University of Virginia Library

5. THE
JOURNEY INTO SPAIN.

5. THE
JOURNEY INTO SPAIN.

Soft-breathing Spring! how many pleasant
thoughts, how many delightful recollections
does thy name awaken in the mind of a traveller!
Whether he has followed thee by the
banks of the Loire or the Guadalquivir, or traced
thy footsteps, slowly climbing the sunny
slope of Alp or Appenine, the thought of thee
shall summon up sweet visions of the past, and
thy golden sunshine, and soft, vapory atmosphere

become a portion of his day dreams and
of him. Sweet images of thee, and scenes
that have oft inspired the poet's song, shall
mingle in his recollections of the past. The
shooting of the tender leaf,—the sweetness and
elasticity of the air,—the blue sky and the fleet-drifting
cloud, and the flocks of wild fowl,
wheeling in long phalanx through the air, and
screaming from their dizzy height,—all these
shall pass like a dream before his imagination,

It was at the opening of this delightful season
of the year, that I passed through the
South of France, and took the road of Saint
Jean de Luz for the Spanish frontier. I left
Bordeaux amid all the noise and gaiety of the
last scene of Carnival. The streets and public
walks of the city were full of merry
groups in masks,—at every corner, crowds were
listening to the discordant music of the wandering
ballad-singer, and grotesque figures
mounted on high stilts and dressed in the garb
of the peasants of the Landes of Gascony,

were stalking up and down like so many longlegged
cranes;—others were amusing themselves
with the tricks and grimaces of little
monkeys, disguised like little men, bowing to
the ladies, and figuring away in red coats and
ruffles;—and here and there a band of chimney-sweeps
were staring in stupid wonder at
the miracles of a showman's box. In a word,
all was so full of mirth and merrimake, that
even beggary seemed to have forgotten, that it
was wretched, and gloried in the ragged masquerade
of one poor holiday.

To this scene of noise and gaiety succeeded
the silence and solitude of the Landes
of Gascony. The road from Bordeaux to
Bayonne winds along through immense pine
forests, and sandy plains, spotted here and
there with a dingy little hovel, and the silence
is interrupted only by the dismal, hollow roar of
the wind among the melancholy and majestic
pines. Occasionally, however, the way is enlivened
by a market town or a straggling village;
and I still recollect the feelings of delight,
which I experienced, when just after sunset
we passed through the romantic town of

Roquefort, built upon the sides of the green
valley of the Douze, which has scooped out a
verdant hollow for it to nestle in, amid the barren
tracts of sand around.

On leaving Bayonne the scene assumes a
character of greater beauty and sublimity.
To the vast forests of the Landes of Gascony,
succeeds a scene of picturesque beauty, delightful
to the traveller's eye. Before him rise
the snowy Pyrenees,—a long line of undulating
hills,

To the left, as far as the eye can reach,
stretch the delicious valleys of the Nive and
Adour, and to the right the sea flashes along
the pebbly margin of its silver beach, forming
a thousand little bays and inlets, or comes
tumbling in among the cliffs of a rock-bound
coast, and beats against its massive barriers,
with a distant, hollow, continual roar.

Should these pages meet the eye of any
solitary traveller, who is journeying into
Spain, by the road I here speak of, I would

advise him to travel from Bayonne to Saint
Jean de Luz on horse back. At the gate of
Bayonne he will find a steed ready caparisoned
for him, with a dark eyed Basque girl for his
companion and guide, who is to sit beside him
upon the same horse. This style of travelling
is, I believe, peculiar to the Basque provinces;
at all events I have seen it nowhere else. The
saddle is constructed with a large frame-work
extending on each side, and covered with cushions;
and the traveller and his guide being
placed on the opposite extremities, serve as a
balance to each other. We overtook many
travellers mounted in this way, and I could
not help thinking it a mode of travelling far
preferable to being cooped up in a diligence.
The Basque girls are generally beautiful;
and there was one of these merry
guides, we met upon the road to Bidart, whose
image haunts me still. She had large and expressive
black eyes,—teeth like pearls,—a rich
and sun-burnt complexion, and hair of a glossy
blackness, parted on the forehead, and falling
down behind in a large braid, so long as almost
to touch the ground with the little ribbon,
that confined it at the end. She wore the
common dress of the peasantry of the South of
France, and a large gipsey straw hat was
thrown back over her shoulder, and confined
by a ribbon about her neck. There was hardly
a dusty traveller in the coach, who did not
envy her companion, the seat he occupied beside
her.

Just at night-fall we entered the town of
Saint Jean de Luz, and dashed down its narrow
streets at full gallop. The little mad-cap postillion,
cracked his knotted whip incessantly,
and the sound echoed back from the high, dingy
walls like the report of a pistol. The coach-wheels
nearly touched the houses on each side
of us;—the idlers in the street jumped right
and left to save themselves; window-shutters
flew open in all directions; a thousand heads
popped out from cellar and upper story; Sacr-r-ré
mâtin! shouted the postillion,—and
we rattled on like an earthquake.

Saint Jean de Luz is a smoky little fishing
town, situated on the low grounds at the mouth
of the Nivelle, and a bridge connects it with
the faubourg of Sibourne, which stands on the

opposite bank of the river. I had no time,
however, to note the peculiarities of the place,
for I was whirled out of it, with the same speed
and confusion with which I had been whirled in,
and I can only recollect the sweep of the road
across the Nivelle—the church of Sibourne by
the water's edge—the narrow streets—the
smoky looking houses, with red window-shutters,
and “a very ancient and fish-like smell.”

I passed by moonlight the little river Bidasoa,
which forms the boundary between France
and Spain; and when the morning broke
found myself far up among the mountains of
San Salvador, the most westerly links of the
great Pyrenean chain. The mountains around
me were neither rugged nor precipitous; but
they rose one above another in a long majestic
swell, and the trace of the plough-share was
occasionally visible to their summits. They
seemed entirely destitute of forest scenery;
and as the season of vegetation had not
yet commenced, their huge outlines lay black
and barren, and desolate against the sky.
But it was a glorious morning; and the sun

rose up into a cloudless heaven, and poured a
flood of gorgeous splendor over the mountain
landscape, as if proud of the realm he shone
upon. The scene was enlivened by the
dashing of a swollen mountain-brook, whose
course we followed for miles down the valley,
as it leaped onward to its journey's end, now
breaking into a white cascade, and now foaming
and chafing beneath a rustic bridge. Now
and then we rode through a dilapidated town,
with a group of idlers at every corner, wrapped
in tattered brown cloaks, and smoking
their little paper cigars in the sun. Then
would succeed a desolate tract of country
cheered only by the tinkle of a mule-bell, or
the song of a muleteer. Then we would meet
a solitary traveller, mounted on horseback,
and wrapped in the ample folds of his cloak,
with a gun hanging at the pommel of his saddle.
Occasionally, too, among the bleak, inhospitable
hills, we passed a rude little chapel, with
a cluster of ruined cottages around it; and
whenever our carriage stopped at the relay, or
loitered slowly up the hill-side, a crowd of
children would gather around us, with little
images and crucifixes for sale, curiously ornamented
with ribbons, and little bits of tawdry
finery.

A day's journey from the frontier brought
us to Vitoria, where the diligence stopped for
the night. I spent the scanty remnant of daylight
in rambling about the streets of the city,
with no other guide but the whim of the moment.
Now I plunged down a dark and narrow
alley,—now emerged into a wide street,
or a spacious market-place, and now aroused
the drowsy echoes of a church or cloister with
the sound of my intruding footsteps. But descriptions
of churches and public squares are
dull and tedious matters for those readers, who
are in search of amusement and not of instruction;
and if any one has accompanied me thus
far on my fatiguing journey towards the Spanish
capital, I will readily excuse him from the
toil of an evening ramble through the streets of
Vitoria.

On the following morning we left Vitoria
long before day-break, and during our forenoon's
journey, the postillion drew up at a
relay, on the southern slope of the Sierra de

San Lorenzo in the province of Old Castile.
The house was an old, dilapidated tenement,
built of rough stone, and coarsely plastered
upon the outside. The tiled roof had long
been the sport of wind and rain, the motley
coat of plaster was broken and time-worn, and
the whole building sadly out of repair; though
the fanciful mouldings under the eaves, and
the curiously carved wood-work, that supported
the little balcony over the principal entrance,
spoke of better days gone by. The
whole building reminded me of a dilapidated
Spanish Don, down at the heel and out at
elbows, but with here and there a remnant of
former magnificence peeping through the loopholes
of his tattered cloak.

A wide gate-way ushered the traveller into
the interior of the building, and conducted him
to a low-roofed apartment, paved with round
stones, and serving both as a court-yard and
a stable. It seemed to be a neutral ground
for man and beast;—a little republic, where
horse and rider had common privileges, and
mule and muleteer lay cheek by jowl. In
one corner a poor jackass was patiently devouring

a bundle of musty straw,—in another
its master lay sound asleep with his saddle-cloth
for a pillow; here, a group of muleteers
were quarrelling over a pack of dirty cards,—
and there the village barber with a self-important
air, stood laving the alcalde's chin from
the helmet of Mambrino. On the wall a little
taper glimmered feebly before an image of
Saint Anthony; directly opposite these, a
leathern wine-bottle hung by the neck from a
pair of ox-horns; and the pavement below was
covered with a curious medley of boxes, and
bags, and cloaks, and pack-saddles, and sacks
of grain, and skins of wine, and all kinds of
lumber.

A small door upon the right led us into the
inn-kitchen. It was a room about ten feet
square, and literally all chimney; for the hearth
was in the centre of the floor, and the walls
sloped upward in the form of a long tapering
pyramid, with an opening at the top for the escape
of the smoke. Quite round this little
room ran a row of benches, upon which sat
one or two grave personages smoking paper
cigars. Upon the hearth blazed a handful of

faggots, whose bright flame danced merrily
among a motley congregation of pots and kettles,
and a long wreath of smoke wound lazily
up through the huge tunnel of the roof above.
The walls were black with soot, and ornamented
with sundry legs of bacon and festoons of
sausages; and as there were no windows in
this dingy abode, the only light, which cheered
the darkness within, came flickering from the
fire upon the hearth, and the smoky sunbeams,
that peeped down the long-necked chimney.

I had not been long seated by the fire,
when the tinkling of mule bells, the clatter of
hoofs, and the hoarse voice of a muleteer in
the outer apartment announced the arrival of
new guests. A few moments afterward, the
kitchen door opened and a person entered,
whose appearance strongly arrested my attention.
It was a tall athletic figure, with the
majestic carriage of a grandee, and a dark sun-burnt
countenance, that indicated an age of
about fifty years. His dress was singular, and
such as I had not before seen. He wore a
round hat, with wide flapping brim, from
beneath which his long black hair hung in

curls upon his shoulders; a leather jerkin,
with cloth sleeves, descended to his hips;
around his waist was closely buckled a leather
belt, with a cartouche-box on one side; a
pair of Marmeluke pantaloons of black serge
hung in ample folds to the knees, around which
they were closely gathered by embroidered
garters of blue silk; and black broadcloth
leggings, buttoned close to the calves, and
strapped over a pair of brown leather shoes,
completed the singular dress of the stranger.
He doffed his hat as he entered, and saluting
the company with a “Dios guarde á Ustedes,
caballeros,” (God guard you, gentlemen) took
a seat by the fire, and entered into conversation
with those around him.

As my curiosity was not a little excited by
the peculiar dress of this person, I inquired of
a travelling companion, who sat at my elbow,
who and what this new-comer was. From him
I learned that he was a muleteer of the Maragatería,
a name given to a cluster of small
towns which lie in the mountainous country between
Astorga and Villafranca, in the western
corner of the kingdom of Leon.

“Nearly every province in Spain,” said he,
“has its peculiar costume, as you will see,
when you have advanced farther into our country.
For instance, the Catalonians wear crimson
caps, hanging down upon the shoulder like
a sack; wide pantaloons of green velvet, long
enough in the waistband to cover the whole
breast; and a little strip of a jacket, made of
the same material, and so short as to bring the
pocket directly under the arm-pit. The Valencians,
on the contrary, go almost naked; a
linen shirt, wide linen trowsers, reaching no
lower than the knees, and a pair of coarse
leather sandals complete their simple garb;
it is only in mid-winter, that they indulge in
the luxury of jacket. The most beautiful
and expensive costume, however, is that of
Andalusia. It consists of a velvet jacket, faced
with rich, and various-colored embroidery,
and covered with tassels and silken cord; a
vest of some gay color; a silken handkerchief
round the neck, and a crimson sash round the
waist; breeches, that button down each side;
gaiters and shoes of white leather; and a
handkerchief of bright-colored silk wound

round the head like a turban, and surmounted
by a velvet cap, or a little round hat, with a
wide band, and an abundance of silken loops
and tassels. The Old Castilians are more
grave in their attire. They wear a leather
breast-plate instead of a jacket; a montera
cap, breeches and leggings. This fellow is a
Maragato; and in the villages of the Maragatería
the costume varies a little from the rest
of Leon and Castile.”

“If he is indeed a Maragato,” said I jestingly,
“who knows, but he may be a descendant
of the muleteer, who behaved so naughtily
at Cacabelos, as related in the second chapter
of the veracious history of Gil Blas de
Santillana.”

“¿ Quien sabe?” was the reply. “Notwithstanding
the pride, which even the meanest
Castillian feels in counting over a long line
of good-for-nothing ancestors, the science of
genealogy has become of late a very intricate
study in Spain.”

Here our conversation was cut short by the
mayoral of the diligence, who came to tell us,
that the mules were waiting; and before many

hours had elapsed, we were scrambling through
the square of the ancient city of Burgos. On
the morrow we crossed the river Duero and the
Guadarama mountains, and early in the afternoon
entered the “Heroica Villa” of Madrid
by the Puerta de Fuencarral.