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 Phoenicians; its name is probably derived from Columna, the Phoenician Pharos, or lighthouse; and its famous lighthouse, the Tower of Hercules, has had its counterpart from the earliest days. The Phoenicians, 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.

LEÓN—THE CATHEDRAL.