The Rivers of Spain--Bridges--Navigation--The Ebro and Tagus.
[Sidenote: SPANISH RIVERS.]
There are six great rivers in Spain,--the arteries which run between the
seven mountain chains, the vertebræ of the geological skeleton. These
water-sheds are each intersected in their extent by others on a minor
scale, by valleys and indentations, in each of which runs its own
stream. Thus the rains and melted snows are all collected in an infinity
of ramifications, and are carried by these tributary conduits into one
of the main trunks, which all, with the exception of the Ebro, empty
themselves into the Atlantic. The Duero and Tagus, unfortunately for
Spain, disembogue in Portugal, and thus become a portion of a foreign
dominion exactly where their commercial importance is the greatest.
Philip II. saw the true value of the possession of an angle which
rounded Spain, and insured to her the possession of these valuable
outlets of internal produce, and inlets for external commerce. Portugal
annexed to Spain gave more real power to his throne than the dominion of
entire continents across the Atlantic, and is the secret object of every
Spanish government’s ambition. The _Miño_, which is the shortest of
these rivers, runs through a bosom of fertility. The _Tajo_, Tagus,
which the fancy of poets has sanded with gold and embanked with roses,
tracks much of its dreary way through rocks and comparative barrenness.
The _Guadiana_ creeps through lonely Estremadura, infecting the low
plains with miasma. The _Guadalquivir_ eats out its deep banks amid the
sunny olive-clad regions of Andalucia, as the Ebro divides the levels of
Arragon. Spain abounds with brackish streams, _Salados_, and with
salt-mines, or saline deposits after the evaporation of the sea-waters;
indeed, the soil of the central portions is so strongly impregnated with
“villainous saltpetre,” that the small province of La Mancha alone could
furnish materials to blow up the world; the surface of these regions,
always arid, is every day becoming more so, from the singular antipathy
which the inhabitants of the interior have against trees. There is
nothing to check the power of rapid evaporation, no shelter to protect
or preserve moisture. The soil becomes more and more parched and dried
up, insomuch that in some parts it has almost ceased to be available for
cultivation: another serious evil, which arises from want of
plantations, is, that the slopes of hills are everywhere liable to
constant denudation of soil after heavy rain. There is nothing to break
the descent of the water; hence the naked, barren stone summits of many
of the sierras, which have been pared and peeled of every particle
capable of nourishing vegetation: they are skeletons where life is
extinct; not only is the soil thus lost, but the detritus washed down
either forms bars at the mouths of rivers, or chokes up and raises their
beds; they are thus rendered liable to overflow their banks, and convert
the adjoining plains into pestilential swamps. The supply of water,
which is afforded by periodical rains, and which ought to support the
reservoirs of rivers, is carried off at once in violent floods, rather
than in a gentle gradual disembocation. From its mountainous character
Spain has very few lakes, as the fall is too considerable to allow water
to accumulate; the exceptions which do exist might with greater
propriety be termed lochs--not that they are to be compared in size or
beauty to some of those in Scotland. The volume in the principal rivers
of Spain has diminished, and is diminishing; thus some which once were
navigable, are so no longer, while the artificial canals which were to
have been substituted remain unfinished: the progress of deterioration
advances, while little is done to counteract or amend what every year
must render more difficult and expensive, while the means of repair and
correction will diminish in equal proportion, from the poverty
occasioned by the evil, and by the fearful extent which it will be
allowed to attain. However, several grand water-companies have been
lately formed, who are to dig Artesian wells, finish canals, navigate
rivers with steamers, and _issue shares at a premium_, which will be
effected if nothing else is.
[Sidenote: SPANISH BRIDGES.]
The rivers which are really adapted to navigation are, however, only
those which are perpetually fed by those tributary streams that flow
down from mountains which are covered with snow all the year, and these
are not many. The majority of Spanish rivers are very scanty of water
during the summer time, and very rapid in their flow when filled by
rains or melting snow: during these periods they are impracticable for
boats. They are, moreover, much exhausted by being drained off,
_sangrado_--that is, bled, for the purposes of artificial irrigation;
thus, at Madrid and Valencia, the wide beds of the Manzanares and the
Turia are frequently dry as the sands of the seashore when the tide is
out. They seem only to be entitled to be called rivers by courtesy,
because they have so many and such splendid bridges; as numerous are the
jokes cut by the newly-arrived stranger, who advises the townsfolk to
sell one of them to purchase water, or compares their thirsting arches
to the rich man in torments, who prays for one drop; but a heavy rain in
the mountains soon shows the necessity for their strength and length,
for their wide and lofty arches, their buttress-like piers, which before
had appeared to be rather the freaks of architectural magnificence than
the works of public utility. Those who live in a comparatively level
country can scarcely form an idea of the rapidity and fearful
destruction of the river inundations in this land of mountains. The
deluge rolls forth in an avalanche, the rising water coming down tier
above tier like a flight of steps let loose. These tides carry
everything before them--scarring and gullying up the earth, tearing down
rocks, trees, and houses, and strewing far and wide the relics of ruin;
but the fierce fury is short-lived, and is spent in its own violence;
thus the traveller at Madrid, if he wishes to see its Thames, should run
down or take the ’bus as he can, when it rains, or the river will be
gone before he gets there. When the Spaniards, under those blockheads
Blake and Cuesta, lost the battle of _Rio Seco_, which gave Madrid to
Buonaparte, the French soldiers, in crossing the _dry river_ bed in
pursuit of the fugitives, exclaimed,--“Why Spanish rivers run away too!”
[Sidenote: THE EBRO.]
Many of these beds serve in remote districts, where highways and bridges
are thought to be superfluous luxuries, for the double purposes of a
river when there is water in them, and as a road when there is not.
Again, in this land of anomalies, some streams have no bridges, while
other bridges have no streams; the most remarkable of these _pontes
asinorum_ is at Coria, where the Alagon is crossed at an inconvenient,
and often dangerous ferry, while a noble bridge of five arches stands
high and dry in the meadows close by. This has arisen from the river
having quitted its old channel in some inundation; or, as Spaniards say,
_salido de su madre_, gone out from its mother, who does not seem to
know that it is out, or certainly does not care, since no steps have
ever been taken by the Corians to coax it back again under its old
arches; they call on Hercules to turn this Alpheus, and rely in the
meantime on their proverb, that all fickle, unfaithful rivers repent and
return to their legitimate beds after a thousand years, for nothing is
hurried in Spain, _Despues de anos mil, vuelve el rio a su cubil_. On
the fishing in these wandering streams we shall presently say something.
The navigation of Spanish rivers is Oriental, classical, and imperfect;
the boats, barges, and bargemen carry one back beyond the mediæval ages,
and are better calculated for artistical than commercial purposes. The
“great river,” the Guadalquivir, which was navigable in the time of the
Romans as far as Cordova, is now scarcely practicable for
sailing-vessels of a moderate size even up to Seville. Passengers,
however, have facilities afforded them by the steamers which run
backwards and forwards between this capital and Cadiz; these
conveniences, it need not be said, were introduced from England,
although the first steamer that ever paddled in waters was of Spanish
invention, and was launched at Barcelona in 1543; but the Spanish
Chancellor of the Exchequer of the time was a poor red tapist, and
opposed the whole thing, which, as usual, fell to the ground. The
steamers on the Guadalquivir are safe; indeed, in our times, the
advertisements always stated that a mass was said before starting in the
heretical contrivance, just as to this day Birmingham locomotives, when
a railway is first opened in France, are sprinkled with holy water, and
blessed by a bishop, which may be a new “wrinkle” to Mr. Hudson and the
primate of York.
[Sidenote: THE TAGUS.]
There is considerable talk in Arragon about rendering the Ebro
navigable, and it has been surveyed this year by two engineers--English
of course. The local newspapers compared the astonishment of the herns
and peasantry, created on the banks by this arrival, as second only to
that occasioned when Don Quixote and Sancho ventured near the same spot
into the enchanted bark.
There has been still older and greater talk about establishing a water
communication between Lisbon and Toledo, by means of the Tagus. This
mighty river, which is in every body’s mouth, because the capital of the
kingdom of Port wine is placed at its embouchure, is in fact almost as
little known in Spain and out of it, as the Niger. It has been our fate
to behold it in many places and various phases of its most poetical and
picturesque course--first green and arrowy amid the yellow corn fields
of New Castile; then freshening the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing
the gardens with verdure, and filling the nightingale-tenanted glens
with groves; then boiling and rushing around the granite ravines of
rock-built Toledo, hurrying to escape from the cold shadows of its deep
prison, and dashing joyously into light and liberty, to wander far away
into silent plains, and on to Talavera, where its waters were dyed with
brave blood, and gladly reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets
of England,--triumphantly it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of
Almaraz, down to desolate Estremadura, in a stream as tranquil as the
azure sky by which it is curtained, yet powerful enough to force the
mountains at Alcantara. There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a
hundred miles to see; it stems the now fierce condensed stream, and ties
the rocky gorges together; grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the
tender colours of seventeen centuries, it looms like the grey skeleton
of Roman power, with all the sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the
interest of the past and present. Such are the glorious scenes we have
beheld and sketched; such are the sweet waters in which we have
refreshed our dusty and weary limbs.
[Sidenote: THE TAGUS.]
How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No commerce has
ever made it its highway--no English steamer has ever civilized its
waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have witnessed
battles, not peace; have reflected castles and dungeons, not quays or
warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of the
Thames and Rhine; it is truly a river of Spain--that isolated and
solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life; man
has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and
independent gambols.
It is impossible to read Tom Campbell’s admirable description of the
Danube before its poetry was discharged by the smoke of our ubiquitous
countrymen’s Dampf Schiff, without applying his lines to this
uncivilised Tagus:--
“Yet have I loved thy wild abode,
Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore,
Where scarce the woodman finds a road,
And scarce the fisher plies an oar;
For man’s neglect I love thee more,
That art nor avarice intrude
To tame thy torrent’s thunder shock,
Or prune the vintage of thy rock,
Magnificently rude!”
As rivers in a state of nature are somewhat scarce in Great Britain, one
more extract may be perhaps pardoned, and the more as it tends to
illustrate Spanish character, and explain _las cosas de España_, or the
things of Spain, which it is the object of these humble pages to
accomplish.
The Tagus rises in that extraordinary jumble of mountains, full of
fossil bones, botany, and trout, that rise between Cuenca and Teruel,
and which being all but unknown, clamour loudly for the disciples of
Isaac Walton and Dr. Buckland. It disembogues into the sea at Lisbon,
having flowed 375 miles in Spain, of which nature destined it to be the
aorta. The Toledan chroniclers derive the name from Tagus, fifth king of
Iberia, but Bochart traces it to _Dag_, Dagon, a fish, as besides being
considered auriferous, the ancients pronounced it to be piscatory. Not
that the present Spaniards trouble their head more about the fishes here
than if they were crocodiles. Grains of gold are indeed found, but
barely enough to support a poet, by amphibious paupers, called
_artesilleros_ from their baskets, in which they collect the sand, which
is passed through a sieve.
[Sidenote: NAVIGATION OF THE TAGUS.]
The Tagus might easily be made navigable to the sea, and then with the
Xarama connect Madrid and Lisbon, and facilitate importation of colonial
produce, and exportation of wine and grain. Such an act would confer
more benefits upon Spain than ten thousand _charters_ or paper
constitutions, guaranteed by the sword of Narvaez, or the word and
honour of Louis-Philippe. The performance has been contemplated by many
_foreigners_, the Toledans looking lazily on; thus in 1581, Antonelli, a
Neapolitan, and Juanelo Turriano, a Milanese, suggested the scheme to
Philip II., then master of Portugal; but money was wanting--the old
story--for his revenues were wasted in relic-removing and in building
the useless Escorial, and nothing was made except water parties, and
odes to the “wise and great king” who _was_ to perform the deed, to the
tune of Macbeth’s witches, “_I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do_,” for here the
future is preferred to the present tense. The project dozed until 1641,
when two other _foreigners_, Julio Martelli and Luigi Carduchi, in vain
roused Philip IV. from his siesta, who soon after losing Portugal
itself, forthwith forgot the Tagus. Another century glided away, when in
1755 Richard Wall, an Irishman, took the thing up; but Charles III.,
busy in waging French wars against England, wanted cash. The Tagus has
ever since, as it roared over its rocky bed, like an unbroken barb,
laughed at the Toledan who dreamily angles for impossibilities on the
bank, invoking Brunel, Hercules, and Rothschild, instead of putting his
own shoulder to the water-wheel. In 1808 the scheme was revived: Fro
Xavier de Cabanas, who had studied in England our system of canals,
published a survey of the whole river; this folio ‘_Memoria sobre la
Navigation del Tajo_,’ or, ‘Memoir on the Navigation of the Tagus,’
Madrid, 1829, reads like the blue book of one discovering the source of
the Nile, so desert-like are the unpeopled, uncultivated districts
between Toledo and Abrantes. Ferd. VII. thereupon issued an approving
_paper_ decree, and so there the thing ended, although Cabanas had
engaged with Messrs. Wallis and Mason for the machinery, &c. Recently
the project has been renewed by Señor Bermudez de Castro, an intelligent
gentleman, who, from long residence in England, has imbibed the schemes
and energy of the foreigner. _Verémos!_ “we shall see;” for hope is a
good breakfast but a bad supper, says Bacon; and in Spain things are
begun late in the day, and never finished; so at least says the
proverb:--_En España se empieza tarde, y se acaba nunca_.
[Sidenote: DIVISION INTO PROVINCES.]