Briviesca and Pancorvo 



Pyrenees looked in through the opening vista. We are 

 dehghted to be getting into a mountain district again after 

 all those horrid plains of La Mancha and Valladolid. At 

 Briviesca there is a good inn, and a civil landlord. He took 

 us to see the retablo of Santa Clara, a beautiful oak carving 

 thirty feet high. 



I thought I should have had a chance of selling my 

 revolver, vi^hich would have eased our financial tightness. 

 But vi'hen I had astonished the company w^ith tw^o or three 

 barrels, and the important man likely to buy had been 

 dravirn to witness the miracle, the other barrels (having been 

 loaded long before, and the nipples being rusty) did not go 

 oflF, and the purchaser did. 



If we had got ten or twelve dollars for the pistol, it would 

 have made us independent of selling our ponies at Yrun. 

 The ponies, both of them, were off their feed at Briviesca. 

 About two leagues further on we stopped to let them graze 

 in a clovery ditch by the road-side. The limestone dust of 

 the highway encourages the growth of clover. They say, 

 if you put lime on a moor, it brings up this grass. 



Reaching Pancorvo we found the posada stable under 

 repairs, and had to clear the manger of crumbling mortar to 

 feed our beasts ; but it appeared the slight sprinkling of 

 lime which remained fertilised their appetites, for this time 

 they ate their barley. 



At Pancorvo we fairly entered the mountains by a re- 

 markable gorge. The great green hills, crested and sprinkled 

 with hoary ragged crags, seem like huge diluvian waves 

 solidified and changed to turf and stone. 



We stopped for the night at Miranda, and soon after 

 sunset there came on a violent thunder-storm. The rosy 

 flashes playing among the mountain-peaks, and the rolling 

 thunder echoing down the valleys, were so pleasantly 



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