This peasantry is by instinct well-bred, proud of a pure descent, by nature a gentleman, a _caballero_. A traveler"s life and pocket are absolutely secure in these unfrequented northern provinces of "dark and scowling Spain." For a century those who have turned aside from the beaten track have brought back the same tale of courtesy and hospitality. There is much of Arcadian gentleness among these unlettered people. The Spanish _labrador_ may not read or write, but he cannot be called ignorant; statistics here do not guide one to a true knowledge.
The country people hand down in the primitive way, from one generation to the other, a ripe store of human wisdom, that often gives them a wider outlook on life and a deeper strength of character than that of the educated man who shallowly criticises them. They are unspoiled and very human, the women essentially feminine, the men essentially manly; daily this note of virility strikes one,--one grows to love their expressive, beautiful word, _varonil_. "The man in the saloon steamer has seen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things that divide men,--diet, dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa, or in the ears as in Europe. The man in the cabbage field has seen nothing at all; but he is thinking of the things that unite men,--hunger, and babies, and the beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky."
When one can say a thing like that, one is born to appreciate Spain.
Will not Mr. Gilbert Chesterton go there and study some day her untamable grand old qualities and describe her as she should be described? If such a country population had had good government during the past three hundred years instead of the worst of tyrannies, where would it stand to-day? Though such a surmise is foolish, for perhaps it is because of its isolation that the Spanish peasantry is racy and vigorous. Knowing the hopelessness of battling against corruption in high places in Madrid, it lived out of touch with modern life, elevated by its intense faith, the hard-won inheritance from the _Reconquista_,--and a peasant"s faith is his form of poetry and ideality, which when taken from him makes him lose in refinement and charm.
Back in the Basque provinces the new idea had dawned on us that this was not a spent, degenerate race, but a young unspoiled one, and every excursion in the country parts of Spain made deeper the a.s.surance of red blood coursing in her veins. Corrupt government has deeply tainted the city cla.s.ses, has made loafers, and men who open their trusts to the silver key, but the heart of the people is sound. It has been tragically wounded by rulers to whom, an heroic trait, it has ever been loyal. If a country after centuries of misrule had the same power to govern herself as a nation that had had enlightened government for the same length of time, would not one of the best arguments for good government be lost?
It may be a long time before Spain learns the restraint of self-rule.
But go among the vigorous mountaineers of the north, talk with the patient, sober Castilian _labrador_, watch the Catalan men of industry and you will see the possibility of her future. A n.o.ble esprit de corps controls the Guardia Civil who are the keepers of law and security in Spain, to whom a bribe is an insult. Let the same spirit extend to the other departments,--to the post, to the railway, the civil government; let the judge sit on an impregnable height; let the priest of Andalusia have as solemn a realization of his office as the priest of Navarre, of Aragon, of old Castile; let the women be given a wider education (though may nothing ever change their present qualities as wives and mothers), and Spain is on the right road.
Cavadonga was merely a two days" trip from Oviedo, yet we had to forego it. The weather was too abominable; while Malaga on the southern coast of Spain has an average of but fifty-two rainy days in the year, this city on the northern coast has only fifty-two cloudless days. The thought of a rickety diligence over miles of muddy roads kept enthusiasm within bounds. After a short pause in the Asturian capital we took the train back to Leon. The valleys were a veritable paradise; now we skirted a wide river flowing under heavily-wooded hills, now we crossed fields covered with the autumn crocus, and saw from the balconies of the farmhouses yellow tapestries of corn cobs hung out to dry.
Some day, not so far distant as an ideal government in Spain, the lover of independence and untouched nature will come to these northern provinces instead of going to hotel-infested Switzerland. The temperate climate, the trout and salmon rivers, the courtesy of the people, make these valleys between the mountains and the sea an ideal tramping and camping ground for the summer.
THE SLEEPING CITIES OF LEoN
"I stood before the triple northern porch Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say: "Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot Of faith so n.o.bly realized as this.""
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
There have been many efforts to divide Spain into right-angled departments similar to those of her neighbor France. The individual land throws off such efforts to bring her into geometric proportion: never can her thirteen immemorial divisions, her thirteen historic provinces be wiped out. Each is an ent.i.ty with ineradicable characteristics and customs. Their boundaries may seem confused on a paper map, but they are reasonable in the flesh and blood geography of mountains and river valleys, or the psychological geography of early affiliation and conquest.
No Alfonso or Ferdinand will ever be King of Spain, but King of the Spains, _Rey de las Espanas_. _Mi paisano_, the term which stands for the closest bond of fellowship, is used by an Aragonese of an Aragonese, by a Catalan of a Catalan, never by an Aragonese of an Andalusian, or a Catalan of a Castilian. The independent Basque provinces, (where the monarch is merely a lord) the free mountain towns of Navarre, stiff-necked Aragon, these never will merge themselves in Old Castile.
Nor can Catalonia, self-centered, humming with manufactures and seething with anarchy, understand pleasure-loving Andalusia, that basks under fragrant orange trees as it smiles its ceaseless _manana_. Valencia and Murcia, where crop follows crop in prodigal fruitfulness are the ant.i.thesis of desolate Estremadura, and of that immortal desert of Don Quixote the denuded steppes of New Castile, to their north. And the mountain provinces of Galicia and the Asturias, of idyllic hill and dale, yet with seaports fast awakening to commercial life, look with little sympathy on the sluggish province of Leon that borders them.
Industrial advancement is on its gradual way in Spain, but there is not a hint of its movement in this oldest of the separate kingdoms. Zamora, Astorga, Leon, Salamanca, the romantic cities of the earlier days of chivalry, lie asleep; the whistle of the railways has failed to rouse them. You must lay aside all theories of modern comfort here, and make the tour in the spirit of a pilgrim lover of the antique and picturesque. What else could be expected in a province where the peasantry still embroider their coa.r.s.e linen sheets with castles and heraldic lions, in a land where even the blazonry of a city rings with a psalm, _Ego autem ad Deum clamavi_. The centuries of forays have bequeathed a hardy endurance to the people, but they are the cause at the same time of the scanty population of the plains, the tragic evil of central Spain.
We got to the city of Leon the day of a horse fair. Fresh from wide-awake Oviedo, it was like stepping back into an older world; here was old Spain much as it was in the time of Guzman[13] the Good, the defender of Tarifa in 1294, whose _casa solar_ faced the plaza where the fair was held. The peasants who bargained in groups, wore toga-draped capes and wide-brimmed felt hats edged with an inch of velvet; every horse in Spain must have been gathered there, and an equal number of kind-eyed woolly little donkeys, essential factors of a Spanish scene.
"The Castilian donkey has a philosophic, deliberate air," wrote Theophile Gautier on his sympathetic tour in the Peninsula seventy years ago, "he understands very well they can"t do without him; he is one of the family, he has read "Don Quixote," and he flatters himself he descends in direct line from the famous a.s.s of Sancho Panza."
A step beyond the horse fair brought us to ma.s.sive Roman walls with frequent semi-circular towers; Leon"s name comes from Augustus" 7th Legion who fortified it against the highlanders of the north. Built into the walls is the remarkable church of San Isidoro encrusted with later work, but with the strong Romanesque lines still prominent. The pilgrims who flocked from Europe to Santiago Compostella in the Middle Ages were partly the means of bringing this style into Spain; thus San Isidoro is of Burgundian origin, just as Santiago Cathedral resembles Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, and the Catalan churches show Lombard features. Though the Spaniard adapted the style to his own character, adding the original feature of outside cloisters for the laity, its importation nipped in the bud a just beginning national architecture, whose loss cannot but be regretted. San Isidoro has a privilege seldom given, the Blessed Sacrament being exposed every day of the year, and always before its lighted altar one sees veiled figures kneeling. It served as the pantheon for the kings who followed Ordono II--twelfth in descent from Pelayo--who removed his capital from Oviedo here, and the ancient burial chamber still has ceilings painted in the stiff Byzantine manner with obscure color, hard lines, and lack of perspective, probably the oldest paintings in Spain. The "Romancero" tells how Jimena, the gallant, golden-haired wife of the Cid, came here after the birth of her child to attend Ma.s.s. She wore the velvet robes given her by the king on the day of her marriage, a richly jeweled hair-net, gift of the Infanta Urraca, her rival; around her neck painted medals of San Lazaro and San Pedro, _santos de su devocion_, and so beautiful was she that the sun stood still in his course to see her better. At the church door the king met her and escorted her in honor, for was not her husband away fighting the infidel for his monarch? There is so true a ring to the old ballads that Jimena lives a real personage.
"_Oviedo la sacra, Toledo la rica, Sevilla la grande, Salamanca la fuerte, Leon la bella_" runs an old verse on Spanish Cathedrals. And the Cathedral of Leon merits its name. It is harmoniously beautiful, pure French-Gothic, graceful and elegant, cla.s.sic if the word is permissible for the unrestrained individualism of Gothic art. Built in one age without intermission, in 1303 the Bishop announced that no further contributions were needed, and the centuries since have left the church untouched. Here no cold Herrera portal usurps some lovely pointed work and Churrigueresque extravagancies are not prominent: the late restorations have followed the first plans.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright, 1910, by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CATHEDRAL OF LEoN]
Always excepting the _Portico de la Gloria_ in Santiago, the west doorways of Leon Cathedrals stand for the best in Spanish sculpture. The statue of the _Virgen Blanca_ in the center is famous. Around her the saints and apostles are grouped in appealing att.i.tudes;--out of proportion though they may be as to hands and feet, their sincerity covers all flaws: here, a homely face with care-worn wrinkles of goodness; there, one beaming in satisfaction to be standing in such a chosen band. The lunette over the central door is delightful. On one side, in Heaven, a clerk plays the organ, while a boy blows the bellows, and groups stand chatting near, for a Spaniard"s idea of bliss, in those days also, took the form of ease and desultory talk. h.e.l.l, on the opposite side, not to be outdone, has two urchins blowing bellows as well, not to make music but to quicken a fiery caldron into which devils are thrusting the sinners. The enjoyment of the old sculptor in his Heaven and h.e.l.l was too keen to be confined in the lunette and he has spread himself over the curving of the arches; in spite of time and retouching these three doorways show exquisite detail chiseling.
"About their shoulders sparrows had built nests And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch, Now on a miter poising, now a crown, Irreverently happy."
Within Leon Cathedral all is quiet and solemn, a true beauty of holiness. There is no clutter of side chapels in the nave but a sheer sweep of windows filled with the jeweled gla.s.s of Flemish masters.[14]
These windows come as a surprise in a land where churches are guarded from the sun, and often the open triforium and clearstory, as at Avila, are walled up later to darken the interior. The chancel and choir are worth detail study. The _coro_ seats have panels carved with single figures,--saints with their emblems, warriors with raised visors, placid-faced nuns, thoughtful bishops, gallant pages with their crossed feet gracefully poised,--all of a n.o.ble type, with high brow and aquiline nose. Spain has comparatively nothing to show in the way of frescoes, she had no early Masaccio, no Giotto, no Filippo Lippi, to paint the costumes and features of his generation, but wood carvings are her subst.i.tute; in them, and in her unrivaled tombs can be read the contemporary history of warrior, bishop, and page. The _retablo_ of the High Altar is of the same simple elegance as the rest of the church. The usual towering one of carved scenes would have been singularly out of place, it is appropriate for the big dark interior of Seville Cathedral, but here are grace and restraint instead of grandeur and mystery, and most suitable are the ancient paintings of varying sizes, gathered from scattered churches and framed together. Radiating round the chancel are chapels that give to the exterior view of the apse a truly French-Gothic air, flying b.u.t.tresses supporting the cap of the _capilla mayor_.
Romanesque, Gothic, and Plateresque are each well represented in Leon City. In the last style is the noticeable convent of San Marcos that stands isolated outside the town beside the swift blue-green river. The Knights of Santiago built a resting-place on their pilgrimage route back in the 12th century, but the present building is of Isabella"s day, and the architect has given free rein to his silversmith"s arabesques and medallions, and scattered pilgrim sh.e.l.ls all over the facade of the church. We tried to get into the Museum, now in the convent, as it contains some good wood carvings, but an aged beggar at the door explained "_Manana_," the easy "to-morrow," as prevalent in Leon as in Andalusia,--then rising to the occasion as only an Italian or Spanish beggar can, he swept open his toga-draped cape, smiling as he pointed to the entrance door: "To-morrow, after your morning chocolate, it will be open for you."
It was sunset as we turned away. The long ma.s.s of San Marcos stood boldly against the red glow of the sky. The horizon was outlined by the blue mountains of Asturias. With our imagination filled with the old days when pilgrims flocked here from England, from the forests of Germany, from the Po and the Danube, suddenly over the ancient bridge rode a troop of cavaliers on prancing steeds, in cloaks and plumed hats.
The kindly blessed illusion hid the fact that our pilgrim-knights were st.u.r.dy peasants in the national _capa_, riding their long-haired horses back from the city fair.
"Sin el vivo calor, sin el fecundo Rayo de la ilusion consoladora Que fuera de la vida y del mundo?"
asks one of Spain"s poets of the 19th century, Nunez de Arce, and in his native country it takes but little effort of the imagination to repeople the solemn churches, the narrow city streets, or the treeless plain with the romantic figures of the past.
The following day at dawn, after a miserable night in rooms like icy death, a true pilgrim night of endurance, we took the train for the west. As we entered the railway carriage _Reservado para Senoras_ a sleepy railway-guard stumbled out of the further door; all through the journey in the north, we roused these cozily-ensconced railway-officials, for so rare are ladies alone on this route, that the conductors have fallen into the habit of sleeping in the carriage reserved for them.
When our tickets were collected we were given many a severe look for daring to upset a _cosa de Espana_.
On the way from Leon to Astorga, little over thirty miles, the realization of the old pilgrim route is vivid. Before reaching Astorga comes the paladin"s bridge,[15] of orbigo, where in the reign of Isabella"s father ten _caballeros andantes_ challenged every pa.s.sing pilgrim to a bout of arms; if a lady came without a cavalier to fight for her, she forfeited her glove, if any knight declined to fight he lost his sword and spur. The age of knight errantry which Cervantes has haloed with a deathless charm, breathes in this historic Pa.s.s of Honour.
The leader, Suero de Quinones, came of the great Guzman family, to which St. Dominic belonged, and of which the Empress Eugenie was a scion. To show his captivity to his lady, every Thursday he wore an iron chain round his neck, but when victor in this tourney, it was removed with solemnity by the heralds. Suero"s sword is to be seen to-day in the Madrid Armory where in an hour more of Spain"s real history is learned than in years of reading.
The Roman walls of Astorga, seen from the railway present an imposing appearance: here, as at Leon and Lugo, the frequent half-circular towers do not rise above the crest of the walls. Astorga must have looked just like this when the pilgrims rode by to the shrine of St. James. A closer inspection spoils the illusion however, for the proud city that once ranked as a grandee of Spain is to-day a very tattered and worn hidalgo, and there is a sad air of desolation about its plaza and crumbling walls. Whether or not it was because our ramble was by early morning before the inhabitants were astir, at any rate I brought away a picture of a depopulated town. There were but a few silent worshipers under the cl.u.s.tered piers of the late-Gothic Cathedral, whose reddish tower is the important feature of the distant view. What had tempted us to pause a night in Astorga was the wood-carved _retablo_ by Becerra in the Cathedral, but we found it by no means equal to the work of the carvers in Valladolid. Becerra had studied under Vasari in Rome, and the influence is shown too plainly. There is a curious weather c.o.c.k on the church, a wooden statue called Pedro Mata, dressed in the costume of a singular tribe that lives in some thirty villages near by. The origin of the Maragatos is involved in mystery; some say they are the descendants of Moors taken in battle, some of Goths who sided with the Moors. During all these centuries they have kept separate from the people about them, like gypsies they marry only with themselves. They should not be confounded with _gitanos_, however, for the Maragatos are honest and industrious; they are the carriers of the countryside, with the privilege of taking precedence on the road. Here and there in Spain one stumbles on a strange, isolated relic of the past such as this. Astorga was still sleeping, in the literal as well as figurative sense, when we left; a walk on top of the walls looking out over the Leon plain, a regret that we could not sketch the artistic church of San Julian, with its faded green door and crumbling portal, and we turned south. On the train I discovered that a five franc piece given me in change by the innkeeper, was nothing but a bit of silver-washed bra.s.s advertising the cakes of one Casimiro in Salamanca, and I, seeing the king"s effigy, had thought it a genuine Spanish dollar,--it is easy to be caught napping in Leon.
Zamora is not many miles from Astorga and like the other sleepy towns of the province, it too seems to feel it has a right to a long pause in obscurity after its heroic centuries of Moorish warfare. The great hour of the city was the time of the Cid; the "Romancero" should be in one"s pocket here. One of its stirring incidents is the death of King Ferdinand I, in 1065, and its sequel of battles and sieges. The king lies on his deathbed, holding a candle, great prelates at his head and his four sons on his right hand. With the fatal propensity of Spanish rulers to bequeath discord, he divides his kingdom among his sons; to Don Sancho, Castile; Leon to Alfonso; the Basque provinces to Garcia; the fourth son already was of enough importance, "_Arzobispo de Toledo, Maestre de Santiago, Abad en Zaragoza, de las Espanas, Primado_." The king"s daughter Urraca, she who had given the Cid"s wife, Jimena, her jeweled hair-net, now complains bitterly that she is left out of the inheritance, so her dying father gives her the fortress-city of Zamora, "_muy preciada, fuerte es a maravilla_," and "who takes it from you let my curse fall on him." In spite of which threat her wicked brother Sancho, besieges the city,--a Spanish proverb for patience runs: "_No se gano Zamora en una hora._" With Sancho comes his chief warrior Roderick Diaz de Bivar, given the t.i.tle of Cid Campeador, Lord Champion, by the Moorish envoys who here met him. The Cid had wellnigh fought an entrance into the city when the intrepid Urraca ascends a tower--to-day called the Afuera Tower--and delivers her famous scolding.
"Afuera! Afuera! Rodrigo, El soberbio Castellano!"
"Out! Out! Rodrigo, proud Castilian! Remember the past! When you were knighted before the altar of Santiago, and my father, your sponsor, gave you your armor, my mother gave you your steed, and I laced on your spurs! For I thought to be your bride, but you, proud Castilian, set aside a king"s daughter to wed that of a mere Count!" And the ballad tells how the Cid, hearing her upbraiding with emotion, retired with his men.
The only present attraction of the decayed town is its Cathedral, set high above the Duero on the edge of the bluff along which Zamora stretches. It was built by the Cid"s confessor, Bishop Geronimo, the dome above the transept crossing being an original feature which the bishop was to elaborate later in the old Cathedral of Salamanca; as Trinity Church, Boston, is copied from this last, Zamora has a special interest for the visitor from New England. We had a four hours" pause there, ample time to see the city. It was raining so dismally that my fellow traveler decided not to face a certain drenching, as the long-drawn-out town had to be traversed before reaching the Cathedral.
In an unfortunate moment I started out alone for what I supposed would be a leisurely exploring of a venerable city. Fleeing in distress would better describe the reality, for every hooting boy and girl in Zamora followed at my heels. Whether it was a white ulster or an automobile veil tied over my hat as the wind was high, or just the unaccustomed figure of a stranger in those narrow streets, an excited crowd pursued me the whole length of the town. In front, walking backward, open-mouthed, went a dozen urchins, and behind came a long brigade I hardly dared look back on, it so increased with every step. Men hastened to their shop doors to wonder at the crowd, and the pa.s.sers-by stood still in astonishment; a feeling of horror came over me at such publicity. In vain I fled into churches in the hope of escaping the relentless little pests; when I emerged they greeted me with howls of pleasure. I angrily shook my umbrella at them, but that only added to the glorious excitement. Here and there a kind woman came to the bothered stranger"s help, and scattered the crowd. The children merely scampered down side streets to meet me again in still greater numbers at the next corner. It is easy to laugh now that it is over, but at the time there is small amus.e.m.e.nt in fleeing through a foreign city pursued by forty hooting youngsters, to have them press round you in a stifling circle when you pause to look in your book, to have them gaze long and seriously at you, then burst into uncontrollable laughter so that in desperation you begin to feel if you have two noses or six eyes. We had decided that in most of the unfrequented towns of Spain, the children were a nuisance; in Zamora they were positive vampires. A visitor in the future had best wear black, a black veil on the head, a black prayer-book in the hand, as if on the way to church, then resembling other people, the children may let her pa.s.s. But a white ulster and a red guide book are magic pipes of Hamelin to lure every idle child in Zamora. In spite of wind and rain, and a lengthy disappearance within the Cathedral, it was only on reentering the station, several hours after they had first seized on their prey, that the unsolicited escort left me, and even then they hung round the door till the shriek of the engine told them the escaped lunatic who had given them so splendid an afternoon"s entertainment was out of reach.
GALICIA
"Blessed the natures sh.o.r.ed on every side With landmarks of hereditary thought!
Thrice happy they that wander not lifelong Beyond near succour of the household faith, The guarded fold that shelters, not confines!
Their steps find patience in familiar paths Printed with hope by loved feet gone before Of parent, child or lover, glorified By simple magic of dividing Time."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago,--perhaps this claims too much for the Spanish pilgrimage shrine? It would not in the Middle Ages, when the Christians of all Europe flocked there to pray beside the tomb of St. James the Elder, the patron of Spain invoked in the battle cry of her chivalry for a thousand years, "_Santiago y cierra Espana!_"--"St. James and close Spain!" A Latin certificate used to be given to every pilgrim, and it was kept among family records, for there were properties that could only be inherited if one had gone to Santiago Compostella. To-day Spaniards are the only devotees, though as I write I see that a band of English pilgrims with the Archbishop of Westminster at its head is visiting the far-off corner of Galicia. Though few travelers turn out of their way there, it is one of the most characteristic spots to be seen in Spain, a solemn old granite city, with arcaded streets and vast half-empty caravansaries darkened with humidity and age.
It takes over fifteen hours to go from Leon to Santiago, but the journey is a beautiful one, with mountains and fertile valleys, and rivers such as the Sill and that gem of the province, the Mino. At Monforte the railway branches, one line goes to Tuy and Santiago, and the other turns up to Lugo and Coruna. We took this last, tempted by accounts of Lugo.
It is indeed a unique little city, walled around without a break by Roman battlements forty feet high, on the top of which is the fashionable promenade of the town. With its walls and the view from them, it closely resembles Lucca. Lugo was a surprise in various ways.
It had a hotel, the "Fernan Nunez," so up-to-date that it boasted a tiled bathroom with hot water and a shower bath. Not only the comfortable inn but the streets of the town were a model of propriety.
As always, our steps turned first to the Cathedral, spoiled outside, as is unfortunately the way in Spain, by those two disastrous centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth, but within being of the lovely transition period, Romanesque as it merged into Gothic, with the arches just slightly pointed. The irrepressible Churriguera has worked himself into the inside of the church too; his canopy over the High Altar is abominable, though it would take more than that to detract from the simple solemnity of such a church. Lugo is one of the holiest spots in the Peninsula, like San Isidoro in Leon, it claims the privilege of perpetual exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, only more privileged than Leon, exposed night as well as day. So proud is the province of this ancient custom that the Host is represented on the shield of Galicia.
No matter at what hour you enter the Cathedral, there are worshipers; two priests always kneel before the tabernacle, and they never kneel alone. The scenes of humble piety drew me back to the church again and again with compelling attraction. To me a Spaniard praying unconsciously before the altar is unequaled by any act of worship I have witnessed; not even the touching Russian pilgrims in Jerusalem kissing the pavement in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, nor the Arab at sunset kneeling alone in the desert, can impress more powerfully. It seemed as if this tranquil shrine of Lugo spread an influence of uplifting thought through the whole contented little town; in the quiet afternoon a withered grandmother knelt with her hands on the head of a little tot of six who repeated the prayers that fell from the old lips, or three young women of the upper cla.s.s sought a retired corner of the church to repeat together their daily chaplet; now in a side chapel, a peasant thinking herself un.o.bserved, in a glow of devotion, encircled the altar on her knees.
On leaving the west door of the Cathedral, we ascended the inclined path that leads to the promenade on top of the walls. It was sunset, an exquisite hour to look out on the well-wooded countryside, through which meandered the trout-filled Mino. In the distance were mountains. No wonder the Romans, who ferreted out most of the choice spots of Europe, used to come to this city for the thermal baths. The handsome modern Lugonians strolled around the ramparts, pausing to chat here and there in the semicircles made by the numerous towers of the wall. Now a white-haired matron draped in the national mantilla, loitered leisurely by, with some of the higher ecclesiastics of the Cathedral; now a mother and two grave, pretty daughters pa.s.sed, watched discreetly by the young beaux. Evidently far-off little Lugo, tucked away in the unknown northwestern corner of Spain, had a social life that sufficed for itself, with no envy of Madrid and San Sebastian. The local contentment found everywhere in the country struck me as admirable. Will "progress"
unsettle it? We could have stayed a month in Lugo. To fish in the Mino, to ramble over the fertile country, to feel about one peaceful, contented human beings, would make a summer there a happy experience.
When we went on to Coruna, a commercial town that, like seaports the world over, has a rough populace, we were glad to have first seen Dona Emilia Pardo Bazan"s loved province at pretty Lugo. In travel there must always be, I suppose, some places that one slights; one knows if one stayed long enough they might show a pleasanter side. We treated Coruna in this way. Sir John Moore, buried at midnight during the Peninsula War, was our a.s.sociation with the town before going there, and for all we saw of it Sir John will remain the chief a.s.sociation of the future.