After we had left the high inland road, we had about three leagues to
the sea side, and the village on its margin where we were to lie; this
road was through a very wild, uncultivated country, over-run with
underwood and tall firs. We saw but few houses and met with fewer
people. When we came near the sea, the country, however, improved upon
us; and the farms, churches, convents, and beacons, upon the high lands,
rendered the prospects every way pleasing. We crossed a shallow river
several times, adorned on both sides with an infinite quantity of tall
beeches, on one of which trees (boy like) I cut my name, too high for
_other boys_, without a ladder, to cut me _out_ again. At length we
arrived at the village, and at a _posada_, than which nothing could be
more dreadful, after the day-light was gone; for beside the rudest
mistress, and the dirtiest servants that can be conceived, there lay a
poor Frenchman dying in the next room to us; nay, I may almost say, in
the same room with us, for it could hardly be called a door which parted
us. This poor man, who had not a shilling in his pocket, had lain twenty
days ill in that house; but was attended by the priests of the town with
as much assiduity as if he had been a man of fashion: he had been often
exhorted by them, it seems, to confess, but had refused. The night we
came, he feared would be his last, and he determined to make his
confession; I was in the room when he signified his desire so to do; and
all the people were dismissed by the parish priest. I returned to my
room, and could now and then hear what the priest said: but the sick
man's voice was too low: his crimes however, I fear, were of an high
nature, for we heard the priest say, with a voice of impatience and
seeming horror, _Adonde--adonde--adonde_?--Where--where--where?

You may imagine, a bad supper, lighted by stinking oil, burning in an
iron lamp hung against the side of a wall, (for there were no candles to
be had) and while the sick man was receiving the last sacrament, would