At Vergara, which is the place where the treaty between Espartero and Maroto was concluded, I saw, for the first time, a Spanish priest. His appearance struck me as rather grotesque, although, thank heaven, I entertain no Voltairean ideas with regard to the clergy; but the caricature of Beaumarchais' Basile involuntarily suggested itself to my recollection. Just fancy a black cassock, with a cloak of the same colour, and to crown the whole, an immense, prodigious, phenomenal, hyperbolical, and Titanic hat, of which no epithet, however inflated and gigantic, can give any idea at all approaching the reality. This hat is, at least, three feet long; the brim is turned up, and forms, before and behind the hat, a kind of horizontal roof. It would be difficult to invent a more uncouth and fantastic shape; this, however, did not prevent the worthy priest from presenting a very respectable appearance, and walking about with the air of a man whose conscience is perfectly tranquil about the form of his head-dress; instead of bands, he wore a little collar (_alzacuello_), blue and white, like the priests in Belgium. Beyond Mondragon, which is the last small market-town, the last _pueblo_ of the province of Guipuzcoa, we entered the province of Alava, and were not long before we found ourselves at the foot of the hill of Salinas. The _Montagnes Russes_[3] are nothing compared to this, and, at first sight, the idea of a carriage passing over it appears as preposterous as that of your walking head downwards on the ceiling like a fly. This prodigy was however effected, thanks to six oxen which were harnessed on before the mules. Never in my whole life did I hear so horrible a disturbance; the mayoral, the zagal, the escopeteros, the postilion, and the oxen-drivers, tried which could excel each other in hooting, swearing, using their whips, and exercising their goads; they thrust forward the wheels, held up the body of the coach behind, and pulled on the mules by their halters and the oxen by their horns, with a most incredible amount of fury and vehemence. The coach thus placed at the end of this long string of animals and men, produced a most astonishing effect. There were, at least, fifty paces between the first and last beast in the team. I must not forget to mention, _en passant_, the steeple of Salinas, which has a very pleasing Saracenic form. From the top of the hill the traveller beholds on looking back, the Pyrenees rising one above the other until lost in the distance; they resemble immense pieces of rich velvet drapery, thrown together by chance and rumpled by the whim of a Titan. At Royane, which is a little further on, I observed a magical effect in optics. A snowy mountain-top (_Sierra Nevada_), that the proximity of the other mountains had till then veiled from our sight, suddenly appeared standing out from the sky, which was of a blue so dark as to be almost black. Soon afterwards, at all the edges of the table-land we were traversing,