between it and the Zocodover. From this ran round a castellated wall, and here you entered the street of arms by the Puerta de Perpiñan.