Spanish Highways and Byways

For the historian, basking in this last smile of civilization, the afternoon passed blissfully among the orange chairs, but I sallied forth once more, attended by our benignant landlady. The rays of the sun flashed down like deadly arrows and I had pleaded for a carriage, but longed to beg its pardon when it came, so faded, rheumatic, and yet august was that fat old chariot, groaning and tottering as it rolled, but lowering the pomp of a velvet-carpeted staircase whenever we desired to alight.

Our progress made a grand sensation in those drowsy streets and squares, a retinue soon gathered, and nobody seemed surprised when, after a round of Jesuit and Dominican churches, we drew up before the madhouse. I had wished to look upon this building, because it is reputed to have been a dwelling of the Cid; but the hero of Castile was as unknown to my gentle escort as to the medical priest whom she must needs call forth to meet me, or to the hapless lunatics whom he, in turn, insisted on my seeing. A town which had forgotten its chief citizen naturally fails to keep on sale photographs of its cathedral, so we packed our memories in default of anything more substantial and took the evening train to the northwest.

Four hours of hushed, moonlit plain, and then Leon! This is a name of thrilling memories, and we stepped out into the midnight silence of that once royal capital whose kingdom "stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rhone," so awed that even a rickety 'bus, and a smuggler who tried to hide his trunk behind our honest luggage, hardly broke the spell. My comrade, still new to Spanish ways, had fears that the illustrated card which I had forgotten to stamp would not have reached the hotel. She asked me why I did not telegraph; but some days later, when we sent a telegram at noon, took a way-train at five, and reached our destination at ten, simultaneously with the telegram which I might as well have brought in my pocket, she was set free from New World prejudices. The unstamped card went through without question, a picture of a pretty mountain maid being quite as acceptable to the postal clerks as the portrait of their young king.

We were expected at the hotel, the best in town, but so dirty and malodorous that we would better have camped under the stars. There had been some attempt to sweep the floor of our dingy chamber, as we could see by comparing it with stairs and corridors. Sour milk and sour bread were served with a compensating sweetness of manner, but the experiences of that night belong to oblivion.

The joy of the morning! Guided by a shy little scullery lad, smooched of face and ragged of raiment, but with all the instincts of a cavalier, we stepped out into those stately streets, with their haughty old houses, balconies, coats of arms, arches, and battlements, as into an animated picture book. It was Saturday, and the town was all astir with peasants come to market, every peasant as good as a romance. Such brightness of figured kerchiefs, homespun petticoats, trunk hose, jackets, sashes! The little girls were quaintest of all, dressed precisely like their mammas, even to those brilliant skirts edged with one color and slashed with another. Many of the women were carrying loads of greens, others plucked fowls, and some had indignant chickens, in full possession of chicken faculties, snuggled under the arm.

As the chief city in a far reach of luxuriant plain, Leon becomes the focus, every Saturday, of flocks of sheep, droves of pigs, and herds of cattle, together with innumerable mules and donkeys bringing in grain, fruit, and all manner of garden produce. We chanced upon the market itself in the arcaded Plaza Mayor, under shadow of the towered court-house, with the tapering spire of the cathedral overlooking all. The great square hummed like a beehive and sparkled with shifting color like a field of butterflies. We found ourselves first in the bread market. Under wide umbrellas of canvas set on poles women were perched high on wooden benches, with their gayly shod feet supported on stools. Beside each woman, on her rude seat, was a brightly woven basket heaped with the horny Spanish loaves. Close by was the fruit market, with its piles of red and purple plums, pears, grapes, green peppers, lemons, and, beyond, patches of melons, cucumbers, cabbages, potatoes, beans, and that staff of Spanish life, chick pease, or garbanzos.

The meat market appeared to be itinerant. A man in blue blouse, short brown breeches, and dove-colored hose adorned with green tassels, was leading a cow by its crumpled horn; an old woman, with giant silver hoops in her ears, a lavender shawl knotted about her body, her scarlet skirt well slashed so as to show the gamboge petticoat beneath, and so short for all its purple frill as to display the clockwork of her variegated stockings, was carrying a black lamb, nestled like a baby in her arms; another walking rainbow bore a live turkey; and a lad, whose rosy-hued kerchief, shawl, and sash floated like sunrise clouds about him, balanced on his erect young head an immense basket of eggs. There was a pottery section, too, – square rods of cups, plates, and jars in all manner of russet tints and graceful shapes.

The various divisions were intermingled and blent into one great open-air market, the cheeriest sort of neighborhood picnic, where gossip, jest, and laughter were accompanied by the cackling of fowls, braying of donkeys, and cooing of babies. Here fluttered a colony of bantams cast, their legs well tied, down on the cobble-stones; there stood carts laden with bunches of the yellowish dried heather; here two patient oxen had laid themselves out for a snooze; there a wicked little ass was blinking at the greens; here squatted a damsel in gold kerchief, garnet bodice, and beryl skirt, weighing out fresh figs; there sat a cobbler pegging away at his stall, his patrons waiting with bare feet while he mended their shoes; stands of cheeses, coops of chickens, children sleeping among the sacks of grain, a boy waving a rod on which was strung a gorgeous assortment of garters; loitering soldiers, limping beggars, bargaining ladies attended by their maids, all gave notes to the harmony. Yet with all that trampling, small weeds were growing green amid the slippery stones that pave the square.

The Leon peasantry is said to be the finest in all Spain, and surely no concourse of people could have been more honest, courteous, and dignified than this. The women wore ornamented wallets beneath the skirt, and warned us gravely against carrying money in exposed pockets; but we moved freely among the press with notebook and kodak, always the centre of curious groups, and our purses were not touched. Indeed we found it difficult to spend even a peseta, so modest were the prices. For as large a jar as our little squire could well carry we paid the value of three cents. The men often rebuked the children for staring and questioning, but stood themselves at gaze, and asked us frankly what we were about. When we replied that we had never seen so beautiful a market, and were taking notes and photographs that we might not forget, the peasants smilingly passed the word from one side of the plaza to the other, and all, even to the chief of police, who was strutting about waving an unnecessary staff, were eager to offer information and to point out picturesque subjects.

But the morning was slipping away, and we had almost forgotten the oracle of a Spanish gentleman in Palencia: "Leon has three sights for the visitor, and only three – the Cathedral, San Isidoro, and San Marcos." We proceeded to take these illustrious churches in order. The Leon Cathedral, closely analogous to the Gothic masterpieces of northern France, is far beyond all poor praises of mine. Now in process of repair and stripped of the garish shrines of modern worship, it may be enjoyed purely as architecture – a temple of high beauty. Let artists tell of its towers and finials, flying buttresses, gables, cornices, galleries, piers, façades. Yet one need not be an artist to delight in the glow of its great rose windows, or to spend fascinated hours poring over the chiselled story book of portals, stalls, and cloisters. Such inimitable glass, burning still with the fervors of the mediæval faith! And such a world of divinity and humanity, even down to childish mischief, in those multitudinous carvings! The Passion scenes are repeated over and over, creation and judgment are there, the life, death, and ascension of the Virgin, hero legends, animal fables, and folk-lore. Gothic energy is abundantly manifest. St. George smites the dragon, St. Michael tramples the devil, Samson splits the lion's jaws, and Santiago, carved in ebony on a door in the mellow-hued old cloisters, is riding down the Moors with such contagious fury that the very tail of his horse is twisted into a ferocious quirk. On angel-guarded tombs pictures of ancient battle, murder, vengeance, are graven in the long-remembering stone. But marble birds peck at the marble fruit, the ivory peasant drives his pigs, the alabaster shepherd watches his flock, the lad leads his donkey, the monk feeds the poor at the abbey gates, and plump stone priests, stowed away in shadowy niches, make merry over the wine.

If we had revelled overmuch in the art values of the cathedral, San Isidoro administered a prompt corrective. This Romanesque church, dating from the beginning of the eleventh century and a forerunner of the Escorial in that it was founded by the first Fernando of Castile as a royal mausoleum, is excessively holy. Not merely are the bones of the patron saint kept on the high altar, but the Host is on constant exhibition there. Unaware of these especial sanctities, we were quietly walking toward the choir, when an angry clamor from behind caused us to turn, and there, stretching their heads out over the railing of an upper gallery, was a line of furious priests. In vain the sacristan strove to excuse us, "foreigners and ladies," who did not know that we were expected to fall upon our knees on first entering the door. We had been guilty of no irreverence beyond this omission, and even under the hail of priestly wrath did our best to withdraw correctly without turning our backs to the altar. But nothing would appease that scandalized row of gargoyles, whose violent rudeness seemed to us the greater desecration. Thus it was that we did not enter the frescoed chambers of the actual Panteon, said to be imposing yet, although the royal tombs were broken up by the French in 1808. Very wrong in the French, but unless the manners of San Isidoro's bodyguard have degenerated, the soldiers of Napoleon may have had their provocation.

It was now high noon, and the market-place had poured all its peasants out upon the streets. Groups of them were lying at luncheon under the trees, passing the pigskin bottle of wine from mouth to mouth. Beggars were standing by and blessing them in return for scraps of the coarse and scanty fare. "May God repay! May the saints prosper thy harvest!"

A woman riding home, sitting erect on the red-striped donkey-bag, handed a plum to her husband, who trudged beside her in gray linen trunks and green velveteen waistcoat, with a white square of cloth set, for ornament, into the middle of the back. He divided the fruit with a pleading cripple, who called after them as devoutly as a man with half a plum in his cheek well could, "May the Blessed Virgin ride forth with you and gladden all your way!"

We had, because of the increasing heat, conjured up a carriage, a species of invalid stage-coach, and were therefore the envy of little schoolboys in blue pinafores. Their straw satchels bobbed on their backs as they gave chase to our clattering ark and clung to steps and door. This mode of locomotion did not save us time, for our coachman had domestic cares on his mind and drew up to bargain for a chicken, which finally mounted with a squall to the box seat; but in due Spanish season we stopped before the plateresque façade of San Marcos.

This is a still unfinished convent, rich in artistic beauties and historic memories. Here, for instance, is a marvellously human head of St. Francis, a triumph of the polychrome sculpture, and here is the little cell where the poet Quevedo, "colossal genius of satire," was imprisoned for over three years by Philip IV, the patron of Velázquez. It is not so easy to cage a mocking-bird, though the satire-pencilled walls have been well whitewashed.

But San Marcos was originally a hospital for pilgrims on the road to Compostela, and conch shells are the central ornamentation of arch and vault and frieze. We accepted the rebuke; we would loiter no more. Early that afternoon we took train for Coruña, after which some agency other than steam must transport us to the mediæval city of St. James.

XXIV

PILGRIMS OF SAINT JAMES

"In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne,She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye."– Chaucer: Canterbury Tales."Pilgrimes and palmers plihten hem to-gederesFor to seche Seint Jame."– Langland: Piers Plowman."I am Saint Jaques' pilgrim, thither gone."– Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well.

From Leon to Coruña is a journey of some eighteen hours by rail. Degenerate pilgrims that we were, we had taken a first-class carriage reserved for ladies, not so comfortable as the average third-class carriage on an English road. We hoped for space, at least, and solitude, but people who choose to pry into out-of-the-way corners of Spain need not expect to find any slavish deference to rights of place and property. The conductor had planned to dine and sleep in this particular compartment, which was a shade cleaner than the rest, and removed his kit from the rack with natural disappointment. Why should ladies be going to Galicia? But the general first-class compartment, next to ours, was unoccupied, and he resignedly transferred his belongings thither. The numerous third-class carriages were crowded with raw recruits, who had all jumped down, boy fashion, on the Leon platforms, and came scrambling back at the starting bell in noisiest confusion. Just as the train was puffing out, a station official threw open our door with a smiling, "Only to the next stop, ladies!" and precipitated upon us three belated warriors. We groaned inly with dark foreboding, for third-class occupancy of a first-class carriage is apt to leave lively souvenirs behind. Our three young soldiers, each with his personal effects bundled up in an enormous red and yellow handkerchief, were of the rudest peasant type, hardly lifted above animal and clod. Only one was able to spell out anything of the newspaper we offered. He labored over a large-lettered advertisement with grimy thumb, twisting brows, and muttering lips, but soon gave it up in sheer exhaustion. The hulking fellow beyond him was continually on the point of spitting, – a regular Spanish pastime in travel; but, determined that the carriage should not suffer that offence, I kept strict watch on this chrysalis hero, and embarrassed him into stark paralysis with questions on the landscape whenever he was quite prepared to fire. The third conscript was a ruddy, fair-haired boy of seventeen, who had in rudimentary form the social instincts of a Spaniard, and in his intervals of blue-eyed staring at the tawdry splendors about him hammered our ears with some harsh dialect, his one theme being the indignities and hardships of a Spanish soldier's lot. Yet dull as they were, and ignorant of railway customs, they knew enough to prefer broad cushions, whose variety of stains did not trouble their enviable simplicity, to the rough and narrow benches of the overcrowded third-class carriages, and at the "first stop" they unanimously forgot to change. But they were not unkindly lads, and after I had explained to them a dozen times or so that my friend was suffering from a headache and needed to lie down, and had, furthermore, lawlessly suggested that they could make themselves equally comfortable in the other first-class carriage, which was not "reserved for ladies," they promised to leave us at the second station; but their slow peasant hands fumbled at the door so clumsily that the train was under way again before the latch had yielded. It was not until we had been fellow-travellers for two or three hours that they finally stumbled into the neighboring compartment. From this the conductor, who had been blind and deaf to past proceedings, promptly ejected them, having no mind to let them make acquaintance with his wine bottle, and our poor exiles cast reproachful glances at us as they were hustled off to their own place.

We have sometimes talked enthusiastically of democracy, but we did not discuss such exalted subjects then. Indeed, we had enough to do in guarding our doors, often by frank exercise of muscle, from further intrusion, and in trying to provide ourselves with food and water. A struggling mob of soldier boys besieged the refreshment stalls at every station, and drained the jars of the water-venders long before these could arrive at the car windows. At last, by a union of silver and violence, we succeeded in gaining from an astounded little girl, who was racing after the departing carriages, all her stock in trade, even the great russet jar itself, with its treasure of cold spring water. The historian possesses a special genius for cooking over an alcohol lamp on a rocking mountain train, and having augmented our knapsack stores with scalded milk and knobby bread from a tavern near one of the depots, we lived like feudal barons "of our own" for the rest of that memorable journey.

Reminders of the pilgrims were all along our route. Overflowing as Santiago's young knights were with martial and romantic spirit, when the brigands did not give their steel sufficient sport they would break lances for the love of ladies or on any other conceivable pretext. We passed the bridge of twenty arches, where ten companions in arms once posted themselves for ten successive days, and challenged to the tilt every cavalier who came that way in journey to the Compostela jubilee.

All the afternoon we were climbing into the hill-country. The waste slopes were starred with purple clumps of heather, and crossed by light-footed maids, who balanced great bunches of bracken on their heads. The patches of green valley, walled in by those barren steeps, held each a few tumble-down old houses, while elsewhere we noticed human dwellings that seemed scarcely more than nests of mud plastered to the stone. Yet the soil appeared to be cultivated with the most patient thrift, – wheat and potatoes growing wherever wheat and potatoes might. The view became a bewildering medley of Scottish hills, Italian skies, and Gothic castles, with occasionally a tawny and fantastic rock from the Garden of the Gods. The city of Astorga, whose cathedral was founded, so the pilgrims used to say, by St. James in his missionary tour, greeted us from the midst of the flinty hills. These are the home of a singular clan known as the Maragatos. They wear a distinctive dress, marry only among themselves, and turn a sullen look upon their neighbors.

As night came on, the road grew so rough that we had to cork our precious water-jar with a plump lemon. The historian was sleeping off her headache, except as I woke her at the stations to aid in the defence of our ignoble luxury. We remembered that queen of Portugal who made the pilgrimage to Compostela on foot, begging her way. In the close-packed third-class carriages it must have been a cramped and weary night, and we did not wonder that young socialists occasionally tried to raid our fortress. But we clung stoutly to the door-handles, lustily sounding our war cry of "Ladies only" in lieu of "Santiago," and early in the small hours had the shamefaced pleasure of seeing the herd of drowsy conscripts, with their red and yellow bundles, driven into another train, where they were tumbled two or three deep, the under layer struggling and protesting. One little fellow, nearly smothered in the hurly-burly about the steps, cried out pitifully; but the conductor silenced him with angry sarcasm: "Dost mean to be a soldier, thou? Or shall we put thee in a sugar-bowl and send thee back to mamma?"

There was less need of sentry duty after this, but the night was too beautiful for sleep. We were crossing the wild Asturian mountains, the Alps of Spain, and a full moon was pouring down white lustre on crag, cascade, and gorge. By these perilous ways had streamed the many-bannered pilgrim hosts, – men and women of all countries and all tongues seeking the Jerusalem of the West. Each nation had its own hymn to Santiago, and these, sung to the mingled music of bagpipes, timbrels, bugles, flutes, and harps, must have pealed out strangely on many a silver night. The poor went begging of the rich, and often a mounted crusader cast his purse of broad gold pieces on the heather, trusting Santiago and his own good sword to see him through. Up and down these sheer ravines stumbled the blind and lame, sure of healing if only they could reach the shrine. Deaf and dumb went in the pilgrim ranks, the mad, the broken-hearted, the sin-oppressed; only the troop of lepers held apart. Some of those foot-sore wayfarers, most likely the raggedest of all, carried a secret treasure for the saint. Some staggered under penitential weights of lead and stone, and others bore loads of bars and fetters in token of captivity from which St. James had set them free.

But these pathetic shapes no longer peopled the moonlight. Since it was the nineteenth century, a first-class passenger might as well lie down and watch the gracious progress of the moon across the heavens, —

"Oft, as if her head she bowed,Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

But the clouds perversely made of themselves wayside crosses, urns, cathedral towers; and just as one sky-creature, "backed like a weasel" but with the face of Santiago, began to puff a monstrous cigarette, I roused my dozing senses and discovered that we were entering Lugo, the capital of Galicia, and once, under Roman rule, of all Spain.

This city of tumultuous history, stormed by one wild race after another, and twice sacked in our own century, first by the French and then by the Carlists, lay very peacefully under the white dawn. While the chivalrous Spanish sun rose unobtrusively, so as not to divert attention from the fading graces of the moon, the historian made sustaining coffee, and we tried to look as if we liked Galicia. This far northwestern province is the Bœotia of Spain; its stupid, patient peasantry are the butt of all the Peninsula, and to be called a Gallego is to be called a fool. The country, as we saw it from the train, was broken and hilly, but the Alpine majesty of Asturias was gone. In the misty drizzle of rain, which soon hushed the pipings of the birds, all the region looked wretchedly poor. It was a wooded, watered, well-tilled land, with tufts of heather brightly fringing every bank; but the houses were mere cabins, where great, gaunt, dark-colored pigs pushed in and out among bedraggled hens and half-clad children. Women were working in the fields by five o'clock in the morning, their saffron and carmine kerchiefs twisted into horns above the forehead. Women were serving as porters at the stations, carrying heavy trunks and loads of valises on their heads. Women were driving the plough, swinging the pickaxe in the quarries, mending the railway tracks. Short, stout, vigorous brownies they were, and most of them looked old.

It was mid-forenoon when we reached Coruña, the seaport whence sailed the Invincible Armada. We had meant to rest there for the afternoon and night before undertaking the forty-mile drive to Santiago, but the hotel was so filthy that, tired as we were, there was nothing for it but to go on. Tarrying only for bath and breakfast, we took our places in a carriage which, setting out at one, promised to bring us into Santiago in time for the eight o'clock dinner.

This conveyance was a species of narrow omnibus, which an Andalusian, an Englishman, a son of Compostela returning home after a long sojourn in foreign parts, his young wife of Jewish features, and our weary selves filled to overflowing. Our Jehu had agreed to transport the six of us, with our effects, for the sum of sixteen dollars; but deep was our disgust when he piled our handbags, shawl straps, and all our lesser properties in upon our wedged and helpless forms, and crammed six rough Gallegos, with a reeling load of trunks and boxes, on the roof. Remonstrance would be futile. The places in the regular diligence were not only taken for the afternoon but engaged for several days ahead, and carriages are rare birds in Galicia. The Spanish gentlemen merely shrugged their shoulders, the Englishman had but that morning landed in Spain and could not speak a word of the vernacular, and feminine protest was clearly out of order. The four puny horses took the top-heavy vehicle at a rattling pace down the granite-paved streets of Coruña, but hardly were we under way when our griefs began.