The natural financial difficulties of constructing a railway in Spain
were added to by the strange kind of people Mr. Brassey’s agents were
obliged to employ. One of the sub-contractors was a certain Carlist
chief whom the government dared not arrest on account of his great
influence. Mr. Tapp thus relates the Carlist chief’s mode of settling a
financial dispute:—
“When he got into difficulties, Mr. Small, the district agent, offered
him the amount which was due to him according to his measured work. He
had over 100 men to pay, and Mr. Small offered him the money that was
coming to him, according to the measurement, but he would not have it,
nor would he let the agent pay the men. He said he would have the money
he demanded; and he brought all his men into the town of Orduna, and the
men regularly bivouacked round Mr. Small’s office. They slept in the
streets and stayed there all night, and would not let Mr. Small come out
of the office till he had paid them the money. He attempted to get on
his horse to go out—his horses were kept in the house (that is the
practice in the houses of Spain); but when he rode out they pulled him
off his horse and pushed him back, and said that he should not go until
he had paid them the money. He passed the night in terror, with loaded
pistols and guns, expecting that he and his family would be massacred
every minute, but he contrived eventually to send his staff-holder to
Bilbao on horseback. The man galloped all the way to Bilbao, a distance
of twenty-five miles, and went to Mr. Bartlett in the middle of the
night, and told him what had happened. Mr. Bartlett immediately sent a
detachment up to the place to disperse the men. This Carlist threatened
that if Mr. Small did not pay the money he would kill every person in the
house. When he was asked, ‘Would you kill a man for that?’ he replied,
‘Yes, like a fly,’ and this coming from a man who, as I was told, had
already killed fourteen men with his own hand, was rather alarming. Mr.
Brassey and his partners suffer a great amount of loss by their contracts
for the Bilbao railway.”