them with such patience until they drop into a more moderate pace. Ford has described those exciting starts, and the motion of the “dilly,” as away it goes, “pitching over ruts deep as routing prejudices, with its pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.”
It goes without saying that the observant Ford did not fail to note the vituperative supremacy of the Spanish muleteer. “Their language,” he tells us, “is limited only by the extent of their anatomical, geographical, astronomical, and religious knowledge: it is so plentifully bestowed on their animals—‘un muletier a ce jeu vaut trois rois’—that oaths and imprecations seem to be considered as the only language a mute creation can comprehend: and as actions are generally suited to the words, the combination is remarkably effective.... The Spanish oath is used as a verb, as a substantive, as an adjective, just as it suits the grammar or the wrath of the utterer.” But why, the reader may ask, does the mayoral swear to this degree, or with this fluency? Unless it is a part of his habit, I cannot answer. It is told that a traveller once asked the same question, and received a similar reply. The mayoral had uttered an oath of such peculiar force and aptness that a fellow traveller remarked upon it with good humoured appreciation: “That’s one on the devil!” “But why?” queried the seeker for information, “why does he swear so?” The Spaniard stared in astonishment. “Because he is the mayoral!” was all he said.
In Southern Andalusía.
IDLE as a “painted ship upon a painted ocean,” fair Cadiz sleeps beneath her white mantle and dreams of the succeeding storms that she has endured since Hercules brought her into being eleven hundred years before the advent of the Messiah. For century after century Cadiz played her important part in the world—the world that ended at her glistening shores. Yet it might, from external evidence, have been built yesterday, and whitewashed this morning. But beneath that white covering lies the rust of three thousand years. The natives compare their spotless city to a silver dish; Fernan Caballero describes it as an ivory model set in emeralds. It is an architectural symbol of purity. Extreme neatness and scrupulous cleanliness are its leading characteristics—white is its prevailing and only colour. The Venice of Spain, so far as my opportunities of making a comparison extends, is decidedly the best-kept city in the Peninsula. The impression is heightened by the ever-ready brush of the whitewasher, which keeps the houses and walls in the most immaculate condition.
Although Cadiz is slowly recovering from the decadence into which it was sunk for so long, there is small activity either of commerce, trade, or manufacture to support its seventy thousand inhabitants; and suitable docks have yet to be constructed to enable it to take the commercial rank to which its situation entitles it. Its resemblance to Venice is remarkable. Lying as it does seven miles at sea, the inhabitants could, if they wished it, have had canals instead of streets, for most of the thoroughfares begin and end at the ocean. Coming straight from the
ultra-Moorish Seville with its narrow winding streets, the traveller wonders why in neighbouring Cadiz, which also belonged to the Moors for over five hundred years, the streets should be so much wider and straighter, and why they possess so few patios and other Arabian characteristics. The explanation lies in the fact that almost the entire town was newly laid out and rebuilt after the bombardment in 1596. Cadiz being practically on an island is much cooler than Seville, so that Moorish patios are not essential to comfort, and their places are taken by the turrets on the top of the houses, from whence sea-breezes and a magnificent view can be obtained at the same time.
The history of Cadiz is an epitome of the progress of civilisation up to the time when Spain was the chiefest nation of the world. It capitulated to Hamilcar Barca in B.C. 237, it was fortified by Cæsar, rebuilt in marble by Balbus, and destroyed by the Goths. Its greatness was its misfortune. So rich it was that England in 1596 fitted out an expedition to sack the city. Lord Essex did his work so thoroughly that Cadiz was brought to the verge of bankruptcy, and Spain received the first blow to her supremacy. Two other English expeditions against this place proved unsuccessful; but it was bombarded at the end of the eighteenth century, it was devastated by the plague, and was the theatre of the horrible massacres in the revolution of 1820. Cadiz supplied the ancient Roman epicures with salt fish and anything but proper dancing girls; and was resorted to by philosophers, who came here to study the curious phenomena of the tides. A city with such a history might be expected to be full of antiquarian records; yet, from a mere archæological point of view, it is by no means a place of great attractiveness. In the convent of San Francisco is to be seen the last Murillo, the picture upon which the artist was engaged when he fell from the scaffold and sustained his fatal injuries; but beyond this and the cathedral, which is not remarkable, the city is destitute of works of art.
Moreover, Cadiz is one of the noisiest cities in Spain; but it is, none the less, a delightful city to live in. Here the beggar nuisance is unknown, its society is, with the exception of that of Madrid and Barcelona, the most cultivated in the Peninsula, and its women are the most graceful in Andalusia. The Alameda, where everybody promenades in the evening, commands lovely views of the ocean, the blue of which is varied, according to the light, with rich dark green and royal purple. And in a walk along the sea walls surrounding the city one passes large mercantile storehouses, and mixes with sailors from all parts of the world—negroes and Moors (betokening the nearness of Africa), troops of soldiers who are always at the quick step, and crowds of hardy, picturesque, and sun-browned fishermen.
One does not find in Cadiz the virile gaiety that prevails in Seville. The tone is quieter, more subdued and less fitful. If the Sevillians are not intensely joyous, they are in tears—the people of Cadiz take their happiness as it comes, rather than make it a sacrifice to their subsequent peace of mind. They are as tidy and attractive as their own orderly, sunny streets, and invariably courteous both between themselves and towards strangers. The women are taller than their sisters of Seville, a trifle darker, and a shade less languishing, but—they are Andalusian, and in that admittance the highest compliment to feminine fascination is paid.
Different, quite different from Cadiz, different in situation, tone, and complexion is Malaga. Seen from the shore, the houses stand out in violet and yellow against a background of green and reddish hills, and on either side of the town the mountains stretch out into the distance as far as the eye can reach. The site of the city is excellent; its harbour is one of the best in the kingdom; and in importance it ranks next to Barcelona among the commercial centres of Spain. Its merchants are men of substance, and their villas are objects of beauty in suburbs that are naturally beautiful. But Malaga does not appeal to the heart of the visitor as does Cadiz or Córdova. The certain grandeur that one notes from a distance dwindles almost to vanishing point as one comes nearer; and when one plunges into the narrow, ill-kept, malodorous streets of the lower town, the delusion is dispelled altogether. But one has only to leave the city behind one to regain the first impression of its picturesqueness. If one would see Malaga at its best, an expedition must be undertaken to the summit of the high hill which overlooks the city. The tramway takes one the first part of the journey—the only part that the average Spaniard ever attempts. I am not sure that I blame him for stopping short there. The walk up that brown-baked hill under the fierce rays of the morning sun is an achievement that makes some call upon one’s powers of endurance, but the view from the summit fully atones for the discomforts of the climb. At one’s feet lies picturesque Malaga, set in a huge garden of tropical and semi-tropical floral vegetation; beyond it the blue, clear, glinting Mediterranean stretches far out to where, in the distance, the shores of Africa are dimly visible.
Although the land winds are occasionally variable and trying, the climate of Malaga is one of the most equable in Europe. Winter as we know it is unknown here; and the sugar cane, which is destroyed by the merest suspicion of frost, is cultivated on a large and profitable scale. As an invalid resort it has a considerable repute, but it is as a flourishing commercial centre rather than a sanitorium that Malaga is best known. The raisins of Malaga are famous, the manufacture of sugar gives employment to some thousands of hands, while its wines are widely celebrated. The port receives visits from upwards of 2,500 vessels annually; and although the air of thrift and prosperity is not so marked as it is in Barcelona, and its people lack the sterling integrity and moral balance of the Catalans, there are unmistakable evidences of progress and improvements in its streets. Much building is in progress, the paving of the thoroughfares is receiving attention, and the new stores and warehouses that are being erected are constructed on the most modern plan. Like Cadiz, Malaga is of immemorial antiquity; and, like the white city on the west of Gibraltar, it is singularly deficient in antiquarian monuments. Phœnicians, Carthagenians and Romans occupied it in turn; the Moors caused it to be styled “a paradise on earth;” and the French sacked it in 1810 and walked off with twelve millions of reals in gold and silver. The present cathedral, which was nearly 200 years in the making,
presents a motley appearance. Many architects have put much bad art into its decoration, and with the exception of the magnificently-carved Silleria del Coro, archæologists find little in it to engage their attention.
The reports as to the amount of ignorance that prevails in Malaga are probably exaggerated, since commercial progress and ignorance do not usually go hand-in-hand. But there is no gainsaying the fact that superstition, which is most nearly allied to, and has its foundation in ignorance, is widespread; and the people are notorious for their republican tendencies. The sacredness of human life is only imperfectly understood here; and juries are even, according to official report, culpably averse to bringing in adequate verdicts in cases of manslaughter. The Andalusian is quick-tempered and impulsive—he acts without thinking when he is provoked—and stabbing cases are the not infrequent outcome of the most trifling disagreements. The Procurator Fiscal of Malaga has commented severely upon the leniency with which juries regard such offences. But how can one bring home the heinous nature of manslaughter to a number of men who know themselves capable of committing it within the hour if the provocation should arise; and who realise, moreover, that the person charged only acted on the spur of the moment, and was desperately sorry for his hastiness the moment afterwards? And if the Malaga people are prone to swift individual action, they will act collectively with equal passion and the same entire want of conviction. One might, and possibly would, live all one’s life in the city without coming to any harm, but the reading in the newspapers of frequent impetuous blood-lettings conduces to a feeling of insecurity.
After bustling, thriving Malaga, one finds in Ronda—“the Tivoli of Andalusia”—a haven of wondrous peace and infinite loveliness. Half-a-century ago Ronda was one of the gayest, the most flourishing, the most beautifully-situated towns in the south of Spain. Half-a-century ago it was the grand centre of smuggling for the mountain district of which it was the capital; and at that date “free trade” was a very feasible, highly profitable, and eminently virtuous method of earning a livelihood. But
the decay of smuggling meant the diminution of prosperity and joyaunce. No longer are the streets alive with dancing and the strumming of guitars. Contrabandists in costumes of picturesque splendour no longer linger in its shadows. Ronda has lost its air of thrift and light-heartedness, but the situation of the town still remains to maintain its world-wide renown for beauty. A long tract of table-land terminates, with the abruptness of an ocean-cliff, in a precipice varying in height from 800 to 1,000 feet. On this natural platform stands Ronda above an Alpine valley, in which the orange and olive flourish in rich luxuriance. The view from the bridge is a sheer delight. A chasm, 300 feet wide, divides the old town from the new. It is spanned by a massive wooden bridge, under which, at a depth
of some 700 feet, the Guadalvin rushes forth into open day from the caverns which hitherto have imprisoned its waters. In a bound it clears a huge ledge of rock and dashes onward down the slope, until, having fertilised the green meadows of the valley, it finally empties itself into the green-hued and romantic Guadairo. The sides of the cliff are covered with festoons of moist, fresh creepers; and nothing could be more delightful than the transition from the sun-baked town into these cool depths, where the spray of the waterfall, dropping like unseen, gentle dew, maintains a perpetual freshness.
The Basque Provinces.
THE Basques are a people apart and peculiar in the most acceptable application of the term. They are distinct from the Spaniards of the rest of Spain in type, language, law and custom. They are conservative, shrewd, industrious and intelligent in a high degree. The men possess the hardy and robust appearance common to mountaineers and the symmetry of form which is almost universal in Spain. The women are decidedly handsome, but of a type which is at variance with the characteristic of Spanish beauty. It is enhanced, moreover, by an erect and dignified carriage not usually belonging to peasants, and is attributable principally to a very unpeasantlike planting of the head on the neck and shoulders. But for the difference in dress, many of the village girls, who are universally blondes, might be mistaken for well-bred English or German ladies. But, like all women trained to severe manual labour, their beauty disappears with their youth.
In these provinces of mountain and valley everybody works; and, for the most part, they work their own land. Consequently, Basque farms are small. Five acres, or in other words, just so much land as a man, his wife and family can till, dictates the size of the holding. The Basques, who are the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain, and claim to be the oldest race in Europe, are grievously affected by genealogy. Peppery as the Welsh, proud as Lucifer, and combustible as his matches, as one writer has described them, these Nobleza de España—they are noble by the mere fact of being born in these provinces—fire up when their pedigree is questioned. Yet they recognise no indignity in agricultural employment. Adam, the first gentleman who bore arms, occupied himself in husbandry, and you will not convince a Basque that Adam did not speak Basque.
But without accepting or controverting their pretensions to being the oldest inhabitants of the Continent, these Caballeros hijos de algo are admitted to be the aborigines of the Iberian Peninsula. They have held the provinces of Alava, Viscaya and Guipuzcoa for themselves; they have never been subdued or expelled. Liberty has been their immemorial birthright, and their lives the means by which they have preserved it. The Visigoths never conquered them; the Moors could not prevail against them; and they beat back the Franks who swarmed down upon Spain from the north. While they fought for their homes and their independence their arms were consistently victorious. They are born mountain fighters, and have been distinguished at all times for their great valour; but their Carlist tendencies brought disaster upon them. The conspicuous part they played in both the Carlist wars resulted in the loss of all their special privileges. In particular they resented the order countermanding their exemption from compulsory military service, which they had hitherto enjoyed, and it was thought that they would prove a failure as regular soldiers. But this fear was misplaced; and although Gonzalo de Córdova affirmed that he would rather be a keeper of wild beasts than a commander of Basques, the wearers of the blue blouses and red trousers of the Highland provinces have proved themselves exceptional soldiers when commanded by Basque officers.
To the dwellers on the sea-board, fishing affords a lucrative occupation, and they are considered to be among the best sailors in Spain. The islanders, dwelling in the sub-alpine towns in the midst of green hills, cultivate maize, which is the staple breadstuff, good milk, inferior cheese, and splendid apples. Oranges and palms flourish in the more sheltered districts; but the wine of the country, though wholesome and palatable, is distinctly thin. The hotels are generally very good, and the roads are amongst the best in Spain. The songs and dances of the Basques are of ancient origin, and are entirely different from those in other parts of the Peninsula. Their language is as difficult as Russian, and as ear-pleasing as Welsh. The devil is said to have devoted seven years to the study of it in the Bilboes, and to have mastered exactly three words. Pelota, which is played more or less all over Spain, is zealously cultivated only in the Basque provinces.
The game of pelota is not only interesting in itself, but it challenges the common impression that the Spaniards are an indolent people, who prefer to take their recreation with the least possible physical exertion. In point of fact, Spain is experiencing, in common with England, the dubious blessing of athletic professionalism. Her bull-fighters to-day are all “pros.,” and her pelota players belong to the same category. The game, which would resemble fives if it were not so vastly different, is the most fatiguing I have ever witnessed. So greatly does it tax the constitution, that the career of its paid devotees is limited to three, or at the most, four years. It is played with a four-ounce ball, which has a diameter of eight
inches, and is “volted” about a court, 175 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 40 feet high, by the players, whose hands are encased in leather gloves about two feet in length, protected by basket-work backs. The rallies between good players realise anything between twelve and twenty strokes; and although “soft returns” are not unknown, the majority of the strokes are delivered with all the force of which the players are capable. In a game of fifty up the players will wear a hole completely through the soles of their shoes.
The traveller by the Paris-Madrid route leaves France at Hendaye, the charming little seaside town on the Bay of Biscay, and enters Spain at Irun, which is comparatively modern, is charmingly situated, and is about as much French as Hendaye is Spanish. But except that here the passenger has his luggage examined, changes trains, and puts his watch back twenty-five minutes to mark the difference that is observed between Paris and Madrid time, Irun is of no particular interest: unless, of course, the traveller has plenty of time on his hands, for in that case he will traverse the eight miles to Pasajes, the pretty land-locked harbour which, thanks to the enterprise of a private company, has been made the best port between Coruña and Cherbourg, and ships a third part of the entire exportation of the Spanish wine to France. Pasajes is perhaps the most picturesque port on the north coast of Spain. The tramway also runs over the eleven miles which separate Irun from San Sebastian. This city, which boasts some 33,000 inhabitants, and the favour of royal patronage, is historically interesting on account of the gallant assault by which it was taken by the English forces in the face of the strenuous defence made by the French veterans under General Rey in 1813; it is fashionable by reason of the annual visit of the ex-Queen Regent and the young King, who spend four months in each year in the handsome royal palace overlooking the sea, and it
is beautiful with a beauty that is entirely its own. Here you shall find the tamarisks and the geranium and heliotrope in full bloom far into the autumn, and the birds singing among the foliage, and the Spanish sunlight glinting through the trees and lying hot on the white horse-shoe of glistening sand. And even on the stillest day the blue Atlantic rollers break fiercely upon the rocks beneath the quaint bit of old town, and curl themselves magnificently along the firm, smooth beach. La Perla del Oceano, the bathing establishment, is a popular resort, and, in the season, thousands of bathers disport
themselves on the yellow sands. The old ramparts of the land defence works are now demolished, and their site is occupied by the handsome streets of the Parte Nueva, or New Town. The Calle de la Alameda, stretches across the isthmus that divided the old town from the new. And beyond the old town the gaunt eminence of Monte Orgullo, crowned by the castle of La Mota, rises sheer out of the sea, and forms a scene which fills the eyes with beauty and the mind with memories that do not easily fade. The Grand Casino, which cost £80,000, the bull-ring, the churches of Santa Maria and San Vicente, the Palacio de la Diputacion, and the Pelota Court—these lions of San Sebastian are but so many specks in the broad impression one carries away of ocean, and sky, and the black mountain frowning majestically through the golden sunshine.
Bilbao, the most important city in the Basque provinces, and one of the most progressive and flourishing places in Spain, is the capital of Viscaya, and gained its proud title of La Invicta Villa de Bilbao by successfully withstanding three sieges by the army of Don Carlos. The river Nervion, upon which it is situated, is navigable for steamers up to the town, eight and a-half miles from its mouth. The old town, which is composed of a mass of narrow streets, closely packed between the river and the hills—the city is built in a mountain gorge—was famous for its iron and steel manufactures in the days of Elizabeth; and Shakespeare uses the terms bilbo, a rapier, and bilboes,
fetters. The new town, on the more spacious left bank of the river, is well built; the principal streets are straight and broad, and the houses are substantial. Three stone and two iron bridges cross the river between the old and the new Bilbao. The city owes, of course, its prosperity mainly to the enormous deposits of iron ore on the left bank of the Nervion, which, though known since the earliest times, have only been systematically exploited during the last quarter of a century. Long lines of steamers are constantly loading iron ore, chiefly for Cardiff, Newport, Glasgow, and Newcastle; and the annual amount of British tonnage entering Bilbao exceeds, with the exception of Antwerp, that of any other foreign port in Europe. Pig iron is the staple export—red
wines, wool, and other products are numerous, but unimportant.
The iron ore mines (red and brown hematite) in the Somorrostro range and district are largely in the hands of English capitalists. These mines, which began to attract the attention of British iron masters about 1870, occur chiefly in the mountain limestone, and are worked in open quarries. Short railways and tramways have been made to San Nicolas on the Nervion; and a wire tramway has been constructed by the Galdames Mining Company, who possess a cliff of iron ore about a mile long and 280 feet high. The tramway carries the ore through a tunnel, 600 feet long, to the quay. The Landore Siamese Steel Company have important hematite mines connected with the river by a wire tramway, carrying baskets for loading.
Bilbao is largely modern and wholly commercial, and its public buildings are not notable. But its thoroughfares are full of movement, and the shady arenal, in the old town—the focus of the life of the whole city—contains the principal hotels, the chief cafes, and the New Theatre. The land which this beautiful promenade now occupies was at one time very boggy, and swept by the tides. Now the two principal avenues are asphalted. The Church of San Nicolás de Bari, which faces it, is one of the city parish churches. It was built towards the end of the fifteenth century on the ruins of the sailors’ and fishermen’s little church. This church has suffered greatly on account of floods, especially during the year 1553. It was closed in 1740 as ruin threatened it. When it fell, the present one was begun in 1743. During the last war it was used as a provisioning station; and, after repairs, was opened for worship on the 21st of January, 1881.
In Northern Spain.
THE great bulk of the Spanish people know as little of Galicia and the neighbouring Principality of the Asturias as the average Englishman knows of the Hebrides. Nor can they judge of the inhabitants of these provinces from the few individual Galicians who emigrate to Madrid any more than we in England can form an idea of Italians from the specimens who perambulate the London streets with a piano organ and a monkey. The Madrileño comes across a few Galicians in the capital engaged in menial services, and speaking a harsh, strange patois, which he finds some difficulty in understanding; but the Gallegan in exile is a very different person from the man you meet in his own land of rain and mist, where the scenery is exquisite, the hotels are famously bad, and devotion is the chief recreation of the community. At home these people are poor, but hardy; possessing little intelligence, but great capacity for work; knowing little comfort, but nursing a passionate attachment for the country of their birth. Many of the young women are remarkably handsome, but drudgery and hardship early tell their tale, and very few of them retain their good looks beyond the age of twenty. The country, for the most part, is poor to barrenness; the peasantry work day and night for mere subsistance; the cottages, which do duty for bedroom and nursery, stable, kitchen, rabbit hutch, pigsty and parlour, are damp and dirty, and destitute of beds or chimneys. The climate is rainy, the surface is mountainous, and the roads are generally bad. Small wonder is it that muleteers and commercial travellers constitute the principal visitors to Galicia—for those who have a soul above scenery, and an ambition beyond fishing, the country is practically without attraction.
The single province of Oviedo, which constitutes the principality of the Asturias, harbours a people who have remained unconquered alike by Roman and Moor. There is protection, if not complete safety, in a country of mountain and valley, of damp and cold; and the Asturians have ever been able to spread themselves over the land and farm their straggling holdings in comparative security. They have cultivated maize for their staple food, poached the hills and rivers for game and fish, cultivated the art of dancing, and lived in terror of the evil eye from the most ancient times; and despite damp, hard fare, and harder toil, they have learnt
the secret of longevity and the charm of a gracious civility of manner. Minerals in abundance are common to both Asturias and Galicia; and while the former is the richer in coal and iron, the latter has been worked for gold, silver, and tin from the time of the Roman occupation. It is on their mineral resources that these provinces will have to depend for their future prosperity.
After the cities of the South—Barcelona, Toledo, Granada, or even modern Madrid—the Northern towns are small, shabby, and unimportant. Coruña, the chief seaport of Galicia, though interesting to Englishmen as being the landing place in Spain of John of Gaunt, and the harbour from which the invincible Armada sailed to conquer and Romanise Great Britain, is a place of only secondary importance. The city was founded by the Phœnicians; its name is probably derived from Columna, the Phœnician Pharos, or lighthouse; and its famous lighthouse, the Tower of Hercules, has had its counterpart from the earliest days. The Phœnicians, who made gain rather than discovery the aim of all their expeditions, were attracted to Galicia and to the province of Orense particularly by reason of its rich deposits of tin. Coruña in ancient days was the principal port of the North-west Coast, and the most westerly town in Europe. It is still the chief military station in Northern Spain, and ranks as a commercial city of the first importance.
The hill-girt city of Santiago, though knowing nothing of commercial prestige, and having no part in the military system of the country, is to the traveller of far more interest than the capital of the province. For dead as it now appears to be, with the hand of death on its crooked, branching streets, and its crazy, deformed squares, which echo the pilgrims’ footfalls to the deaf ears of the dead, it was at one time the most celebrated religious centre in Spain—the goal of fanatics from every corner of Europe, the Mecca of countless thousands of theologians, and the tomb of one of the personal companions of Christ. Although the ancient glory of Santiago has departed, although
its broad-flagged pavements are no longer thronged by the feet of the devout, and it has been much shorn of its former civil and religious dignities, the city is still the See of an Archbishop with a cathedral, two allegiate churches, and fifteen parishes. The cathedral is erected on the site of the chapel which was erected by Alonso II. to mark the spot where Theodomer, Bishop of Iria Flavia, is said to have discovered the body of St. James the Apostle; and the city, which sprang up around the memorial, bears the Spanish name for St. James the Elder. The original cathedral, which was finished in 879, consecrated in 899, and destroyed by the Moors in 997, was replaced by the present edifice in 1078. Whether one believes or not the tradition of the foundation of the cathedral—which, by the way, is no mere tradition in the mind of the Galician—one cannot but regard this mighty pile of stone with awe, and recognise in it the expression of an influence which was once felt throughout the Christian world. Even to-day it is one of the most frequented pilgrim-resorts in Europe.
One passes through Pontevedra, a picturesque granite town, with arcaded streets and ancient houses bearing armorial shields, on the journey to Vigo. Here, as everywhere on the Galician coast line, the parish priest goes down to the shore one day in every year and blesses the sea; here also the oysters are excellent and abundant, and here the watchman’s night chant is heard in the streets. The call of the sereno, or watchman, who dates from the building of the ancient walls of Pontevedra, and the chapel of Alonso II. of Santiago, seems to catch the imagination of the traveller, and hurl him back into the mediæval ages, when life was a state that men fought to retain, and religion was a power for which they laid it down. The sereno, with his theatrical cloak wrapped about him, his axe-headed staff, his lantern, his majestic stalking walk, and his thrilling chant, “Ave Maria Purissima. Son las diez y sereno,” seemed to me impressive, unreal, almost fantastic. At ten o’clock he passed me in the deserted square, at eleven he was offering up his quavering invocation beneath my window. Galicia has little in common with the towns of the South—it retires to rest early in order to be up betimes.
At Vigo a small fragment of the ancient sea walls yet remain, but the ruins that Lord Cobham made of the town in 1719 have been obliterated, and in place of the fortified port, which Drake visited in 1585 and 1589, we have a thriving, modernised town. Vigo is an important place of call for Mediterranean steamers, it is one of the chief centres of the cattle trade export to London, and the port of the mineral provinces of Pontevedra and Orense.
The town of Orense, the capital of its province, is reached by the magnificent old bridge that spans the river Miño. Though now deprived of three of its arches, which were removed to give the road more width, and also of the ancient castle which defended the entrance, it continues to attract the attention of the traveller on account of its elegant and bold construction, its ample proportions and majestic appearance. Tradition says it is Roman, but many learned writers find nothing to confirm this assertion. It is quite likely that a bridge existed there previously; but the present one, it would appear, was built by order of Bishop Lorenzo during the first half of the thirteenth century, and has since undergone many alterations, including those to the largest arch, which is more than forty-three metres in width, and the reconstruction of which was completed about the middle of the fifteenth century. In the Roman days Orense was celebrated for its warm baths. These three springs, which are still in existence, flow copiously from fountains one above another, but the waters have lost their medicinal virtues—it is
only a supposition that they ever possessed any—and are now used for domestic purposes. The present cathedral, which is an obvious imitation of the cathedral at Santiago, was raised in 1220. The cathedral, the warm springs, and the bridge over the Miño, comprise the three marvels of the city.
Equally ancient, but in many ways more interesting, is the capital town of Lugo. It boasts a cathedral which shares with San Isidoro of León the immemorial right to have the consecrated Host always exposed; Roman walls in an excellent state of preservation that entirely surround the city, and an establishment of baths. The bath-house contains 200 beds; and the springs, which contain nitre and antimony, are good for cutaneous diseases and rheumatism. The river Miño, which is the glory not only of Lugo but of Galicia, rises in the mountains, some nineteen miles from the city.
As the centre of a beautiful and variegated country, which affords good sport for the angler, and scenery of enchanting loveliness to attract the artist, Oriedo, the capital of the Astionas, has its charms; but the seaport of Gijon, with its tobacco manufactory, its railway workshops, its iron foundry, and glass and pottery works, is a much more thriving and important town. Gijon, like Santander, is a flourishing port; and both have gained immensely in importance of late years. While the latter, with its handsome modern houses, makes a more splendid show, its drainage and sanitary arrangements leave much to be desired, and the harbour at low water is sometimes most offensive. Both towns are of Roman origin, but Gijon is the most pleasantly situated on a projecting headland beneath the shelter of the hill of Santa Catalina, and the harbour is the safest on the North Coast. It exports apples and nuts in enormous quantities, coal, and iron, and jet; while its shores are much frequented by bathers during the summer months.
It is currently believed, and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement, that if a visitor in any town in England stops the first native he meets and inquires as to the objects of interest that the place possesses, he will be referred immediately to the principal hostelry of the town. If you wander in London, and ask your way about, you will be directed right across the city by references to public-houses, which are the only landmarks that the Cockney ever dreams of studying. In Spain, cathedrals are as ubiquitous as inns are in England. You may be sure of finding comfortable accommodation for man and beast in most English towns, and in the Peninsula you can be quite as confident of “bringing up” against a cathedral—if nothing else. In León, the capital of the province of the same name, and in Salamanca, the second city in the province, we find the same state of things existing—the cathedral first and the rest nowhere. Yet these two cities boast of a noble history of ancient splendour and old-time greatness, and with this—and their cathedrals—they appear to be content. León, in the time of Augustus, was the headquarters of the legion that defended the plains from the Asturian marauders; and when the Romans withdrew, it continued as an independent city to withstand the continued attacks of the Goths until 586. The city yielded to the Moor, was rescued by Ordoño I., and retaken by the Arabs with every accompaniment of inhuman atrocity. Its defences were rebuilt by Alonso V. nearly 400 years later, its houses were repeopled, and it continued to be the capital of the Kings of León until the court was removed to Seville by Don Pedro. Its present miserable condition is a lamentable appendix to such a history. Its streets are mean, its shops are miserable, and its inns are worse. Nothing is left to it but its cathedral.