id, I directed my route to Leon by the Palencia road;
the greatest part of the way was barren and uninteresting to a high
degree, consisting of wide dusty plains scantily sown with barley, but
unrelieved with trees or waters. The people are ignorant and brutal,
though they boast themselves to be Old Castilians, which is however not
the fact, as these desolate and benighted regions belong to what was once
the kingdom of Leon. Their inhospitality is so great that I have been
refused a glass of water in their villages, though I asked it in the name
of God; though I have subsequently obtained it by paying for it, for
their hearts can always be opened by the key of interest, though
inaccessible to every noble and generous sentiment. I suffered
dreadfully during this journey, as did likewise my man and horses, for
the heat was the fiercest which I have ever known, and resembled the
breath of the simoom or the air from an oven's mouth. Leon is
beautifully situated in a smiling blooming country abounding in grass and
trees, and watered by many streams which have their source in a mighty
chain of mountains in the neighbourhood, which traverse a great part of
Spain and are connected with the Pyrenees; but unfortunately it is
exceedingly unhealthy, for the heats of the summer-time raise noxious
exhalations from the waters, which generate all kinds of disorders,
especially fevers and tertian agues. It is the Feversham of Spain.

_Nomen cui infausta Fata dedere febris_ [sic].

I had scarcely been at Leon three days when I was seized with a fever,
against which I thought the strength even of my constitution would have
yielded; for it wore me almost to a skeleton, and when it departed, at
the end of about a week, left me in such a deplorable state of weakness
that I was scarcely able to make the slightest exertion. I had however
previously persuaded a bookseller to undertake the charge of vending the
Testaments, and had published my advertisements as usual, though without
very fervent hope of success, as Leon is a place where the inhabitants,
with very few exceptions, are furious Carlists and ignorant and blinded
followers of the old Papal Church. It is, moreover, a Bishop's see,
which was once enjoyed by the prime councillor of Don Carlos, whose
fierce and bigoted spirit still seems to pervade the place. Scarcely had
the advertisements appeared when the clergy were in motion; they went
from house to house, banning and cursing