Burgos 



than the present day, are very much less felt when you 

 travel in the old barbarous fashion on horseback, when they 

 can feel your saddle-bags and let you go, than when you are 

 a passenger in steamboats and railways. Then, instead of 

 filtering through by driblets, suspicious packages come in a 

 great volley ; and, as is the case in almost all grievances, the 

 ceremony and delay are much more than the hardship of 

 having your luggage searched. 



I was not so much tired with my twelve miles' walk as I 

 expected to be, and indeed am much stronger than I was. 

 I think I may congratulate myself now fairly on having 

 quitted the condition of an invalid : for, during the greater 

 part of this journey, I have been ten or twelve hours a day 

 in the saddle, and find myself no worse, but the better — • 

 only rather thinner than I was when I left Seville. 



Arrived in Burgos, we had to settle whether, in the 

 present dilapidated state of our finances, it was prudent to 

 go to the best inn ; but being weary and hungry and dusty, 

 the desire of comfortable washing and food and beds, over- 

 came our economical scruples. Leading our beasts in under 

 the lofty portal of the Fonda de las Diligencias^ it appeared 

 that our outward men did not carry any conviction of our 

 respectability to the minds of the hostelry's understrappers. 

 One of them, a handsome, stupid-looking giant about seven 

 feet high, superciliously looking down upon us, inquired 

 what we were come for ? 



No doubt, he simply meant to inform himself what gentle- 

 man's baggage we had undertaken to transport somewhere, 

 and he was merely treating us to the ordinary patronising airs 

 it was his wont to use towards muleteers. But the hungry 

 and weary British lion is not accustomed to such usage. 



" Come for?" we cried in one breath, " Come for? tontillol 

 (you little simpleton !). Is it a custom to ask gentlemen, 



