Engage a mounted guide, and disfatigue
Our weary bodies with two hours’ repose.
Then, rising in the dark of night, we go
And wonder how the practised guide can find
The labyrinthine way, how he can tell
The rocks and waters manifold (from snow
Just thawed, and pushing for the lowest place)
With such sure step to evitate at night.
At last a little village we descry, and thunder at a cottage door, but, alas! the inhabitants of this cottage persist in a death-like silence and a dread repose. Thus we remain, we know not where, in a very cold night. At length the guide goes to another house by himself, and gets a Galician with straw torches, which are very pretty and convenient.
The road is very dreary and unpleasant, and still three leagues to Villadita. On arriving we get a woman to show us the way to the Corregidor’s. It was three o’clock in the morning. Corregidor looks out of his window and says with a loud voice, “Alguacil.”[24] The old Alguacil leads to one and another, but we make him give us a smart-looking house with windows to it. The mistress makes a rail, but first the maid comes to the balcony and says, “Good morning, gentlemen.” “A curse, you ugly witch,” says Bernardo, “is this a time for the compliments of the morning?” When we get into this house it is so mouldy, forlorn, and faded fine that, late as it is, we try another, where we find a man in bed in every nook and corner. Get very comfortably lodged, and find that we are only nine leagues from Vigo.