Page:Impressions of Spain in 1866.djvu/50

34 hope is to get a corner of a wall against which you can lean and be sheltered from the bitter wind. The arrival of the up train brought, therefore, unmixed joy to our party, who managed to secure a compartment to themselves without any smokers (a rare privilege in Spain), and thus got some sleep for a few hours. At six o'clock the train stopped, the railroad went no farther; so the passengers turned out somewhat ruefully in the cold, and gazed with dismay at the lumbering dirty diligences, looking as if they had come out of the Ark, which were drawn up, all in a row, at the station door, with ten, twelve, or fourteen mules harnessed to each, and by which they and their luggage were to be conveyed for the next eight hours. The station-master was a Frenchman, and with great civility, during the lading of the diligences, gave up to the ladies his own tiny bedroom and some fresh water to wash themselves a little and make themselves comfortable after their long night journey, for there was no pretence of a waiting-room at this station.

Reader, did you ever go in a Spanish diligence? It was the first experience of most of our party of this means of locomotion, and at first seemed simply impossible. The excessive lowness of the carriages, the way in which the unhappy passen-