lly, in Toledo; where the churches, the greater number of which
belong to convents, are not seen, as elsewhere, scattered singly among
the masses of the habitations, but are frequently to be found in
clusters of three or four, whether united by the same walls, or facing
each other at the two sides of a street. It may, perhaps, afford you a
short relief to pick your way over the somewhat rugged pavement of a
few of the Toledo streets, and take a survey of the exterior town, which
our present destination requires us to traverse in its entire extent. I
must inform you that, for the success of this enterprise, the stranger
stands in absolute need of a pilot, without whose assistance his
embarrassments would be endless.

Toledo scarcely boasts a street in which two vehicles could meet and
continue their route. Most are impassable for a single cart; and, in
more than one, I have found it impossible to carry an open umbrella.
Such being the prevailing width of the streets, their tortuous direction
causes a more serious inconvenience. He who has attempted the task of
Theseus, in the mazes of some modern garden labyrinth, will comprehend
the almost inevitable consequence of relying on his own wits for finding
his way about Toledo,--namely, the discovery that he has returned to his
point of departure at the moment he imagined that half the town
separated him from it. This result is the more favoured by the
similarity of the streets and houses. No such thing as a land-mark. All
the convents are alike. You recollect at a particular turning, having
observed a Moorish tower; consequently, at the end of the day, the sight
of the Moorish tower leads you on, buoyed up by doubly elevated
spirits, in the required direction, most anxious to bring the tiring
excursion to a close: but this tower leads you to the opposite extremity
of the city to that you seek, for there are half a dozen Moorish towers,
all alike, or with but a trifling difference in their construction.

Nor is this obstacle to solitary exploration unaccompanied by another
inconvenience. I allude to the continual ascents and descents. The
surface of the mountain on which Toledo is built, appears to have been
ploughed by a hundred earthquakes, so cut and hacked is it, to the
exclusion of the smallest extent of level ground. To carry a railroad
across it, would require an uninterrupted succession of alternate
viaducts and tunnels. In consequence of this peculiarity, the losing