ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS TO LEON
We had penetrated the loftiest mountains in Cantabria without any ascent
worth mentioning. Consequently it was somewhat disconcerting to discover
that the Pass was still to win.
This preliminary canter had merely admitted us into a great cup, the bed
of an ancient lake. We had entered it through the outlet, but must leave
it over the lip. Within its mountain pale the whole internal area of
Castile and Leon consists of a lofty tableland, two thousand feet and
upwards above the coast-line. It is vain to sue entry on the level:
there can be no dispensation from the climb.
Potes itself lies just above the mouth of the great Gorge, and the
precipices of the Picos dominate it as the Wetterhorn dominates
Grindelwald. The deep, narrow vale of Liebana comes winding down upon it
from the southward, its slopes gay with mountain flowers, and shaggy
with beech and chestnut, and dotted here and there with quaint little
red-roofed villages overhanging the brawling stream. But ever across the
exit the great rock wall frowns gloomy and impassive, its base in the
warm green valley and its battlements in the snow.
We in our sanguine ignorance had fancied ourselves upon the watershed,
and thought that some two hours' collar-work would have earned us a
spell of downhill. But the mountains were still thronging round us at
the village of Valdeprado; and an old neat-herd, driving his cows to the
pastures, unfeelingly assured us that the pass was two leagues[5]
further on. We tried to hope that he was mistaken; but the Castilian
peasant knows his roads well, and is annoyingly accurate in his
estimates of distance. It is seldom indeed that he errs on the merciful
side. Now the road began to ascend in real earnest, climbing coil on
coil up the shoulders of the mountain, and marking its course far ahead
at yet loftier altitudes by faint zigzags traced among the trees. A
couple of easy-going ox-waggons had lost heart at the very first corner.
Their drivers and cattle were all placidly slumbering, and the whole
caravan had stuck fast in the middle of the road. It seemed a pity to
disturb so much unanimity; and quite an hour later, looking down from
the loftier terraces, we could still distinguish their figures in the
same position as before. At last we emerged upon a bare and rocky
saddle, just brushed by the drifting clouds--a pass by courtesy, for it
was almost as high as the peaks, and the snow-wreaths lay unmelted in
the shady spots by the road. A great craggy postern shot us out from the
ridge into the head of an upland valley; and beneath hotter skies,
through a more sunburnt country, we sped towards the plateau of Castile.
The descent on the southern side of the _Puerto_ is nothing like so
formidable as upon the northern; and the mountains, shorn of half their
elevation by the altitude to which we have risen, look much less
imposing than on the seaward side. They eventually come to an end with
startling suddenness a mile or so beyond the village of Cervera; and
from their feet to the southward the great treeless level sweeps away
unbroken--an almost uncanny contrast to the tossing wilderness behind.
We had counted upon finding a road of some kind towards Leon from
Cervera, but the inhabitants evidently needed none and declined to
encourage the idea. A railroad, yes;--the train would start at one
o'clock to-morrow. But the only road went southward. If we followed that
we might possibly find a way round. At all events it was a good road,
sagging steadily down over the moors and marshes, shaded here and there
by rustling poplar avenues, and musical with philharmonic frogs. It
delivered us safely at nightfall in the little village of Buenavista, a
collection of forlorn mud cabins, dumped disconsolately in the tawny
plain.
The _Fondas_ in the larger towns are generally very tolerable, and even
the humbler hostels in Cantabria are presentable after their kind. But
the little _Posadas_ and _Paradors_ of the villages in the interior are
much more primitive institutions, and these are the lot of the traveller
who ventures to take to the road. I should imagine that they have not
changed one tittle since the day when Don Quixote, and the Curate, and
the Barber, and the beautiful Dorothea, and the tattered Cardenio,
foregathered with Don Ferdinand and Dona Lucinda at the _Venta de
Cárdenas_ in the Sierra Morena; and one wonders much how the whole of
that illustrious company were able to find accommodation under its roof.
Externally it suggests an abandoned cowshed, and the wayfarer
introduced to one for the first time will apply for quarters with
something bordering on despair. The gateway admits us into a barn-like
entrance-hall, disordered and unpaved. One of the four rooms opening out
of it is the stable, and the mules stroll sociably through the family
circle in the course of their passage to and fro. Another is the
kitchen, with the hearth in the middle of the floor,[6] and the ceiling
funnelled to an aperture in the apex, through which the log-reek escapes
as best it can. A third (the smallest) is the guestroom, and the fourth
one would call a lumberroom, if any of the others could be called
anything else. The bedrooms are mere attics, reached by a crazy
staircase, and the chinks in the floor communicate freely with the rooms
(or stables) below. The furniture is of the scantiest, and the food of
Spartan simplicity; and the family poultry cackle about between our legs
picking up the crumbs which fall from the table. But at least the dishes
are clean and the sheets obviously washed this very evening; and a
wayworn philosopher can brook a good number of hardships so long as he
is not compelled to wear them next his skin.
The villagers were dancing before the door at the moment of our arrival,
but the ball was at once interrupted to interview such extraordinary
guests. "They came round about us like bees," wrote poor Sir E. Verney
in 1623, "touching one thing and handling another, and did not leave us
till we were abed!" Of course they did! But Sir Edmund was a little
particular; and we suspect old James Howell had some reason for his
strictures anent the stand-offishness of the members of Prince Charles'
suite. Our catechising was conducted by the hostess and her daughter:
What were our names? Whence were we? Whither did we go? They surveyed
the bicycles with gasps of "_Madre mia!_" and I am sure their fingers
itched to explore the inside of our packs. Were we married? No? The
English married very little! And this depressing reflection cost them a
sad little shake of the head. It grew rather wearying at last, but
discourtesy was nowise intended. A stranger in these forgotten villages
is as rare as a blue moon.
Spain is socially the most democratic of countries; but it is an
aristocratic democracy; and we must not forget that fact because our
interlocutor happens to be wearing rags. He and his may have been as
poor as church mice for generations;--that is his misfortune. But he is
as good a gentleman as the king, and, as like as not, fully entitled to
all the proud quarterings that are graven up over his door. "I'm an old
Christian," quoth that powerful thinker, the Governor designate of
Barataria, "a high and dry old Christian, and that's good enough for a
lord." The Castilian peasant regards you as an equal, and expects to be
so treated in return: and I have no doubt that a modern Sancho, if he
found himself in the society of a duchess, would be fully as
unembarrassed as the great original himself. In many points--even in
physiognomical features--he has much in common with that other "foinest
pisantry" the Irish; and it is worth noting that the original Milesians
are traditionally reputed to have come from Spain.
Individually he is "a very fine fellow." The verdict is the Duke of
Wellington's. And probably no one in history knew their failings better
than he. Spain is no "dying nationality," though her day be still rather
"_Mañana_." It is idle to deny a future to so robust and prolific a
race.
The traveller need not look to fare sumptuously in a _Posada_. If he
does not carry his own food with him he must take what comes. Mine host
does not profess to find accommodation for man, only for beast; and
anything he does for the beast's owner is regarded as a work of
supererogation. We cannot lodge with the peasantry without sharing some
few of their holiday hardships; and there can be no doubt that in many
districts they are miserably poor. "There is no milk in the place," said
mine hostess to me on one occasion, in answer to a request for that
commonest of luxuries:--"this village is in _la ultima miseria_!" Yet
even there they seemed cheerful and contented; and the common taunt of
idleness certainly did not apply to them. Spanish townsfolk are by no
means early risers: but the villages are stirring at cock-crow and the
labourers out in the fields with the first rays of the sun.
[Illustration: LEON
An Old Palace Doorway.]
This last is no inconsiderable advantage in a country which gets hot by
eight o'clock in the morning; and the great red disk was but half clear
of the horizon when we bade farewell to Buenavista, and began our long
ride to Leon. Washing arrangements had no share in our _Posada's_
economy, so this mysterious British ritual was celebrated at
Saldaña, on the banks of the Carrion; and being here favoured with a
branch road which made a cast to the westward, we resumed our journey
across the level in the direction of Sahagun.
Strictly speaking this is one of those levels which slope upwards and
downwards a good deal; for the streams coming down from the mountains
have cut themselves good deep valleys, though they seldom supply any
water except on special occasions during the autumn rains. In the dips
are trees and greenery, but the general impression is that of a bleak
red ploughland interspersed with wide stretches of heath. Here and
there, marooned at haphazard, are the casual villages, with their
umber-coloured mud walls and red-tiled roofs, rich blotches of colour
against the blue of the distant hills. And the desolate aspect of the
country is enhanced by the dearth of inhabitants. There is scarcely a
labourer in the fallows, scarcely a traveller on the road.
No! the little squared stones that we keep passing so regularly do not
record the kilometres--only the ordinary roadside murders incidental to
an ancient highway. Upon each is graven the simple fact of the
tragedy:--_Aqui murió_,[7] with the name and date,--no more. They are
generally said to have been erected as a trespass offering by the
remorseful murderer: and their persistent recurrence cannot be said to
make for gaiety;--a large group is even depressing at a specially
desolate spot.
Of course we endeavour to solace ourselves with the reflection that
there is at least one similar monument in England; and we note with
gratification that very few are of recent date. But then that does not
prove that the murders are now less frequent, only that the murderers
have less remorse. Yet, after all, the traveller may take courage; his
position is not quite desperate, however unpromising it may look. Many
of these untimely deaths were the result of ordinary accidents--storm or
sunstroke, falls from horses ("a grave that is always open"), or
drowning in the flooded streams. Sometimes a private vendetta may have
reached its _dénouement_ in a chance roadside meeting; but genuine
highway murders form a very small proportion of the whole. The roads in
Spain are as safe as those in England. And though I have been warned
that "there are men in this village who would not hesitate to cut your
throat for a dollar," yet the country folk generally (as one of
themselves bore me witness) are _gente muy regular_, "a very law-abiding
folk." The only really reliable method of getting murdered upon a
Spanish highway nowadays is to quarrel with the Arm of the Law!
See,--out of one of the dips in the road before us rise the figures of
two horsemen;--big men, well mounted, in white puggarees and smart blue
uniforms, with sabre at saddle and carbine on thigh;--the Civil Guard of
Spain. _Vayan Vs con Dios, Caballeros!_ Spain owes you a debt that is
not to be readily computed. Those who have delivered her from her long
tyranny of lawlessness deserve a niche beside the old knightly orders of
Calatrava and Alcántara, who kept the border in the days of raiding
Moors.
Don Bernardo de Castel Blazo distrusted those who kept company with
_Alguazils_; but it is a highly desirable privilege to be friends with
the Civil Guard. _En passant_ it may be mentioned that it is imprudent
to be otherwise, for they are authorised to shoot at sight, and are
reputed seldom to miss. But this vexatious habit is one which they
seldom indulge in, and so long as you keep the right side of them they
are very good fellows indeed. Should our misguided rulers ever signalise
their ineptitude by the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary, we
shall lose the one body in Europe which is altogether comparable to the
_Guardia Civil_.
Readers of Borrow may perhaps recall his description of a forlorn and
melancholy township halfway between Paléncia and Leon, a hotbed of
Carlism, which he discreetly alludes to as ----. But it seems somewhat
superfluous reticence to throw such a very thin veil of anonymity over a
name which is obviously Sahagun. Once the great Romanesque Monastery,
whose massive square tower forms such an imposing landmark, was first in
wealth and dignity in all the kingdom of Leon. But now it is but the
wreck of its former greatness; and the crazy mud hovels and hummocky
streets which surround it form an abomination of dilapidation that it
would not be easy to match even in Spain. What a fit scene for
disillusion it must have presented to Moore and his army as they here
turned their backs upon victory and commenced their disastrous retreat!
The soldiers were all spoiling for a battle, and the 15th Hussars had
brilliantly opened the scoring. But just as they savoured their
appetiser they were dragged off, disappointed and morose. No wonder they
sulked! How were they to know the true cause of their retirement? They
were thinking only of Soult at Saldaña; it was their General who had
been watching for the rush of Napoleon from Madrid.
There is still a Carlist at Sahagun, because we saw him. The
inhabitants, recognising us as strangers, naturally assumed that we
should be interested in seeing their Carlist, and he was accordingly
fetched and paraded, much as a man who had been "out" in the '45 might
have been shown to Dr Johnson in the Hebrides. He was a white-haired and
mild-mannered old gentleman,--a greatly sobered edition of the dashing
young _guerillero_ who had ranged the mountains of Biscay in 1875. And
though he evidently enjoyed his repute as a fire-eater, I doubt whether
he really considered that the game had been quite worth the candle after
all.
The Carlists of to-day seem much in the same position as the Jacobites
of the reign of George III. They may defiantly show you "King Carlos'"
portrait upon their parlour wall, or even exhibit it for sale in their
shop windows. But all this enthusiasm is rather sentimental than active;
and in their heart of hearts they must feel with Redgauntlet that a
cause so much tolerated is lost.
Meanwhile the road to Leon did not seem nearer realisation at Sahagun
than at Cervera. There was only a "dead road," they told us, and this we
should scarcely have recognised had we not been introduced. The "dead
road" proved a sort of consensus of cart tracks, straying vaguely across
the moorland with a general trend towards the west. It had died in a
most dissipated fashion all asprawl among the boulders and heather: and
as each of us soon grew fully absorbed in negotiating his own wheel rut,
we frequently found ourselves drifting poles asunder, and had to regain
connection by cross-country sprints. The water-courses were ineffably
stony, and, of course, there were no bridges. We had good cause to
congratulate ourselves on the absence of rain in the mountains, for had
the streams been in spate we should have had no resource but to follow
the example of the expectant rustic, and wait for them to run down. The
occasional walled sheepfolds, and the spiked collars of the dogs which
guarded them, hinted broadly at the inroads of wolves in winter-time;
and our only way-fellows, a party of gypsies, savage-looking and
half-naked, with tangled elf locks and skins of negro blackness, formed
a group that to outward appearance seemed scarcely more amenable than
the wolves. Fortunately, however, there was small chance of missing our
direction. We could not stray many miles to our right without coming
upon the railway, nor to the left without striking the high-road from
Mayorga. The one thing needed was to keep our right shoulders to the
mountains; and eventually we emerged sure enough at Mansilla de las
Mulas, where, after twenty miles cross-country, our wilderness came to
an end.
Mansilla lies upon the banks of the Esla, and the mules were grazing
under the ancient ramparts along the margin of the stream. A pretty
picture it made as we crossed the old bridge in the twilight and entered
the long colonnade of poplars that leads towards the city of Leon. The
poplar pollen carpeted the road before us as thick and white as
newly-fallen snow, and the whirl of our wheels flung it up on either
side in little wavelets, as the foam is flung up by the bows of a racing
eight. The effect was quite poetical, but we could not linger to
rhapsodise, for the causeway had been broken by floods in several
places, and unless we made use of the daylight we should be breaking our
necks in the pits. It does not seem to occur to the authorities that
there is any risk in delaying repairs for a year or so. And perhaps we
have no right to grumble, for at least we got safe to our goal.
Leon is a city for which I have acquired a growing affection with each
successive visit, a grave old Gothic capital, all filled with memories
of the past. It was founded originally by the Romans to control the
Cantabrian passes; and the massive walls which surround it still bear
witness to the solidity of their work. Unfortunately they are much
masked by the surrounding houses; but they are of most imposing
dimensions, about twenty feet in thickness, and strengthened by huge
_Cubos_ or solid semicircular bastions, spaced at very frequent
intervals, some two and a half diameters apart.
The city is best viewed from the Pajares road to the northward, but as
it is situated on the level it does not show very conspicuously from
without. Its most prominent object is the delightfully elegant
cathedral; obviously French by inspiration, and of extraordinary
lightness of construction, more like a lantern of stained glass than a
monument of stone. It is step-sister to Beauvais and Amiens; and, on the
whole, it need not fear comparison. But the Spanish builders were not
quite at home in dealing with the unfamiliar style. One problem
evidently routed them, and they have left it still crying for an answer.
How on earth was it possible to reconcile the steep French gables with
the low-pitched Spanish roof?
[Illustration: LEON
From the Pajáres Road.]
The cathedral has been recently restored (not before it was necessary,
according to Street's description); but this difficult work has been
admirably executed, though the newness of the stone still renders it
rather conspicuous to the eye. The interior is gorgeous with carving and
tapestry; and a word may be spared for the Gotho-Renaissance cloisters,
and for the great western portals with the Last Judgment graven over the
doors. Some of the details of the latter are not without suspicion of
humour. A monarch, walking delicately like Agag towards the gates of
Paradise, is remorselessly barred by St Peter, and directed to the
opposite road. One blessed spirit has been set to play the organ--and
another has been deputed to blow it! Truly "one star differeth from
another star in glory"; but an eternity of organ-blowing must rank low
in the scale of bliss!
Scarcely less famous than the cathedral is the Collegiate Church of St
Isidore; not the shepherd saint of Madrid, but the Doctor of Spain who
compiled the Mozarabic ritual;[8] the "second Daniel" of Pope Gregory
the Great. It is a queer patchwork edifice, but mostly of the eleventh
century. The tower forms a bastion in the city rampart; and the little
_Panteon_ Chapel beneath it is the burial-place of the early monarchs of
Leon.
Here in 1065 occurred the strange death scene of the founder, the
warrior monarch Fernando I. of Leon and Castile. Smitten with sore
disease while camping on the marches of Valencia, he had been borne back
to make his dying confession before the altar of his metropolitan
church. There he laid aside his crown and robes, and clad his wasted
limbs in sack-cloth, and for a full day and night lay writhing in ashes
on the pavement till his self-inflicted penance was at last ended by his
death. We are assured that his original sickness really had been mortal
from the first.
[Illustration: LEON
Church of San Isidoro.]
Few capitals of Spain are without some memorial of Las Navas de Tolosa,
the great victory won by Alfonso VIII. in 1212, which crippled the
Spanish Moslems for offensive warfare, and paved the way for the
conquest of Andalusia by Ferdinand III. Búrgos and Pamplona have the
trophies of the fighting; but Leon has only a legend; and it is to
_San Isidoro_ and King Fernando that they are indebted for having
anything at all. For it came to pass on the eve of the battle that a
sound was heard at midnight in the streets of the slumbering city. A
sound as of the passage of a mighty army, the clang of armour and the
tramp of horse and man. The priest who was keeping vigil at the shrine
of St Isidore heard the phantom host halt before the portal and their
thundering summons beat upon the door. "Who knocks?" he cried; and the
ghostly captains answered him, "Ferdinand Gonzalez and Roderic of
Bivar![9] And we are come to call King Fernando the Great, who lies
buried in this holy temple, that he may rise and ride with us to deliver
Spain!" The terrified monk fell fainting on the pavement, and when he
revived the door stood open. The last great recruit had joined the
colours, and the spirit host had passed upon their way.
No doubt we may read in this legend the rebuke of the Church against the
selfish policy of the Crown, for no soldier of Leon drew sword in that
great battle for the deliverance of Christendom. Castile and Navarre and
Aragon were the people that jeoparded their lives in the high places of
the Morena. Nay, the Leonese monarch was even mean enough to seize the
occasion for "rectifying his frontier" at the expense of his brother the
Castilian. And this at a crisis when the very dead could rise from their
graves and forget the feuds of their lifetime in the hour of national
stress!
The main streets of the city are overshadowed by several fine _Solares_,
the mansions of the old _hidalgos_, and, beside all its churches and
monasteries, the town boasts an attractive Guildhall. But perhaps its
most interesting feature is supplied by the crowd that frequents them;
for Leon is the metropolis of a big agricultural population, a grave and
stalwart race attired in the most picturesque old-world costumes. The
dresses of the women are perhaps somewhat lacking in brightness; for
they have a taste for sombre shades, especially a mauve-coloured head
kerchief which does not accord nearly so well with their olive
complexions as the brilliant scarlets and yellows of the girls in
Galicia and the south. But this quakerish tinge in the individual does
not produce much effect in the aggregate, and they look bright enough in
the busy market beneath their forest of umbrella-shaped booths.
They are reputed to "wear _Carambas_ in their hair," but this we cannot
corroborate. They kept them discreetly covered with the
kerchief--perhaps from fear of the police. In any case it is to be hoped
that the fashion will not spread indiscriminately. Imagine a German lady
in a "_Donnerwetter_" _coiffure_!
[Illustration: LEON
The Market Place, and Casa del Ayuntamiento.]