A RAID INTO ESTREMADURA
The Estremadura road launches out boldly from the end of the Segóvia
bridge at Madrid, and the fingerpost which points along it laconically
observes that that way you will get to Badajos. But quite a lot of water
will flow under the Segóvia bridge first, even though it is only the
Manzanares which runs there.
Wherefore, to avoid over-watering this narrative, we will not begin it
at Madrid, nor even at Talavera, but transport ourselves at one stride
right away to the other end of the long line of snowy mountains which
guards the northern side of the Estremadura road. Here the Sierra de
Grédos ends in a forked tail like one of its own falcons, and between
the forks a long, straight valley runs up into the centre of the range.
The great snow-peaks sit along either side of that long, straight valley
like a Parliament of Gods, with the shaggy ilex woods wrapped around
their knees; and at its mouth, on a slight eminence half encircled by
the new-born waters of the Jerte, stands the ancient city of Plaséncia.
I were ungrateful not to retain a warm corner in my heart for pretty
little Plaséncia, for I arrived there limping and dog-wrecked, and
Plaséncia was kind to me. But he would be an unimpressionable mortal who
could not love her for her beauty alone; and I am not sure that even
I--such is man's gratitude--would remember her as kindly had she been
less fair. The crumbling walls, the solemn palaces, the quaint old
streets and beautiful situation, make this little Hesperian township one
of the most charming in Spain. Is she not rightly named "Pleasaunce"?
Queenly Segóvia herself need not disdain so fair a cousin.
But Plaséncia should not strictly be included in the Castilian family
circle; she has married into Estremadura, and the mountains part her
from her kind. The picturesque Estremenian peasantry lounge about her
squares and _plazas_, but her site and her buildings seem still to
proclaim her kinship. Like other Spanish wives, she has not quite
dropped her maiden name.
[Illustration: PLASÉNCIA
Puente San Lazaro.]
There is not much traffic in the streets of Plaséncia, neither is
much expected. The workmen patching the cathedral roof were heaving over
the broken tiles on to the pavement without so much as a prefatory
"Heads below!" Yet the place looks far from dead, for the balconies are
gay with flower-boxes, and the numerous old palaces still wear a
comparatively prosperous air. The cathedral stands right upon the
ancient walls, which form a sort of terrace to it upon the southern
side. Internally its effect is marred by a transverse partition; but
externally, though (like Mr Mantelini's countesses) it has no outline,
it is decked with a fanciful miscellaneous finery which makes it
inordinately picturesque. Moreover, it is an educational centre, and we
are indebted to it for constant processions of demure little students,
clad in black cassocks with a burning heart worked in crimson upon the
breast. They are beyond comparison the best-behaved children in the
Peninsula, and make most appropriate figures in the quiet and shady
square.
The _Fonda_ where I brought myself to anchor was situated entirely upon
the first floor; and this waste of good space was gratuitous, for the
ground floor was all empty vaults. My bedroom was at the back. To reach
it I had to pass through the kitchen; and incidentally to make myself
amiable to the cook, who was manipulating her pots over a range of
strictly classical construction which might have been imported from
Pompeii. Beyond was a tiny _patio_ where Maria and the Señora were busy
at their household duties under the shade of the vines; and then came my
room. There was no window except the glazed upper panel of the door; and
no ventilation when the door was shut, so it was usually open. I could
shut it without getting out of bed. Our meals were served in the little
_comedor_ adjoining the kitchen. Maria waited, handing round the viands
in their native earthenware pipkins, piping hot from the fire. Also she
led the conversation, being a notable authority on all the latest gossip
and scandal; and the cook popped her head through the serving-hatch and
chimed in volubly at every suitable opening. There is a homeliness about
these little hostels which is very delightful; but it is always a puzzle
to me how the women get their meals. They seldom dine with their
men-folk, and, so far as my observation goes, must subsist entirely on
"tasters."
[Illustration: PLASÉNCIA
The Town Walls and Cathedral.]
Of course you seldom get a bill. "This is no time o'night to use our
bills! With one word of my mouth I can tell them what is to
betall."[38] The Señora confined herself literally to one word when I
asked her, and responded "thirty-two," but I suppose my face must have
betrayed some uncertainty, for "_reals_[39] not _pesetas_!" added the
Señora hastily, knocking seventy-five per cent. off my mental
calculation, and bringing her charges for full board and lodging down to
about three shillings a day. I wonder who was responsible for the libel
that Spanish innkeepers cheat; any attempt at overcharging is an almost
unprecedented event.
The borderland character of Plaséncia is reflected in its surroundings.
The Castilian sierras wall it in upon the east; but away to the west
stretches the wilderness of Estremadura--vast rugged moors interlaced
with wide belts of olive and ilex, or small rare patches of cultivated
ground. The lonely road holds steadily upon its way till it reaches the
lip of the Tagus ravine, and then plunges abruptly down to the level of
the river.
There is a marked contrast in the scenery along the two great rivers of
northern Spain. The Duero valley is wide and tame, a great unfenced
expanse of vineyard and cornfield, edged by low hills of petrified
earth; but the Tagus rift is narrow and savage, walled in by bare black
rock, and showing few traces of the hand of man. The road swings down
the hill in admirable style, but startles the traveller by coming to an
abrupt and untimely end about half a mile short of the river; and I had
to plough my way down through the shingle to the water's edge to
prospect for a continuation. Far away up stream a few shattered piers
and arches testify to the neglected munificence of some old _Pontifex
Maximus_ of Toledo; and overhead the great lattice girders of the
railway spring from pier to pier across the gulf; but where is there a
passage for a wayfaring man? "It strictly prohibits itself" to use the
railway line; moreover, the sleepers are laid directly upon the naked
girders, so that the passenger gets a fine bird's-eye view of the
landscape between his toes; but there is neither ferry nor ford,--at
least none where a stranger can see them; and why strain at the strict
prohibition if you can swallow the bird's-eye view?
Some little way up the further shore I stumble across the road again. It
is getting along capitally, thank you, and tackles the steep ascent in a
most business-like system of curves and gradients without bestowing a
thought upon the lamentable _hiatus_ in the rear. Elsewhere one might
reprobate such conduct, but here one accepts it as natural. "_Cosas de
España_,"--It's the way with Spain.
At the top is a wilderness of rocky pasture powdered with flocks of
merino sheep, the great nomad hordes that migrate every winter into
these southern latitudes, and are now working their way north again
towards the mountains of Leon. Among them stand the cloaked figures of
their shepherds, tall and motionless,--a hermit race; and the pale peaks
of Almanzor and his brother giants far away in the background, survey
with complacent approval a picture as antiquated as themselves.
Presently this desert gives way to olive woods, and the olive woods to
more cultivated ground. Thick cactus hedges, fringed round with an
edging of blossom, begin to hint at a southern climate; and the
peasantry are already reaping the barley harvest, though it is yet but
the middle of May. At last a cluster of towers planted in the saddle of
a low serrated ridge marks the goal of my day's journey, and with a wide
sweep to the right, to outflank an intervening valley, I enter the town
of Cáceres.
The tourist who wishes to explore Estremadura will find that the
inexorable laws of geography have fixed his headquarters at Cáceres. But
he need have no grudge against the inexorable laws aforesaid; they might
have chosen a much worse place. To begin with, Cáceres is a town of
resources; there is a man in it who owns a bicycle, and who did own till
recently a tube of rubber solution, but this rare and costly curio has
since been acquired by a foreign collector. Moreover, it is the capital
of its province, and it rejoices in a picturesque and busy little
market; but the gem of the whole, to an artist's eyes, is the "old town"
which crowns the rising ground in the centre, a delightful relic of
antiquity all untainted by the contact of to-day.
Nobody seems to go into the old town of Cáceres except the girls with
their water pitchers _en route_ for the Fountain of Council on the
further side. The streets are so steep that they are all stepped, and so
narrow that it is impossible for two loaded mules to pass. No sound is
heard in them but the clattering of the storks, and the grim old palaces
which wall them in have an indescribable air of mystery and romance. I
am convinced that any bold spirit who dared to penetrate into their
flowery _patios_ would find them still inhabited by the old
comrades of Cortes and Pizarro and Diego Garcia de Paredes, the great
Estremenian warriors of yore. No mere modern mortals can dwell behind
those changeless walls. The grey old ramparts which enclose them must
have checked the march of time.
[Illustration: CÁCERES
Within the old Town Walls.]
Four main roads diverge from Cáceres towards the four points of the
compass. That towards the east leads to Trujillo, the birthplace of
Pizarro, and the mountain sanctuary of Guadalupe, which the Estremenian
conquerors enriched with the spoils of Mexico and Peru. I was scheming
in vain to attain to them, but my fate was most resolutely hostile. Two
sallies resulted in breakdowns, and at last I reluctantly succumbed. My
first successful foray was towards the south.
This road leads over a queer wild country, half common, half moor,
sparsely inhabited, and fringed with the low, rugged ridges which are
such a feature of the district. It was a notable haunt of robbers a
couple of generations ago. Towards the south-east rises the Sierra de
Montanchez, which at this point forms the watershed between the Tagus
and Guadiana, and the road gradually rises to pass over its tail. The
Sierra piles itself up into fine bold masses on the left of the road;
and beneath it on the further side lies the hamlet of Arroyo Molinos,
where three thousand French soldiers, reputed the best in Spain, were
surprised and crushed by General Hill in 1811.
Girard was retreating before Hill from Cáceres, and had halted here for
the night, leaving pickets along the road to the northward to give
warning of pursuit. But the pursuers he dreaded had already outstripped
and intercepted him. Hill had followed the parallel road (which is now
the main one) and lay unsuspected at Alcuesca, three miles to the south.
Not a Spaniard in either village but knew of the intended _coup_; but
who would betray it to a Frenchman? And no whisper of his danger reached
Girard till the 71st and 92nd regiments swept the street with fixed
bayonets in the grey of the stormy dawn. Estremadura was Hill's
province, and his other most notable exploit, the seizing of the bridge
of Almaraz, was also achieved in this locality. Two victories of which
Wellington himself might have been proud.
From the summit of the pass the ground sweeps away to the southward, an
ocean of white-flowered cistus bushes interspersed with the vivid yellow
of the broom. But this brilliant spectacle does not continue for many
miles; it soon gives way to the usual jumble of rock and grass and
olive; and at last from this stony upland one looks down across the
sloping cornfields to the distant Guadiana and the town of Mérida.
A big red-roofed village with no special feature, built beside the broad
and sandy bed of a great river, Mérida from a distance looks commonplace
enough. Yet the wide, smooth cornfields around it might disclose a
different scene. Time was when the garrison of Augusta Emerita was
fifteen-fold more numerous than her present population, when her walls
were twenty miles in circumference, and even in her decay her astonished
conqueror could confess that it was "impossible to enumerate" the
marvels she contained. Comparing what she is with what she was, the
wonder is not that so much has survived, but that so much has
disappeared; and yet in good truth the remains are ample enough, "equal
to Rome" say the Meridans, and who should know better than they?
First the great aqueduct (the greatest of three); the bridge of
sixty-four[40] arches which spans the Guadiana, and the mighty castle
which guards its townward end. The theatre, still almost perfect; the
ruins of the Temple of Diana, and of the massive Arch of Trajan. The
amphitheatre is now but an heap, and the hippodrome can only be traced
by its foundations; but the whole soil teems with coins and fragments of
pottery, and if ever systematic excavation could be hoped for in this
happy-go-lucky country, who can guess what treasures might be revealed?
It is at least an encouraging symptom that the Meridans are very proud
of their "_antiguedades_," and are always eager to act as showmen; in
which capacity they are equipped with the most startling archæological
heresies that have ever been foisted upon an astonished world.
It was a hard-worked little room that was assigned to me for my lodging
at Mérida. At night I slept there, but by day it was a tailor's shop,
and between times it was borrowed by Juanita for the conduct of her
little _affaires du coeur_. Its many-sidedness was the result of its
situation, for it was on the ground floor, with a large French window
opening direct on to the pavement, and guarded with a stout iron grille.
To myself this entailed a rather embarrassing publicity, but it just
suited Juanita, who could interview her lover comfortably through the
bars.
[Illustration: CÁCERES
Calle de la Cuesta de Aldana.]
Each night as I returned from the café I beheld the same little
picture (it was being produced in replica in half the streets of the
town); the moonlight bright upon the _Fonda_ walls, and the black
cloaked figure clinging like a bat to the rails. I am proud to remember
that I always tried to play the game properly, and glided off
unobtrusively into a side street before I got near enough to interfere.
But I doubt if I ever really escaped observation, for at my next round
the pavement would be untenanted, and Juanita waiting at the street door
to let me in.
It might be supposed that there was no ostensible motive why she should
not have kept tryst at the door instead of the window, or "gone out
walking" with her lover as an English girl would have done. But no! that
would not be "proper." La Señora Grundy insists upon a barred window.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why all Spanish windows are barred.
"Marriage is honourable to all." But in Spain it is considered expedient
to give an elaborately clandestine flavour to the indispensable
preliminary of courtship; and during the whole of that period Romeo is
officially tabooed by Juliet's kin. He may be a most desirable _parti_,
and the bosom friend of all her brothers. But now he is remorselessly
"cut." When they meet, they never see him;--neither (logically enough)
do they ever notice that cryptic enigma who is "feeding on iron" at the
lattice every evening soon after dark. So matters continue until the
courtship has ripened and the happy lover can formally demand his lady's
hand. Then he is at once received into all honour and affection, and the
lovers are put on a regular footing by being formally betrothed, a
ceremony scarcely less binding than marriage itself.
Mérida was my southernmost limit, and detained me somewhat longer than I
had intended. But, indeed, the very origin of the city seems to
constitute an invitation to repose. First invaded and last subdued of
all the Roman provinces, Spain was just witnessing the dawn of her early
millennium when Augustus founded this home of rest for the veterans of
the final campaign. If rest was his intention, it would rejoice his
heart to see how diligently it is still practised by the descendants of
his original colonists. But my own sojourn was not entirely voluntary. I
had tried once more for Trujillo, and been forced to put back for
repairs. Even a fate-compelled idleness, however, may sometimes be found
opportune.
[Illustration: MÉRIDA
"Los Milagros," the ruins of the Great Aqueduct.]
The great ruined aqueduct, the headquarters of all the storks of
the Guadiana, towered over the Cáceres road to the right of me as I
again bore away to the northward. It had been the first object to greet
my arrival, and was the last to haunt me as I left. The huge gaunt piers
and crumbling arches seem more imposing in their ruin even than the
complete structure at Segóvia, though I believe actual measurements
place the latter first by a short head. "The Miracles," the townsfolk
call them; and the title is well bestowed. Yet Estremadura can boast one
other miracle more stupendous even than these.
Once more I sallied forth from Cáceres, and set my face towards the
west; and surely in all the solitudes of Estremadura there are none more
solitary than this. Mile after mile the straight, white road heaves its
long line across the ridges of the rolling moor. Its dust is seamed with
the trail of the viper, and here and there the eagle hangs poised above
his hunting-ground; but other life or landmark there is none for leagues
together, till one feels one has been riding there for ever, and will
probably continue till the end of time. Sometimes a ruined watch-tower
will afford a distant beacon; sometimes a well-ambushed hamlet, whose
swine are reputed to develop a specially succulent bacon by a strict
adherence to a viper dietary. They appear like the phases in a dream,
and are swallowed in the immensity of their surroundings. As well seek a
pin in a haystack as a homestead in this boundless waste.
If there be any faith in the milestones, Alcántara cannot lie beyond
that great purple combe ahead of me. Yet how can there be room for the
Tagus valley on the hither side? But even as I am flouting their
promise, the road dives gracefully over the lip of an unsuspected
hollow, and the fragments of a crumbling rampart resolve themselves into
the long-sought town. The gateway admits me to a forlorn and grimy
street; the houses are ruinous and neglected; everywhere is dirt and
misery and dilapidation. What went ye out into the wilderness to see?
Just beyond the town, and far below the level of the moors, the Tagus
has carved its deep and savage glen. Right and left, as far as the eye
can reach, the bare bluff headlands stoop down into the abyss like the
tors on the Devonshire coast; and at the bottom, pent between its walls
of rock, the tawny river swirls down the ravine. All is vast and huge
and desolate; the town itself hardly shows in such a picture; yet in the
midst one object catches the eye which seems to challenge comparison
even with nature itself,--the work of Titans rather than men,--THE
BRIDGE--_Al Kántarah_.
Spain is the land of bridges. In all Europe they have few rivals, but
here they own a King. Since the day when Caius Julius Lacer finished his
great work for the Emperor Trajan, and was laid to rest beside it, no
other bridge has ever challenged comparison with his;--a work to vie
with the pyramids of Egypt, or the Flavian Amphitheatre at Rome.
It is long before the eye can learn to grasp its full dimensions; all
around it is rock and mountain, there is nothing to give scale. We are
warned of it first by the camera, for the lens will not look at so wide
an angle; and then by the size of the archway flung across the road at
the centre pier. Presently, as we peer over the parapet into the depths
of the gulf below us, we realise that there is a man down there walking
by the waterside, and a dog which seems to bark though we cannot hear
the sound. Our eye slowly sizes up the _voussoir_ above which we are
standing; it is a twelve-ton block of granite; and the huge vault with
its eighty such _voussoirs_ seems to widen and deepen beneath us as we
gaze; for the brook that it spans is the river Tagus, whose waters have
their source three hundred miles away.
Thus hint by hint we have pieced together the astonishing conclusion
that the span of each of the two great central arches is rather wider,
and nearly as high as the interior of the dome of St Paul's; and that
the height of the railway lines above the Firth of Forth is sixty feet
less than that of the road above the Tagus! What must the scene be like
in winter, when the waters are foaming against the springer stones one
hundred and fifty feet above their summer level! How vast the strength
of these massive piers which for eighteen hundred years have defied the
fury of the floods!
Where now is the great _Via Lata_ that ran from Gades to Rome? Where are
the famous cities which it threaded on the way? The vine and olive grow
in the forum of Italica, and the Miracles of Mérida are a dwelling for
the stork. But here at the wildest point of all its wild journey our
eyes may still behold a memorial which nature has assailed in
vain:--"Pontem perpetui mansurum in sæcula mundi,"--the monument of
Caius Julius Lacer, more enduring even than Wren's.
[Illustration: ALCÁNTARA]
We English, I regret to say, were responsible for blowing up one of
the smaller arches in 1809; and our makeshift restoration,--a suspension
bridge made out of ships' cables, probably the earliest introduction of
the type to Europe,--lasted till the time of the Carlist wars. Then it
was again destroyed, and the Spaniards were long content with a ferry.
Now, however, they have restored it in its native granite, a feat of
which they are justly proud. Only, seeing that no cement at all was used
in the original building, it was really a little too bad of them to
insist upon pointing the joints!
It seems rather farcical to make a parade of military secrecy about a
structure that has been famous for eighteen centuries; but there is a
sentry assigned to it to make sure of preserving its privacy, and I
think I acted kindly towards him in providing one culprit for the year.
Our re-arrival in the town to interview the _Teniente_ created quite a
little sensation, particularly as that official was not to be found at
his office, and had to be hunted through the parish by packs of
importunate boys. The _Teniente_ was eventually run to earth in his
bedroom, in a state of great deshabille, but as polite as if he had been
attired in full court uniform. His house and his goods were at my
service, and himself only too anxious to do anything in the world to
oblige me; but I must not sketch within twenty-five miles of the
frontier without a special permit from the Minister of War at Madrid!
The travelling Englishman (when not admittedly mad) is always an object
of suspicion. But it must be confessed that his vagaries are generally
humoured in Spain. He only gets gently restrained in remote and
inaccessible places, where the official (never having seen a stranger
before) naturally feels it incumbent upon him to do something, but it is
not quite certain what. I made no attempt to protest. It would, of
course, have been entirely useless; and my Spanish had been already
heavily strained in compliments. Moreover, in this instance the _genius
loci_ had benignantly decreed that I should have got the horse before
they locked the stable door.
Meanwhile I had been left some consolation. The bridge is not quite the
only lion at Alcántara, and the grand Benedictine convent of its old
military monks rises most imposingly upon the edge of the impending
moors. It is now ruinous and dismantled, its fine church perfect but
empty, and its cloisters used as a cart-shed by the thrifty usurpers of
its halls. Beyond this feature, however, the town has little attraction.
It was mercilessly sacked in the spring of 1809 by General
Lapisse,--killed three months later while striving to rally his division
during the great assault at Talavera,--and since that crushing disaster
it has never had spirit to raise its head. There comes a stage when ruin
ceases to be picturesque and becomes only depressing. It is rather in
this connection that I remember Alcántara and Sahagun.[41]
It is not altogether surprising, in such an inconsequent country, to
discover that by crossing Alcántara you will arrive--Nowhere! and that
the only traffic across that stupendous edifice is limited to a few
flocks of sheep and some casual mules. I had hoped to return to
Plaséncia by way of Cória. It is no great distance. Alcántara is in
Cória diocese, and there are no special obstacles beyond the river; but
there is no vestige of a road. No, I must return from Alcántara to
Cáceres, and from Cáceres to Plaséncia, and from Plaséncia I might find
a road to Cória--perhaps. Which is the reason why Cória is now
bracketted with Trujillo and Guadalupe as one of the places I hope to
see some day. I returned, therefore, to Plaséncia the same way that I
had come; and passing round the end of the Sierra de Grédos, took my
farewell of these "extrema Durii"[42] from the summit of the Pass of
Béjar.
I have since learned that "nothing but a lively historical curiosity,
and a keen sympathy with the lonely melancholy of the heaths, could have
enabled me to endure with equanimity the privations to which I was
exposed."
It is astonishing how little I realised my fortitude at the time.