Our carriage stopped near a picturesque village, through which lay our path leading to the Bridge of Alonso III. In a shed as we passed I saw some carts of the “singing wheel” kind, and took the opportunity to study their make; the walnut wood axles, as smooth as satin, were as thick as a man’s thigh, the wheels were solid disks of oak with iron-bound edges.
We entered one of the cottages; it was built with great solid blocks of granite, and had walls three-quarters of a yard thick; such cottages last for generations. They are deliciously cool in summer and warm in winter, for each has a great oven built into the wall and forming an excrescence on the outside, not unlike the mud ovens of Central Asia. Here the bread is baked; while near it, hanging from a hinge on the wall like a picture, is the _escaño_, or wooden dining-table; it takes up no room, and is on the principle of the seats in the corridors of trains, and never in the way; two hooks in the ceiling, a couple of yards apart, support two loops of cord, and in these loops rests a long pole; on the pole hang the clothes of the family. This too is on the same principle as the wardrobes of Turkestan; they, like the table, can be got out of the way in a moment when their room is required. A small baby boy in a quaint wooden cradle delighted us with its beautiful brown eyes, and its little sister standing near also had magnificent eyes. Opposite the kitchen, across the narrow passage, we opened another door, expecting to see another dwelling room, but behold, it was a cattle stall, dark, with no windows, and containing one solitary cow, who looked at us with great surprise. The baby’s mother informed us that the cows were always kept in the houses, and that only the bullocks were out ploughing.
The interior of the next cottage was shown to us by its owner, an old woman wearing a yellow straw hat with a black ribbon band round the low crown, crossed in two short ends at the back; in a shed outside we saw piles of freshly mown hay full of daisies, and aromatic with field herbs. Fowls were running about in the kitchen, which also did duty as a hen-coop. We noticed a crucifix on a shelf in the bedroom. As we came out again into the lane, a long-legged pig met us at a gallop, and a man trotted briskly past on a mule.