away, and set out from Madrid about the middle of October. But when we
came to the edge of Navarre, we were alarmed at several towns on the
way, with an account that so much snow was fallen on the French side of
the mountains, that several travellers were obliged to come back to
Pampeluna, after having attempted, at an extreme hazard, to pass on.

When we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me that
had been always used to a hot climate, and indeed to countries where we
could scarce bear any clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor,
indeed, was it more painful than it was surprising: to come but ten days
before out of the Old Castile, where the weather was not only warm, but
very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyrenees mountains, so
very keen, so severely cold, as to be intolerable, and to endanger
benumbing and perishing of our fingers and toes, was very strange.

Poor Friday was really frighted when he saw the mountains all covered
with snow, and felt cold weather, which he had never seen or felt before
in his life.

To mend the matter, after we came to Pampeluna, it continued snowing
with so much violence, and so long, that the people said, winter was
come before its time; and the roads, which were difficult before, were
now quite impassable: in a word, the snow lay in some places too thick
for us to travel; and being not hard frozen, as is the case in northern
countries, there was no going without being in danger of being buried
alive every step. We staid no less than twenty days at Pampeluna; when
(seeing the winter coming on, and no likelihood of its being better, for
it was the severest winter all over Europe that had been known in many
years) proposed that we should all go away to Fontarabia, and there take
shipping for Boardeaux, which was a very little voyage.