Travelling in Spain--Steamers--Roads, Roman, Monastic, and
Royal--Modern Railways--English Speculations.
Of the many misrepresentations regarding Spain, few are more inveterate
than those which refer to the dangers and difficulties that are there
supposed to beset the traveller. This, the most romantic, racy, and
peculiar country of Europe, may in reality be visited by sea and land,
and throughout its length and breadth, with ease and safety, as all who
have ever been there well know, the nonsense with which Cockney critics
who never have been there scare delicate writers in albums and lady-bird
tourists, to the contrary notwithstanding: the steamers are regular, the
mails and diligences excellent, the roads decent, and the mules
sure-footed; nay, latterly, the _posadas_, or inns, have been so
increased, and the robbers so decreased, that some ingenuity must be
evinced in getting either starved or robbed. Those, however, who are
dying for new excitements, or who wish to make a picture or chapter, in
short, to get up an adventure for the home-market, may manage by a great
exhibition of imprudence, chattering, and a holding out luring baits, to
gratify their hankering, although it would save some time, trouble, and
expense to try the experiment much nearer home.
As our readers live in an island, we will commence with the sea and
steamers.
[Sidenote: STEAMERS.]
The Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Company depart regularly three
times a month from Southampton for Gibraltar. They often arrive at
Corunna in seventy hours, from whence a mail starts directly to Madrid,
which it reaches in three days and a half. The vessels are excellent
sea-boats, are manned by English sailors, and propelled by English
machinery. The passage to Vigo has been made in less than three days,
and the voyage to Cadiz--touching at Lisbon included--seldom exceeds
six. The change of climate, scenery, men, and manners effected by this
week’s trip, is indeed remarkable. Quitting the British Channel we soon
enter the “sleepless Bay of Biscay,” where the stormy petrel is at home,
and where the gigantic swell of the Atlantic is first checked by Spain’s
iron-bound coast, the mountain break-water of Europe. Here _The Ocean_
will be seen in all its vast majesty and solitude: grand in the
tempest-lashed storm, grand in the calm, when spread out as a mirror;
and never more impressive than at night, when the stars of heaven, free
from earth-born mists, sparkle like diamonds over those “who go down to
the sea in ships, and behold the works of the Lord, and his wonders in
the deep.” The land has disappeared, and man feels alike his weakness
and his strength; a thin plank separates him from another world; yet he
has laid his hand upon the billow, and mastered the ocean; he has made
it the highway of commerce, and the binding link of nations.
The steamers which navigate the Eastern coast from Marseilles to Cadiz
and back again, are cheaper indeed in their fares, but by no means such
good sea-boats; nor do they keep their time--the essence of
business--with English regularity. They are foreign built, and worked by
Spaniards and Frenchmen. They generally stop a day at Barcelona,
Valencia, and other large towns, which gives them an opportunity to
replenish coal, and to smuggle. A rapid traveller is also thus enabled
to pay a flying visit to the cities on the seaboard; and thus those
lively authors who comprehend foreign nations with an intuitive
eagle-eyed glance, obtain materials for sundry octavos on the history,
arts, sciences, literature, and genius of Spaniards. But as Mons. Feval
remarks of some of his gifted countrymen, they have merely to scratch
their head, according to the Horatian expression, and out come a number
of volumes, ready bound in calf, as Minerva issued forth armed from the
temple of Jupiter.
[Sidenote: SPANISH ROADS.]
The Mediterranean is a dangerous, deceitful sea, fair and false as
Italia; the squalls are sudden and terrific; then the crews either curse
the sacred name of God, or invoke St. Telmo, according as their notion
may be. We have often been so caught when sailing on these perfidious
waters in these foreign craft, and think, with the Spaniards, that
escape is a miracle. The hilarity excited by witnessing the jabber,
confusion, and lubber proceedings, went far to dispel all present
apprehension, and future also. Some of our poor blue-jackets in case of
a war may possibly escape the fate with which they are threatened in
this French lake. But no wise man will ever go by sea when he can travel
by land, nor is viewing Spain’s coasts with a telescope from the deck,
and passing a few hours in a sea-port, a very satisfactory mode of
becoming acquainted with the country.
The roads of Spain, a matter of much importance to a judicious
traveller, are somewhat a modern luxury, having been only regularly
introduced by the Bourbons. The Moors and Spaniards, who rode on horses
and not in carriages, suffered those magnificent lines with which the
Romans had covered the Peninsula to go to decay; of these there were no
less than twenty-nine of the first order, which were absolutely
necessary to a nation of conquerors and colonists to keep up their
military and commercial communications. The grandest of all, which like
the Appian might be termed the Queen of Roads, ran from Merida, the
capital of Lusitania, to Salamanca. It was laid down like a Cyclopean
wall, and much of it remains to this day, with the grey granite line
stretching across the aromatic wastes, like the vertebræ of an extinct
mammoth. We have followed for miles its course, which is indicated by
the still standing miliary columns that rise above the cistus underwood;
here and there tall forest trees grow out of the stone pavement, and
show how long it has been abandoned by man to Nature ever young and gay,
who thus by uprooting and displacing the huge blocks slowly recovers her
rights. She festoons the ruins with necklaces of flowers and creepers,
and hides the rents and wrinkles of odious, all-dilapidating Time, or
man’s worse neglect, as a pretty maid decorates a shrivelled dowager’s
with diamonds. The Spanish muleteer creeps along by its side in a track
which he has made through the sand or pebbles; he seems ashamed to
trample on this lordly way, for which, in his petty wants, he has no
occasion. Most of the similar roads have been taken up by monks to raise
convents, by burgesses to build houses, by military men to construct
fortifications--thus even their ruins have perished.
[Sidenote: LEGEND OF SANTO DOMINGO.]
The mediæval Spanish roads were the works of the clergy; and the
long-bearded monks, here as elsewhere, were the pioneers of
civilization; they made straight, wide, and easy the way which led to
their convent, their high place, their miracle shrine, or to whatever
point of pilgrimage that was held out to the devout; traffic was soon
combined with devotion, and the service of mammon with that of God. This
imitation of the Oriental practice which obtained at Mecca, is evidenced
by language in which the Spanish term _Feria_ signifies at once a
religious function, a holiday, and a fair. Even saints condescended to
become waywardens, and to take title from the highway. Thus _Santo
Domingo de la Calzada_, “St. Domenick of the _Paved Road_,” was so
called from his having been the first to make one through a part of Old
Castile for the benefit of pilgrims on their way to Compostella, and
this town yet bears the honoured appellation.
This feat and his legend have furnished Southey with a subject of a
droll ballad. The saint having finished his road, next set up an inn or
_Venta_, the Maritornes of which fell in love with a handsome pilgrim,
who resisted; whereupon she hid some spoons in this Joseph’s saddlebags,
who was taken up by the Alcalde, and forthwith hanged. But his parents
some time afterwards passed under the body, which told them that he was
innocent, alive, and well, and all by the intercession of the sainted
road-maker; thereupon they proceeded forthwith to the truculent Alcalde,
who was going to dine off two roasted fowls, and, on hearing their
report, remarked, You might as well tell me that this cock (pointing to
his rôti) would crow; whereupon it did crow, and was taken with its hen
to the cathedral, and two chicks have ever since been regularly hatched
every year from these respectable parents, of which a travelling
ornithologist should secure one for the Zoological Garden. The cock and
hen were duly kept near the high altar, and their white feathers were
worn by pilgrims in their caps. Prudent bagsmen will, however, put a
couple of ordinary roast fowls into their “provend,” for hungry is this
said road to _Logroño_.
[Sidenote: ROAD TO TOLEDO.]
In this land of miracles, anomalies, and contradictions, the roads to
and from this very _Compostella_ are now detestable. In other provinces
of Spain, the star-paved milky way in heaven is called _El Camino de
Santiago_, the road of St. James; but the Gallicians, who know what
their roads really are, namely, the worst on earth, call the milky-way
_El Camino de Jerusalem_, “the road to Jerusalem,” which it assuredly is
not. The ancients poetically attributed this phenomenon to some spilt
milk of Juno.
Meanwhile the roads in Gallicia, although under the patronage of
Santiago, who has replaced the Roman Hermes, are, like his milky-way in
heaven, but little indebted to mortal repairs. The Dean of Santiago is
waywarden by virtue of his office or dignity, and especially
“protector.” The chapter, however, now chiefly profess to make smooth
the road to a better world. They have altogether degenerated from their
forefathers, whose grand object was to construct roads for the pilgrim;
but since the cessation of offering-making Hadjis, little or nothing has
been done in the turnpike-trust line.
Some of the finest roads in Spain lead either to the _sitios_ or royal
pleasure-seats of the king, or wind gently up some elevated and
monastery-crowned mountain like Monserrat. The ease of the despot was
consulted, while that of his subjects was neglected; and the Sultan was
the State, Spain was his property, and Spaniards his serfs, and willing
ones, for as in the East, their perfect equality amongst each other was
one result of the immeasurable superiority of the master of all. Thus,
while he rolled over a road hard and level as a bowling-green, and
rapidly as a galloping team could proceed, to a mere summer residence,
the communication between Madrid and Toledo, that city on which the sun
shone on the day light was made, has remained a mere track ankle-deep in
mud during winter and dust-clouded during summer, and changing its
direction with the caprice of wandering sheep and muleteers; but Bourbon
Royalty never visited this widowed capital of the Goths. The road
therefore was left as it existed if not before the time of Adam, at
least before Mac Adam. There is some talk just now of beginning a
regular road; when it will be finished is another affair.
[Sidenote: ROAD TO LA CORUNA.]
[Sidenote: CROSS ROADS.]
The church, which shared with the state in dominion, followed the royal
example in consulting its own comforts as to roads. Nor could it be
expected in a torrid land, that holy men, whose abdomens occasionally
were prominent and pendulous, should lard the stony or sandy earth like
goats, or ascend heaven-kissing hills so expeditiously as their prayers.
In Spain the primary consideration has ever been the souls, not the
bodies, of men, or legs of beasts. It would seem indeed, from the
indifference shown to the sufferings of these quadrupedal
blood-engines, _Maquinas de sangre_, as they are called, and still more
from the reckless waste of biped life, that a man was of no value until
he was dead; then what admirable contrivances for the rapid travelling
of his winged spirit, first to purgatory, next out again, and thence
from stage to stage to his journey’s end and blessed rest! More money
has been thus expended in masses than would have covered Spain with
railroads, even on a British scale of magnificence and extravagance.
To descend to the roads of the peninsular earth, the principal lines are
nobly planned. These geographical arteries, which form the circulation
of the country, branch in every direction from Madrid, which is the
centre of the system. The road-making spirit of Louis XIV. passed into
his Spanish descendants, and during the reigns of Charles III. and
Charles IV. communications were completed between the capital and the
principal cities of the provinces. These causeways, “_Arrecifes_”--these
royal roads, “_Caminos reales_”--were planned on an almost unnecessary
scale of grandeur, in regard both to width, parapets, and general
execution. The high road to La Coruña, especially after entering Leon,
will stand comparison with any in Europe; but when Spaniards finish
anything it is done in a grand style, and in this instance the expense
was so enormous that the king inquired if it was paved with silver,
alluding to the common Spanish corruption of the old Roman via lata into
“camino de _plata_,” of plate. This and many of the others were
constructed from fifty to seventy years ago, and very much on the M’Adam
system, which, having been since introduced into England, has rendered
our roads so very different from what they were not very long since. The
war in the Peninsula tended to deteriorate the Spanish roads--when
bridges and other conveniences were frequently destroyed for military
reasons, and the exhausted state of the finances of Spain, and troubled
times, have delayed many of the more costly reparations; yet those of
the first class were so admirably constructed at the beginning, that, in
spite of the injuries of war, ruts, and neglect, they may, as a whole,
be pronounced equal to many of the Continent, and are infinitely more
pleasant to the traveller from the absence of pavement. The roads in
England have, indeed, latterly been rendered so excellent, and we are
so apt to compare those of other nations with them, that we forget that
fifty years ago Spain was in advance in that and many other respects.
Spain remains very much what other countries were: she has stood on her
old ways, moored to the anchor of prejudice, while we have progressed,
and consequently now appears behind-hand in many things in which she set
the fashion to England.
The grand royal roads start from Madrid, and run to the principal
frontier and sea-port towns. Thus the capital may be compared to a
spider, as it is the centre of the Peninsular web. These diverging
fan-like lines are sufficiently convenient to all who are about to
journey to any single terminus, but inter-communications are almost
entirely wanting between any one terminus with another. This scanty
condition of the Peninsular roads accounts for the very limited portions
of the country which are usually visited by foreigners, who--the French
especially--keep to one beaten track, the high road, and follow each
other like wild geese; a visit to Burgos, Madrid, and Seville, and then
a steam trip from Cadiz to Valencia and Barcelona, is considered to be
making the grand tour of Spain; thus the world is favoured with volumes
that reflect and repeat each other, which tell us what we know already,
while the rich and rare, the untrodden, unchanged, and truly
Moro-Hispanic portions are altogether neglected, except by the
exceptional few, who venture forth like Don Quixote on their horses, in
search of adventures and the picturesque.
[Sidenote: TRAVELLING.]
[Sidenote: CONTEMPLATED RAILROADS.]
The other roads of Spain are bad, but not much more so than in other
parts of the Continent, and serve tolerably well in dry weather. They
are divided into those which are practicable for wheel-carriages, and
those which are only bridle-roads, or as they call them, “of horseshoe,”
on which all thought of going with a carriage is out of the question;
when these horse or mule tracks are very bad, especially among the
mountains, they compare them to roads for partridges. The cross roads
are seldom tolerable; it is safest to keep the high-road--or, as we have
it in English, the furthest way round is the nearest way home--for there
is no short cut without hard work, says the Spanish proverb, “_ho hay
atajo, sin trabajo_.”
All this sounds very unpromising, but those who adopt the customs of the
country will never find much practical difficulty in getting to their
journey’s end; slowly, it is true, for where leagues and hours are
convertible terms--the Spanish _hora_ being the heavy German
_stunde_--the distance is regulated by the day-light. Bridle-roads and
travelling on horseback, the former systems of Europe, are very Spanish
and Oriental; and where people journey on horse and mule back, the road
is of minor importance. In the remoter provinces of Spain the population
is agricultural and poverty-stricken, unvisiting and unvisited, not
going much beyond their chimney’s smoke. Each family provides for its
simple habits and few wants; having but little money to buy foreign
commodities, they are clad and fed, like the Bedouins, with the
productions of their own fields and flocks. There is little circulation
of persons; a neighbouring fair is the mart where they obtain the annual
supply of whatever luxury they can indulge in, or it is brought to their
cottages by wandering muleteers, or by the smuggler, who is the type and
channel of the really active principle of trade in three-fourths of the
Peninsula. It is wonderful how soon a well-mounted traveller becomes
attached to travelling on horseback, and how quickly he becomes
reconciled to a state of roads which, startling at first to those
accustomed to carriage highways, are found to answer perfectly for all
the purposes of the place and people where they are found.
Let us say a few things on Spanish railroads, for the mania of England
has surmounted the Pyrenees, although confined rather more to words than
deeds; in fact, it has been said that no rail exists, in any country of
either the new world or the old one, in which the Spanish language is
spoken, probably from other objections than those merely philological.
Again, in other countries roads, canals, and traffic usher in the rail,
which in Spain is to precede and introduce them. Thus, by the prudent
delays of national caution and procrastination, much of the trouble and
expense of these intermediate stages will be economized, and Spain will
jump at once from a mediæval condition into the comforts and glories of
Great Britain, the land of restless travellers. Be that as it may, just
now there is much talk of _railroads_, and splendid official and other
_documentos_ are issued, by which the “whole country is to be
intersected (on paper) with a net-work of rapid and bowling-green
communications,” which are to create a “perfect homogeneity among
Spaniards;” for great as have been the labours of Herculean steam, this
amalgamation of the Iberian rope of sand has properly been reserved for
the crowning performance.
It would occupy too much space to specify the infinite lines which are
in contemplation, which may be described when completed. Suffice it to
say, that they almost all are to be effected by the iron and gold of
England. However this _estrangerismo_, this influence of the foreigner,
may offend the sensitive pride, the _Españolismo_ of Spain, the power of
resistance offered by the national indolence and dislike to change, must
be propelled by British steam, with a dash of French revolution. Yet our
speculators might, perhaps, reflect that Spain is a land which never yet
has been able to construct or support even a sufficient number of common
roads or canals for her poor and passive commerce and circulation. The
distances are far too great, and the traffic far too small, to call yet
for the rail; while the geological formation of the country offers
difficulties which, if met with even in England, would baffle the
colossal science and extravagance of our first-rate engineers. Spain is
a land of mountains, which rise everywhere in Alpine barriers, walling
off province from province, and district from district. These mighty
cloud-capped _sierras_ are solid masses of hard stone, and any tunnels
which ever perforate their ranges will reduce that at Box to the delving
of the poor mole. You might as well cover Switzerland and the Tyrol with
a net-work of _level_ lines, as those caught in the aforesaid net will
soon discover to their cost. The outlay of this up-hill work may be in
an inverse ratio to the remuneration, for the one will be enormous, and
the other paltry. The parturient mountains may produce a most musipular
interest, and even that may be “deferred.”
[Sidenote: DIFFICULTIES OF RAILROADS.]
Spain, again, is a land of _dehesas y despoblados_: in these wild
unpeopled wastes, next to travellers, commerce and cash are what is
scarce, while even Madrid, the capital, is without industry or
resources, and poorer than many of our provincial cities. The Spaniard,
a creature of routine and foe to innovations, is not a moveable or
locomotive; local, and a parochial fixture by nature, he hates moving
like a Turk, and has a particular horror of being hurried; long,
therefore, here has an ambling mule answered all the purposes of
transporting man and his goods. Who again is to do the work even if
England will pay the wages? The native, next to disliking regular
sustained labour himself, abhors seeing the foreigner toiling even in
his service, and wasting his gold and sinews in the thankless task. The
villagers, as they always have done, will rise against the stranger and
heretic who comes to “suck the wealth of Spain.” Supposing, however, by
the aid of Santiago and Brunel, that the work were possible and were
completed, how is it to be secured against the fierce action of the sun,
and the fiercer violence of popular ignorance? The first cholera that
visits Spain will be set down as a passenger per rail by the
dispossessed muleteer, who now performs the functions of steam and rail.
He constitutes one of the most numerous and finest classes in Spain, and
is the legitimate channel of the semi-Oriental caravan system. He will
never permit the bread to be taken out of his mouth by this Lutheran
locomotive: deprived of means of earning his livelihood, he, like the
smuggler, will take to the road in another line, and both will become
either robbers or patriots. Many, long, and lonely are the leagues which
separate town from town in the wide deserts of thinly-peopled Spain, nor
will any preventive service be sufficient to guard the rail against the
_guerrilla_ warfare that may then be waged. A handful of opponents in
any cistus-overgrown waste, may at any time, in five minutes, break up
the road, stop the train, stick the stoker, and burn the engines in
their own fire, particularly smashing the luggage-train. What, again,
has ever been the recompense which the foreigner has met with from Spain
but breach of promise and ingratitude? He will be used, as in the East,
until the native thinks that he has mastered his arts, and then he will
be abused, cast out, and trodden under foot; and who then will keep up
and repair the costly artificial undertaking?--certainly not the
Spaniard, on whose pericranium the bumps of operative skill and
mechanical construction have yet to be developed.
[Sidenote: BENEFITS OF RAILROADS.]
The lines which are the least sure of failure will be those which are
the shortest, and pass through a level country of some natural
productions, such as oil, wine, and coal. Certainly, if the rail can be
laid down in Spain by the gold and science of England, the gift, like
that of steam, will be worthy of the Ocean’s Queen, and of the world’s
real leader of civilization; and what a change will then come over the
spirit of the Peninsula! how the siestas of torpid man-vegetation, will
be disturbed by the shrill whistle and panting snort of the monster
engine! how the seals of this long hermetically shut-up land will be
broken! how the cloistered obscure, and dreams of treasures in heaven,
will be enlightened by the flashing fire-demon of the wide-awake
money-worshipper! what owls will be vexed, what bats dispossessed, what
drones, mules, and asses will be scared, run over, and annihilated!
Those who love Spain, and pray, like the author, daily for her
prosperity, must indeed hope to see this “net-work of rails” concluded,
but will take especial care at the same time not to invest one farthing
in the imposing speculation.
Recent results have fully justified during this year what was prophesied
last year in the Hand-Book: our English agents and engineers were
received with almost divine honours by the Spaniards, so incensed were
they with flattery and cigars. Their shares were instantaneously
subscribed for, and directors nominated, with names and titles longer
even than the lines, and the smallest contributions in cash were
thankfully accepted:--
“L’argent dans une bourse entre agréablement;
Mais le terme venu, quand il faut le rendre,
C’est alors que les douleurs commencent à nous prendre.”
[Sidenote: ANGLO-HISPANO RAILROADS.]
When the period for booking up, for making the first instalments,
arrived, the Spanish shareholders were found somewhat wanting: they
repudiated; for in the Peninsula it has long been easier to promise than
to pay. Again, on the only line which seems likely to be carried out at
present, that of Madrid to Aranjuez, the first step taken by them was to
dismiss all English engineers and _navvies_, on the plea of encouraging
native talent and industry rather than the foreigner. Many of the
English home proceedings would border on the ridiculous, were not the
laugh of some speculators rather on the wrong side. The City capitalists
certainly have our pity, and if their plethora of wealth required the
relief of bleeding, it could not be better performed than by a Spanish
_Sangrado_. How different some of the windings-up, the final reports, to
the magnificent beginnings and grandiloquent prospectuses put forth as
baits for John Bull, who hoped to be tossed at once, or elevated, from
haberdashery to a throne, by being offered a “potentiality of getting
rich beyond the dreams of avarice!” Thus, to clench assertion by
example, the London directors of the Royal Valencia Company made known
by an advertisement only last July, that they merely required
240,000,000 reals to connect the seaport of Valencia--where there is
none--to the capital Madrid, with 800,000 inhabitants,--there not being
200,000. One brief passage alone seemed ominous in the lucid array of
prospective profit--“The line has not yet been minutely surveyed;” this
might have suggested to the noble Marquis whose attractive name heads
the provisional committee list, the difficulty of Sterne’s traveller, of
whom, when observing how much better things were managed on the
Continent than in England, the question was asked, “Have you, sir, ever
been there?”
[Sidenote: LONDON RAILROAD MEETINGS.]
A still wilder scheme was broached, to connect Aviles on the Atlantic
with Madrid, the Asturian Alps and the Guadarrama mountains to the
contrary notwithstanding. The originator of this ingenious idea was to
receive 40,000_l._ for the cession of his plan to the company, and
actually did receive 25,000_l._, which, considering the difficulties,
natural and otherwise, must be considered an inadequate remuneration.
Although the original and captivating prospectus stated “_that the line
had been surveyed, and presented no engineering difficulties_,” it was
subsequently thought prudent to obtain some notion of the actual
localities, and Sir _Joshua_ Walmsley was sent forth with competent
assistance to spy out the land, which the Jewish practice of old was
rather to do before than after serious undertakings. A sad change soon
came over the spirit of the London dream by the discovery that a country
which looked level as Arrowsmith’s map in the prospectus, presented such
trifling obstacles to the rail as sundry leagues of mountain ridges,
which range from 6000 to 9000 feet high, and are covered with snow for
many months of the year. This was a damper. The report of the special
meeting (see ‘Morning Chronicle,’ Dec. 18, 1845) should be printed in
letters of gold, from the quantity of that article which it will
preserve to our credulous countrymen. Then and there the chairman
observed, with equal _naïveté_ and pathos, “that had he known as much
before as he did now, he would have been the last man to carry out a
railway in Spain.” This experience cost him, he observed, 5000_l._,
which is paying dear for a Spanish rail whistle. He might for five
pounds have bought the works of Townshend and Captain Cook: our modesty
prevents the naming another red book, in which these precise localities,
these mighty Alps, are described by persons who had ridden, or rather
soared, over them. At another meeting of another Spanish rail company,
held at the London Tavern, October 20, 1846, another chairman announced
“a fact of which he was not before aware, that it was impossible to
surmount the Pyrenees.” Meanwhile, the Madrid government had secured
30,000_l._ from them by way of _caution_ money; but caution disappears
from our capitalists, whenever excess of cash mounts from their pockets
into their heads; loss of common sense and dollars is the natural
result. But it is the fate of Spain and her things, to be judged of by
those who have never been there, and who feel no shame at the indecency
of the nakedness of their geographical ignorance. When the blind lead
the blind, beware of hillocks and ditches.
[Sidenote: POST-OFFICE.]