WESTERN ASTURIAS
A BUXOM old lady who was occupying the shadow of a large umbrella in the
centre of Rivadeo marketp-lace greeted us volubly as we emerged from the
_Fonda_ door. "A good day to your honours! It seems then that they are
upon a journey? Ah! without doubt they are going to Castropol. Yes,
there is a road there, but it is a long way round the _Ria_. They will
save an hour,--two hours,--by taking a boat!" Our honours, indeed, had
already come to the same conclusion; neither were they altogether
surprised when their friend's eloquence culminated in the announcement
that she herself (thank God) was a Castropolitan, and her boat in
waiting at the quay below. A small black-eyed damsel was hastily
installed commandant of the big umbrella, and the old lady sallied forth
to rout out her boatman and steer us down to the shore.
This spirited attempt to corner the entire passenger traffic was hotly
resented by a partner in a rival firm; an unprincipled operator who
endeavoured to gain control of the market by the most shameless
rate-cutting. He would take us across for six _reals_! for five _reals_!
for four!! He followed us down the street, waving his arms and
gesticulating and pitching his voice a tone higher at every bid. But the
old dame resolutely headed off all his attempts to get at her convoy;
silenced his feebler abuse with broadsides of the bitterest sarcasm; and
finally expressed her scorn for competition and equilibrium by a dance
of derision executed upon the poop as the boat shoved off into the bay.
It was truly a lovely morning, and the view was worthy of the sunshine.
Behind were the white walls and shiny slate roofs of Rivadeo scrambling
one above the other up the steeply sloping cliff; before us Castropol
rose from the water's edge in a pyramid of purple shadow,--for the sun
was dead behind it,--and between the two lay the glassy _Ria_, a long
narrow fiord, winding away inland, reach beyond reach, till it lost
itself in the bosom of the hazy hills. Evidently the path before us was
at least cast in pleasant places.
[Illustration: RIVADEO
An Approach to the Harbour.]
We had made bold to confide somewhat in fortune when we embarked on
this stage of our campaign. The map gave no pledge of a road, and the
guide-books were equally uncommitted. Borrow, indeed, had traversed the
province, with his honest guide, Martin of Rivadeo; but Borrow made his
journey on horseback, and his description did not lead one to infer that
there was any opening for wheels. Yet our trust in the chapter of
accidents brought a suitably generous reward.
Take the mountains of the Lake District, and double their height; plant
them under an Italian sky behind a Cornish coast; add plenty of old
broad-eaved, balconied houses, not unlike Swiss chalets, a primitive
picturesque population clad in bright colours, and draught cattle,
ploughs, waggons, pack mules, and other appointments _en suite_. Such a
picture is fairly typical of the scenes that awaited us upon our way.
Here the road dipped to carry us past the end of a rocky inlet, where
the waves were breaking upon the chesil beach some fifty yards away.
Here it rose again to disclose a panorama of sea and mountain, with the
thin blue smoke of the charcoal burners' fires trailing lazily across
the plateau or wreathing itself around the shoulders of the hills. To
Borrow's eyes it had all seemed gloomy and desolate; but he had
traversed it in the mists of a stormy autumn, and beneath the halcyon
skies of summer it is a veritable fairyland.
The _Ria_ at Návia is scarcely worthy of the name, for it is merely the
mouth of a little tidal river, not a harbour for sea-going ships, like
the firth of Rivadeo. Yet it is a beautiful valley, and the
queerly-cropped poplars give a very _bizarre_ effect to the view. A
little further on is a more striking feature. A huge serrated ridge,
known as the Sierra de Rañadoiro, flings itself out at right angles to
the _cordillera_, and stands like a wall across the plateau which
divides the mountains from the sea. Just before it reaches the coast it
branches off into a number of smaller ridges, ravelling out like the
strands of a cable; and the last group in the series are the seven
_Bellotas_, which proved such formidable obstacles to Borrow and his
guide.
There is no chance of "shirking the fences." Each ridge terminates in a
bold and lofty headland, each valley in a rocky creek; and seventy years
ago those deep narrow gorges must have been ugly places enough. But
Borrow's stony bridle-path is now a fine broad roadway, his "miserable
venta" is a comfortable inn; and he certainly would not have
troubled to push on to Muros had he found such good entertainment as did
we.
[Illustration: THE NAVIA VALLEY]
Mine host was a stout and jovial yeoman with a loud voice and a hearty
laugh. He sat very wide at the head of the table, and promised us that
we should have our cutlets raw. "What! Were we not Englishmen? And
should he set cooked meat before Englishmen? No, indeed; that perfectly
comprehended itself. _Spaniards_ ate cooked meat, but _Englishmen_
devoured it raw." Of course (as a special concession) _we_ might have
them cooked--"_á la Española_." But this without prejudice to the
eternal verity that "_á la Inglesa_" was "raw." We struggled in vain to
persuade him that we knew as much about England as he did. An Asturian
dalesman is commonly reputed capable of driving a nail into a wall with
his head. But so long as his principles were not controverted he
certainly was excellent company for his guests. He regaled us with a
capital white wine, "_Vino Castellano_" (I suppose from the Medina del
Campo district, which is the only place where I know of white wine in
Castile); he discoursed to us on the beauties of Právia and the
excellence of Asturian cider; and sped us at parting with the assurance
that there were very few hills on the road. But this last piece of
information (as we subsequently discovered) was to be accepted in a
strictly Asturian sense.
Luarca and Cudillero, the two little coast towns of the district, are
twin brothers in situation, but moving in different sets. Luarca is
aspiring to the dignity of a watering-place:--it must have quite a dozen
visitors in the season even now. Cudillero is a fishing village pure and
simple, and is content to leave vanities alone. Each town lies nestling
in a deep narrow notch of the lofty coast-line, with its quaint shanties
spilling themselves pell-mell down the precipitous escarpments in all
shapes, sizes, and positions, like rubble shot out of a cart. The
brawling waters of a little brook go tumbling down the middle; and the
tiny creek at the bottom is lined with a sturdy array of quays and
breakwaters, where the fishing fleet can shelter itself from the
tempests of the Bay. Perhaps of the two Luarca has the prettier harbour;
but the unabashed raggedness and dilapidation of Cudillero, and the
old-world simplicity of its people, will appeal more strongly to an
artist's eye.
The main road drops in to call at Luarca, but it is quite unaware of the
existence of Cudillero, and but for the directions of an auspicious
waggoner we might have strayed past it altogether. A break-neck descent
of a mile or so eventually brought us on to the roofs of some houses;
and it presently transpired that the town was "underneath." Down we
plunged into it by a ricketty corkscrew street, as steep as that at
Clovelly; ducked under the weather-beaten old church which is plugged
like a bung in the outlet; and eventually emerged at the waterside,
where the fishwives were sitting in a long parti-coloured fringe along
the edge of the quay, armed with their large flat baskets, and awaiting
the return of the boats.
The _Fonda del Comércio_ was a poky and primitive little hostelry, but
they had plenty of fresh sardines; and his lot is not entirely pitiable
who sups upon fresh sardines. We slept in tiny alcoves curtained off
from our dining-room; and our last recollections were connected with
parties of happy fishermen in the street without, singing rollicking
ditties in honour of "_amor_."
I was down in the harbour early in the morning for the purpose of
sketching, and so also were a goodly contingent of the townsfolk, intent
on their morning dip. It is a libel on the Spanish nation to imagine
that they do not wash. Perhaps it is true of the central plains,--poor
people, they lack the water, but all along the coast they are much
given to bathing. The women stroll unconcernedly down to the beach,
armed with a huge towel and a sort of glorified sack which serves as a
bathing costume. The huge towel, spread over their heads, envelopes them
completely, and under cover of it they make their toilet. At Cudillero
the beach where the boats were drawn up was reserved for the women, and
the men bathed off the rocks a little distance away. But neither party
made any pretence of privacy; and there is an air of primitive innocency
about the whole proceeding which forbids all notion of offence.
Another primitive sight, though of a different character, was awaiting
me as I re-entered the town. It was Sunday morning, and the early Mass
was being celebrated in the church at the stairfoot of the roadway. The
building was crowded even beyond its utmost capacity, for a long _queue_
of kneeling worshippers had thrust itself out from the open door, like
bees hanging from a hive when they are about to swarm. Whatever may be
the case in the cities, it is certain that the peasantry are as devout
as ever in their religious observances; and once or twice upon holy
days we have found the highway itself absolutely blocked with a crowd of
worshippers intent on their orisons before some wayside shrine.
[Illustration: CUDILLERO
The Harbour.]
We regained the high road above Cudillero by a long winding ascent; and
leaving far below us on our left the beautiful estuary of Muros, bore up
into the mountains for the secluded vale of Právia at the confluence of
the Narcea and the Nalon. "Právia is better than Switzerland," our host
at Bellotas had informed us, and we do not wish to deny it. But the
comparison could only be made by one who had never seen Switzerland, for
there is nothing in common between the two. Our own Lake District would
supply a nearer parallel; but I know nothing quite like Právia except
Právia itself; a meeting-place of many valleys with vistas of mountain
scenery opening out on every side. Yet the heart of the range still
holds remote and invisible. It is not till we have progressed some
distance up the Nalon valley, and are drawing near to Oviedo, that we
get acquainted with the higher peaks. Then, indeed, the scale becomes
truly Alpine, and the valleys which lie across our path would not
discredit Piedmont or Savoy.
Oviedo is not a town for which I have ever been able to acquire much
enthusiasm. A traveller newly landed from France might find it
delightfully Spanish, but to one who is fresh from the interior it has a
flavour of underdone French. It lies amid beautiful scenery, but just
out of sight of the best of it; and perhaps, as it is bent upon a career
of commercial enterprise, this retirement is creditable to its taste.
Yet its situation is by no means commonplace, its atmosphere not
generally smoky, and its fine old palaces and narrow cobbled _calles_
must be allowed to weigh something in the balance against its boulevards
and tram-lines and plate-glass.
The cathedral is a fine building, though it hardly can rank with the
finest; and it seems to be somewhat infected by the prevailing
Frenchified air. Yet in sanctity it is pre-eminent; for it boasts the
holiest relics in the Peninsula--all the miracle-working treasures which
the kings of the Visigoths had hoarded in their temple at Toledo, and
which the faithful bore away with them into the mountains when they fled
from the invading Moors. Some splendid specimens of early jewellery may
be seen among the caskets and monstrances; and the reredos behind the
High Altar is quite in the best Spanish style.
The children seem afflicted with an uncontrollable mania for getting
their pictures taken. Perhaps there is thought to be luck in it, for
even their elders are not entirely exempt. This fact accounts for the
presence of the venerable _Sereno_ in the foreground of my drawing of
the cathedral. He insisted on shaking hands with me for my kindness in
putting him there, although I had conceived the obligation to be all on
my side.
These quaint old watchmen are a sort of hall-mark of municipal
respectability. No Spanish city "of any degree of _ton_" would think of
dispensing with its _Serenos_. Indeed, in some instances the _Sereno_
has survived where the city is now little more than a name. Fine
picturesque old figures clad in cloaks and slouch hats, and armed with
javelins and lanterns,--(the towns are all lighted by electricity, but
that is a detail),--they give a deliciously old-world flavour to the
deserted streets at night. It is questionable whether they would be much
use in a row; for like our own late lamented "Charlies," they are often
aged and infirm. But their pictorial effect is incomparable: and they
are real good Samaritans to the belated reveller, for they carry the
keys of all the street doors on their beat, so that the errant
householder can always steal quietly to cover, after he has awakened
half the parish in summoning "_Ser-êno-o!_"
Light sleepers abominate the whole tribe; for they have powerful voices,
and their melodious bellow, "Twelve o'clock, and all serene!"--(the
refrain to which they owe their title)--is sure to arouse all the dogs
that happen to have stopped barking since eleven. It sounds such
gratuitous worry to make night hideous because the weather is fine.
But it seems quite a passion with Spaniards to know how the time is
progressing--not from any regard of its monetary value, but merely from
an altruistic and dilettante point of view. They adopt at least three
bases of reckoning--the local time, the Madrid time, and the Western
European (by which the trains do _not_ start). All the clocks are at
variance with all of them: and the whole system seems solely contrived
for the bewilderment of the foreigner, for the _habitué_ impartially
ignores the lot.
The people of Oviedo,--and, indeed, all Asturians and Gallegans,--are
esteemed an inferior race by your true Castilian. The prejudice is
rather puzzling: for "the mountains" are the cradle of the oldest and
bluest blood in Spain. But it is of very old standing; for even the Cid
Campeador, when administering the oath to Alfonso VI. (who was suspected
of complicity in King Sancho's murder[16]), could devise no more
humiliating adjuration than "If you swear falsely, may you be slain by
an Oviedan!"
[Illustration: OVIEDO
A Street near the Cathedral.]
Perhaps the early warriors who sallied forth to achieve the reconquest
despised those who remained quietly behind in the mountains. And when in
later days royalty and chivalry made their home in the south, the
simpler northerners would come to be regarded as boors. Even to this day
the Asturian peasant seems to lack something of the formality of the
Castilian. He is less punctilious in enquiring "how you have passed the
night" of a morning; less prompt with the regular roadside greeting,
"May your honour go with God!" The slurring of these little niceties may
possibly be sufficient to brand him as a "bounder"; and there is no
stigma more hard to obliterate than this.
For all these courteous trifles are the _shibboleth_ of high breeding to
a Spaniard, and a terrible stumbling-block to the blunt-spoken
Englishman,--so apt to give unwitting offence. The Spanish generals
always waited on Wellington to ask how he had slept, even when they knew
that he had watched all night in the trenches. If they omitted the
ceremony they feared he would deem himself slighted. "On the contrary,"
quoth Alava drily, "he will be very much obliged."
The Asturian monarchs had good reason for fixing their capital at
Oviedo; for it guards the main gateway of their kingdom, the chief of
the passes to the south. It lies not indeed at the actual mouth of the
valley, but a little on one side of it. Our road has to struggle over a
couple of thousand-foot ridges ere it can lay its course straight for
its goal. These two preliminary mountains we resolved to put behind us
in the evening, and keep a clear day for the Pass of Pajares itself.
Our overture was by no means a trifle. It was dark when we began the
second descent, and the iron furnaces of Miéres glowed up out of the
black profundity beneath us like little volcano craters anxious to win
themselves fame. Miéres is a village of ironworkers, and rather shabby
and grimy in consequence: yet we were glad to gain its shelter, for the
sky had long been threatening, and the storm broke soon after our
arrival--a true mountain tempest, with the rain roaring on the roof like
a cataract, and incessant flashes of lightning illuminating the valley
with the brightness of day.
Storm succeeded storm throughout the night, and the outlook next
morning was far from promising. But we took our courage in both hands
and started at the first break in the downpour. The valley was choked
with mist, and the road in a state of unutterable slabbiness: yet our
enterprise was soon rewarded, for the weather had done its worst in the
darkness, and the sunshine brought the vapours steaming up out of the
meadows and banished them with the clouds across the summits of the
hills.
The symptoms of industrial activity do not extend far above Miéres, and
Lena is but the quiet head village of a peaceful mountain glen. Lena is
famous for the possession of the precious little eighth-century church
of Sta Cristina, perhaps the most notable of the group for which the
Oviedo district is renowned; and the scenery amid which it is situated
is very similar to that of our own Welsh or Cumberland Highlands, though
planned on a larger scale.
Hitherto the ascent has been gradual; but now the road takes to the side
of the mountain, and heaves itself up from shoulder to shoulder in a
vast skein of steadily rising zigzags; while the railway which has so
far accompanied it wanders off by itself into remote lateral valleys,
groping for an easy gradient to help it up its four-thousand-foot
climb. Twenty miles by road from Lena, and over thirty by rail, the
approach to the summit is long and arduous, though redeemed by most
lovely views. We have a vivid recollection of the glass of water which
was bestowed upon us by the woman in charge of the level crossing at the
foot of the final ascent. She was a Navarrese woman, and the water was
the most delicious in the world!
At the final pitch the railway takes to a tunnel; and the road scrambles
alone to the saddle, rewarding its clients with the most magnificent
panorama,--looking out over the abysmal valley to the wilderness of pike
and fell on the westward, where the rigid outlines of the Peña Ubiña are
seldom destitute of snow. A rock-climber might break his neck very
satisfactorily among these savage crags. One great _aiguille_ in
particular seems to challenge him by its sheer inaccessibility--a rocky
splinter torn apart from its parent precipice, like another Napes
Needle, but probably a thousand feet high. When the Alps have become
unbearably Roshervilled, perhaps these untrodden fastnesses may solace
the _blasé_ mountaineer.
The step which carries us across the Pass of Pajares is one of the most
decisive of any we have yet taken. It spans the frontier of Leon and
Asturias, the boundary of the realms of cloud and sun. The ridge parts
not merely two provinces but two climates, and we seem to enter the
tropics at a stride. Behind lies the green and flowery valley, and the
heathery slopes half veiled in tender haze; before are the hot bare
rocks, and the parched grass toasting itself under the stare of the
sunshine; and though the Atlantic clouds bank thick upon the northward,
it is only an occasional straggler who ventures across to the south.
The scenery is perhaps less attractive, but on the whole even more
striking; for the rocks, as in all Spanish landscapes, take most daring
and original forms. The most remarkable example is near the foot of the
descent, just before arriving at the village of Pola de Gordon. Here the
limestone strata have been tilted up absolutely vertical, hard layers
alternating with soft, like the fat and lean in a piece of streaky
bacon. The principal hard layer forms the precipitous face of a
mountain, and stretches for a mile or more along the river, like a huge
surcharged retaining wall. The complementary layers are at first buried
in the mass behind; but presently the ridge dips to give passage to the
river, and rises again beyond in a bold conical hill, so that all the
layers become at once exposed. The soft strata at this point are
entirely weathered away, and the hard remain, like huge parallel
cock's-combs, rising as straight and steep as the parapets of a gigantic
stairway. These razor-back limestone ridges are a very characteristic
feature of Spanish mountain scenery; but nowhere else have I seen them
quite so strongly marked as here.
We were not to escape from the Pass without one final downpour, but
luckily it caught us within reach of shelter at Pola de Gordon. A black,
oily cloud glued itself onto the mountain above the village, the windows
of Heaven were opened, and the deluge fell. It only lasted some thirty
minutes; but by that time the village was paddling, and all the
bye-lanes had converted themselves into foaming torrents which had piled
great dykes of shingle at intervals across the street. Yet all the while
we had been able to see the sky clear and brilliant under the fringe of
the storm-rack towards the southward; and three miles away, the road was
dry and dusty, and even the river that ran beside it was unconscious of
the coming flood.
[Illustration: IN THE PASS OF PAJÁRES
Near Pola de Gordon.]
We finally slipped from the valley at the village of La Robla, and
mounted onto the bare, brown moorlands that slope towards the city of
Leon. The mountains come to a halt behind us as abruptly as if they were
toeing a line; and the vast level sweeping away from their feet to the
southward is broken only by the deeply grooved valleys of the Esla's
tributary streams. The effect is somewhat similar to the line of the
Merionethshire mountains breaking down into the Morfa. But this
remarkable emphasising of primary physical features is specially
characteristic of the geology of Spain. Leon itself lies low beside the
river, and only comes into view when we are close upon it; but the
cathedral spires are just high enough to overtop the upland, and form a
solitary landmark for several miles around.