When your carriage has mounted the
hill and passed the evening promenade of the To-ledans, the quaint
triangular Place,--I had nearly called it Square,--"waking laughter in
indolent reviewers," the Zocodover, you are lost in the dae-dalian
windings of the true streets of Toledo, where you can touch the walls on
either side, and where two carriages could no more pass each other than
two locomotives could salute and go by on the same track. This
interesting experiment, which is so common in our favored land, could
never be tried in Toledo, as I believe there is only one turnout in the
city, a minute omnibus with striped linen hangings at the sides, driven
by a young Castilian whose love of money is the root of much discussion
when you pay his bill. It is a most remarkable establishment. The horses
can cheerfully do their mile in fifteen or twenty minutes, but they make
more row about it than a high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and the
crazy little trap is noisier in proportion to its size than anything I
have ever seen, except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an
excursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable;
let it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the better,
for every door is a study.
It is hard to conceive that this was once a great capital with a
population of two hundred thousand souls. You can easily walk from one
end of the city to the other in less than half an hour, and the houses
that remain seem comfortably filled by eighteen thousand inhabitants.
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