Between Pancorbo and Burgos we fell in with three or four little villages, such as Briviesca, Castil de Peones, and Quintanapalla, half in ruins, as dry as pumice-stone, and of the colour of a toast. I doubt whether Decamps ever found in the heart of Asia Minor, any walls more roasted, more reddened, more tawny, more seedy, more crusty, and more scratched over, than these. Along these said walls wandered carelessly certain asses, who are decidedly well worth the Turkish ones, and which I would advise him to go and study. The Turkish ass is a fatalist, and, as is evident from his humble air, resigned to the blows which Fate has in store for him, and which he endures without a murmur. The Castilian ass has a more philosophical and deliberate look; he is aware that people cannot do without him; he makes one of the family; he has read Don Quixote, and he flatters himself that he is descended in a straight line from the celebrated donkey of Sancho Panza. Side by side with these asses were also dogs of the purest blood and most superb breed, with splendid claws, broad backs, and beautiful ears, and among the rest some large greyhounds, in the style of Paul Veronese and Velasquez, of most magnificent size and beauty, not to speak of some dozen _muchachos_, or boys, whose eyes glistened in the midst of their rags, like so many black diamonds. Old Castile is, doubtless, so called, on account of the great number of old women you meet there; and what old women! The witches in "Macbeth" crossing the heath of Dunsinane, to prepare their diabolical cookery, are charming young girls in comparison: the abominable hags in the capricious productions of Goya, which I had till then looked upon as monstrous nightmares and chimeras, are but portraits frightfully like; most of these old women have a beard like mouldy cheese, and moustaches like French grenadiers; and then, their dress! You might take a piece of cloth, and work hard ten years to dirty, to rub, to tear, to patch, and to make it lose all traces of its original colour, and you would not even then attain the same sublimity of raggedness! These charms are increased by a haggard and savage look, very different from the humble and piteous mien of the poor wretches in France. A little before reaching Burgos, a large edifice, situated upon a hill, was, in the distance, pointed out to us. It was the _Cartuja de Miraflores_ (Carthusian convent), of which I shall have occasion, later, to speak more at length. Soon afterwards the spires of the Cathedral displayed their embrasures more and more distinctly against the sky, and in another half-hour we were entering the ancient capital of Old Castile.