  WE had penetrated the loftiest mountains in Cantabria without any ascent worth mentioning. Consequently it was somewhat disconcerting to discover that the Pass was still to win. This preliminary canter had merely admitted us into a great cup, the bed of an ancient lake. We had entered it through the outlet, but must leave it over the lip. Within its mountain pale the whole internal area of Castile and Leon consists of a lofty tableland, two thousand feet and upwards above the coast-line. It is vain to sue entry on the level: there can be no dispensation from the climb. Potes itself lies just above the mouth of the great Gorge, and the precipices of the Picos dominate it as the Wetterhorn dominates Grindelwald. The deep, narrow vale of Liebana comes winding down upon it from the southward, its slopes gay with mountain flowers, and shaggy We in our sanguine ignorance had fancied ourselves upon the watershed, and thought that some two hours’ collar-work would have earned us a spell of downhill. But the mountains were still thronging round us at the village of Valdeprado; and an old neat-herd, driving his cows to the pastures, unfeelingly assured us that the pass was two leagues The descent on the southern side of the Puerto is nothing like so formidable as upon the northern; and the mountains, shorn of half their elevation by the altitude to which we have risen, look much less imposing than on the seaward side. They eventually come to an end with startling suddenness a mile or so beyond the village of Cervera; and from their feet to the southward the great treeless level sweeps away unbroken—an almost uncanny contrast to the tossing wilderness behind. We had counted upon finding a road of some kind towards Leon from Cervera, but the inhabitants evidently needed none and declined to encourage The Fondas in the larger towns are generally very tolerable, and even the humbler hostels in Cantabria are presentable after their kind. But the little Posadas and Paradors of the villages in the interior are much more primitive institutions, and these are the lot of the traveller who ventures to take to the road. I should imagine that they have not changed one tittle since the day when Don Quixote, and the Curate, and the Barber, and the beautiful Dorothea, and the tattered Cardenio, foregathered with Don Ferdinand and Dona Lucinda at the Venta de CÁrdenas in the Sierra Morena; and one wonders much how the whole of that illustrious company were able to find accommodation under its roof. Externally it suggests an abandoned cowshed, and the wayfarer The villagers were dancing before the door at the moment of our arrival, but the ball was at once interrupted to interview such extraordinary guests. “They came round about us like bees,” wrote poor Sir E. Verney in 1623, “touching one thing and handling another, and did not leave us till we were abed!” Of course they did! But Sir Edmund was a little particular; and we suspect old James Howell had some reason for his strictures anent the stand-offishness of the members of Prince Charles’ suite. Our catechising was conducted by the hostess and her daughter: What were our names? Whence were we? Whither did we go? They surveyed the bicycles with gasps of “Madre mia!” and I am sure their fingers itched to explore the inside of our packs. Were we married? No? The English married very little! And this depressing reflection cost them a sad little shake of the head. It grew rather wearying at last, but discourtesy was nowise intended. A stranger in these forgotten villages is as rare as a blue moon. Spain is socially the most democratic of countries; but it is an aristocratic democracy; and Individually he is “a very fine fellow.” The verdict is the Duke of Wellington’s. And probably no one in history knew their failings better than he. Spain is no “dying nationality,” though her day be still rather “MaÑana.” It is idle to deny a future to so robust and prolific a race. The traveller need not look to fare sumptuously in a Posada. If he does not carry his own food with him he must take what comes. Mine host does not profess to find accommodation for man, only for beast; and anything he does for the beast’s owner is regarded as a work of supererogation. We cannot lodge with the peasantry without sharing some few of their holiday hardships; and there can be no doubt that in many districts they are miserably poor. “There is no milk in the place,” said mine hostess to me on one occasion, in answer to a request for that commonest of luxuries:—“this village is in la ultima miseria!” Yet even there they seemed cheerful and contented; and the common taunt of idleness certainly did not apply to them. Spanish townsfolk are by no means early risers: but the villages are stirring at cock-crow and the labourers out in the fields with the first rays of the sun.
This last is no inconsiderable advantage in a country which gets hot by eight o’clock in the morning; and the great red disk was but half clear of the horizon when we bade farewell to Buenavista, and began our long ride to Leon. Washing arrangements had no share in our Posada’s economy, so this mysterious British ritual was cele Strictly speaking this is one of those levels which slope upwards and downwards a good deal; for the streams coming down from the mountains have cut themselves good deep valleys, though they seldom supply any water except on special occasions during the autumn rains. In the dips are trees and greenery, but the general impression is that of a bleak red ploughland interspersed with wide stretches of heath. Here and there, marooned at haphazard, are the casual villages, with their umber-coloured mud walls and red-tiled roofs, rich blotches of colour against the blue of the distant hills. And the desolate aspect of the country is enhanced by the dearth of inhabitants. There is scarcely a labourer in the fallows, scarcely a traveller on the road. No! the little squared stones that we keep passing so regularly do not record the kilometres—only the ordinary roadside murders incidental to an ancient highway. Upon each is graven the simple fact of the tragedy:—Aqui muriÓ, Of course we endeavour to solace ourselves with the reflection that there is at least one similar monument in England; and we note with gratification that very few are of recent date. But then that does not prove that the murders are now less frequent, only that the murderers have less remorse. Yet, after all, the traveller may take courage; his position is not quite desperate, however unpromising it may look. Many of these untimely deaths were the result of ordinary accidents—storm or sunstroke, falls from horses (“a grave that is always open”), or drowning in the flooded streams. Sometimes a private vendetta may have reached its dÉnouement in a chance roadside meeting; but genuine highway murders form a very small proportion of the whole. The roads in Spain are as safe as those in England. And though I have been warned that “there are men in this village who would not hesitate to cut your throat for a dollar,” yet the country folk generally (as one of See,—out of one of the dips in the road before us rise the figures of two horsemen;—big men, well mounted, in white puggarees and smart blue uniforms, with sabre at saddle and carbine on thigh;—the Civil Guard of Spain. Vayan Vs con Dios, Caballeros! Spain owes you a debt that is not to be readily computed. Those who have delivered her from her long tyranny of lawlessness deserve a niche beside the old knightly orders of Calatrava and AlcÁntara, who kept the border in the days of raiding Moors. Don Bernardo de Castel Blazo distrusted those who kept company with Alguazils; but it is a highly desirable privilege to be friends with the Civil Guard. En passant it may be mentioned that it is imprudent to be otherwise, for they are authorised to shoot at sight, and are reputed seldom to miss. But this vexatious habit is one which they seldom indulge in, and so long as you keep the right side of them they are very good fellows indeed. Should our misguided rulers ever signalise their ineptitude Readers of Borrow may perhaps recall his description of a forlorn and melancholy township halfway between PalÉncia and Leon, a hotbed of Carlism, which he discreetly alludes to as ——. But it seems somewhat superfluous reticence to throw such a very thin veil of anonymity over a name which is obviously Sahagun. Once the great Romanesque Monastery, whose massive square tower forms such an imposing landmark, was first in wealth and dignity in all the kingdom of Leon. But now it is but the wreck of its former greatness; and the crazy mud hovels and hummocky streets which surround it form an abomination of dilapidation that it would not be easy to match even in Spain. What a fit scene for disillusion it must have presented to Moore and his army as they here turned their backs upon victory and commenced their disastrous retreat! The soldiers were all spoiling for a battle, and the 15th Hussars had brilliantly opened the scoring. But just as they savoured their appetiser they were dragged off, disappointed and morose. No wonder they sulked! How were they to know the true cause of their There is still a Carlist at Sahagun, because we saw him. The inhabitants, recognising us as strangers, naturally assumed that we should be interested in seeing their Carlist, and he was accordingly fetched and paraded, much as a man who had been “out” in the ‘45 might have been shown to Dr Johnson in the Hebrides. He was a white-haired and mild-mannered old gentleman,—a greatly sobered edition of the dashing young guerillero who had ranged the mountains of Biscay in 1875. And though he evidently enjoyed his repute as a fire-eater, I doubt whether he really considered that the game had been quite worth the candle after all. The Carlists of to-day seem much in the same position as the Jacobites of the reign of George III. They may defiantly show you “King Carlos’” portrait upon their parlour wall, or even exhibit it for sale in their shop windows. But all this enthusiasm is rather sentimental than active; and in their heart of hearts they must feel with Redgauntlet that a cause so much tolerated is lost. Meanwhile the road to Leon did not seem nearer Mansilla lies upon the banks of the Esla, and the mules were grazing under the ancient ramparts along the margin of the stream. A pretty picture it made as we crossed the old bridge in the twilight and entered the long colonnade of poplars that leads towards the city of Leon. The poplar pollen carpeted the road before us as thick and white as newly-fallen snow, and the whirl of our wheels flung it up on either side in little wavelets, as the foam is flung up by the bows of a racing eight. The effect was quite poetical, but we could not linger to rhapsodise, for the causeway had been broken by floods in several places, and unless we made use of the daylight we should be breaking our necks in the pits. It does not seem to occur to the authorities that there is any risk in delaying repairs for a year or so. And perhaps we have no Leon is a city for which I have acquired a growing affection with each successive visit, a grave old Gothic capital, all filled with memories of the past. It was founded originally by the Romans to control the Cantabrian passes; and the massive walls which surround it still bear witness to the solidity of their work. Unfortunately they are much masked by the surrounding houses; but they are of most imposing dimensions, about twenty feet in thickness, and strengthened by huge Cubos or solid semicircular bastions, spaced at very frequent intervals, some two and a half diameters apart. The city is best viewed from the Pajares road to the northward, but as it is situated on the level it does not show very conspicuously from without. Its most prominent object is the delightfully elegant cathedral; obviously French by inspiration, and of extraordinary lightness of construction, more like a lantern of stained glass than a monument of stone. It is step-sister to Beauvais and Amiens; and, on the whole, it need not fear comparison. But the Spanish builders were not quite at home in dealing with the unfamiliar style. One
The cathedral has been recently restored (not before it was necessary, according to Street’s description); but this difficult work has been admirably executed, though the newness of the stone still renders it rather conspicuous to the eye. The interior is gorgeous with carving and tapestry; and a word may be spared for the Gotho-Renaissance cloisters, and for the great western portals with the Last Judgment graven over the doors. Some of the details of the latter are not without suspicion of humour. A monarch, walking delicately like Agag towards the gates of Paradise, is remorselessly barred by St Peter, and directed to the opposite road. One blessed spirit has been set to play the organ—and another has been deputed to blow it! Truly “one star differeth from another star in glory”; but an eternity of organ-blowing must rank low in the scale of bliss! Scarcely less famous than the cathedral is the Collegiate Church of St Isidore; not the shepherd saint of Madrid, but the Doctor of Spain who Here in 1065 occurred the strange death scene of the founder, the warrior monarch Fernando I. of Leon and Castile. Smitten with sore disease while camping on the marches of Valencia, he had been borne back to make his dying confession before the altar of his metropolitan church. There he laid aside his crown and robes, and clad his wasted limbs in sack-cloth, and for a full day and night lay writhing in ashes on the pavement till his self-inflicted penance was at last ended by his death. We are assured that his original sickness really had been mortal from the first.
Few capitals of Spain are without some memorial of Las Navas de Tolosa, the great victory won by Alfonso VIII. in 1212, which crippled the Spanish Moslems for offensive warfare, and paved the way for the conquest of Andalusia by Ferdinand III. BÚrgos and Pamplona have the trophies of the No doubt we may read in this legend the rebuke of the Church against the selfish policy of the Crown, for no soldier of Leon drew sword in that great battle for the deliverance of Christendom. Castile and Navarre and Aragon were the people The main streets of the city are overshadowed by several fine Solares, the mansions of the old hidalgos, and, beside all its churches and monasteries, the town boasts an attractive Guildhall. But perhaps its most interesting feature is supplied by the crowd that frequents them; for Leon is the metropolis of a big agricultural population, a grave and stalwart race attired in the most picturesque old-world costumes. The dresses of the women are perhaps somewhat lacking in brightness; for they have a taste for sombre shades, especially a mauve-coloured head kerchief which does not accord nearly so well with their olive complexions as the brilliant scarlets and yellows of the girls in Galicia and the south. But this quakerish tinge in the individual does not produce much effect in the aggregate, and they look bright enough in the busy market beneath their forest of umbrella-shaped
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