In The Calle De Alcala, Flowing To The Prado
Out Of The Puerta Del Sol, There Passed A Current Of Farm-Carts And
Farm-Wagons More Conspicuous Than Any Urban Vehicles, As They Jingled
By, With Men And Women On Their Sleigh-Belled Donkeys, Astride Or Atop
The Heavily Laden Panniers.
The donkeys bore a part literally leading in
all the rustic equipages, and with their superior intellect found a way
through the crowds for the string-teams of the three or four large mules
that followed them in harness.
Whenever we saw a team of mules without
this sage guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team
of them attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to
dispense with the path-finding donkeys.
To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more
or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open
victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to be
ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It
"follows as the night the day" that the coupe is not in favor, and that
in its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out
of Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled
in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express
for my service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short
drive to the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious
loss in pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as
bad.
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