And on one the watch-tower tall:
On the third are fourteen turrets
On the fourth the city-wall.
One August afternoon I went to visit Labraz, a town of Old Cantabria. I had been told that it was a decayed and dying city, and my spirit, which was at that time depressed by the bitter gloom left on it by the disillusion of romantic dreams, was anxious to refresh itself in the extreme desolation of a town half dead. The city appeared in the distance, with its houses grouped on the side of a hill, standing out yellow against the sky with a humble melancholy air; a few tall dark towers stood among the brown mass of the warped and moss-grown roofs.
I approached Labraz by an exceedingly steep road, full of stones, which after ascending the hill, then passed round the walled enclosure of the town, the remains of bulwarks still standing, the ancient ruined fortifications which followed the irregularity of the hilly ground, rising and descending with the rocks and ravines that sur-
