The Rider’s Costume--Alforjas: their contents--The Bota, and How to
use it--Pig Skins and Borracha--Spanish Money--Onzas and smaller
Coins.
The rider’s costume and accoutrements require consideration; his great
object should be to pass in a crowd, either unnoticed, or to be taken
for “one of us,” _Uno de Nosotros_, and a member of the Iberian
family--_de la Familia_: this is best effected by adopting the dress,
that is usually worn by the natives when they travel on horseback, or
journey by any of their national conveyances, among which Anglo-Franco
mails and diligences are not yet to be reckoned; all classes of
Spaniards, on getting outside the town-gate, assume country habits, and
eschew the long-tailed coats and civilization of the city; they drop
pea-jackets and foreign fashions, which would only attract attention,
and expose the wearers to the ridicule or coarser marks of consideration
from the peasantry, muleteers, and other gentry, who rule on the road,
hate novelties, and hold fast to the ways and jackets of their
forefathers; the best hat, therefore, is the common _sombrero calanes_,
which resemble those worn at Astley’s by banditti, being of a conical
shape, is edged with black velvet, ornamented with silken tufts, and
looks equally well on a cockney from London, or on a squire from
Devonshire. The jacket should be the universal fur _Zamarra_, which is
made of black sheepskin, in its ordinary form, and of lambskin for those
who can pay; a sash round the waist should never be forgotten, being
most useful both in reality and metaphor: it sustains the loins, and
keeps off the dangerous colics of Spain, by maintaining an equable heat
over the abdomen; hence, to be Homerically well girt is half the battle
for the Peninsular traveller.
[Sidenote: THE ALFORJAS.]
The _capa_ the cloak, or the _manta_ a striped plaid, and saddle-bags,
the _Alforjas_, are absolute essentials, and should be strapped on the
pommel of the saddle, as being there less heating to the horse than when
placed on his flanks, and being in front, they are more handy for
sudden use, since in the mountains and valleys, the rider is constantly
exposed to sudden variations of wind and weather; when Æolus and Sol
contend for his cloak, as in Æsop’s Fables, and the buckets of heaven
are emptied on him as soon as the god of fire thinks him sufficiently
baked.
These saddle-bags are most classical, Oriental, and convenient; they
indeed constitute the genus _bagsman_, and have given their name to our
riding travellers; they are the _Sarcinæ_ of Cato the Censor, the
_Bulgæ_ of Lucilius, who made an epigram thereon:--
“Cum _bulgâ_ cœnat, dormit, lavat, omnis in unâ.
Spes hominis _bulga_ hâc devincta est cætera vita:”
which, as these indispensables are quite as necessary to the modern
Spaniard, may be thus translated:--
“A good roomy bag delighteth a Roman,
He is never without this appendage a minute;
In bed, at the bath, at his meals,--in short no man
Should fail to stow life, hope, and self away in it.”
The countrymen of Sancho Panza, when on the road, make the same use of
their wallets as the Romans did; they still (the washing excepted) live
and die with these bags, in which their hearts are deposited with their
bread and cheese.
These Spanish _alforjas_, in name and appearance, are the Moorish _al
horeh_. (The F and H, like the B and V, X and J, are almost equivalent,
and are used indiscriminately in Spanish cacography.) They are generally
composed of cotton and worsted, and are embroidered in gaudy colours and
patterns; the _correct_ thing is to have the owner’s name worked in on
the edge, which ought to be done by the delicate hand of his beloved
mistress. Those made at Granada are very excellent; the Moorish,
especially those from Morocco, are ornamented with an infinity of small
tassels. Peasants, when dismounted, mendicant monks, when foraging for
their convents, sling their _alforjas_ over their shoulders when they
come into villages.
[Sidenote: WHAT TO STOW AWAY IN THE ALFORJAS.]
Among the contents which most people will find it convenient to carry in
the _right-hand bag_, as the easiest to be got at, a pair of blue gauze
wire spectacles or goggles will be found useful, as ophthalmia is very
common in Spain, and particularly in the calcined central plains. The
constant glare is unrelieved by any verdure, the air is dry, and the
clouds of dust highly irritating from being impregnated with nitre. The
best remedy is to bathe the eyes frequently with hot water, and _never
to rub them when inflamed_, except with the elbows, _los ojos con los
codos_. Spaniards never jest with their eyes or faith; of the two
perhaps they are seriously fondest of the former, not merely when
sparkling beneath the arched eyebrow of the dark sex, but when set in
their own heads. “I love thee like my eyes,” is quite a hackneyed form
of affection; nor, however wrathful and imprecatory, do they under any
circumstance express the slightest uncharitable wishes in regard to the
visual organs of their bitterest foe.
The whole art of the _alforjas_ is the putting into them what you want
the most often, and in the most handy and accessible place. Keep here,
therefore, a supply of small money for the halt and the blind, for the
piteous cases of human suffering and poverty by which the traveller’s
eye will be pained in a land where soup-dispensing monks are done away
with, and assistant new poor law commissioners not yet appointed; such
charity from God’s purse, _bolsa de Dios_, never impoverishes that of
man, and a cheerful giver, however opposed to modern political
economists, is commended in that old-fashioned book called the Bible.
The left half of the _alforjas_ may be apportioned to the writing and
dressing cases, and the smaller each are the better.
Food for the mind must not be neglected. The travelling library, like
companions, should be select and good; _libros y amigos pocos y buenos_.
The duodecimo editions are the best, as a large heavy book kills horse,
rider, and reader. Books are a matter of taste; some men like Bacon,
others prefer Pickwick; stow away at all events a pocket edition of the
Bible, Shakspere, and Don Quixote: and if the advice of dear Dr. Johnson
be worth following, one of those books that can be taken in _the hand_,
and to the fire-side. Martial, a grand authority on Spanish hand-books,
recommended “such sized companions on a long journey.” Quartos and
folios, said he, may be left at home in the book-case--
“Scrinia da magnis, _me manus una_ capit.”
[Sidenote: THE BOTA.]
Here also keep the passport, that indescribable nuisance and curse of
continental travel, to which a free-born Briton never can get
reconciled, and is apt to neglect, whereby he puts himself in the power
of the worst and most troublesome people on earth. Passports in Spain
now in some degree supply the Inquisition, and have been embittered by
vexatious forms borrowed from bureaucratic France.
[Sidenote: THE BOTA.]
Having thus disposed of these matters on the front bow of his saddle, to
which we always added a _bota_--the pocket-pistol of Hudibras--one word
on this _Bota_, which is as necessary to the rider as a saddle to his
horse. This article, so Asiatic and Spanish, is at once the bottle and
the glass of the people of the Peninsula when on the road, and is
perfectly unlike the vitreous crockery and pewter utensils of Great
Britain. A Spanish woman would as soon think of going to church without
her fan, or a Spanish man to a fair without his knife, as a traveller
without his _bota_. Ours, the faithful, long-tried comforter of many a
dry road, and honoured now like a relic, is hung up a votive offering to
the Iberian Bacchus, as the mariners in Horace suspended their damp
garments to the deity who had delivered them from the dangers of water.
Its skin, now shrivelled with age and with fruitless longings for wine,
is still redolent of the ruby fluid, whether the generous _Valdepeñas_
or the rich _vino de Toro_: and refreshing to our nostrils is even an
occasional smell at its red-stained orifice. There the racy wine-perfume
lingers, and brings water into the mouth, it may be into the eyelid.
What a dream of Spanish odours, good, bad, and indifferent, is awakened
by its well-known _borracha!_--what recollections, breathing the aroma
of the balmy south, crowd in; of aromatic wastes, of leagues of thyme,
whence Flora sends forth advertisements to her tiny bee-customer; of
churches, all incense; of the goats and monks, long-bearded and
odoriferous; of cities whose steam of garlic, ollas, oil, and tobacco
rises up to the heavens, mingled with the thousand and one other
continental sweets which assail a man’s nose, whether he lands at Calais
or Cadiz! There hangs our smelling-bottle _bota_, now a pleasure of
memory; it has had its day, and is never again to be filled in torrid,
thirsty Spain, nor emptied, which is better.
This _Bota_, from whence the terms _Butt_ of sherry, _bouteille_, and
bottle are derived, is the most ancient Oriental leathern bottle
alluded to in Job xxxii. 19, “My belly ready to burst like new bottles;”
and in the parable, Matt. ix. 17, about the old ones, the force and
point of which is entirely lost by our word _bottle_, which being made
of glass, is not liable to become useless by age like one made of
leather. Such a “bottle of water” was the last among the few things
which Abraham gave to Hagar, when he turned out the mother of the
Arabians, whose descendants brought its usage into Spain. The shape is
like that of a large pear or shot-pouch, and it contains from two to
five quarts. The narrow neck is mounted with a turned wooden cup, from
which the contents are drunk. The way to use it is thus--grasp the neck
with the left hand and bring the rim of the cup to the mouth, then
gradually raise the bag with the other hand till the wine, in obedience
to hydrostatic laws, rises to its level, and keeps always full in the
cup without trouble to the mouth. The gravity with which this is done,
the long, slow, sustained, Sancho-like devotion of the thirsty Spaniards
when offered a drink out of another man’s _bota_, is very edifying, and
is as deep as the sigh of delight and gratitude with which, when unable
to imbibe more, the precious skin is returned. No drop of the divine
contents is wasted, except by some newly-arrived bungler, who, by
lifting up the bottom first, inundates his chin. The hole in the cup is
made tight by a wooden spigot, which again is perforated and stopped
with a small peg. Those who do not want to take a copious draught do not
pull out the spigot, but merely the little peg of it; the wine then
flows out in a thin thread. The Catalonians and Aragonese generally
drink in this way; they never touch the vessel with their lips, but hold
it up at a distance above, and pilot the stream into their mouths, or
rather under-jaws. It is much easier for those who have had no practice
to pour the wine into their necks than into their mouths, but their
drinking-bottles are made with a long narrow spout, and are called
“_Porrones_.”
[Sidenote: THE BOTA--WINE.]
The _Bota_ must not be confounded with the _Borracha_ or _Cuero_, the
wine-skin of Spain, which is the _entire_, and answers the purpose of
the barrel elsewhere. The _bota_ is the retail receptacle, the _cuero_
is the wholesale one. It is the genuine pig’s skin, the adoration of
which disputes in the Peninsula with the cigar, the dollar, and even the
worship of the Virgin. The shops of the makers are to be seen in most
Spanish towns; in them long lines of the unclean animal’s blown out
hides are strung up like sheep carcases in our butchers’ shambles. The
tanned and manufactured article preserves the form of the pig, feet and
all, with the exception of one: the skin is turned inside out, so that
the hairy coat lines the interior, which, moreover, is carefully pitched
like a ship’s bottom, to prevent leaking; hence the peculiar flavour,
which partakes of resin and the hide, which is called the _borracha_,
and is peculiar to most Spanish wines, sherry excepted, which being made
by foreigners, is kept in foreign casks, as we shall presently show when
we touch on “good sherris sack.” A drunken man, who is rarer in Spain
than in England, is called a _borracho_; the term is not complimentary.
These _cueros_, when filled, are suspended in _ventas_ and elsewhere,
and thus economise cellarage, cooperage, and bottling; and such were the
bigbellied monsters which Don Quixote attacked.
As the _bota_ is always near every Spaniard’s mouth who can get at one,
all classes being ever ready, like Sancho, to give “a thousand kisses,”
not only to his own legitimate _bota_, but to that of his neighbour,
which is coveted more than wife: therefore no prudent traveller will
ever journey an inch in Spain without getting one, and when he has, will
never keep it empty, especially when he falls in with good wine. Every
man’s Spanish attendant will always find out, by instinct, where the
best wine is to be had; good wine neither needs bush, herald, nor crier;
in these matters, our experience of them tallies with their proverb,
“mas vale vino _maldito_, que no agua _bendita_,” “cursed bad wine is
better than holy water;” at the same time, in their various scale of
comparisons, there is good wine, better wine, and best wine, but no such
thing as bad wine; of good wine, the Spaniards are almost as good judges
as of good water; they rarely mix them, because they say that it is
spoiling two good things. Vino _Moro_, or Moorish wine, is by no means
indicative of uncleanness, or other heretical imperfections implied
generally by that epithet; it simply means, that it is pure from never
having been baptized with water, for which the Asturians, who keep small
chandlers’ shops, are so infamous, that they are said, from inveterate
habit, to adulterate even water; _aguan el agua_.
[Sidenote: MONEY.]
It is a great mistake to suppose, because Spaniards are seldom seen
drunk, and because when on a journey they drink as much water as their
beasts, that they have any Oriental dislike to wine; the rule is “_Agua
como buey, y vino como Rey_,” “to drink water like an ox, and wine like
a king.” The extent of the _given_ quantity of wine which they will
always swallow, rather suggests that their habitual temperance may in
some degree be connected more with their poverty than with their will.
The way to many an honest breast lies through the belly in this
classical land, where the tutelar of butlers still keeps the key of
their cellars and hearts--aperit præcordia Bacchus: nor is their
Oriental blessing unconnected with some “savoury food” previously
administered. And independently of the very obvious reasons which good
wine does and ought to afford for its own consumption, the irritating
nature of Spanish cookery provides a never-failing inducement. The
constant use of the savoury class of condiments and of pepper is very
heating, “_la pimienta escalienta_.” A salt-fish, ham and sausage diet
creates thirst; a good rasher of bacon calls loudly for a corresponding
long and strong pull at the “_bota_,” “_a torresno de tocino, buen golpe
de vino_.”
This digression on _botas_ will be pardoned by all who, having ridden in
Spain, know the absolute necessity of them. The traveller will of course
remember the advice given by the rogue of _Ventero_ to Don Quixote to
take shirts and money with him. “Put money in thy purse” said also
honest Iago, for an empty one is a beggarly companion in the Peninsula
as elsewhere. There is no getting to Rome or to Santiago if the
pilgrim’s scrip be scanty, or his mule lame: _Camino de Roma, ni mula
coja ni Bolsa floja_.
[Sidenote: MONEY.]
Practically it may be said, that there is no paper money in Spain. Notes
may be taken in some of the larger cities, but in the provinces the
value of a man in office’s promise to pay on paper, is not considered by
the shrewd natives to be actually equal to cash; while they will readily
give these notes to foreigners, they prefer for their own use the
old-fashioned representatives of wealth, gold and silver, towards the
smallest fraction of which they have the largest possible veneration.
Accounts are usually kept in _reales de vellon_ of royal bullion; and
these are subdivided into _maravedis_, the ancient coin of the
Peninsula: there are minor fractions even of farthings, consisting in
material of infinitesimal bits of any metals, melted church bells, old
cannon, &c., with names and values unknown in our happy land, where not
much is to be got for a mite; in Spain, where cheapness of earth-produce
is commensurate with poverty, anything, even to an old button, goes for
a _maravedí_, and we have found that in changing a dollar by way of
experiment into small coppers in the market at Seville, among the
multitudinous specimens of Spanish mints of all periods, Moorish and
even Roman coins were to be met with, and still current.
The dollar, or _Duro_, of Spain is well known all over the world, being
the form under which silver has been generally exported from the Spanish
colonies of South America. It is the Italian “Colonato,” so called
because the arms of Spain are supported between the two pillars of
Hercules. The coinage is slovenly: it is the weight of the metal, not
the form, which is looked to by the Spaniard, who, like the Turk, is not
so clever a workman or mechanist as devout worshipper of bullion.
Ferdinand VII. continued for a long while to strike money with his
father’s head, having only had the lettering altered: thus early Trajans
exhibit the head of Nero. When the Cortes entered Madrid after the
Duke’s victory at Salamanca, they patriotically prohibited the currency
of all coins bearing the head of the intrusive Joseph; yet his dollars
being chiefly made out of stolen church plate, gilt and ungilt, were,
although those of an usurper, intrinsically worth more than the
_legitimate_ duro: this was a too severe test for the loyalty of those
whose real king and god is cash. Such a decree was worthy of senators
who were busier employed in expelling French tropes from their
dictionary than French troops from their country. The wiser Chinese take
Ferdinand’s and Joseph’s dollars alike, calling them both “devil’s head”
money. These bad prejudices against good coin have now given way to the
march of intellect; nay, the five-franc piece with Louis-Philippe’s
clever head on it bids fair to oust the pillared _Duro_. The silver of
the mines of Murcia is exported to France, where it is coined, and sent
back in the manufactured shape. France thus gains a handsome per
centage, and habituates the people to her image of power, which comes
recommended to them in the most acceptable likeness of current coin.
[Sidenote: GOLD COINAGE.]
In Spain cash, ambrosial cash, rules the court, the camp, the grove;
hence the extraordinary credit of three millions recently required for
the secret service expenses of the Tuileries, and official enthusiasm
and unanimity secured thereby in the Montpensier purchase. The whole
decalogue is condensed at Madrid into one commandment, Love God as
represented on earth not by his vicar the Pope, but by his
lord-lieutenant, Don Ducat.
_"El primero es amar Don Dinero,_
_Dios es omnipotente, Don Dinero es su lugarteniente."_
Thus grandees and men in Spanish offices, both governmental and printing
ones, have preferred the other day five-franc pieces to the ribbons of
the Legion of _honor_; nor, considering the swindlers on whom this badge
of Austerlitz has been prostituted, were these worthy Castilians much
out in their calculations, if there be any truth in the catechism of
Falstaff.
[Sidenote: AVARICE OF SPANIARDS.]
The _gold coinage_ is magnificent, and worthy of the country and period
from which Europe was supplied with the precious metals. The largest
piece, the ounce, “_onza_,” is worth sixteen dollars, or about 3_l._
6_s._; and while it puts to shame the diminutive Napoleons of France and
sovereigns of England, tells the tale of Spain’s former wealth, and
contrasts strangely with her present poverty and scarcity of specie:
these large coins have however been so _sweated_, not by the sun, but by
Jews, foreign and domestic, so clipped worse than Spanish mules or
French poodles, that they seldom retain their proper weight and value.
They are accordingly looked upon every where with suspicion; a
shopkeeper, in a big town, brings out his scales like Shylock, while in
a village shrugs, _ajos_, and negative expressions are your change; nor,
even if the natives are satisfied that they are not light, can sixteen
dollars be often met with, nor do those who have so much ready money by
them ever wish that the fact should be generally known. Spaniards, like
the Orientals, have a dread of being supposed to have money in their
possession; it exposes them to be plundered by robbers of all kinds,
professional or legal; by the “_alcalde_,” or village authority, and the
“_escribano_,” the attorney, to say nothing of Señor Mon’s tax-gatherer;
for the quota of contributions, many of which are apportioned among the
inhabitants themselves of each district, falls heaviest on those who
have, or are supposed to have, the most ready money.
The lower classes of Spaniards, like the Orientals, are generally
avaricious. They see that wealth is safety and power, where everything
is venal; the feeling of insecurity makes them eager to invest what they
have in a small and easily concealed bulk, “_en lo que no habla_,” “in
that which does not tell tales.” Consequently, and in self-defence, they
are much addicted to hoarding. The idea of finding hidden treasures,
which prevails in Spain as in the East, is based on some grounds; for in
every country which has been much exposed to foreign invasions, civil
wars, and domestic misrule, where there were no safe modes of
investment, in moments of danger property was converted into gold or
jewels and concealed with singular ingenuity. The mistrust which
Spaniards entertain of each other often extends, when cash is in the
case, even to the nearest relations, to wife and children. Many a
treasure is thus lost from the accidental death of the hider, who, dying
without a sign, carries his secret to the grave, adding thereby to the
sincere grief of his widow and heir. One of the old vulgar superstitions
in Spain is an idea that those who were born on a Good Friday, the day
of mourning, were gifted with a power of seeing into the earth and of
discovering hidden treasures. One place of concealment has always been
under the bodies in graves; the hiders have trusted to the dead to
defend what the quick could not: this accounts for the universal
desecration of tombs and churchyards during Bonaparte’s invasion. The
Gauls growled like gowls amid the churchyards; they despoiled the
mouldering corpses of the last pledge left by weeping affection; or, as
Burke observed of their domestic doings, they unplumbed the dead to make
missiles of destruction against the living. These hordes, in their
hurried flight before the advancing Duke, also hid much of their
ill-gotten gains, which to this day are hunted after. Who has forgotten
Borrow’s graphic picture of the treasure-seeking Mol? At this very
moment the authorities of San Sebastian are narrowly superintending the
diggings of an old Frenchwoman, to whom some dying thief at home has
revealed the secret of a buried kettle full of gold ounces.
[Sidenote: CONCEALMENT OF CASH.]
Having provided the “_Spanish_,” those metallic sinews of war, which
also make the mare go in peace, a prudent master, if he intends to be
really the master, will hold the purse himself, and, moreover, will keep
a sharp eye on it, for the jingle of coin dispels even a Spanish siesta,
and causes many a sleepless day to every listener, from the beggar to
the queen mother.
[Sidenote: SPANISH SERVANTS.]