  THE Estremadura road launches out boldly from the end of the SegÓvia bridge at Madrid, and the fingerpost which points along it laconically observes that that way you will get to Badajos. But quite a lot of water will flow under the SegÓvia bridge first, even though it is only the Manzanares which runs there. Wherefore, to avoid over-watering this narrative, we will not begin it at Madrid, nor even at Talavera, but transport ourselves at one stride right away to the other end of the long line of snowy mountains which guards the northern side of the Estremadura road. Here the Sierra de GrÉdos ends in a forked tail like one of its own falcons, and between the forks a long, straight valley runs up into the centre of the range. The great snow-peaks sit along either side of that long, straight valley like a Parliament of Gods, with the shaggy I were ungrateful not to retain a warm corner in my heart for pretty little PlasÉncia, for I arrived there limping and dog-wrecked, and PlasÉncia was kind to me. But he would be an unimpressionable mortal who could not love her for her beauty alone; and I am not sure that even I—such is man’s gratitude—would remember her as kindly had she been less fair. The crumbling walls, the solemn palaces, the quaint old streets and beautiful situation, make this little Hesperian township one of the most charming in Spain. Is she not rightly named “Pleasaunce”? Queenly SegÓvia herself need not disdain so fair a cousin. But PlasÉncia should not strictly be included in the Castilian family circle; she has married into Estremadura, and the mountains part her from her kind. The picturesque Estremenian peasantry lounge about her squares and plazas, but her site and her buildings seem still to proclaim her kinship. Like other Spanish wives, she has not quite dropped her maiden name.
There is not much traffic in the streets of The Fonda where I brought myself to anchor was situated entirely upon the first floor; and this waste of good space was gratuitous, for the ground floor was all empty vaults. My bedroom was at the back. To reach it I had to pass through the
Of course you seldom get a bill. “This is no time o’night to use our bills! With one word of The borderland character of PlasÉncia is reflected in its surroundings. The Castilian sierras wall it in upon the east; but away to the west stretches the wilderness of Estremadura—vast rugged moors interlaced with wide belts of olive and ilex, or small rare patches of cultivated ground. The lonely road holds steadily upon its way till it reaches the lip of the Tagus ravine, and then plunges abruptly down to the level of the river. There is a marked contrast in the scenery along the two great rivers of northern Spain. The Some little way up the further shore I stumble across the road again. It is getting along capitally, thank you, and tackles the steep ascent in a most At the top is a wilderness of rocky pasture powdered with flocks of merino sheep, the great nomad hordes that migrate every winter into these southern latitudes, and are now working their way north again towards the mountains of Leon. Among them stand the cloaked figures of their shepherds, tall and motionless,—a hermit race; and the pale peaks of Almanzor and his brother giants far away in the background, survey with complacent approval a picture as antiquated as themselves. Presently this desert gives way to olive woods, and the olive woods to more cultivated ground. Thick cactus hedges, fringed round with an edging of blossom, begin to hint at a southern climate; and the peasantry are already reaping the barley harvest, though it is yet but the middle of May. At last a cluster of towers planted in the saddle of a low serrated ridge marks the goal of my day’s journey, and with a wide sweep to the right, to outflank an intervening valley, I enter the town of CÁceres. The tourist who wishes to explore Estremadura will find that the inexorable laws of geography have fixed his headquarters at CÁceres. But he need have no grudge against the inexorable laws aforesaid; they might have chosen a much worse place. To begin with, CÁceres is a town of resources; there is a man in it who owns a bicycle, and who did own till recently a tube of rubber solution, but this rare and costly curio has since been acquired by a foreign collector. Moreover, it is the capital of its province, and it rejoices in a picturesque and busy little market; but the gem of the whole, to an artist’s eyes, is the “old town” which crowns the rising ground in the centre, a delightful relic of antiquity all untainted by the contact of to-day. Nobody seems to go into the old town of CÁceres except the girls with their water pitchers en route for the Fountain of Council on the further side. The streets are so steep that they are all stepped, and so narrow that it is impossible for two loaded mules to pass. No sound is heard in them but the clattering of the storks, and the grim old palaces which wall them in have an indescribable air of mystery and romance. I am convinced that any bold spirit who dared to penetrate into their flowery patios would find them still inhabited by
Four main roads diverge from CÁceres towards the four points of the compass. That towards the east leads to Trujillo, the birthplace of Pizarro, and the mountain sanctuary of Guadalupe, which the Estremenian conquerors enriched with the spoils of Mexico and Peru. I was scheming in vain to attain to them, but my fate was most resolutely hostile. Two sallies resulted in breakdowns, and at last I reluctantly succumbed. My first successful foray was towards the south. This road leads over a queer wild country, half common, half moor, sparsely inhabited, and fringed with the low, rugged ridges which are such a feature of the district. It was a notable haunt of robbers a couple of generations ago. Towards the south-east rises the Sierra de Montanchez, which at this point forms the watershed between the Tagus and Guadiana, and the road gradually rises to pass over its tail. The Sierra piles itself up into fine bold masses on the left of the road; Girard was retreating before Hill from CÁceres, and had halted here for the night, leaving pickets along the road to the northward to give warning of pursuit. But the pursuers he dreaded had already outstripped and intercepted him. Hill had followed the parallel road (which is now the main one) and lay unsuspected at Alcuesca, three miles to the south. Not a Spaniard in either village but knew of the intended coup; but who would betray it to a Frenchman? And no whisper of his danger reached Girard till the 71st and 92nd regiments swept the street with fixed bayonets in the grey of the stormy dawn. Estremadura was Hill’s province, and his other most notable exploit, the seizing of the bridge of Almaraz, was also achieved in this locality. Two victories of which Wellington himself might have been proud. From the summit of the pass the ground sweeps away to the southward, an ocean of white-flowered cistus bushes interspersed with the vivid yellow of the broom. But this brilliant spectacle does not continue for many miles; it soon gives way to the A big red-roofed village with no special feature, built beside the broad and sandy bed of a great river, MÉrida from a distance looks commonplace enough. Yet the wide, smooth cornfields around it might disclose a different scene. Time was when the garrison of Augusta Emerita was fifteen-fold more numerous than her present population, when her walls were twenty miles in circumference, and even in her decay her astonished conqueror could confess that it was “impossible to enumerate” the marvels she contained. Comparing what she is with what she was, the wonder is not that so much has survived, but that so much has disappeared; and yet in good truth the remains are ample enough, “equal to Rome” say the Meridans, and who should know better than they? First the great aqueduct (the greatest of three); the bridge of sixty-four It was a hard-worked little room that was assigned to me for my lodging at MÉrida. At night I slept there, but by day it was a tailor’s shop, and between times it was borrowed by Juanita for the conduct of her little affaires du coeur. Its many-sidedness was the result of its situation, for it was on the ground floor, with a large French window opening direct on to the pavement, and guarded with a stout iron grille. To myself this entailed a rather embarrassing publicity, but it just suited Juanita, who could interview her lover comfortably through the bars.
Each night as I returned from the cafÉ I beheld It might be supposed that there was no ostensible motive why she should not have kept tryst at the door instead of the window, or “gone out walking” with her lover as an English girl would have done. But no! that would not be “proper.” La SeÑora Grundy insists upon a barred window. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why all Spanish windows are barred. “Marriage is honourable to all.” But in Spain it is considered expedient to give an elaborately clandestine flavour to the indispensable preliminary of courtship; and during the whole of that period Romeo is officially tabooed by Juliet’s kin. He may be a most desirable parti, and the bosom friend of all her brothers. But now he is remorse MÉrida was my southernmost limit, and detained me somewhat longer than I had intended. But, indeed, the very origin of the city seems to constitute an invitation to repose. First invaded and last subdued of all the Roman provinces, Spain was just witnessing the dawn of her early millennium when Augustus founded this home of rest for the veterans of the final campaign. If rest was his intention, it would rejoice his heart to see how diligently it is still practised by the descendants of his original colonists. But my own sojourn was not entirely voluntary. I had tried once more for Trujillo, and been forced to put back for repairs. Even a fate-compelled idleness, however, may sometimes be found opportune.
The great ruined aqueduct, the headquarters Once more I sallied forth from CÁceres, and set my face towards the west; and surely in all the solitudes of Estremadura there are none more solitary than this. Mile after mile the straight, white road heaves its long line across the ridges of the rolling moor. Its dust is seamed with the trail of the viper, and here and there the eagle hangs poised above his hunting-ground; but other life or landmark there is none for leagues together, till one feels one has been riding there for ever, and will probably continue till the end of time. Sometimes a ruined watch-tower will afford a distant beacon; sometimes a well-ambushed hamlet, whose swine are reputed to develop a specially succulent If there be any faith in the milestones, AlcÁntara cannot lie beyond that great purple combe ahead of me. Yet how can there be room for the Tagus valley on the hither side? But even as I am flouting their promise, the road dives gracefully over the lip of an unsuspected hollow, and the fragments of a crumbling rampart resolve themselves into the long-sought town. The gateway admits me to a forlorn and grimy street; the houses are ruinous and neglected; everywhere is dirt and misery and dilapidation. What went ye out into the wilderness to see? Just beyond the town, and far below the level of the moors, the Tagus has carved its deep and savage glen. Right and left, as far as the eye can reach, the bare bluff headlands stoop down into the abyss like the tors on the Devonshire coast; and at the bottom, pent between its walls of rock, the tawny river swirls down the ravine. All is vast and huge and desolate; the town itself hardly shows in such a picture; yet in the midst one Spain is the land of bridges. In all Europe they have few rivals, but here they own a King. Since the day when Caius Julius Lacer finished his great work for the Emperor Trajan, and was laid to rest beside it, no other bridge has ever challenged comparison with his;—a work to vie with the pyramids of Egypt, or the Flavian Amphitheatre at Rome. It is long before the eye can learn to grasp its full dimensions; all around it is rock and mountain, there is nothing to give scale. We are warned of it first by the camera, for the lens will not look at so wide an angle; and then by the size of the archway flung across the road at the centre pier. Presently, as we peer over the parapet into the depths of the gulf below us, we realise that there is a man down there walking by the waterside, and a dog which seems to bark though we cannot hear the sound. Our eye slowly sizes up the voussoir above which we are standing; it is a twelve-ton block of granite; and the huge vault with its eighty such voussoirs seems to widen and deepen beneath Thus hint by hint we have pieced together the astonishing conclusion that the span of each of the two great central arches is rather wider, and nearly as high as the interior of the dome of St Paul’s; and that the height of the railway lines above the Firth of Forth is sixty feet less than that of the road above the Tagus! What must the scene be like in winter, when the waters are foaming against the springer stones one hundred and fifty feet above their summer level! How vast the strength of these massive piers which for eighteen hundred years have defied the fury of the floods! Where now is the great Via Lata that ran from Gades to Rome? Where are the famous cities which it threaded on the way? The vine and olive grow in the forum of Italica, and the Miracles of MÉrida are a dwelling for the stork. But here at the wildest point of all its wild journey our eyes may still behold a memorial which nature has assailed in vain:—“Pontem perpetui mansurum in sÆcula mundi,”—the monument of Caius Julius Lacer, more enduring even than Wren’s.
We English, I regret to say, were responsible for It seems rather farcical to make a parade of military secrecy about a structure that has been famous for eighteen centuries; but there is a sentry assigned to it to make sure of preserving its privacy, and I think I acted kindly towards him in providing one culprit for the year. Our re-arrival in the town to interview the Teniente created quite a little sensation, particularly as that official was not to be found at his office, and had to be hunted through the parish by packs of importunate boys. The Teniente was eventually run to earth in his bedroom, in a state of great deshabille, but as polite as if he had been attired in full court uniform. His house and his goods were at my service, and himself only too anxious to do anything in the world Meanwhile I had been left some consolation. The bridge is not quite the only lion at AlcÁntara, and the grand Benedictine convent of its old military monks rises most imposingly upon the edge of the impending moors. It is now ruinous and dismantled, its fine church perfect but empty, and its cloisters used as a cart-shed by the thrifty usurpers of its halls. Beyond this feature, however, the town has little attraction. It was mercilessly It is not altogether surprising, in such an inconsequent country, to discover that by crossing AlcÁntara you will arrive—Nowhere! and that the only traffic across that stupendous edifice is limited to a few flocks of sheep and some casual mules. I had hoped to return to PlasÉncia by way of CÓria. It is no great distance. AlcÁntara is in CÓria diocese, and there are no special obstacles beyond the river; but there is no vestige of a road. No, I must return from AlcÁntara to CÁceres, and from CÁceres to PlasÉncia, and from PlasÉncia I might find a road to CÓria—perhaps. Which is the reason why CÓria is now bracketted with Trujillo and Guadalupe as one of the places I hope to see some day. I returned, therefore, to PlasÉncia the same way that I had come; and passing round the end of the Sierra de GrÉdos, took I have since learned that “nothing but a lively historical curiosity, and a keen sympathy with the lonely melancholy of the heaths, could have enabled me to endure with equanimity the privations to which I was exposed.” It is astonishing how little I realised my fortitude at the time. |
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