Annette M. B. Meakin

A walled city—Beautiful views—A Casa de Huespedes—Chocolate—Partridges and trout—Bearing the cold—Rainy months—Damp in the air—The university—The medical college—The modern university building—Treasures of the library—The most ancient writing preserved in Spain—The reading-room—The natural history museum—Government of the university—Pharmacy—Cases of accidental poisoning—Unruly students—Capilla de las Animas—The Alameda—Santa Susana—The finest view of Santiago—A church of refuge—San Felix de Solovio—The Plaza de Alonso XII.—The Pepys of Galicia—A bull fight—Fountains—Water-carriers—A Gallegan wedding—The Carnival—A superfluity of chimneys—The nuns of San Payo—The Convent of Santa Clara—A private museum—SeÑor Cicerons’ collection of coins—His valuable torques—The use of torques—The Dublin collection—Prehistoric gold jewellery—Iberian inscriptions

THE name of Santiago has been given to one of the judicial departments of the province of CoruÑa, which contains ninety-nine parishes, with a total population of nearly eighty-two thousand souls. The town of Santiago de Compostela has a population of about twenty-five thousand, just about half that of CoruÑa; it is still the seat of an archbishopric and a university town; it has never been without an archbishop since the year 1120. In the Middle Ages Santiago was a walled city, but the walls have almost entirely disappeared, and the houses now cover the hill and even spread down its steep slopes into the surrounding valley. As we have seen, the hill on which Santiago stands was covered with pine trees until the discovery of the Apostle’s tomb in the ninth century, and the cathedral, built upon the spot where the tomb was found, is practically the centre and heart of the town, which, as far as its situation is concerned, might well be called the Perugia of Spain. All round it are beautiful valleys, covered, summer and winter alike, with verdant green; and encircling the valleys are picturesque mountains, spurs of the Pyrenees, between whose peaks other vistas open out, so that on clear days the eye can travel as far as it will, over hill and dale, for many a mile. Like Perugia, Santiago has beautiful views on every side, and its air is mountain air. Here automobiles have preceded railways, just as in Siberia railways have preceded roads. There is no railway between CoruÑa and Santiago, and until 1906 the only means of transport were hired carriages and a coach drawn by six horses. The coach does the journey in seven hours, but now there is a regular service of motor cars which take you there in less than four hours. The road, which passes through the little town of Ordenes, is good, and the scenery fine; it is practically uphill all the way, for CoruÑa is on the sea-level, while Santiago is perched on a hill at a height of 500 feet, and surrounded by mountains. In winter Santiago is many degrees colder than CoruÑa, while in summer it is very much cooler. Although the days of pilgrimages to the sepulchre of St. James are practically over, the hotels and boarding-houses are always full of Spanish travellers during the summer months.

We stayed at a Casa de Huespedes which was famed for its liberal table and good cooking, and where some forty students from the university and a number of commercial travellers sat down to dinner every day. The mistress of the house superintended the cooking, while the master himself waited on the guests. Every one was well cared for, and all were satisfied. I never heard a complaint during the three months that I was there. I am sorry to say that the good lady died a short time after our departure, at the early age of forty-two. For breakfast most of the guests took a small cup of boiling-hot chocolate, so thick that a spoon would stand up in it, and into this they dipped their bread or biscuit, finishing up with a glass of cold milk, which was always served with chocolate. A popular proverb referring to Santiago, says, “Where there are many canons, there is the best chocolate.” And Santiago is indeed famous for its chocolate.

During the months of January and February we dined and supped, at least five days out of seven, upon plump partridges and delicately flavoured trout. Both were cooked in oil, and the fish was invariably served after the meat, according to the Spanish custom. Local red wine was liberally supplied with every meal, and olla podrida took the place of the partridges on Fridays. Butter we never saw, except on one occasion when we had asked for that luxury. We took care not to repeat the request.

There are no fireplaces in the houses of Santiago. Sometimes, when snow was falling and it was freezing hard, the students would gather round a charcoal brazier while waiting for their dinner, but most of us, fearing the headachy effects of charcoal fumes, kept away from them, contenting ourselves with foot warmers and double clothing. The amount of clothing one can bear in a stone house without a fire in the middle of January is wonderful. One lady told me she seldom went out in cold weather on account of the weight of her clothes. Spaniards bear cold very well, and I think they must be healthier than people who sit all the winter in heated rooms. The men are great smokers, and, as Ford remarked, more smoke issues from labial than from house chimneys.

January and February are rainy months as a rule, and as there is not much sun, the washerwomen do as little laundry work as possible till March, when they can spread their linen on the green hillsides and get it bleached to a spotless white by the strong sunshine. In early spring, mountain mists cover the town for days together, and at such times it is useless to hang anything out to dry, for the water refuses to evaporate. I tried for four days in succession to dry a hand towel, and found it damper on the fourth day than on the first, in spite of the fact that the sun shone brightly each day.

Santiago University draws students from all parts of Spain, but mostly from Galicia and the neighbouring provinces. The youths who come from Andalusia do little work and much talking. I found their gaiety quite entertaining, but a cynical Gallegan informed me that if you cut out their tongues there would be nothing left! The Basque students are very quiet, sober, and plodding, and their general character is much more reliable than that of the southerners: they are the Scotch of Spain.

The present University was founded in 1582 by Archbishop Fonseca, but, before that date, the town possessed several important colleges, chiefly for the study of theology and letters, and these institutions produced many noted men. Murguia reminds us that the two Bernardos and Don Pedro MuÑez, named the nigromantico for his great learning, were all educated at the Colegiata de Sar, and that the Estudio Viejo was the real beginning of the University; it lacked only the Law Faculty. There are only three other universities in Spain that have a Faculty for Pharmacy, namely, Barcelona, Granada, and Madrid. The Faculties of Law and Medicine were not established at Santiago till the year 1648. In 1772, in consequence of reforms introduced in the reign of Charles III., the number of professors was raised to thirty-three, but this university has passed through many vicissitudes. Sanchez tells a woful tale of colleges opened and colleges closed. “A few years ago,” he wrote, in 1885, “we had six Theological Faculties at Compostela, besides Philosophy, Letters, Sciences, Law, Medicine, and Pharmacy, but now, in spite of an imperative need for a fully-equipped centre of learning, our Faculties are reduced to three.”

The priests’ colleges wished at first to have the university under their control, but the lay professors objected, and there was a good deal of dispute, until at length the university shook itself free from the Church in 1769; its professors at that period were world-famed. Bedoza lectured there on Anatomy and Lorenzo Montes on Medicine.[208]

The Medical College of Fonseca, with its interesting Renaissance faÇade, was founded by Archbishop Fonseca in 1544, above the foundations of the house in which he was born. Its elegant Renaissance faÇade consists of two storeys with four handsome fluted columns; between the columns are Gothic statues, resting on brackets, and templetes (miniature temples). Between the lower and upper columns are six beautifully sculptured Gothic statues in arched niches, and beneath the central window of the upper storey is an escutcheon with the armorial bearings of the Fonseca family. The two lowest statues on either side of the entrance represent the Virgin and Child, and St. Maurus the hermit. Sanchez tells us that until about the middle of the nineteenth century a lamp burned in front of the former, and poor pilgrims were wont to deposit before the two statues ears of corn and other simple offerings. Passing through the doorway we find ourselves in a square vestibule with richly ribbed Gothic vaulting; the door to our right leads to a pretty little college chapel, with lofty Gothic vaulting. The reredos behind the chief altar has its niches filled with sculptured statues, all of unpainted chestnut wood. It is a beautiful old college, with a very fine cloister much after the style of our Oxford and Cambridge colleges of the same date, but which has now, like the whole interior, a dirty, abandoned appearance. A long inscription, stating by whom and when the college was built, runs round the cornice between the two storeys of the cloister; it begins on the western side, and concludes with the following hexameters:—

For many years the spacious dining-hall, with the handsome carved ceiling, was used as a dissecting-room, but now that branch of study is carried on elsewhere, and the medical students do most of their work at the Hospital Real. Yet in spite of the absolutely neglected appearance of this college, the porter informed me that three hundred students work there every day. Over the general staircase there is a ceiling covered with mudijar work (stalactite woodwork), the only example of its kind in Santiago. Behind the building are some picturesque but neglected Botanical Gardens for the use of the students.

The modern university building, which was designed by JosÉ Machado, is entirely of granite, and looks very important with its sculptured pediment supported by four Ionic columns, and its triple flight of steps. It has three storeys and a handsome marble staircase, and a central patio in which there stands a great two-faced clock, on a pedestal so tall that it can only be reached by a long ladder, and is therefore seldom wound up and not to be trusted. On the ground floor there are six spacious and well-lighted lecture halls, but the finest thing in the University is its splendid Library of more than seventy thousand printed volumes and some six hundred manuscripts, many of them “the sweepings of convents.” The books are arranged in cases, with wire in place of glass, round a spacious reading-room that will accommodate a hundred readers. Over the entrance is written—

In glass cases, placed in the centre of the reading-room, are some highly-prized literary treasures; among which I saw a beautifully preserved Commentary on Dante’s Inferno, by Landino, published at Florence, and bearing the date 1485; also an illustrated volume published by Schectel and Hartmann at Nuremberg in 1493, and other fine specimens of early printing. I also saw and handled an illuminated Diurno or Book of Daily Prayer that had belonged to Ferdinand I., and bore the date 1055; in it I saw a miniature in which the copyist is presenting the book to the king and queen; all the capitals are illuminated, and all different. There is also some eleventh century musical notation in it, the notes are represented by dots (pentagrammic) over the words, and without any lines. The book itself tells us that it was written by Pedro and painted by Fructuoso. In the opinion of M. MacÌus FÉrotin,[209] this Diurno is the most precious document in the university of Compostela; its chronology, written in gold letters, fixes the chronology of the last three kings of Leon. FÉrotin thinks that the lines in honour of King Bermudo III. were dictated by the queen herself. Bermudo died in battle. Sanchez believed this treasure to have been among the “sweepings” of the monastery of San Martin Pinario. A beautifully bound volume of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, with an exquisitely stamped leather cover, was also shown to me. In another case I found what is said to be one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, specimens of handwriting in Spain—a bit of brown parchment about eight inches long and four deep, representing a bill of sale of a little village called Nogueira, near Lalin. The date on it is Era 826 (A.D. 788), and the language used is Latin: it is from the great monastery of Carboeiro, in the province of Pontevedra. Another document was shown to me bearing the date 1504, it was the last will and testament of Don Alfonso de Fonseca, the founder of the university. Another parchment bore the seal of Alfonso VII.; this was a charter conferring certain privileges on a monastery. There were also two manuscript Bibles of the fifteenth century, written and illuminated by monks of the neighbouring convents; the text was in Latin, the pages were like silk, and the colours wonderfully preserved.

The librarian, SeÑor B——, took me into his private room, adjoining the Library, to see the flag that was carried by the Santiago students, who, to the number of twelve thousand, formed themselves together into a volunteer battalion, and fell defending Galicia against the troops of Napoleon in 1808. The student chosen by his companions as their leader, Don JosÉ Ramon Rodil, became in later years both Minister of War and President of the Ministerial Council. In honour of his services, his country raised him to the rank of a marquis. Aguiar, writing in 1836, waxed eloquent over the heroes of Santiago university. “The University of Santiago,” he wrote, “has given us three Ministers for our Government, and four Generals for our Army, all from its battalion of student cadets who immortalised themselves in the defence of our country.” On another wall was the portrait of Don Diego de Muros, and that of Filippo de Castro, a famous Gallegan sculptor of whom we shall have occasion to speak again later on. There was also a portrait of Emmanuel BonaventurÆ Figueroa, who founded the Library, and left estates the revenues of which were to be employed in starting all his descendants in life: if men, they are entitled to a university education or a share in some business; if women, to a dowry! What a fine old fellow he must have been. I hear that his estates have increased in value, and the librarian told me that quite poor people keep unexpectedly turning up and claiming relationship—even a nephew seven times removed can claim his share. Another portrait was that of Archbishop Fonseca, whose Will I had seen in the glass case.

The Reading Room is divided into two by a passage, and one half of it is reserved for distinguished readers who might not care to sit among the general public; the other is open to the students and to the public during the hours of daylight. The books round the walls are all arranged according to their size, in order to economise space; each volume is numbered, and by means of a corresponding card it may be easily found by the attendant. The method is similar to that adopted by our Geographical Society, boxes of cards taking the place of catalogue volumes. A subject catalogue is in course of preparation, and SeÑor B—— is determined that no pains shall be spared to make the Library one of the most perfect of its kind. Underneath the Reading Room is another room of the same size, also lined with books; its ceiling and bookcases are decorated with the white-and-gold Louis XVI. decorations that once adorned the monastic library of San Martin Pinario, and many of its most precious volumes have come from the same place; others were bequeathed by private collectors.

Every department of this university is being energetically overhauled and rearranged, so that it may be quite up to date, but a melancholy mistake made by the architect in planning the Natural History Museum cannot, unfortunately, be rectified. Wishing to give plenty of room for the cases containing stuffed animals, birds, and such like, he built it in a square, with an open space reaching from the ground floor to the roof of the building, and covered the walls with glass cases which could be reached by two spiral iron staircases, and a gallery running round on a level with each floor. The result is that the glass cases not immediately on a level with the galleries are utterly useless, for they cannot be reached without the help of a long ladder and a climb to a dizzy height! The student who could study specimens under these difficulties must be endowed with considerable nerve. To walk round the top gallery and look down was enough to make me feel giddy. I found Professor Varela, a naturalist newly arrived from Madrid, busy rearranging the specimens. He was a comparative stranger to Galicia, and had a hard task before him. I pitied him for having such a stupidly constructed museum, and wondered how he would eventually utilise all those inaccessible glass cases. Professor Varela showed me a valuable collection of the many kinds of wood to be found in Galicia, but lamented over the ridiculous mistake that had been made in polishing and varnishing each block, instead of leaving them in their natural state. He also attracted my attention to an interesting collection of skulls from Mindanao, the largest of the Philippine Islands, which he was engaged in measuring. He had already discovered that they belonged to two distinct races: his measuring instrument was a simple compass, which he preferred to any of the recent inventions. He spoke of the wonderful influence that climate has upon the shape of the human skull, and of the short time it had taken for the skulls of Anglo-Saxons of North America to become quite different from that of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. Professor Varela hopes eventually to devote a large section of his museum to local specimens.

The University of Santiago is under the management of a Rector and a General Secretary, assisted by thirty-eight professors and from forty to fifty assistant professors, all of whom have taken their Doctor’s degree at Madrid. In all the larger town there are Institutos or Grammar Schools, which take boys at the age of ten and prepare them for the university, which they enter at the age of seventeen. The official course lasts six years, but it is not obligatory. Those who pass the examination at the end of their six years become Licenciados, they then have to put in a year at the Madrid university if they wish to obtain their Doctor’s degree. The Academic year begins about October 9th, and ends about May 20th, this is called the Calendario. The vacations, including Sundays, Feast Days, and local Holidays, cover seventy days of the year. The Law Faculty has its own library of legal literature quite separate from the general library.

As I have said, Santiago is one of the four Spanish universities which have a Faculty for pharmacy. In Spain, all chemists, until 1907, had to be university men, and no man, however thoroughly he might have studied his subject, was allowed to open a chemist’s shop and dispense medicines if he had not passed through the university. This arrangement had deplorable results, for chemists’ assistants and druggists who wished to open chemists’ shops on their own account took to bribing university men to allow their names to be put up above the shops. In such cases, if any one was accidentally poisoned through a mistake on the part of the dispenser, the university chemist whose name was over the shop had to bear all the responsibility. At length the Spanish public became alarmed at the idea that the men who dispensed for them would get off scot-free no matter how many people they poisoned, and as the result of a general agitation the Government issued a proclamation on 7th April 1907, that, in future, chemists’ assistants who had practised for a certain period, I think three years, should be eligible as candidates for a chemists’ diploma. This reform was a most necessary and rational one, and all the university chemists rejoiced that they would no longer be liable when their assistants poisoned their customers by mistake; but the silly young students looked at the matter from a different standpoint. Longing to find an excuse for a riot, they persuaded themselves that by allowing chemists’ assistants to gain diplomas without having passed through the university the Government had grievously insulted that venerable institution. Accordingly, at eleven o’clock in the morning they poured forth into the streets of Santiago in unruly crowds, hooting and shouting and leaping in the air. Drawn to my window by their hissing and hooting, I saw some two hundred of them pass down the street in the wildest state of excitement, while the townspeople watched them from their balconies and smiled at their folly.

Besides the important edifices to which I have devoted several of my earlier chapters, Santiago possesses a good many interesting churches, and is rich in convents for women, which also deserve a brief notice. The Capilla de Las Animas is a church dedicated to prayer for souls passing through purgatory; it was built towards the end of the eighteenth century, and is in the Greco-Roman style. Four tall Doric columns support its pediment, which is crowned with a cross and a statue of an adoring angel on either side. But the most striking thing about this faÇade is the alto-relief group of souls wrapt in purgatorial flames above the entrance. The interior of this church is lined with remarkable alto-relief, life-size, brightly painted wooden figures in groups, representing the principal scenes connected with the Crucifixion. They are the work of Prado, a Gallegan sculptor. This church has always had immense attractions for pilgrims, both rich and poor. More masses are said there than in any church in the town except the Cathedral; they begin at five in winter and at four in summer. Close to the church is the Plaza de Cervantes, with a bust of the author of Don Quixote on a column above a fountain from which hundreds of women and girls come to fill their buckets every morning. To the east is the little church of San Benito, now considered to be the oldest in Santiago, which has recently been restored under the auspices of a clever archÆologist.

Santiago has a pleasant Alameda lined with four rows of camellias and many fine trees. Here a band plays on fine afternoons, and here the ladies of the town, who seldom appear in the streets before four in the afternoon, may be seen sauntering under enormous hats. I had been three weeks in Santiago before I saw a woman in a hat, for the ladies who go to early Mass always appeared in black mantillas, and the poor women wore handkerchiefs. The Alameda winds round a hill planted with oak trees, in the centre of which stands a tiny church, Santa Susana. The original edifice was built by Gelmirez in 1105, and bore the name of Santo Sepulcro until the remains of Santa Susana were brought to Santiago from Braga three years later. Santa Susana is one of the patron saints of Santiago. Sanchez states that the present portico of the church is the one built by Gelmirez, and that some of the arches also date from his day; but as it was always closed when I tried to enter it I can give no opinion. The finest view obtainable of Santiago and its Cathedral is from this Alameda, and no visitor should miss it.

Another little church that interested me was that of Santa Maria SalomÉ, in the Rua Nueva, named after the Mother of St. James the Greater. As Sanchez has remarked, “its portico attracts the attention of intelligent persons”; it is a quaint, Romanesque portico, of which the central arch is Gothic, covering a part of the footway and forming a useful shelter to foot passengers on a rainy day. The arch above the entrance to the church is semicircular, and supported on two columns with richly sculptured capitals. The statue of the Virgin seated on a throne, with a crown on her head and the Child Jesus in her arms, is also worthy of attention. Just above it is a row of remarkable corbels. On either side of the entrance there are two quaint statues, one is the angel Gabriel, and the other the Virgin receiving his message. In one of the triangles of the arch is the inscription Iglesia reservada para refugio. At one time all the churches of Santiago were churches of refuge, but in the eighteenth century an outcry was raised because they harboured too many criminals, and the result was that eventually only the church of Maria SalomÉ was allowed to be used as a refuge. In the present day the whole custom has been quite done away with. The church dates from the twelfth, and its portico from the end of the fifteenth century.

Another small church of considerable antiquity is that of San Felix de Solovio, or, as the Gallegans call it, San Fins de Lovio. Sanchez thought this edifice older than San Benito; in fact he speaks of it as the oldest church in Santiago. The truth is that it was built on the ruins of an older church of the same name, which had been reduced to ashes by Almanzor and his followers. The present edifice has a graceful entrance, with four Byzantine columns supporting its two arches, the interior of which is in the shape of a horse-shoe, while the outer one is semicircular and decorated with diminutive arches also of the horse-shoe form; the whole being a curious mixture of the Romanesque and the Arabic styles. In the church, in a niche in the southern nave, is a sculptured group representing the Adoration of the Magi, which, like the entrance, dates from the twelfth century; it is quite Byzantine. The whole building underwent restoration at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

I have already alluded to the fine Square called Plaza de Alonso XII., of which the faÇade of the Hospital Real and the Churrigueresque faÇade of the cathedral form two sides. Its other two sides are formed by the handsome Consistorio, which faces the Cathedral, and the faÇade of the Colegio de San JerÓnimo. This last-named building dates from the first or second decade of the sixteenth century, and its striking faÇade is a mixture of the Romanesque and the GrÆco-Roman styles. At present the principal entrance is in the Calle del Franco, not far from that of the adjoining Colegio de Fonseca, and it is used as a normal school for boys, but it was formerly a college for poor students. An inscription on the southern wall of the Doric cloister tells us that in the year 1652 the ancient college of San GerÓnimo (St. Jerome) was moved to this building. That was at the time when the monks of San Martin Pinario were buying up the buildings round their monastery in order that the latter might be enlarged.

When Philip II. was negotiating with England for the hand of our Queen Mary, he awaited in Santiago the return of his ambassadors, and was entertained at the Hospital Real in the suite of rooms set apart for the reception of royalty. A curious account of Philip’s visit has just come to light in the pages of a diary kept by a village priest of that period. The document was accidentally discovered in a country rectory and handed to Dr. Eladio Oviedo, who, it is to be hoped, will shortly publish it, with valuable annotations. The writer, Amaro Gonzalez, was a cura of Carril, in Galicia, and his entries in his diary remind us of those of Pepys. “In the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and fifty-four,” he writes, “on the twenty-second of June, King Philip entered the city of Santiago....” and he goes on to tell how on the following day the whole company attended Mass in the Cathedral, and how, after dinner, they were entertained by a bull fight in the Plaza de Alonso XII., the King watching from one of the lower windows of the Hospital. Three days later the Royal party embarked at CoruÑa and set sail for England with a great fleet.[210] In an earlier entry he tells how “a corsair coming from England, under the command of Drake, did much damage,” which he says he cannot attempt to describe. “Drake came with seventy ships, I believe he wants to intercept the king’s ships that are coming with gold from America.” And later on he writes: “An Armada is being fitted out against Lutheran England and against that Lutheran —— Isabel” (our good Queen Bess!). The word he uses is too insulting to be translated. In another place he describes a very hard winter, followed by a remarkably cold summer, “so cold that in the hottest days of the year it was too cold to walk to church.” He adds naÏvely that all the things he writes about happened in his own days, and, as it were, before his very eyes, and that he writes them down because (unlike Pepys) he thinks their perusal will give pleasure to those who come after him, and he begs the Rectors who succeed him to continue the diary, “because, as wise men have pointed out, written records keep the memory of the past fresh before us, and connect the days that are gone with the actual present.” In the year 1586 he records the arrival at the little town of Rianjo of an Irish bishop, “a man of about forty-five years of age, good looking, and very devout, he came, on behalf of the Archbishop, to confirm and visit in his name, because the Archbishop of Santiago, Don Alonso Velazquez, had renounced his office on account of illness. The bishop confirmed many in these parts, both young and old; his name was Don Tomas (Thomas), he had fled from his Irish bishopric, in company with many others, through fear of the Lutherans.”

Santiago is particularly rich in fountains; we might almost say there is one at the end of every street, and as there is no other water supply, all the water used in the houses has to be fetched in buckets on the heads of women employed for the purpose. My hostess, having a large household, kept a servant whose whole duty consisted in fetching water from the fountain; during the winter she fetched about fifty buckets a day, but in hot summer weather she often fetches as many as seventy. The grace and ease with which these handsome girls balanced their buckets upon their heads, without the aid of their hands, called forth my unceasing admiration throughout my stay in Galicia. I never tired of watching them as they passed along the narrow, uneven, and badly paved streets, with their rapid and swinging gait; it was an art they had learned in their babyhood. Women going and coming from the market make use of their heads, where their husbands and brothers would of their shoulders. If a girl has the smallest parcel to carry, up it goes to her head, and her hands are left free. It would be difficult for me to say what movables I have not seen upon the head of a Gallegan woman. I have seen there every object imaginable, from a table to a child’s coffin. When a fire breaks out in a Gallegan town, the women water-carriers are among the first on the scene. There was a fire at Pontevedra a few days before my arrival there, and it was entirely due to the energy and spirit of the water-carriers that half of the burning house was saved, and the fire prevented from spreading; these girls, as my friends who looked on afterwards related to me, not only fetched water in their buckets, but poured it on the flames like veritable firemen.

In February a party of well-to-do Gallegan peasants came to stay for a few days at our Casa de Huespedes, in order that a wedding, which was to take place between their two families, might be celebrated in the Cathedral. The wedding took place on a Sunday, and I gladly accepted an invitation to be present at the ceremony. The whole party walked to the church, the streets in that part being too narrow for carriages. The bride, who wore her hair in a simple plait down her back, as is customary in Galicia, was neatly dressed in black, with a simple blue silk handkerchief over her head; her sisters wore coloured dresses and blue handkerchiefs. It is the custom throughout Spain for women of the better classes to wear black on most important occasions, secular as well as religious, but among the upper classes a bride is usually dressed in white as in other European countries. The bridegroom had on a neat black suit and brown shoes. It was a very simple ceremony, performed in a small side chapel. When the priest had asked the consent, first of the woman and then of the man, the couple exchanged rings. As the bridegroom handed his ring to the bride the priest passed him a tray on which were piled thirteen[211] silver dollars, and motioned to him to hand that also to the bride. The priest then told the bride to wrap the coins in her handkerchief and put them in her pocket, which she did. The whole service was much shorter than it is with us. After it was over the wedding party joined in the Mass which was being said in one of the larger chapels, and then returned to partake of the wedding breakfast.

During the carnival a band of musicians paraded the town in garments of many colours, decked out with streaming ribbons; and in spite of pelting rain a large crowd of men, women, and children followed them, mostly under umbrellas. People came in from all the neighbouring villages, and among them were peasants wearing straw hats and capes, capas de junco, which I have described elsewhere as very like those that are worn by Japanese peasants who work during rainy weather in the rice-fields.

My windows looked out upon the high and sombre wall which enclosed the women’s convent of San Payo. Curious to see beyond that wall, I ascended into the attics and looked down upon it from the highest window in the house, but even then I could see nothing but the garden wall, a foot and a half in breadth. San Payo was originally a monastery founded by King Castro on the occasion of his pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James in 813, and dedicated to St. Peter. As it faced the altar of the cathedral it received the name of San Pedro de Autealtares. Its first inmates were the holy Abbot Ildefrede and his monks, to whom had been entrusted the care of the Apostle’s sepulchre. St. Pedro de Mozonzo was its Abbot between 974 and 988, and for several centuries after that its abbots and monks were honoured and respected all over Galicia. The present building dates from the last years of the seventeenth century; its church was consecrated in the year 1707. Sanchez devotes pages to a description of the interior of this edifice, and of the marble ara supposed to have stood upon the original sepulchre of St. James, but the convent itself, which now encloses women, interested me far more. From the attic window I had noted its superfluity of chimneys, and I afterwards learned that when the building became a nunnery it was inhabited by nuns from rich families, and that each had her own servant and her own kitchen, until the archbishop, looking into the matter, decided that one kitchen ought to be enough for them all, and that the nuns ought to wait upon themselves. I was allowed to enter the great door, and ascend the broad flight of steps to the wooden window where visitors are allowed on certain days to speak with, but not to see, the nuns, and on the landing I met the priest whose duty it was to minister to their spiritual wants. After a little conversation, I asked him how the nuns who had grown old in the convent managed without servants. He smiled at my question, and replied that the younger nuns waited on the older ones and did the housework for them. “But,” I persisted, “they must all grow old in time?” To which he answered that new ones were continually entering the convent and taking the place of the old ones. Only three men ever enter those doors, the priest, the sacristan of the conventual church, and the carpenter who nails the dead nuns into their coffins and carries them out. There is a legend among the townspeople to the effect that, a long time ago, one of the more youthful of the nuns, getting heartily tired of her life of seclusion within those gloomy walls, let herself down, by a rope made of twisted sheets, from one of the windows into the Quintana, or what is now the Plaza de los Literarios, intending to escape with a lover who had won her heart before she had taken the veil; but she inadvertently hung herself, and remained suspended till her corpse was discovered the following day. I often thought of that story when I looked up at those high, prison-like windows, and also of the report that there must be rats in the disused kitchens “as large as men.” At six o’clock every evening I used to hear the bells of St. Payo (or Pelayo) summoning the nuns to Mass, and so close they sounded it seemed almost as if they were pealing for me as well.

Santiago is rich in fortress-like convents for women. On the road to CoruÑa, in a street of the same name, is situated the convent of Santa Clara, founded in 1260 by Queen Violante, the wife of Alfonso el Sabio (the royal trovador), but its present construction only dates from the latter years of the sixteenth century, and the faÇade of its church is the work of the eighteenth century, and extremely ugly. In this church there is an elegant Gothic pulpit, which attracts the attention of visitors, and the tomb of the Abbess Isabel of Granada, who is reputed to have been a granddaughter of the Moorish warrior Boabdil, the last Mohammedan king of Granada. There is another theory to the effect that she was a granddaughter of Abul Hasan Ali, whose son Naser (her father) entered the Catholic Church, and received the baptismal name of Juan de Granada.

Opposite the convent of Santa Clara is the convent of (barefooted) Carmelite Nuns, established in the eighteenth century; it has a large church called La Virgen del Carmen. Close by is the Hospital de San Roque, established in 1577 for the treatment of venereal diseases; it has attached to it a modern penitentiary. The hospital was rebuilt in 1818 with funds bequeathed for the purpose by a wealthy merchant of Villagarcia. Patients come to this hospital from all parts of the province.

Santiago possesses a very small ArchÆological Museum in the Sociedad Economica, or School of Art, which is a modern building in the street of San Clements, facing the Alameda. Here are stored some old statues thought to have once decorated the original faÇades of the cathedral, one of which represents King David, and is brightly coloured. Here also is preserved the great statue of Minerva, which once stood above the columns of the university faÇade.

Remembering the valuable and interesting private museums I had discovered in some of the remotest of the Russian towns, I inquired if there were no private collections in Santiago. “Yes, we have one,” was the reply, “it is in the house of SeÑor Ricardo Blanco Ciceron”; and through the kindness of SeÑor Cabeza Leon I soon received an invitation from SeÑor Ciceron to inspect the treasures which he had gathered together during some forty years. SeÑor Ciceron is a wealthy Santiago merchant, his comfortable house is filled with antique furniture and other objÊts d’art, but besides these he has a couple of rooms filled with curios of every description and of every period of Galicia’s history. Here I saw some fine specimens of Roman mosaic, Roman pottery, and Roman metal work. I was struck with a beautifully preserved glass vase, which had been discovered in a brick-tomb three feet beneath the surface of the ground, by railway navvies, near Astorga. But the real value of this museum lies in the collections of ancient coins, and the collection of torques. Among the coins I saw a great many Phoenician, and a still larger number of Visigothic coins (very small, and as thin as wafers). Numismatologists tell us it is an ascertained fact that the Carthaginians did not begin to mint for themselves until three or four years later than their Greek neighbours.[212] Dr. Macdonald remarks that among the ancients themselves there was a difference of opinion as to where the first coins were struck. Herodotus thought that the Lydians were the first people to strike and use gold and silver coins. There seems to be no proof that they were in circulation earlier than 700 B.C.[213] Before the introduction of a metallic standard the universal unit of value was the ox, and it is the opinion of some students that when the primitive system of currency was superseded by a metallic one, a picture of the article that had formerly served as money was very naturally impressed upon the coins. There have been found in Galicia a number of coins with an ox or other animal represented.

Among the Celtiberic coins I noticed one on which was depicted a man on a galloping horse; on its reverse was the head of a man wearing a helmet. There were also a goodly number of Roman coins from the time of Augustus to that of Nero. All these had been coined at Rome, but we have already seen that several of the Roman colonies in Galicia were permitted to strike their own money until about the middle of the first century A.D., when the privilege was withdrawn both from Gaul and Spain.

It seems very probable that long before coins were current in Galicia the natives used their jewellery as money. SeÑor Ciceron is the happy possessor of the finest collection of golden torques in existence, and every one of these was dug up in Galicia. Their great weight, and the purity of their metal, indicate that they were used for more purposes than that of ornament alone.

There are eleven torques in SeÑor Ciceron’s unique collection, and eight of them are of gold. That gentleman assured me that he might have had many more had the little shepherd boys who stumble across them in the neighbouring hills better understood their value. Some think that these torques date from the days of the ancient Iberians, and that they were worn as necklaces by the chiefs of tribes. But their great weight and their enormous size make me somewhat doubtful of this theory. Some of them have been pronounced by SeÑor Villa-Amil to be very like the Gallo-Roman specimens in the Louvre collection. Those in the Dublin Museum are much thinner, and altogether less massive. The two in the Kunsthistorisches Museum at Vienna are yoke-shaped, they are laid one inside the other; both are silver bordered. It is curious that the ancient Irish should have had torques of gold so similar to those that are now being found in Galicia. Joyce tells us that in a legend in the Book of Leinster, Credrie, the great artificer, was drowned while bringing golden ore from Spain; and a poem in the same book speaks of “torques of gold from foreign lands.”

Geraldus reported in the thirteenth century that the Irish were too idle to work their own gold mines. “Even gold, of which they require large quantities, and which they desire so eagerly as to indicate their Spanish origin, is brought hither by merchants.”[214] Torcs or Muntorcs (necktorcs) seem to have been much in vogue with the ancient Irish; they were often mentioned in their literature. Joyce describes them thus: “The torque was formed of a single square or triangular bar of gold, from which the metal had been hollowed out along the flat sides, so as to leave four or three ribbons along the corners, after which it was twisted into a spiral shape, something like a screw with four or three threads. There is one in the museum only half made, having three leaves or ribbons the whole length untwisted....” This writer says of those in the Dublin Museum, that some are barely the size of the neck, others so large that when worn they extended over the breast almost to the shoulders, and he reminds his readers that the Dying Gladiator has a torque round his neck (a fact first noticed, he says, by Robert Ball, LL.D.).

In various documents of the Middle Ages, preserved in the archives of Santiago, mention is made of certain gifts made by Royal personages to the Cathedral under the name of limace or lunace. These objects were usually of gold, and of great value; sometimes they were studded with pearls and precious stones.[215] SeÑor Villa-Amil pointed this out to me when I was in Madrid in the spring of 1907, and said that possibly these objects, of which all trace seems to have disappeared, were nothing more nor less than torques. Now I find that besides their torques the Irish had golden crescents, or neck-circlets, which they called munices, and Mr. Joyce says that the word seems to have applied to almost every kind of neck ornament; he describes three main types, and gives illustrations of them, adding that Sir W. Wilde thought some of them must have been diadems, to be worn on the head. The definition of the word torque given by Chambers is “a necklace of metal rings interlaced,” and there is no doubt that the word is derived from the Latin torqueo, to twist. Some of those in SeÑor Ciceron’s collection are like thick cord twisted into a rope, but others are not twisted at all. SeÑor Villa-Amil has recently been engaged in writing a very full and learned description of all the torque collections in Spain, and he begins with the remark that SeÑor Ciceron’s collection, taken together with those of the late SeÑor Arteago, his own, and those of the ArchÆological and Historical Museums of Madrid, would form the finest collection of torques in the world. Many of the objects labelled as torques in the museums are not torques. SeÑor Villa-Amil has seen eight gold ones in the museum at Toulouse, but not one of them can be compared to those he has mentioned; they look more like work of Louis XIV.’s time.

Besides his torques, SeÑor Ciceron has a most valuable collection of prehistoric gold jewellery, amongst which I saw a deep neckband of solid gold, some gold beads on a gold thread, a spiral ring, and a wide bracelet which has no join in it, and must have been hammered out of a solid lump of the precious metal; experts who have examined it say that is the only way in which it could have been made. Another curious object was a necklace formed of hand-made gold fillets, which SeÑor Ciceron had bought of some peasants who had found it in the sand of the River Sil, which has been known to contain grains of gold since the days of Strabo. SeÑor Ciceron informed me that he had recently received letters both from England and America asking if he would be willing to sell his unique collection, and although he had no intention of parting with his treasures at the time of my visit, I think it is more than likely that the torques, at least, will eventually find their way to the United States.

Amongst other things I saw in this museum were some gold signet rings with Iberian characters, two very ancient bronze statues, a Mercury; a Hercules excavated in Galicia; and about twenty sharp bronze hatchets; also a number of stone arrow-heads. Every age is represented in that little museum. I was shown Greek crosses; Byzantine pictures; some Limoges vessels (enamelled) of the sixteenth century; a splendid collection of French Imperial medals, and a watch made entirely of wood, from Lugo.

After we had seen everything indoors, SeÑor Ciceron took me out into his garden to see some statues that had formed part of one of the original faÇades of the Cathedral. He had saved them from some rubbish heap, and used them to ornament his garden wall.

Note.—I have been obliged, from lack of space, to omit two chapters describing the monasteries of San Martin Pinario, San Lorenzo, San Francisco, and Santo Domingo—four remarkable relics of the Middle Ages which no visitor to Santiago should fail to see.—Author.