WE spent another week in Santiago after our return from Noya, and then proceeded by train to Pontevedra, the chief town of the province of that name.[247] Two of the stations we passed on the way were Padron and Villagarcia. It was at Villagarcia that a British fleet lay for several weeks in the spring of 1907, as I found to my cost, for the officers had been before me and had bought up all the best photographs available in several of the neighbouring towns. Villagarcia is beautifully situated on the eastern bank of the Ria de Arosa, nineteen kilometres from the town of Pontevedra, and is called la Perla de Arosa (the Pearl of Arosa). It has a population of about seven thousand. The sea-bathing here is excellent, and there are delightful walks in the vicinity; but the fact that King Alfonso has selected it as the site of his new summer palace is perhaps the best proof we can give of its healthful beauty and charm.

Pontevedra, surrounded by hills on three sides, is situated on a small peninsular formed by the rivers Lerez, Alba, and Tomeya, just before they empty themselves into the sea. During the Middle Ages the town was surrounded by a rampart with bastions and castellated towers at regular intervals. A little to the north on the road to Santiago there is a magnificent stone bridge over the river Lerez, with twelve arches; it was built upon the site of an older bridge in 1765, and is also called Puente del Burgo. There are many old houses in the town, with the escutcheons of influential families still upon their walls.

Pontevedra too has her ancient history: she claims, on the authority of Strabo, to have been founded by the Greeks, who came over with Teucer, and to have been called Los Helenos in consequence. Strabo got this information from Asclepeades Merleanus (the Grammarian of Andalusia).[248] It is not known when the name was changed, but there seems no doubt that it must have been about the time of the advent of the Romans, and that Pontevedra is derived from Pons vetus. Roman milestones discovered during the last hundred and fifty years prove by their inscriptions that at least one of the Roman military roads passed this way.[249]

During the Middle Ages Pontevedra was a town of considerable maritime importance; Molina calls it “the largest town in Galicia,” with a fishing trade of seldom less than eighty thousand ducats annually, and says, “it trades with Valencia, Andalusia, Sicily, and places even more distant; more than a hundred vessels laden with sardines leave its port every year.” All the activity and all the wealth of this town was connected with the sea; its merchant fishermen formed among themselves a sort of fishing guild, and, like the Hanseatic League, kept all the maritime commerce in their own hands, including that of all the towns on the Ria de Arosa, as well as Marin and Vigo. Pontevedra was the only port for loading and unloading vessels all along the coast from Bayona to Los Trangueiros; she also, along with Noya, had a monopoly of the preparation of fish oil, conceded to them by Fernando in 1238. On one occasion, when twelve or thirteen Pontevedrans had been carried off by Turkish pirates, the Archbishop of Santiago, Don Gaspar Avalos, granted these merchants a very curious privilege, namely, that they might fish on Sundays, provided that they would spend the money so made in ransoming the captives.

The fishers’ league, or guild, was called Gremio de la Cofradia del Cuerpo Santo, and the merchant fishermen called themselves Mareantes: they had their own ordinances, laws, and regulations, and, being an extremely powerful and wealthy body, they had control of all municipal affairs, and always came off best in any dispute with their neighbours. In gratitude to Heaven for the prosperity which they enjoyed, these merchant fishers subscribed money to build a church worthy of their town, and the result was the beautiful edifice of Santa Maria la Grande. The money was not subscribed all at once in a lump sum, but different parts of the church were built at the expense of the various donors. In the faÇade to the right of the principal entrance is an inscription giving the name of a Mareante—BartolamÉ Trigo—and stating exactly what part of the wall had been paid for out of his pocket. Now, two Bartolames figure in the local documents of the fifteenth century, one young and one old, so that, in spite of all his care, we cannot be sure whether this donor was the son or the father. Inside the church there are many more such inscriptions on the walls and on the pillars. Sometimes the wife’s name figures beside that of the husband, as for instance in the oldest of the side chapels, where we find an inscription giving the names of Juan de Barbeito and his wife Taresa, and stating that they were the founders of the chapel; it is the oldest of all the inscriptions. Here is one from the right wall beneath the choir[250]—

Juan de Celis was an influential Mareante of the early days of the sixteenth century. But my readers must not think that the church, because each paid for his own bit of work, was like a patchwork quilt, with work of all shapes and sizes. It is, on the contrary, a remarkably beautiful edifice, and the only patchwork about it results from a fusion of several styles of architecture. Here we find, it is true, the Gothic merging into the Renaissance style, but the fusion is brought about with consummate skill, and, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, the architect could not have succeeded better; he had to keep in touch with the art of the thirteenth century, and at the same time to introduce

the later element of the neo-GrÆco-Roman or plateresque. The result is a harmonious combination which deserves the highest praise. The nearest English equivalent to the predominating style is what we call “Tudor.”

The faÇade, which is in the Renaissance style, is considered to be the finest part of Santa Maria, and “the jewel of Pontevedra”;[251] it is divided into five sections or storeys, in three of which there are six columns with statues between; above each statue is the shell of St. James. Over the chief entrance is a beautiful relief representing the Assumption of the Virgin—eight Apostles clustering round the couch (a four-poster) of the dying Virgin; the faces are very fine. All the columns are covered with elaborate alto-relief in the grotesque style of the Renaissance. The church is built upon an eminence, and the ground, sloping sharply away from the faÇade, is covered with three handsome flights of steps; it is thus impossible, unfortunately, to get a good near view of the faÇade, for every step you take away from it brings you a step lower and makes the point of view less favourable. Above the stone wall which encloses the church on either side of the steps there is a remarkably fine iron railing. The bell-tower is eighteenth-century work, all except the lower storey, which is of the same date as the church. The real date of the faÇade is 1546, for SeÑor Casto Sampedro has discovered (in 1907) the deed of contract for its erection; the date of the vaulting of the naves is 1559, the chapels are of various dates. In former days there was a gate of the town between castellated walls facing the church; the present flight of steps is modern. In a book of the sixteenth century, entitled “Chronicles of England and France,”[252] in the possession of the British Consul at Villagarcia, there is a picture of the fortified town of Pontevedra with its battlements and towers; a very small portion of the castellated wall still remains near the Convent of Santa Clara.

All round the outer walls there is a fringe of plateresque stone lace which is very effective. One corner of the church, added later, forms a modern chapel, dedicated to El Cristo del buen viage (the Christ of the good journey). I looked in at the window, and saw an altar with a crucifix and a great many artificial flowers; in front of the window was a railing and a slit for coppers. This chapel, though modern, has its interests, and good Catholics about to take a journey drop a copper in the slot for good luck.

The richly decorated interior of Santa Maria is most graceful; fan ribs radiate from the sculptured capitals of the tall clustered piers, and, interlacing, spread themselves over the vaulting in a geometrical network, while stone filigree fringes the central arch. The two side naves are divided from the central nave by pointed Gothic arches; each nave is covered with three separate vaults; at the head of the principal nave there is an apse of the same width, while on either side of the apse, at the head of each side nave there is a small chapel. All the vaulting is of one height. There was till quite recently a most gorgeous iconographic seventeenth-century retablo behind the chief altar, but, having become rotten and dangerous, it has now been removed in fragments to the local museum. The entire inner wall of the faÇade is entirely covered by a series of scenes from the Old and New Testament, sculptured in bas-relief upon the granite blocks—it is so dark in that part of the church that without the aid of a candle the work is hardly visible; one or two of the Biblical scenes are difficult to identify. I do not remember seeing anything like them in any other church; it is a superfluity of sculpture, a kind of inner faÇade, contrafachada. It is composed of nine divisions in three compartments. Among the scenes represented are: the creation of Eve, Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, and the death of Abel. The chief interest in these is the treatment of details—the houses, mills, and bridges in the background, all have interest for the antiquarian.

Upon the site where Santa Maria la Grande now stands there once stood a church built in the ninth century; this is proved by existing documents, and it is also known that the name of that church was also Santa Maria la Grande; it stood on the highest spot in the town, and was in all probability the site of a Roman temple; this eminence dominates both the sea and the ria.

With regard to the name of the architect of Santa Maria la Grande there has been a good deal of doubt; he seems to have been more modest than the Mareantes who contributed the funds. SeÑor Villa-Amil thought that he had discovered both the date and the name of the architect when he found in a manuscript the statement that on 10th July 1517, Juan de los Cuelos, maestro de la obra de la iglesia de Santa-maria la Grande ortogÓ, etc. Murguia stated that the architect was a Portuguese,—Pedro Gonzalez,—but a local archÆologist, SeÑor Casto Sampedro, has now proved both these statements to be erroneous, for, while reading through some ancient documents preserved in the notarial archives of the town, in the spring of 1907, he suddenly lighted upon the real name of the sculptor of the faÇade, Cornelius de Holanda.[253]

Morales, who visited Pontevedra in the reign of Philip II. (in 1572), spoke of this church as Santa Maria de los Pescadores (the fishermen’s church), and said “they have spent more than twenty thousand ducats on it, and intend to spend another twenty thousand, the sum still needed to complete the work.” There are several pictures in the church, which, though of little value as paintings, have still an archÆological interest, and there are some old chalices in the sacristy. In the principal nave there is a graceful font, very shallow, with an inscription round the brim and a sculptured pedestal.

On our way to Santa Maria la Grande, we had passed the ivy-covered ruins of a beautiful Gothic abbey; the sky was visible through the lancet windows of its graceful apses, and its crumbling walls seemed to speak to us from another world. This was all that remained of the Conventual Church of Santo Domingo.

I have heard this ruin spoken of by archÆologists as the sole specimen of purely Gothic architecture in the whole of Galicia; every other church in the province seems to have borrowed something from the style of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. In 1880, Fita urged that the ruins of Santa Domingo at Pontevedra should be carefully guarded, and preserved as a national monument, but to-day the practical citizens of Pontevedra are complaining of the space taken up by its walls, and suggesting that it be cleared away to make room for some useful modern building!

In a history of the Order of San Domingo, published in 1613,[254] it is stated that there is no document in existence which gives the date of the foundation of Santo Domingo of Pontevedra, but that the site for it was purchased in Era 1321 (1283 A.D.) from a lady, Donna Sancha Roca Helda, and it is certain that the edifice was standing in the beginning of the fourteenth century. All that remains of it to-day is a little bit of the transept and its five polygonal apses—one large one with two small ones on either side; all five have fan vaulting and double lancet windows. The ornamentation of the columns is iconographic: on one of the capitals is sculptured a fight between warriors and a dog; on another, monster birds with long twisted necks attacking one another with their beaks. The inner walls show traces of having been once covered with frescoes representing the Resurrection and the Life of Santo Domingo, of which some still remain. “It is the number of the apses,” writes Villa-Amil, “which constitutes the singularity of this church, for it is the only one of all the conventual churches built in Galicia during the Middle Ages which has that number, all the others (and here he mentions ten) have only three. Otherwise there is nothing remarkable about it.” The door which opened between the church and the sacristy is still there; it is Gothic, with an archivolt decorated with fluted mouldings, leaves, and twisted fillets; the statues which adorned it are gone. In the largest apse there is still preserved the original altar table of one solid piece of stone.

Santo Domingo, now an archÆological museum, was once the principal necropolis, the Westminster Abbey, of the province of Pontevedra. As far back as the close of the fourteenth century, illustrious men left money to it in their wills, and the command that they should be interred within its precincts. The sepulchral effigies of Don Payo Gomez de Sotomayor and his wife the Infanta de Hungria, Donna Juana, are still there in their Gothic niches. Don Payo is coated with mail, his head is covered by a helmet, and his sword is by his side. The family of Sotomayor is one of the oldest in Spain, and the chapel in which their effigies lie was founded by them. Payo Gomez de Sotomayor was one of the two ambassadors sent by King Enrique III. of Castille to the court of Tamerlane in 1402; the other was Hernan Sanchez Palazuelos: they helped Tamerlane in his fight against the Turks. Tamerlane loaded them with presents, and also presented them with two beautiful captives (one of whom was said to be a member of the royal family of Hungary), whom they eventually married. Donna Juana, whose effigy is in Santo Domingo, was the captive who became the wife of Payo Gomez. On her tomb is an escutcheon in which the arms of the Sotomayors are united to those of the house of Hungary. Close by there is also the effigy of Don Suero Gomez de Sotomayor, the son of the ambassador to Persia.[255]

The ruins of Santo Domingo rise in the midst of a modern town; on two sides they overlook the street, and on a third side a huge grammar school for boys is being erected. The plot on which the ruins stands is shut in with a railing, and has been turned to the best possible use, for it now serves as an Open-air ArchÆological Museum. Rows of Roman

mile-stones decorate one of its paths, and a row of ancient coats of arms lines another, while the wall behind them is a mass of ivy, laden when we were there with heavy black berries, that hang like bunches of grapes between the escutcheons. Cannon balls, a cannon that was thrown overboard by the sailors of a Spanish gallion when pressed by the Dutch in 1702, and an old iron anchor sixteen feet long with a ring at one end, were the first objects that attracted my attention; near them was an old stone cross (taken from the old church of San BartolomÉ) some twenty-five feet high, and the horizontal tombstone of one of the monks of Santo Domingo which had been found in an old cemetery belonging to the monastery. There was also an old altar covered with tessellated work, and on it a curious statue of St. John the Baptist dating from the fourteenth century. St. John holds a plate on which there is a lamb sculptured, and the front of his tunic terminates with a human hand (very clear in the photograph). The frontal of an altar taken from the church of la Virgen del Camino, and dating from the fifteenth century, had a curiously sculptured representation of the Descent from the Cross; Mary is taking the body of Christ in her arms, two disciples support the head, another supports the knees; the Christ has a long drooping moustache which reaches almost to His waist, and the monk who supports the head has a similar moustache, only a shorter one. We also noted several horizontal tombstones, with emblems upon them indicating the class of work in which the respective persons buried beneath had been engaged.

One half of this museum is reserved for Roman, and the other for Iberian, Celtic, and Sueve antiquities. In the latter I saw several stones that were thought to belong to the period of the Sueves; there were also some rough boulders with strange markings on them thought to be Iberian writing. Near a bed of purple and white irises was a fine stone fountain that formerly stood in the principal square of the town, also a circular font covered with sculpture. The inscriptions on the Roman milestones are dedicated to Trajan, to Hadrian, to Constantine the Great, and other emperors. There are with them a number of aras, capitals, and funereal inscriptions; belonging to a later date there are Byzantine statues, hand-mills, sarcophagi, and numerous objects of antiquity. These are all scattered among the flower-beds, and the whole is like a rock-garden rather than a museum. The ivy-draped walls of the Church of Santo Domingo are covered on the inside with lapidary signs—stonemasons’ marks—I counted some eighty-five of them.

The founding of this most unique and fascinating Museum in 1896 was due to the suggestion and energy of SeÑor Casto Sampedro, who has not only devoted endless time to its arrangement, but has published with the minutest care, in the local ArchÆological Journal, all the inscriptions it contains as well as those from the local churches. SeÑor Sampedro is a lawyer by profession, but his office is a veritable curiosity-shop, filled with antiques of every class and description: he is also an epigraphist, highly skilled in deciphering ancient documents. When a manuscript gives him any trouble, he pins it on his office wall, and looks at it at intervals during his work, sometimes for days together, before the correct meaning occurs to him. SeÑor Castro was also the founder of the Pontevedra ArchÆological Society.

We next visited the church of the Franciscan monastery. This edifice is built in the shape of a Latin cross, with one very wide nave and a wide transept; at the head of the nave are three Gothic apses, a large one the width of the nave, and a smaller one on either side. The apses have recently been restored, and the lancet windows which had been bricked up are now filled with coloured glass from the manufactory at Leon. The transept was begun in the fifteenth century, but the rest of the church, with the exception of the chapels, dates from the middle of the thirteenth. The apses have fan vaults, and are of the first period of Gothic art, very similar to those of Santo Domingo. The side chapels are filled with the sumptuous tombs of wealthy families of the vicinity. The table of the chief altar is a great stone slab, seventeen feet long and three wide; it is thought to date from the foundation of the edifice. On one of the lateral altars I noted a black-faced statue of St. Benedict of Palermo. Two pairs of sarcophagi at the foot of the steps leading to the chief altar had the recumbent effigies of two interesting couples; their length is about seven feet. One on the right is thought to be a famous admiral of the fourteenth century, the legendary ChariÑo. The feet of all these effigies are crossed, their heads rest upon stone pillows, while the top of each sarcophagus represents a couch. The inscription on the tomb thought to be that of ChariÑo has been the subject of considerable discussion in books and pamphlets. Payo Gomez ChariÑo was the admiral who, at the head of a fleet composed of twenty-seven ships from Pontevedra and thirteen from Noya, broke and burned the famous bridge over the Guadalquivir

near Seville, Puente de Triana, which, being the key to the Moorish dominion of that part of the country, enabled Ferdinand III., to take the city.

Besides the Open-air Museum of Santo Domingo, there are also a couple of rooms devoted to antiquities in the handsome new municipal buildings overlooking the Alameda, but the keys are not always forthcoming for visitors, and I only visited one of them; it contained a collection of coins, some bronze agricultural instruments, a few arrow-heads, and a few Roman amphoras, and round the walls were a series of pictures to show what Pontevedra looked like before the English destroyed its battlemented walls and towers. In a bookcase I saw among other books an old copy of Pliny’s History. There was also a collection of ancient keys, and another of fifteenth-century bells. In a glass case there were some medals, among which was the square medal worn by the Inquisitors. The room to which I could not get the key contains the pieces of the seventeenth-century retablo that was removed from Santa Maria la Grande, and many interesting pieces of old furniture.

The archives of Pontevedra were very rich in historical documents relating to the past history of the town and province, but about three years ago the authorities of Madrid took it upon themselves to send some one to fetch them bodily to the capital, where they now lie in piles unread and uncared for, while local archÆologists, who for the love of their town would willingly devote to them the most painstaking study, are left behind to lament the departure of a precious mental pabulum. What Madrid can gain by thus robbing the smaller towns of their archÆological treasures, and damping the ardour of local enthusiasts, I fail to see. This is not the way to educate the people and make them value all that is connected with their past. No wonder that the citizens of Pontevedra should look upon the ruins of Santo Domingo as an eyesore; why should they do otherwise when they feel that if it had any value it would be carted to Madrid!

In the public gardens the azalias were covered with white blossom, and in the private gardens between the houses the wisteria was also resplendent, so too were camellias and oranges. One of the finest houses, standing in its own grounds, was that of Admiral Mendez NuÑez; it is here that our English admirals who come with the fleet are usually entertained.

One of the most charming drives in the vicinity of Pontevedra is to Marin, a little fishing town which lies upon a crescent-shaped bay on the south-east coast of the ria; there is also a steam tramcar route, but it is far pleasanter to drive. Marin is a diminutive port, it has a little wharf, and is so safe and commodious that ships, all except the largest, can enter it in the most stormy weather, and its bottom affords splendid anchorage. As our carriage left the town behind us, we caught a fine view of the bridge over the Lerez, and the bull-ring near it. To our left we passed the handsome summer residence and grounds of the Marquis de Monfero Rios: here an orange grove had recently been planted, and some of the trees were laden with golden fruit; beside them was an avenue of tall pines which led up to the principal entrance of the villa. Hyacinths, nemopholi, and drooping narcissi covered the banks beneath the hedges that bordered our road as we proceeded, and behind them in the gardens were wisterias again, and camellias, and white roses creeping in profusion over the walls; but the principal feature of the whole drive was the vines; they showed as yet no signs of leaves, yet their dark knotted branches looked as if they had plenty of life in them, for tendrils were shooting all over the frames. These vines were not trained like hops on sticks, as they are in the Crimea, nor on trellis-work like those of the Austrian Tyrol, but rested upon bamboo canes from eight to twelve feet long, especially cultivated for that purpose; the cottages had bamboo brackets swinging out over their doors and lower windows to form supports for the vine branches; these make a deliciously cool covering in hot weather. The hills did not slope down to the water, but descended in terraces cut like steps; there were steps of vines, steps of corn, steps of grass, and steps of green peas; but always steps, never patches. At Marin we were kindly welcomed by some English Protestant missionaries, who do what they can to improve the condition of the poor fisherfolk; they have recently built a tasteful little chapel near their dwelling: the priests do not favour their presence, but the same liberty is accorded to them as is accorded to Mohammedans in England. At Marin numbers of fisherwomen are occupied in gathering cockles and other shell-fish on the shore; cartloads of cockles are taken up to the mountain villages, where the peasants live on them for days together. I constantly found groups of cottage children picking cockles out of their shells and making of them their mid-day repast.

An excursion by boat upon the river Lerez was planned for us, but had to be abandoned on account of the rain; this is one of the most beautiful excursions that tourists can take from Pontevedra; the banks of the Lerez are thickly wooded, and are one mass of flowers and ferns in April and May.

The convent of Santa Clara is surrounded by lofty and forbidding walls; part of it is very old and part quite modern. Tradition says that the original building was a centre for the Knights Templars, whose duty it was to protect pilgrims and travellers on their journeys through the wilder parts of the country: it is said that this accounts for the fact that there is no escutcheon of the Order of Santa Clara upon the walls. The apse of the conventual church is Gothic, and resembles, with its lancet windows, those of Santo Domingo and San Francisco: the nuns are not allowed to leave their convent on any pretext whatsoever—they are cloistered for life; they do not even enter the body of their church, but worship in a gallery behind a wooden trellis, like the Jewesses in the synagogues of Bokhara.

Our next drive was across the bridge to the village of Combarro, and then on to the monastery of San Juan de Poyo Grande, to hear the monks sing the Salve Regina at their Saturday afternoon Mass. As we were just reaching the bridge, we got out of our carriage to look at the little house in which Pedro Sarmiento is said to have been born. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa was a celebrated navigator of the sixteenth century. Sir Clements Markham tells us that Sarmiento’s writings on the Straits of Magellan are admirable work, and well known to English naval surveyors.[256] It seems that Sarmiento left Pontevedra at the age of eighteen, and devoted seven years of his life to studying the Incas. The Inquisition found him guilty of possessing mysterious and magic rings, and although his confessor had authorised his collecting them, he was condemned to say Mass, on his knees and nearly naked, in the Cathedral of Lima. While this sentence was being carried out, he was shut up in the convent of Santo Domingo without a single book, fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, and reciting seven psalms a day. At length his case was brought before the Pope, who somewhat softened the severity of his punishment. He eventually returned to Spain, equipped a large fleet and sailed forth, to be caught by three English ships and tortured to confess that he carried precious metal. The English took him to Plymouth; he travelled thence to Windsor, where he was kindly treated by Queen Elizabeth, till his enemies got up some scandals about him, whereupon Elizabeth sent him on a diplomatic mission to Flanders and afterwards on another to Spain. He was taken prisoner, while asleep at Burgos, by Viscount de Bearny, and put in prison; thence he was ransomed by the king for six thousand escudos, and four horses. Such was the early history of the eminent navigator. He wrote many books, including a Treatise on Navigation, Information concerning the Stars, and a Treatise on Fortification.

The little house in which Pedro Sarmiento passed his childish days[257] is nothing but a white-washed granite cottage with the usual red-tiled roof. The last relic of the Sarmiento family is still there in the shape of two old maiden ladies, whom the townsfolk call Las Sarmientas. They have sold most of the original house, and only kept one little end of it for themselves to live in. No one who had studied the massive build of the granite cottages of Galicia would feel any surprise that one of them should last for nearly five centuries; they are as solid and firm as the rock from which their blocks are hewn.

About two kilometres distant from Pontevedra is the quaint little village of Combarro, with about four hundred inhabitants; it is thought to be very ancient and to have derived its name from the Greek word ?apt?. We left our carriage to scramble up and down its steep, narrow, and stony streets, with its houses of granite and its balconies of wood, and its red-tiled roofs. Some of the balconies were painted green, others blue, while most of the walls were covered with whitewash. We were invited to visit the inhabitants of several of the houses, and found all very poor. The village covers a steep hillside sloping down to the water, and most of the people are fisherfolk.

At the door of one of the houses there suddenly appeared a woman of about forty-five years of age. I could see threads of silver in her thick black hair, but her face (though it had a wrinkle or two) was still beautiful. She addressed us in tones of the most passionate fervour; she wrung her hands, she lifted them to heaven, she swayed her body like a reed swayed by the wind, and at length burst into a flood of tears. “What is all this?” I asked of the friend who was with me, for the woman spoke in the Gallegan dialect, and so fast that I could catch very few of her words.

“She is telling us of all the hardships that she and her neighbours have to bear,” replied my friend. “She says they are all being ruined by the heavy taxes that the Government

is imposing on all the produce of their industry, and the heavy rents demanded by the landlords.

“‘We live from hand to mouth,’ she cried; ‘and everything we earn with the sweat of our brow is swallowed up in discharging our liabilities, in paying our rates, our rent, and our taxes. We cannot even buy bread for our children because of the oppression of the rich—because we have no money. There is plenty of money in the land, and plenty of food, but it does not come our way; we are being ground down and killed by the heavy and unjust taxes, and there is nothing to encourage us to work, and no hope for the future. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful!’”

Leaving Combarro, we now mounted the hill on which stood the church and Benedictine monastery of San Juan de Poyo; the church with its two naves and its two towers dates only from the eighteenth century, but the cloister with its arcade dates from the sixteenth. Here we saw the stone sarcophagus of Santa Tramunda which had recently been discovered in the neighbouring hermitage of San Martin. On the lid of the sarcophagus was an ancient form of the cross, rarely seen after the sixth century; behind the sarcophagus was a full size painting of Santa Tramunda, with her name and the date 1792. There is a tradition that she was captured by Mohammedans, but, escaping from their clutches, was miraculously enabled to walk home over the sea, without being drowned. The monks who now inhabit the cloister are a begging Order, de la Merced, founded by San Pedro Nolasco for the ransoming of captives; they have not been there long. At the appointed hour they gathered before the altar and sang with candles in their hands; they were all dressed in white with black leather girdles, and the whole performance was interesting. At the close they filed out at the doors to right and left of the altar. These monks have restored the church with their own private funds; it is a handsome granite edifice. The two Padres from Solesme, sent by the Pope Leo X. to instruct the monks of Spain in the art of singing Gregorian music, had just left San Poyo, and so it was with special interest that we listened to their rendering of the hymn composed by their founder, San Pedro Nolasco. There is still a handsome carved wood choir in the back of the church; the cloister too, with its groined vaulting, is well worth inspection.

In front of the church there is a terrace commanding an exquisite view over the Ria de Pontevedra, with the island of Tumbo in the distance, and Marin away on the opposite side of the water.

In the old days, before the Jews were expelled from Spain, Pontevedra had, like other towns, its Jewish quarter—it was called Lampas dos Judeus (lampas, burying-place). At the end of the street was a space called Picota d’os Judeus, where Jewish delinquents were publicly punished; Christians were castigated on the spot now covered by the Capilla de la Peregrina, an edifice of the eighteenth century. Several of the houses that were inhabited by wealthy Jews are still standing. Those Jews who remained in Spain became Christians. SeÑor Sampedro told me he had talked with an old man of ninety, who said he remembered seeing on the wall of the old church a list of the Jewish families into which the Christians were not allowed to marry.

The old town mansion of the Sotomayor family is still preserved in Pontevedra, and their castle, the Castillo de Mos, is the only remaining example of a mediÆval castle in Galicia: the latter is now the summer residence of the Marquis de la Viga de Armijo. We drove to it from Pontevedra in about two and a half hours, through beautiful and historic country. The bridge, Puente de San Payo, by which we crossed the river Verdugo, has given its name to the battlefield where Marshal Ney, at the head of seven thousand French troops, was utterly routed on 7th June 1809, by a force composed of rude undisciplined Gallegan peasants under the command of NoroÑa, and backed by some English marines. The peasants fought with anything that could be used as a weapon; in place of guns, they made rough catapults out of the trunks of oak trees, and formed a kind of battery under the direction of Colonel M’Kinley. Children still find skulls in this battlefield and in the surrounding country, and bring them in to Pontevedra as curios.

The vines that we passed on the drive were trained, not over bamboos, but over rough granite columns, often nearly six feet in height; the hills were terraced with verdant steps as before, and there was an absence of all flatness and monotony; even the hedges round the gardens had changed to granite, so plentiful was that material. The people find it easier and cheaper to wall their fields and gardens with blocks of granite than to plant hedges. We passed stretches of land covered with the canary-coloured blossom of cabbages, others brilliant with some purple flower, others, again, with tall green grass mingled with hyacinths. On all sides the horizon was bounded by distant mountain peaks of a hazy blue, and the eye was free to travel unhindered over many a mile of cultivated hills and valleys. Here and there amongst the granite hedges would be a real English hedge of blackberries with familiar wild flowers in the grass below. The kilometres were marked by the quaintest of pointed milestones, which looked as if their proper place was a cemetery. In some of the ploughed patches, women with red handkerchiefs over their heads, and legs bare nearly to the knee, were busy sowing seed in the freshly ploughed furrows. The cottages were all of sparkling granite, and as solid in their build as if they had been cathedrals; in many a cottage garden we saw a lemon tree full of yellow fruit; presently we crossed the railway line, and near it a plantation of bamboos. Then a granite quarry came in view; a second time we crossed the railway and then came the river, its banks blazing with mica dust. Then came a village with a granite church and a schoolhouse; the road itself has been hewn out of granite rocks; boulders covered with moss and with ferns in their crannies formed the sides of the road; now we had reached the top of a hill covered with chestnut trees, whose bright green foliage was lit up by the powerful sun, and from this point of vantage we looked across an exquisite valley that lay on our right. Women were busy turning up the clods with antiquated implements which appear to date from the days of Noah. One woman had hung her giant umbrella in the branches of a neighbouring tree, and another had stuck hers in the field. It is no unusual sight in Galicia to find umbrellas apparently growing among the cereals, for every peasant takes his “gamp” with him to his daily labour, and has to leave it somewhere while he works. All at once we catch sight of a castellated wall on a distant hill; this is our first view of the castle we have come to see. Our road now skirts the wide luxuriant valley, and the castle towers upon one of the highest of the peaks that command it. Terrace after terrace of cultivated land slopes down to the bottom of the valley. Shrubs of white broom wave over our road, and banks of primroses come into sight; then we see a signboard with the words el Castello de Mos. Pine-covered hills are now surrounding us, and our road ascends the one that is crowned by the castle; our way is now bordered on both sides with high bracken and other ferns, and the air is fragrant with the scent of the pine. Tall eucalyptus trees mingle with the pines near the road, and we see the bark peeling off their mastlike stems and lying in sheaths across the road. Another signpost comes in view upon which are two fingers; one points out the road to Redondela, and the other shows us the direction of the nearest railway station, that of Arcade.

At length we enter the grounds of the castle, not by the principal entrance, which looks as if it were seldom used, but by a side gate. Inside the grounds the first thing we notice is a small building opposite the castle, with the word Teatro over the door, and a bust in a niche on either side. The gardener who acted as our guide invited us to enter the little playhouse, and explained to us that the plays performed in the theatre were got up and acted by the family and their guests. The family comes there in the beginning of August and stays till 1st October. The present master is a widower with no children, but nephews and nieces help to make the place merry, and there are always plenty of guests. Special seats are reserved for the family and their guests, and the rest of the little theatre is filled by servants and retainers.

The castle stands, as we have seen, upon the top of a pine-covered hill; it is surrounded by a thick wall and parapet enclosing a green sward, and beyond that are the beautiful park-like grounds. The entrance to the castle is by way of its oldest part, an old keep dating from the fourteenth century commanding the chief entrance. There are loopholes or crenelles, through which arrows and other missiles could be discharged at assailants, from a bulging wall behind which there is room for several men to conceal themselves, and there are more of these holes in the passage. The pretty Gothic staircase, pointed arches, and stone balustrade are quite modern, but as nearly as possible a copy of the original. At the top of the stairs is the chapel, and below the chapel is the family crypt containing the tomb of the wife of the present marquis, who died some seventeen years ago. The carving on the door represents St. Peter and St. Paul and is very good work. Over the altar there is a picture, said to be a copy of the famous “San Antonio” of Murillo at Seville; the saint is kneeling before the Child, which has Its left hand resting upon his head. There is also some modern sculpture in memory of Don Diego de Sotomayor, the builder, in 1543, of the walls and fortifications which enclose the castle. Don Diego lies in full armour, and the inscription tells us that this tomb was erected (in 1870) by his descendant, “Don Antonio Aguilar y Torrea, Marques de la Vega de Armijo y de Mos Conde de la Bobadilla, Visconde del Pegullal.” On the wall at the top of the stairs are some magnificent antlers of deer killed by the father of the present king of Spain, when he was a guest at the castle for the third time in 1882. The rooms of the old keep have walls nearly three yards thick, and the openings for the windows are like passages. Beneath the Sala de Armas is a dark dungeon—a black hole—to which there was originally no other entrance but the trapdoor in the floor; there is now a door to it from below, and it does duty as a wine cellar; but it has had its victims, and the story goes that a bishop was once confined there. On the wall of the Sala de Armas there is a medallion of Alfonso II., and a curious genealogical tree of the Sotomayor family, which grows downwards and begins at the top with Froila Fernandez, Conde de los patremonios de Galicia. The present marquis is in his eighty-fourth year; as he leaves no descendants, the estate will go to the left branch.

We ascended to the castellated parapet at the top of the keep to enjoy the exquisite panorama of the wide village-dotted valley and the surrounding peaks; there was the river Verdugo, and yonder, the waterfall which supplies Vigo with electric light; in the distance we could see the village of Puente Caldelas; all the pine woods and the meadows in the vicinity of the castle are part of the Sotomayor estate. Opposite the Castle Mos on a cone-shaped hill, a little loftier, if anything, we could see ruined walls and a chapel. This was the peak called la Peneda, and the chapel of la Virgen de la Peneda; the walls are a remnant of fortifications placed there by a fighting Archbishop of Santiago to whom all the valley was subject, that he might keep an eye on the movements of the unruly Sotomayors.

The turret is filled now with small bedrooms for visitors, and huge wardrobes stand in the passages, while in every bedroom there is a commodious zinc bath. The reception-room, the ceiling of which is handsomely carved, is draped with fine old tapestries, but those on the walls of the dining-room are modern. Good old-fashioned stone chimneys and wide hearths give the whole place an air of comfort; there is a billiard-room with French windows opening into a stone balcony on two sides of it, and from here we see three old cannon still perched upon the outer walls; they are ornaments now, and covered with verdigris, but there was a day when they had their use. In the billiard-room we found a little book describing the castle, written by a niece of the present marquis, la Marquesa de Ayerbe;[258] she has published several other works. The marquesa began her book with a quotation from Taine,[259] about the kings and knights of the Middle Ages being one and all warriors by profession, and who, in order to be always ready, had their horses standing in their bedrooms while they slept. Then came a verse by Molina, in which he enumerates the great families of Galicia, including that of Sotomayor. “The reason that Sotomayor arrives so far on in the list is,” explains the marquesa, “because Molina, to be quite impartial, took the families alphabetically—there is no question of precedence.” The authoress tells us she was herself born, baptized, and married in the castle, so that she has spent nearly every summer of her life there, and that she is a true native of beautiful Galicia, which she passionately loves. She reminds her readers of Taine’s remark that in the days of the Moors in Spain all the eminent medical men, surgeons, artists, and men of brains and talent, generally were either Moors or Jews, and that they exercised a beneficial influence upon the country by importing civilisation from the East. She also gives an interesting quotation from the will of a Sotomayor, which is still in existence and bears the date 1468, and another from one dated 1472; she states further that the fort on a neighbouring peak is called Castrican or Castrizan, and that the chapel there is dedicated to Nuestra SeÑoro de los Nieves. Perhaps the Sotomayor of the Middle Ages who has left the most vivid traditions in the minds of the people is Don Pedro, nicknamed Madruga, of whose doings the cottagers in the valley below have many strange legends.

There are three distinct periods exemplified in the architecture of Castillo Mos: first, the old keep, with its massive walls, which forms the kernel of the building; second, the outer walls and fortifications built by Don Diego in the sixteenth century; and, lastly, the modern work done in the lifetime of the present marquis, who has succeeded in turning an abandoned ruin into one of the most beautiful and romantic of all the summer residences I have ever seen. The grounds are delicious with their fine old chestnuts hoary with age, their waterfalls, lawns, and flower-beds, while the keep over the entrance in the outer wall is now used as the library, and its walls are covered with bookshelves. The grass plot between the castle and the wall has many orange trees, and I saw fine large oranges lying about on the grass that no one had thought it worth their while to touch, because they were of the bitter kind, only good for preserving! and almost hidden among the long grass was a deep granite well approached by a winding stone stair covered with ferns and moss. The chain bridge over the remains of the old moat, the fine old trees, the bronze bust of the celebrated painter Castro Placentia (who painted the “San Antonio” in the chapel), sculptured by Mariano Bellini at Rome in 1891. A stream of pure water gushes from the hillside and flows near the shady old chestnut trees

CASTILLO MOS, NOW THE SUMMER RESIDENCE OF THE MARQUIS DE LA VEGA ARMIJO, PONTEVEDRA