LA CORUÑA
Sir John Moore--The province of Coruña--The town of Coruña--By sea
to Coruña--Our steamer--The other passengers--A dangerous
harbour--Fear of stowaways--Glass-covered galleries--Beggars--The
Customs--No fireplaces--Our drive to the ramparts--The Lion and the
Unicorn--A British hero--Borrow and the tomb of Sir John Moore--The
gardens of San Carlos--Moore’s lack of confidence in himself--His
reputation as a general--Wellington’s opinion of him--“The Burial
of Sir John Moore”--Situation of Coruña--The cemetery--The tower of
Hercules--Originally erected by Phœnicians--Its outer
staircase--Sir Francis Drake--A Spanish heroine--In honour of Maria
Pita--The chief industry--An ice factory--Sardines--Corpulence of
Spanish ladies--Chocolate factories--How the poor live--A home for
the aged--Tobacco factories--The streets of Coruña--A fashionable
summer resort--One of the best harbours in Europe
Who has not heard of Coruña, and the “Burial of Sir John Moore”?
The province of Coruña--or La Coruña, as it is usually called--covers
7902 square kilometres, and its population in the year 1905 amounted to
683,915 souls. Coruña is the dampest province in the whole of Spain, and
it has more misty days in the year than any other part; but, on the
other hand, it is never troubled with those dry hot winds that cross to
Spain from Africa: it is decidedly healthy, and its women and children
have very beautiful complexions.
The town of Coruña, with its 50,000 inhabitants, is situated on a
diminutive peninsula at the point of the angle which forms the
north-west corner of Spain, and the distance between it and Madrid is
830 kilometres. Coruña is one of the oldest towns in Spain. Orosius
wrote about it in the fifth century, calling it _Brigantia_. He related
that it had a very high tower built for looking out over the sea as far
as Britain.[179] It was to Coruña that Julius Cæsar brought his fleet
from Cadiz, and it was the natives of Coruña who were so terribly
frightened at the sight of that fleet, having never seen anything like
it before. The name of _Brigantia_ is derived from the Celtic word
_Briga_, which we have already discussed in these pages.
Both English and German passenger steamers constantly touch at the ports
of Coruña and Vigo on their way to Lisbon and South America, and the sea
route to Galicia is by far the shortest and quickest for English
travellers.
We left Southampton just before midnight on January 10, boarding the
Hamburg-American liner of 11,000 tons, the _König Fredrick August_, with
the aid of a steam tender. The night was pitchy dark, and the only
lights visible after we had left the shore were those that shone from
the deck and port-holes of the _König Fredrick August_. Many of the best
boats running between Europe and South America are German, and there is
no doubt that Germany has begun to take, during recent years, a very
lively interest in the development of Argentina and her sister
Republics. Germans are wresting from the hands of enervated and
self-satisfied Englishmen the trade of which we once thought we had the
monopoly by divine right, and it is chiefly by German vessels that
Spaniards are emigrating in shoals from their native land to Buenos
Ayres, to Uruguay, and to Chili. I do not think I entered a single town
in Galicia upon the walls of which I did not see placards denoting the
speedy departure of some German liner from Europe to South America.
All the passengers we found on board the _König Fredrick August_ were
bound for Buenos Ayres or the neighbouring States. We alone were bound
for Spain. Ours was a journey of two,[180] theirs of twenty-two, days.
We were the only English; every one else was either German or Spanish
South American. Here was a favourable opportunity of comparing Teuton
and Latin types. As we paced the deck in brilliant sunshine the
following day, I noticed that the Spanish were decidedly short and
slight of stature, with sallow, almost bilious complexions, black hair,
and large and brilliant dark eyes; while the Germans were tall and
thick-set, with florid complexions, light sandy hair, and blue eyes. The
cooking on board was quite German, so we subsisted for those two days
principally upon apples and grapes, both being abundant and excellent in
quality. A German band performed lively airs during dinner each evening,
and enabled us to forget somewhat the motion of the vessel. Our cheerful
and airy cabin was fitted up regardless of expense with every possible
convenience, including an air-fan, a telephone, and an electric
hair-curling apparatus; and, in addition, an amiable stewardess flew to
execute our every wish. The dreadful Bay of Biscay behaved like a lamb,
and the vessel carried us from Southampton to Coruña as steadily as if
she had run on rails. Yet, though the sun was shining and the weather
calm, we could see great foaming waves dash steeple-high against the
rocks of Brest as we passed well out to sea. Only a few days before
there had blown a terrible gale in that very corner of the Bay, and a
fishing smack had been wrecked near San Sebastian. We slept both nights
with our port-holes open, but repented of this when, at about 10 a.m. on
the second morning, a great wave washed in upon us, flooding the floor
and drenching all our belongings, including the clothes in which we were
to land. Pails of water were taken up from the floor by an angry steward
after our soaking carpet had been removed, and we had to remain in our
berths till lunch time, when our apparel was brought back to us from the
drying-room. Traces of rust on our keys and on the fittings of our
travelling-bags, which were filled with water when the wave entered,
still remind us that sleeping with open port-holes in the Bay of Biscay
is a dangerous pleasure.
At 3 p.m. on January 12 we steamed into the horseshoe harbour of Coruña,
our band playing a lively march. To our right we passed the majestic
lighthouse known as the Pillar of Hercules, a sight to rivet every eye;
and there before us was the town upon whose ramparts the brave Sir John
Moore was buried by his comrades.
Coruña is a dangerous harbour to enter, even in calm weather, on account
of its islands and its many rocks. The whole coast as far as Vigo is
treacherous and unfriendly; it has, in fact, so bad a name that it is
called the “Coast of Death.” Even in calm weather waves dash with fury
against the jagged reefs, and the surf rises to such a height that it
may easily be mistaken for whales spouting. I put a question or two to
the sailors who stood amongst the passengers with eyes fixed upon the
harbour, but they told me they knew no more than I did about the coast,
as neither they nor any of their line of steamers had ever entered that
harbour before; till now they had always made straight for Vigo. Even
the captain, they added, had never seen Coruña till that day! A pilot
had come on board to take us to a spot where we could anchor, and a
couple of Spanish soldiers, who had come with the doctor, now took their
places on either side of the lowered gangway to examine the papers of
all who left the ship or came on board. Little boats laden with fruit
and vegetables soon approached us from the shore, to the great amusement
of a fat German who was looking
[Illustration: PEASANTS IN COSTUMES PECULIAR TO GALICIA]
over the side. “They evidently think,” he remarked, “that we have
nothing to eat on board.”
“Set a watch all round the ship,” cried the blue-eyed captain to the
first mate. “We must be sure that no stowaways creep on board.” And as
the mate went aft to carry out the captain’s instructions, we descended
the ladder and took our places in the tender, which rose and fell with
the dancing water.
All the houses that face the harbour of Coruña are entirely fronted with
glass-covered galleries or verandahs, which present a novel appearance
to the unaccustomed eye. The town looked like a line of conservatories,
and I remembered the proverb about people who dwell in glass houses, and
wondered whether it had originated in Coruña. These glass fronts are sun
traps; they take the place of fireplaces in cold weather. The bright,
genial Spanish sun shines through the glass and fills the rooms with
pleasant warmth even on the coldest days, when the ground outside is
covered with frost. There glass is the only heating apparatus with which
the houses of Galicia are supplied.
Upon landing we were immediately surrounded by a crowd of
miserable-looking beggars of all ages and descriptions. Most of the
children squinted, and many were blind in one eye; several were blind in
both. Many were terribly maimed, and had difficulty in following us upon
their remaining limbs--but follow us they would and did, some on all
fours, till we drove off to an hotel and left them behind. It was some
time, however, before we could drive off, as we had the misfortune to
arrive at four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. The Custom-House officer
had gone off for his week-end, and we were gravely informed by the
assistant that we must leave all our luggage on the quay, and return to
have it examined on the following Monday morning, when the head
Custom-House official would attend in person. “What!” we cried, “may we
not at least take a valise to the hotel with our night apparel?” “No,
you can take nothing till Monday,” was the stolid reply. At this we
became desperate, and assured the official that it would be an
unheard-of thing to force English people to sleep for two nights in
their travelling clothes simply because they had landed on Saturday. For
a long time they continued to shake their heads; but finding at last
that we were quite determined not to budge without the valise, they
reluctantly handed it into our cab, and we drove off to an hotel.
Our room at _Hotel Francia_ had the usual glass-fronted verandah, the
glass consisting of small panes let into a wooded framework which was
painted white. Our host told us that if we kept the verandah windows
open when the sun shone, closing them about four o’clock, we should find
the room as warm in the evening as if we had a fire. To a certain extent
this was correct; but on one occasion we forgot to shut the windows at
sunset, and all the warmth that the glass had gathered during the day
fled the way it had come, and in the evening the atmosphere of our room
was that of a refrigerator. From that verandah we took our first survey
of the Coruña thoroughfares. Cabs, whose tops consisted of canvas
awnings, passed continually below us, and donkeys were so numerous as
beasts of burden that they gave the place quite an Eastern touch. The
trams and most of the carts were drawn by mules, and nearly every woman
carried some burden on her head.
Our first drive was to the ramparts, to visit the tomb of England’s
hero, Sir John Moore. It was the 14th of January, a beautiful day, with
such hot and brilliant sunshine that the ladies were using parasols as
freely as if it were July. There had been a touch of frost in the night,
but as we drove through the public gardens, named after Admiral Mendez
Nuñez, with their waving palm trees and camellias full of handsome white
and red blossom, there was little to remind us of winter. The clear blue
sky was reflected in the sea, and the view of the rocky coast was very
fine as our road mounted behind the ramparts of the old town. A glaring
British Lion and Unicorn decorated the stone gateway leading to the
Gardens of San Carlos, which covered the top of the batteries. I wished
them away, for their appearance in such a spot bordered on the
aggressive, and jarred somewhat. Modesty becomes the great as well as
the brave. And, after all, it was the Spaniards who collected the money
for Moore’s monument.
We now alighted from our awning-covered vehicle and entered. There,
straight before us in the centre of the gardens, was the tomb we had
come to see, a marble sarcophagus, on which we read the following
inscription:--
“In memory of General Sir John Moore, who fell at the battle of
Elvina while covering the embarkation of the British troops, 16th
January 1809.”
The marble tomb stood on a square plot surrounded by a five-foot granite
wall with a granite vase at each corner filled with pink cyclamen; the
wall was surrounded by green grass, and the grass, in its turn, was
bordered by sunflowers.
In the grass at the four corners grew four palm trees. The rest of the
gardens consisted of winding paths between flower beds bordered with
box. The whole was enclosed between the rampart walls, which were
partially hidden by tall cacti covered with white blossom which had the
appearance of rosebuds.
When Borrow visited Coruña in 1836 he found the tomb of Sir John Moore
on the spot where he was buried by his soldiers “at dead of night,” on a
small battery of the old town, whose wall was washed by the waters of
the Bay. “It is a sweet spot,” he wrote, “and the prospect which opens
before it is extensive. The battery itself may be about eighty yards
square. In the centre of the battery stands the tomb of Moore, built by
the chivalrous French in commemoration of the fall of their heroic
antagonist. It is oblong and surrounded by a slab, and on either side
bears one of the simple and sublime epitaphs for which our rivals are
celebrated, and which stands in such powerful contrast with the bloated
and bombastic inscriptions which deform the walls of Westminster Abbey--
‘JOHN MOORE
LEADER OF THE ENGLISH ARMIES
SLAIN IN BATTLE
1809.’
... close to each corner (of the granite wall) rises from the earth the
breach of an immense brass cannon, intended to keep the wall compact and
close. These outer erections are, however, not the work of the French,
but of the English Government.”[181]
The Gardens of San Carlos are a favourite resort of the Coruña
townspeople. The photographer whom I commissioned the following day to
take a photograph of the tomb informed me that the gardens stood on the
most ancient bit of Coruña, and that all the new part of the town was
built upon land that had been retrieved from the sea in comparatively
recent times. “Yes, there lies the hero almost within sight of the
glorious hill where he turned upon his pursuers like a lion at bay.
Many acquire immortality without seeking it, and die before its first
ray has gilded their name: of these was Moore. The harassed general,
flying through Castile with his dispirited troops before a fierce and
terrible enemy, little dreamed that he was on the point of obtaining
that for which many a better and greater, though certainly not braver,
man had sighed in vain. His very misfortunes were the means which
secured him immortal fame: his disastrous rout, his bloody death, and,
finally, his tomb on a foreign strand, far from kin and friends. There
is scarcely a Spaniard but has heard of his tomb, and speaks of it with
a strange kind of awe. Immense treasures are said to have been buried
with the heretic general, though for what purpose no one pretends to
guess. Yes, even in Spain immortality has already crowned the head of
Moore--Spain, the land of oblivion, where the Guadalete flows.”[182]
“Never,” writes Maxwell,[183] “was the ordeal to which an unfortunate
commander was subjected so gently exercised--no man obtained a larger
share of sympathy from his countrymen, and none deserved it better.
Misfortunes and mistakes were half forgotten--and the failure of Moore’s
campaign was attributed to that evil influence exercised by individuals
at home and on the Peninsula by whom he was misguided in the
commencement and abandoned in the end. On the living, popular
disapprobation descended with unsparing severity, while the faults of
the departed soldier seemed buried in his warrior grave.... To claim
equality as a commander for Moore with Wellington, Napoleon, and Soult”
(it was in defending himself against Soult that Moore fell) “no
circumstances will warrant. Sir John was a first-rate officer--but he
never could have been a great commander. He was an able
tactician--understood thoroughly the economy of an army--handled troops
well--had a sound discretion and a clear head--but a constitutional
defect in some degree neutralised these admirable qualities. Moore
lacked confidence in himself--he was haunted by a fear of
responsibility--and a constant dread of doing that which was wrong, of
running himself and his troops into difficulties from which they might
not be able to extricate themselves.... Sir John Moore had earned the
highest reputation as a general of division; he was aware of
[Illustration: A NATIVE CART]
[Illustration: A STREET IN CORUÑA]
[Illustration: A WATER CARRIER, LA CORUÑA]
[Illustration: KEEPING MAY DAY, BETANZOS]
PHOTOS. BY AUTHOR
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF HERCULES, LA CORUÑA
[Illustration: TOMB OF SIR JOHN MOORE ON THE RAMPARTS OF LA CORUÑA]
this, and perhaps felt no inclination to risk it; at all events, _he was
clearly incapable of despising partial obstacles in the pursuit of some
great ultimate advantage_.” The Italics are my own.
Wellington said of Moore: “I can see but one error; when he advanced to
Sahagun, he should have considered it a movement of retreat, and sent
officers to the rear to mark and prepare the halting-places for every
brigade.” Napoleon asserted that to the talents and firmness of their
leader the deliverance of the British army was to be ascribed, and that,
if he committed a few trifling errors, they were to be attributed to the
peculiarity of his situation. A brother officer said of Moore: “The
British army has produced some able men, and many in point of military
talent were and are quite his equals; but it cannot, and perhaps never
could, boast of one more beloved, not by his personal friends alone, but
by every individual that served under him.” And after all it is only
just that Moore should receive honour from Spain and from the people of
Coruña, for the first purpose of his presence in the Peninsula was to
aid the Spaniards in regaining their soil from the great
invader--Napoleon. Local writers speak to-day of Moore as one who met
with his death while defending Coruña,[184] and the townsfolk delight to
stroll with their little ones around the hero’s tomb on cool, fresh
summer evenings.
There was one thing that puzzled me as I stood beside Sir John Moore’s
tomb. How could those wonderful lines on his burial, every one of which
throbs with personal feeling, reality, and detail, have been composed
years after the event by a young Irish clergyman, who had never left the
British Isles? But it was not till just as this chapter was going to the
press that I could find any possible solution to the problem. At last
light is thrown upon the subject by Mr. R. C. Newick. “There is no poem
in the English language,” he writes, “more often quoted in speech or
printed in books, no poem about whose authorship there has been more
controversy, none which grips more firmly both the mind of a child and
the intellect of a cultivated scholar, than the immortal threnody, ‘The
Burial of Sir John Moore.’” But who wrote it? Was its author the Rev.
Charles Wolfe, as the text-books of English literature inform us? No, it
appears to have been composed by a soldier who was present at Coruña,
and an eye-witness of all that is related in the poem. Mr. Newick
claims to have discovered a book which tells us all about the
composition of the poem--namely, the _Memoirs of Sergeant Paul
Swanston_, published by B. D. Cousins, 18 Duke Street, Lincoln’s Inn,
with no date, but about 1850.
I will take the liberty of quoting the poem as it stands in Mr. Newick’s
pamphlet (from the original MS. of the Author, as given to his friend
Swanston in February 1809):--
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O’er the grave where our hero was buried.
We buried him darkly; at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the twinkling of the pale starlight,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay--like a warrior taking his rest--
With his martial cloak around him!
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
How the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But nothing he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on,
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done,
When the clock toll’d the hour for retiring,
And we heard by the outpost signal gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame, fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him--alone with his glory.”[185]
The town of Coruña is built, as we have seen, on a peninsula, upon whose
rocky sea-washed point there stands the famous _Tower of Hercules_, a
monument of remote antiquity with modern restorations. After bidding
adieu to the tomb of Sir John Moore, we told our coachman to drive us to
this lighthouse, whose majestic proportions had aroused our admiration
as our steamer entered the Coruña harbour. On the way thither we visited
the _Campo Santo_, a large cemetery, with many handsome marble
monuments. There was a high white wall round the cemetery, and inside it
were some tall and leafy eucalyptus trees; on the outer side of the wall
there were geranium hedges, six and seven feet high, and in full flower.
A priest was standing at the entrance to the cemetery, and seeing that
we were foreigners, he kindly volunteered a few explanatory remarks.
“Those niches in the catacombs which you see lining the cemetery wall,”
he observed, “are the graves of rich people, whose friends can afford to
pay a considerable sum for the privilege; the graves you see in the
centre, under the grass, are those of poor people, who could not pay for
more than the plain ground.” The cemetery was a very large one; it
covered the whole hillside and stretched right down to the sea, which
formed an azure background to the gleaming white marble. The descending
path had handsome monuments on either side of it, all bearing the
letters R.I.P.; they were separated from one another by handsome palm
trees.
“These monuments were all sculptured in Italy,” explained the priest,
“where Carrara marble and sculpture are comparatively cheap: it is easy
to bring them here by sea from Genoa.” One of the pantheons was like a
chapel. We looked through its glass doors, protected by a strong iron
gateway, and saw an altar with four high candles, flowers, and crucifix
at the farther end; each candle had a big black ribbon bow with long
ends hanging down; in front of the altar were two _prie-dieu_ chairs,
which had the appearance of being in constant use. To our left as we had
entered we had noticed a round edifice lighted with high oval windows.
The priest told us this was the mortuary, that all unclaimed corpses
were brought here and laid on the marble slab in the centre, and that
this was the spot where inquests were held. A little below, there was a
sort of inner cemetery where--so said the priest--all the children who
died under seven years of age were buried. We read the inscriptions over
several of these little graves, and noticed that nearly all had the
words “ascended into heaven on----” and then followed the date.[186]
And we were reminded of the fact that “early death is held in Spain to
be rather a matter of congratulation than of grief.”[187]
We now returned to our carriage, and drove to the Tower of Hercules.
Between the rocks that ran into the sea and were at every moment being
covered by its white foam and the great square tower, were stretches of
green cornfields, which, to our surprise, were covered with waving oats
ready for cutting, and actually being cut before our very eyes by
peasant women with small prehistoric crescent-shaped hand
sickles--another sight strange to English eyes in the middle of January!
But a cold wind was blowing from the sea, and we were glad that the hot
sunshine had not tempted us to leave our warm wraps at home: we now drew
them well round us, and proceeded on foot to examine the tower. To walk
round its square base, I had to take eighty good steps. The original
construction of this tower is attributed to the Phœnicians, who have
been called the first civilisers of Spain, and who also erected a Tower
of Hercules in the neighbourhood of Cadiz. The material of which this
tower is built consists of small stones about a foot square, cemented
together with pebbles in the gaps. It has three storeys, and the roof is
of the same material as the vaults. The storeys, connected with one
another by a wooden stair, are said to date from the time of
Captain-General Uceda. On the stones is the following inscription:[188]--
LVPVS CONSTRVXIT EMV
LASVS MIRACVLA MEMPHIS
GRADIBVS STRAVIT YLAM
LVSTRANS CACVMENE NAVES
.....S XDDVO
In olden days the tower was surrounded on the outside by a wide spiral
stair supported at each corner by a stone pillar. On November 17, 1684,
the English, Dutch, and Flemish consuls pointed out to the
Captain-General, the Duke of Uceda, the great convenience that would
result were he to turn the Tower of Hercules into a lighthouse. The
three consuls stated further that all the expenses could be easily
defrayed if a small contribution were levied on each vessel that entered
the harbour during the space of ten years. The outer staircase must have
ceased to exist before the year 1549, since at that date the monk
Francisco Molina of Malaga stated in his _History of Galicia_ that it
had been taken down, he did not know by whom. Molina also stated that
this tower was so famous that few authors omitted to mention it. “Some
say,” he added, “that it once had a great mirror in which could be seen
the ships at sea, no matter how far away they might be sailing,” but he
explains that all this was a fable, and that what the tower really had
was “a light, which it ought to have still, to guide the ships that
would enter the port by night. This tower,” he continues, “is close to
the town, on the seashore: it is of such great height and of such
antiquity that it is truly a marvel, and its winding stone stair, which
once formed part of the tower, was the most remarkable thing about it; a
cart drawn by two oxen could mount to the top.” This last sentence gives
one the idea that there must have been ramps, not steps. As for the
mirror mentioned above, it may perhaps have been a metal camera obscura
something after the style of that to be seen in our day in the
Observatory on Clifton Downs.
Florez looked upon the story of the mirror as a fable, and thought it
must have originated from the fact that Orosius speaks of a very lofty
lighthouse in Galicia called a _Specula_. Florez also states that the
present tower cannot be traced farther back than to the Romans;
moreover, the material of which it is built is the same as that of other
Roman structures. The historical notices of this tower differ so much
from one another that the exact truth regarding its erection seems
unobtainable, but the most trustworthy reference is thought to be the
one which indicates that it was the work of the Emperor Trajan, because
no geographer before his date makes mention of the existence of such a
colossal monument. The following inscription has been found on one of
the rocks which form its foundations:--
MARTI
AUG. SACR
G. SEVIVS
LUPUS
ARCHITECTVS
AF....SIS
LVSITANVS. EX. Vº.
Sir John Moore is not the only Englishman with whose name Coruña is
closely connected in the minds of the Spaniards. In the year 1589, Sir
Francis Drake came with sixty ships, landed English troops at Coruña,
and took possession of the convent of Santo Domingo, which was situated
on the highest point in the town. He fortified the building, manned it
with English soldiers, and built batteries around it, intending to
subdue the town; but all his attempts to do so were frustrated by the
courage and patriotism of a woman--Maria Pita. Drake was eventually
compelled to retire with a loss of fifteen thousand men, but he set fire
to the convent before evacuating it, and it was burned to the ground.
Ever since that time Coruña has celebrated yearly, in the month of
August, a popular festival of a religious character which is called
_Fiestas de Maria Pita_.
Maria Pita, sometimes called Maria Fernandez de Pita, was a poor woman
from the street, who, seizing the sword of a dead soldier, gathered the
people of Coruña together and inspired them with courage to resist
Drake. In fact, it was she who, sword in hand, led the attack which
forced Drake and the troops under General Henry Noris to abandon their
position and quit the town. In her honour the chief square in Coruña is
called _Plaza de Maria Pita_. Every year the best preacher obtainable is
invited to preach a carefully prepared sermon to the people of Coruña in
the church of St. George (the largest church in the town) on the subject
of Maria Pita’s victory over Sir Francis Drake. There is not a child in
the province who has not heard of the courage and dauntless bravery of
Maria Pita. She is one of Spain’s heroines. Five years after Drake’s
departure, in the reign of Philip II., a new convent was begun upon the
site of the one that had been destroyed. It was completed in the reign
of Philip III. It is dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary, the patron
saint of the town.[189]
Fishing is the most important industry in Coruña, and excellent ice
factories recently planted in the neighbourhood have given the trade a
wonderful impetus. Formerly, for want of ice to keep the fish cool, a
great deal was spoiled, and it was almost impossible to make use of the
fish caught, or to send it to any great distance, in a country where the
sun is so powerful. But now ice factories supply the fishing-smacks with
ice, and they can go out and fish four days consecutively, the ice they
take with them keeping the fish cool and fresh. Ice is also used in
great quantities for packing the fish destined for Madrid, where the
demand is still greater than the supply. Every evening a special fish
train leaves Coruña at 6 p.m. for Madrid. There is tremendous bustle and
excitement among the fisher-folk before the train starts. We stood on
the wharf one afternoon and watched the smacks come in, their decks
piled high with silvery sardines. Women and children helped to carry the
sardines up the gangway in baskets balanced on their heads, and,
depositing them in the warehouse, proceeded to wash them in the running
water and place them with lightning speed in the wooden boxes ready to
receive them. The sardines were thrown into the boxes in handfuls,
spread out, and sprinkled with salt, till the boxes were almost full,
and then a carefully assorted row was laid on top. Each basket that was
filled with sardines from the newly arrived boat was so heavy that it
took four persons to lift it on to a woman’s head! Since the latest
appliances for the production of ice have reached Coruña, that commodity
has become cheap and plentiful, and consequently the price that the
inhabitants have to pay for fish for their own tables has risen
tremendously. Before there was ice available for packing fish and
preserving it, sardines were so cheap that they were almost given away,
and the poor made them their principal food. They are now a delicacy
which the very poor cannot afford to buy.
We visited an important ice factory, and watched the ice being made with
the help of liquid ammonia. By expansion of the liquid the necessary
cold is produced, the ammonia is pumped into the congealer and then
compressed and cooled by water, after which it again becomes liquid; and
so the process is repeated. Sea water is pumped into the factory at the
rate of fourteen tons an hour, by means of electricity. We saw the pipe
running along the beach; it was two hundred yards long. The water enters
the pipe at a depth of seven yards below the surface. As I have said, we
watched the ice being made. Fresh water filled great tin moulds; these
were then let down into a tank containing salt water rendered very cold
by means of pipes beneath, filled with the ammonia which had been
expanded from its liquid state into gas. The degree of cold which is
sufficient to freeze fresh water does not freeze salt water, so only the
water in the moulds was turned to ice. When the water in the moulds had
become ice, they were raised out of the salt water and tipped up so that
the ice blocks could slide out; each block weighed twenty kilos. That
the blocks might slip out easily, the moulds were dipped for an instant
into hot water. If the heat is too great, the ice sticks; but if it is
exactly the right temperature, the ice blocks slip out easily, like
puddings out of a pudding mould. The blocks of ice are kept in an
ice-house with pipes of ammonia running over the ceiling to keep the
temperature at freezing-point. The windows of the ice-house were made of
prisms, like bottles filled with air; they let the light of the sun
enter, but not its heat.
The sardines are caught in draughts.[190] They shun very cold water, and
are most plentiful on the Galician coast at periods when the Gulf Stream
flows nearest to the shore. Fishermen can tell when the sardines are
coming. As many as four hundred deal boxes (as large as petroleum cases)
are sent to Madrid every day from one factory during the sardine season.
The packing is almost all done by women. The women work with far more
energy than the men. This fact was pointed out to me by the manager of
the principal factory, and I saw for myself that it was correct. Strange
to say, it is only among the poorer classes that the women of Galicia
are remarkable for their energy.
“Our ladies are too fat, because life is too easy; they have not enough
work either for mind or body,” said a Spanish gentleman. “Even our men
are lazy,” he added. “In Spain a man waits to inherit his father’s
worldly goods, and as long as his father lives he remains the son, and
nothing else; he only gets responsibility and independence at his
father’s death. In England, on the contrary, a father gives his son
responsibility, educates him, and then expects him to make a position
for himself.”
Coruña has not so many chocolate factories as formerly. When Cuba
belonged to Spain, the Cubans exported large quantities of cocoa nibs to
the mother country, but, since the war, that branch of commerce has been
interfered with to such an extent that many manufacturers have left
Spain to settle in Cuba and start factories over there instead, so that
Coruña has lost much of her chocolate-making industry. I visited a
Coruña chocolate factory and saw cocoa nibs put into a machine and
ground to powder; in another machine the powder was being mixed with
cane sugar; and in a third the blocks of chocolate, weighing a
hundredweight, were being cut up into half-pound strips; a fourth
machine kept the little tin moulds into which the melted chocolate was
poured continuously shaking, so that the chocolate might not stick. In
the next department we watched a number of women rolling up chocolate
cigarettes in silver paper.
The poor of Coruña subsist chiefly upon vegetables. I devoted some of my
time to visiting them, that I might get a correct idea of their
circumstances and the kind of life they led. One woman who earned her
daily bread as a charwoman took me up to her room on the fourth storey
of a house that appeared to be built almost entirely of wood. The room,
which she shared with her little daughter, contained two beds, a table,
and a chair. It had neither windows nor fireplace--in fact, no opening
of any kind but the door, and was so dark even with the door open that
she had to light a candle in order to show me the size of the room and
the prints and photographs with which the walls were adorned. For this
abode the woman paid three pesetas (half a crown) a month. There were
several such rooms on the same floor, tenanted in a similar manner, and
a general kitchen with charcoal cooking hearth was at the service of
all. These poor people take a cup of coffee or chocolate for their early
breakfast, and their dinner consists of a bread-and-vegetable soup,
called Gallegan broth (_kaldo Gallego_), which is famed all over Spain,
and a sardine, or other fish, on the days that they can afford it. More
coffee is drunk than chocolate; they find that it is a greater
stimulant. The best chocolate in Coruña costs four pesetas (three
shillings and fourpence) a pound, but that used by the poor costs them
only one peseta (tenpence) a pound. On leaving the house, I asked the
poor woman if she was not afraid of the house taking fire, seeing that
it was all of wood and that they used candles so constantly. “Oh no,”
she replied, smiling; “I have never heard of a house in Coruña being
burnt, and I have lived here all my life.” Coming out of the door, I met
a woman with a market gardener’s heavy basket on her head filled with
cabbages and potatoes; in her arms she carried a little baby.
My next visit was to a large building which served as a home for the
aged poor, and was managed entirely by _Hermanitas de Caridad_, “Little
Sisters of Charity.” All was spotlessly clean. A Sister showed us round.
Each dormitory contained some twenty beds, with red coverlets and snowy
sheets and pillows; one could hardly believe they had ever been slept
in. There was a lavatory with six washing-stands attached to each
dormitory. The old men lived quite apart from the old women. We found
one old lady in a bed that she had never left for seven years; she
appeared well cared for, and quite comfortable. The building is modern,
having only been completed fifteen years ago. It stands in its own
grounds, where it has its own laundry and drying-ground. In the garden
there is a pleasant summer-house, where the old people can sit almost
every fine day in the year.
As is usual in such institutions, no servants were kept; the Sisters did
everything, with the help of the sturdiest of the inmates, who were
employed in scrubbing the floors, etc. The linen closets, with their
tastefully folded linen, were a sight to see; glass cupboards full of
linen reached to the ceiling and covered the walls. The air in all the
apartments and corridors was fresh and pure, and the sun shone in at the
windows, from which there was a pleasant view of the seashore. On the
upper storey were a number of rooms destined for single or widow ladies
who had no homes of their own, and were glad to have a cheap and quiet
retreat. I saw one of them standing at her door as we passed along the
corridor; she was in _negligé_ attire, and was evidently surprised to
see visitors. We bowed, and seeing her inclined, entered into
conversation with her. She was a woman about fifty-five years of age,
with powdered cheeks and grey hair frizzed over her forehead. My
charwoman-guide then pulling me aside, informed me in an excited whisper
that the lady was the Contessa de P. “I have worked for her as cook,”
she added, “and I can assure you she smokes like a man.” The Sister who
stood by, a nun, with black hood and white bib, overheard the last
words, and said severely, “She does not smoke here.” The wide
glass-covered verandah was brilliant with the January sunshine: here the
inmates could take the sun, as they say, and can truly say, in Spain.
The chapel, which we inspected next, had a gallery for the nuns, with
fretwork-covered windows looking down upon the pauper congregation. When
there is a great function, all the chairs are taken away, and the people
stand. There was also a neat dispensary, and an infirmary. The
dining-rooms were cheerful and spacious, with marble-topped tables. The
kitchen was a fine, airy room, with a great stove in the centre. In all
the public institutions that I visited in Galicia the stove invariably
stood in the middle of the room, thus making it possible for a number of
persons to stand round it and cook without interfering with one another.
The house is in the hands of twenty Sisters, under a Mother Superior. In
my conversation with the lady boarder I learned that the poor there are
always discontented, and never cease to long for their liberty and for
the old life of begging at the street corners--where they had neither
shelter nor warm clothing nor food to eat. I really thought, after
seeing them huddled together in groups in the great, cheerful, but
_monotonous_ rooms, that while I had a spark of vitality and endurance
left in me I should feel as they did, and prefer the life of the street
with all its risks and privations to that deathly sameness. Monotony is
a slow and sure poison; it can undermine even the constitution of a
pauper. As for the poor of Coruña, they are chiefly fisher-folk, and
the coast being, as I have said, the most dangerous in Spain, cases of
drowning occur with painful frequency, so that the industry is a very
precarious one, and the number of the destitute is continually
increasing. Corpses of fishermen are constantly being washed ashore, and
there is nearly always a body lying in the mortuary to be identified.
There are only eleven tobacco factories in Spain. These are most of them
palatial; they all belong to the Government. The one at Coruña, like the
rest, is managed for the Government by a private Company, which is
allowed to appropriate 10 per cent. of the net profits. It was once a
very large factory, with six thousand women workers, mostly the wives,
widows, and daughters of fishermen, or men who have emigrated to South
America.[191] On the occasion of my visit, I found three thousand women
at work. Besides these, there were forty men employed in carrying the
heavy cases to the warehouse. The tobacco was supplied from various
places, chiefly from Kentucky, Mexico, Brazil, St. Domingo, Cuba, and
the Philippine Islands. In Ford’s day, an enormous amount of tobacco was
smuggled into Spain from Gibraltar, but that is not the case now.
Common cigars sell at about three a penny. Some of the workers have very
nimble fingers, and can prepare nine bundles, of forty cigars each, in a
day, while the slowest workers only manage about five bundles. They
begin work at 7 a.m., and continue till 8 p.m., bringing their dinner
with them, and leaving it in a neighbouring house, where it can be
warmed up if they wish. The women with whom it is left bring it in
baskets to the workers, who eat it where they sit, without leaving their
seats. In the factory at Seville they have a separate dining-room, but
none is provided at Coruña. Every fortnight the women are paid according
to the quality and quantity of the work they have done. We walked among
them as they worked, sixteen at a table, with coloured handkerchiefs
over their heads and tied tightly under the chin, with a three-cornered
shawl crossed over the breast.
The manager told me that the work was not unhealthy, because it was all
done by hand, and there was none of that fine powdery dust which is so
injurious to the health of workers in factories run by machinery. At the
entrance of each workshop we saw a candle burning in front of a
crucifix.
It has been reckoned that every adult male inhabitant of Madrid smokes
on the average twenty pesetas’ (sixteen shillings) worth of tobacco in a
year; but in Barcelona each man smokes nineteen pesetas’ worth. The
smallest quantity is consumed in the Balearic Islands, where the tobacco
consumed by each male values three pesetas and a half. The richer the
town, the better the quality of the tobacco consumed. The wood for
making the cases in which the cigars are packed is of a special kind,
and is sent for the purpose from Cuba. The best cigars manufactured at
Coruña are the _Farios_. Pipes are seldom used, except by a few sailors.
The streets of Coruña have much that is Oriental about them. Men walk
about carrying skins of water, just as they do in the East. I found a
woman cook with all her cooking apparatus neatly arranged around her at
the street corner, and cooking away as unconcernedly as if in her own
kitchen. I asked of the people standing near what she was cooking, and
learned that she was making cakes for the approaching Carnival. We saw
that the men were riding on Moorish saddles; these have been in use in
Spain ever since the Moors introduced them. We also saw many sacks of
pine cones that had been brought in from the villages to be sold as fuel
for kitchen fires. People store their cellars with them as we should
store ours with coal.
Many of the houses in Coruña are built with an air shaft in their
centre; this has a glass top, and the light that descends the shaft
lights four rooms on each landing. Those on the third floor get a fair
amount of light, but those on the first fare badly. This is certainly a
degree better than having no daylight except that which can penetrate
into the room from an open door, as is often the case in Spanish houses.
Coruña is a fashionable seaside resort in summer; its hillsides are
dotted with villas belonging to the wealthy of Madrid and other big
towns. Three bull-fights take place there every year, and an occasional
carousal is held in the bull ring. Families who have not a villa of
their own hire flats for the season. There is no hotel life, and what
hotels the town has are only suited to meet the requirements of business
men and commercial travellers. Donkey picnics are a favourite amusement
with summer visitors, and delightful excursions are made upon
pack-saddle into the wooded valleys and the picturesque hills with which
the town is surrounded on all sides, except where the sea washes its
shores.
Like our Oxford, Coruña can boast of having afforded a refuge to the
National Assembly of her country, when it was forced to leave the
capital. In July 1706, when Madrid was crowded with English and German
soldiers who threatened to burn her to the ground, and the Court and the
Royal Family had established themselves at Burgos, a _Junta del Reino_
was called to discuss the calamitous state of the country, and that
Assembly was held in Coruña. Letters were sent on that occasion to
Santiago, Lugo, and Tuy, asking the citizens to supply forage for the
new battalions that were to be formed in Galicia, and it was mainly
through the bravery of Gallegan soldiers that the invaders were driven
out of the land.[192]
Coruña has one of the best harbours in Europe, and since the remotest
times this town has been considered one of the principal strongholds of
the Peninsula; its present fortifications are, it is true, very
antiquated, but there are projects on foot for once more converting it
into a stronghold of the first order. The town was fortified for the
first time in the reign of Henry III., but it was not till 1602 that the
work of strengthening it was seriously undertaken. The key to the port
is the fort of San Anton, on a small and rocky island which we passed at
the mouth of the harbour; but this fort, which was built in 1779, is now
little more than a ruin.
The most interesting church in Coruña is that of the _Colegiata de Santa
Maria del Campo_. It is a very small Gothic edifice with three naves. An
inscription on a column near the right pulpit bears the date Era 1340,
which is equivalent to the year 1302. The parish church of St. James
(Santiago) is also Gothic, but does not date farther back than the
sixteenth century. The largest church in the town is that of St. George;
the original one was rebuilt after Sir Francis Drake’s visit, but the
present one is the conventual church of the suppressed convent of St.
Augustine.
Coruña possesses a good Public Library, containing four thousand
volumes, with rooms devoted to Physical Science, Chemistry, and Natural
History. There is also a Meteorological Observatory, where candidates
for the post of pilot are examined.