"In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne,
She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye."
--CHAUCER: _Canterbury Tales_.
"Pilgrimes and palmers plihten hem to-gederes
For to seche Seint Jame."
--LANGLAND: _Piers Plowman_.
"I am Saint Jaques' pilgrim, thither gone."
--SHAKESPEARE: _All's Well that Ends Well_.
From Leon to Coruna is a journey of some eighteen hours by rail.
Degenerate pilgrims that we were, we had taken a first-class carriage
reserved for ladies, not so comfortable as the average third-class
carriage on an English road. We hoped for space, at least, and
solitude, but people who choose to pry into out-of-the-way corners of
Spain need not expect to find any slavish deference to rights of place
and property. The conductor had planned to dine and sleep in this
particular compartment, which was a shade cleaner than the rest, and
removed his kit from the rack with natural disappointment. Why should
ladies be going to Galicia? But the general first-class compartment,
next to ours, was unoccupied, and he resignedly transferred his
belongings thither. The numerous third-class carriages were crowded
with raw recruits, who had all jumped down, boy fashion, on the Leon
platforms, and came scrambling back at the starting bell in noisiest
confusion. Just as the train was puffing out, a station official threw
open our door with a smiling, "Only to the next stop, ladies!" and
precipitated upon us three belated warriors. We groaned inly with dark
foreboding, for third-class occupancy of a first-class carriage is apt
to leave lively souvenirs behind. Our three young soldiers, each with
his personal effects bundled up in an enormous red and yellow
handkerchief, were of the rudest peasant type, hardly lifted above
animal and clod. Only one was able to spell out anything of the
newspaper we offered. He labored over a large-lettered advertisement
with grimy thumb, twisting brows, and muttering lips, but soon gave it
up in sheer exhaustion. The hulking fellow beyond him was continually
on the point of spitting,--a regular Spanish pastime in travel; but,
determined that the carriage should not suffer that offence, I kept
strict watch on this chrysalis hero, and embarrassed him into stark
paralysis with questions on the landscape whenever he was quite
prepared to fire. The third conscript was a ruddy, fair-haired boy of
seventeen, who had in rudimentary form the social instincts of a
Spaniard, and in his intervals of blue-eyed staring at the tawdry
splendors about him hammered our ears with some harsh dialect, his one
theme being the indignities and hardships of a Spanish soldier's lot.
Yet dull as they were, and ignorant of railway customs, they knew
enough to prefer broad cushions, whose variety of stains did not
trouble their enviable simplicity, to the rough and narrow benches of
the overcrowded third-class carriages, and at the "first stop" they
unanimously forgot to change. But they were not unkindly lads, and
after I had explained to them a dozen times or so that my friend was
suffering from a headache and needed to lie down, and had,
furthermore, lawlessly suggested that they could make themselves
equally comfortable in the other first-class carriage, which was not
"reserved for ladies," they promised to leave us at the second
station; but their slow peasant hands fumbled at the door so clumsily
that the train was under way again before the latch had yielded. It
was not until we had been fellow-travellers for two or three hours
that they finally stumbled into the neighboring compartment. From this
the conductor, who had been blind and deaf to past proceedings,
promptly ejected them, having no mind to let them make acquaintance
with his wine bottle, and our poor exiles cast reproachful glances at
us as they were hustled off to their own place.
We have sometimes talked enthusiastically of democracy, but we did not
discuss such exalted subjects then. Indeed, we had enough to do in
guarding our doors, often by frank exercise of muscle, from further
intrusion, and in trying to provide ourselves with food and water. A
struggling mob of soldier boys besieged the refreshment stalls at
every station, and drained the jars of the water-venders long before
these could arrive at the car windows. At last, by a union of silver
and violence, we succeeded in gaining from an astounded little girl,
who was racing after the departing carriages, all her stock in trade,
even the great russet jar itself, with its treasure of cold spring
water. The historian possesses a special genius for cooking over an
alcohol lamp on a rocking mountain train, and having augmented our
knapsack stores with scalded milk and knobby bread from a tavern near
one of the depots, we lived like feudal barons "of our own" for the
rest of that memorable journey.
Reminders of the pilgrims were all along our route. Overflowing as
Santiago's young knights were with martial and romantic spirit, when
the brigands did not give their steel sufficient sport they would
break lances for the love of ladies or on any other conceivable
pretext. We passed the bridge of twenty arches, where ten companions
in arms once posted themselves for ten successive days, and challenged
to the tilt every cavalier who came that way in journey to the
Compostela jubilee.
All the afternoon we were climbing into the hill-country. The waste
slopes were starred with purple clumps of heather, and crossed by
light-footed maids, who balanced great bunches of bracken on their
heads. The patches of green valley, walled in by those barren steeps,
held each a few tumble-down old houses, while elsewhere we noticed
human dwellings that seemed scarcely more than nests of mud plastered
to the stone. Yet the soil appeared to be cultivated with the most
patient thrift,--wheat and potatoes growing wherever wheat and
potatoes might. The view became a bewildering medley of Scottish
hills, Italian skies, and Gothic castles, with occasionally a tawny
and fantastic rock from the Garden of the Gods. The city of Astorga,
whose cathedral was founded, so the pilgrims used to say, by St. James
in his missionary tour, greeted us from the midst of the flinty hills.
These are the home of a singular clan known as the Maragatos. They
wear a distinctive dress, marry only among themselves, and turn a
sullen look upon their neighbors.
As night came on, the road grew so rough that we had to cork our
precious water-jar with a plump lemon. The historian was sleeping off
her headache, except as I woke her at the stations to aid in the
defence of our ignoble luxury. We remembered that queen of Portugal
who made the pilgrimage to Compostela on foot, begging her way. In the
close-packed third-class carriages it must have been a cramped and
weary night, and we did not wonder that young socialists occasionally
tried to raid our fortress. But we clung stoutly to the door-handles,
lustily sounding our war cry of "Ladies only" in lieu of "Santiago,"
and early in the small hours had the shamefaced pleasure of seeing the
herd of drowsy conscripts, with their red and yellow bundles, driven
into another train, where they were tumbled two or three deep, the
under layer struggling and protesting. One little fellow, nearly
smothered in the hurly-burly about the steps, cried out pitifully; but
the conductor silenced him with angry sarcasm: "Dost mean to be a
soldier, thou? Or shall we put thee in a sugar-bowl and send thee back
to mamma?"
There was less need of sentry duty after this, but the night was too
beautiful for sleep. We were crossing the wild Asturian mountains, the
Alps of Spain, and a full moon was pouring down white lustre on crag,
cascade, and gorge. By these perilous ways had streamed the
many-bannered pilgrim hosts,--men and women of all countries and all
tongues seeking the Jerusalem of the West. Each nation had its own
hymn to Santiago, and these, sung to the mingled music of bagpipes,
timbrels, bugles, flutes, and harps, must have pealed out strangely on
many a silver night. The poor went begging of the rich, and often a
mounted crusader cast his purse of broad gold pieces on the heather,
trusting Santiago and his own good sword to see him through. Up and
down these sheer ravines stumbled the blind and lame, sure of
healing if only they could reach the shrine. Deaf and dumb went in the
pilgrim ranks, the mad, the broken-hearted, the sin-oppressed; only
the troop of lepers held apart. Some of those foot-sore wayfarers,
most likely the raggedest of all, carried a secret treasure for the
saint. Some staggered under penitential weights of lead and stone, and
others bore loads of bars and fetters in token of captivity from which
St. James had set them free.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT]
But these pathetic shapes no longer peopled the moonlight. Since it
was the nineteenth century, a first-class passenger might as well lie
down and watch the gracious progress of the moon across the heavens,--
"Oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."
But the clouds perversely made of themselves wayside crosses, urns,
cathedral towers; and just as one sky-creature, "backed like a weasel"
but with the face of Santiago, began to puff a monstrous cigarette, I
roused my dozing senses and discovered that we were entering Lugo, the
capital of Galicia, and once, under Roman rule, of all Spain.
This city of tumultuous history, stormed by one wild race after
another, and twice sacked in our own century, first by the French and
then by the Carlists, lay very peacefully under the white dawn. While
the chivalrous Spanish sun rose unobtrusively, so as not to divert
attention from the fading graces of the moon, the historian made
sustaining coffee, and we tried to look as if we liked Galicia. This
far northwestern province is the Boeotia of Spain; its stupid,
patient peasantry are the butt of all the Peninsula, and to be called
a Gallego is to be called a fool. The country, as we saw it from the
train, was broken and hilly, but the Alpine majesty of Asturias was
gone. In the misty drizzle of rain, which soon hushed the pipings of
the birds, all the region looked wretchedly poor. It was a wooded,
watered, well-tilled land, with tufts of heather brightly fringing
every bank; but the houses were mere cabins, where great, gaunt,
dark-colored pigs pushed in and out among bedraggled hens and
half-clad children. Women were working in the fields by five o'clock
in the morning, their saffron and carmine kerchiefs twisted into horns
above the forehead. Women were serving as porters at the stations,
carrying heavy trunks and loads of valises on their heads. Women were
driving the plough, swinging the pickaxe in the quarries, mending the
railway tracks. Short, stout, vigorous brownies they were, and most of
them looked old.
It was mid-forenoon when we reached Coruna, the seaport whence sailed
the Invincible Armada. We had meant to rest there for the afternoon
and night before undertaking the forty-mile drive to Santiago, but the
hotel was so filthy that, tired as we were, there was nothing for it
but to go on. Tarrying only for bath and breakfast, we took our places
in a carriage which, setting out at one, promised to bring us into
Santiago in time for the eight o'clock dinner.
This conveyance was a species of narrow omnibus, which an Andalusian,
an Englishman, a son of Compostela returning home after a long sojourn
in foreign parts, his young wife of Jewish features, and our weary
selves filled to overflowing. Our Jehu had agreed to transport the six
of us, with our effects, for the sum of sixteen dollars; but deep was
our disgust when he piled our handbags, shawl straps, and all our
lesser properties in upon our wedged and helpless forms, and crammed
six rough Gallegos, with a reeling load of trunks and boxes, on the
roof. Remonstrance would be futile. The places in the regular
diligence were not only taken for the afternoon but engaged for
several days ahead, and carriages are rare birds in Galicia. The
Spanish gentlemen merely shrugged their shoulders, the Englishman had
but that morning landed in Spain and could not speak a word of the
vernacular, and feminine protest was clearly out of order. The four
puny horses took the top-heavy vehicle at a rattling pace down the
granite-paved streets of Coruna, but hardly were we under way when our
griefs began.
On our arrival that forenoon, a fluent porter had over-persuaded us to
leave our trunk at the station, letting him retain the check in order
to have the baggage ready for us when we should pass the depot _en
route_ for Santiago. We had been absent scarcely three hours, but
meanwhile the trunk had disappeared. A dozen tatterdemalions ran
hither and thither, making as much noise as possible, all the top
fares shouted contradictory suggestions, and our porter, heaping
Ossa-Pelions of execration upon the (absent) railroad officials,
declared that they in their most reprobate stupidity had started the
trunk on that eighteen-hour journey back to Leon. They were dolts and
asses, the sons of imbecile mothers; but we had only to leave the
check with him, and in the course of an indefinite number of
"to-morrows" he would recover our property. We had grown sadder and
wiser during the last five minutes, however, and insisted on taking
that soiled inch of paper into our own keeping. At this the porter
flew into a Spanish rage, flung back his fee into my lap, and so
eloquently expressed himself that we left Coruna with stinging ears.
It was the historian's trunk, stored with supplies for the camera, as
well as with sundry alleviations of our pilgrim lot, but she put it in
the category of spilled milk, and turned with heroic cheerfulness to
enjoy the scenery. The horses had now drooped into the snail's pace
which they consistently maintained through the rest of their long,
uphill way, for the city of the Apostle stands on a high plateau. As
we mounted more and more, Coruna, lying between bay and sea, still
shone clear across the widening reach of smiling landscape. Maize and
vines were everywhere. So were peasants, who trudged along in family
troops toward Compostela. But whether afoot or astride donkeys of
antique countenance, they could always outstrip our lumbering coach,
and we were an easy prey for the hordes of childish bandits who chase
vehicles for miles along the pilgrim road, shrieking for pennies in
the name of Santiago.
About two leagues out of Coruna we did pass something,--a group
composed of a young Gallego and the most diminutive of donkeys. The
peasant, walking beside his beast, was trying to balance across its
back an object unwonted to those wilds.
"Strange to see a steamer trunk here!" I remarked, turning to the
historian; but she was already leaning out from the window, inspecting
that label-speckled box with an eagle gaze.
"It's mine!" she exclaimed, and in a twinkling had startled the driver
into pulling up his horses, had leapt from the coach, and was running
after the peasant, who, for his part, swerving abruptly from the main
road, urged his panting donkey up a steep lane. Nobody believed her.
Even I, her fellow-pilgrim, thought her wits were addling with our
penitential fasts and vigils, and did not attempt to join in so mad a
chase. As for the scandalized Spaniards, inside and out, they shouted
angrily that the thing was impossible and the senora was to come back.
The coachman roared loudest of all. But on she dashed, ran down her
man, and bade him, in inspired Galician, bring that trunk to the
omnibus at once. He scratched his head, smiled a child's innocent and
trustful smile, and, like a true Gallego, did as he was told. By this
time masculine curiosity had been too much for the driver and most of
the fares, and they had scrambled after, so that the few of us who
kept guard by the carriage presently beheld an imposing procession
advancing along the road, consisting of a Galician peasant with a
steamer trunk upon his head, a group of crestfallen Spaniards, and a
Yankee lady, slightly flushed, attended by an applauding Englishman.
Beyond a doubt it was her trunk. Her name was there, a New York hotel
mark, which she had tried to obliterate with a blot of Leon ink, and
the number corresponding to the number of our check. "By Jove!" said
the Englishman. As for the peasant, he said even less, but in some way
gave us to understand that he was taking the trunk to a gentleman from
Madrid. Thinking that there might have been a confusion of checks in
the station, we gave this childlike native a _peseta_ and a card with
our Santiago address in case "the Madrid gentleman" should suspect us
of highway robbery. Our fellow-passengers took the tale to Santiago,
however; it made a graphic column in the local paper, and none of the
several Spaniards who spoke to us of the matter there doubted that the
trunk was stolen by collusion between the porter and the peasant.
Our next adventure was more startling yet. The coachman had been
heard, at intervals, vehemently expostulating with a roof passenger
who wanted to get down. "Man alive! By the staff of Santiago! By your
mother's head! By the Virgin of the Pillar!" Whether the malcontent
had taken too much wine, whether he was under legal arrest, whether it
was merely a crossing of whims, we could not learn from any of the
impassioned actors in the drama; but, apparently, he found his
opportunity to slip unnoticed off the coach. For suddenly the driver
screamed to his horses, and, like a bolt from the blue, a handsome,
athletic fellow leapt to the ground and rushed back along the dusty
road, brandishing clenched fists and stamping his feet in frenzy. In
mid-career he paused, struck a stage attitude, tore open his pink
shirt, gasped, and shook with rage. "Irving isn't in it," quoth the
Englishman. Then appeared, lurking by the roadside, a slouchy youth,
on whom our tragic hero sprang like a tiger, threw him down, and stood
panting over him with a gesture as if to stab. An instant later he had
seized his victim by the collar, dragged him up, and was running him
back to the coach. "You hurt me," wailed the truant, "and I don't want
to go." But go he must, being bundled back in short order on the roof,
where harmony seemed to be immediately restored. While the men were
struggling, a lordly old peasant, stalking by, surveyed them with a
peasant's high disdain. We had already noted the Irish look of the
Galicians, but this magnificent patriarch, with dark green waistcoat
over a light green shirt, old gold knickerbockers and crushed
strawberry hose, had as Welsh a face, dark and clean-cut, as Snowdon
ever saw.
Long sunset shadows lay across the hills; we had shared with our
companions our slight stores of sweet chocolate, bread, and wine, and
still we were not halfway to Santiago. It was nine o'clock before our
groaning equipage drew up at a wretched little inn, incredibly foul,
where it was necessary to bait the exhausted horses. Mine host
welcomed the party with pensive dignity, and served us, in the midst
of all that squalor, with the manners of a melancholy count. Shutting
eyes and noses as far as we could, and blessing eggs for shells and
fruit for rind, we ate and gathered strength to bear what St. James
might yet have in store for us.
The diligence had resumed its weary jog; we were all more or less
asleep, unconsciously using, in our crowded estate, one another as
pillows, when an uproar from the box and a wild lurch of the coach
brought us promptly to our waking senses. One of the wheel horses was
down, and the others, frightened by the dragging harness, were rearing
and plunging. Out we tumbled into the misty night, wondering if we
were destined, after all, to foot it to Compostela in proper pilgrim
fashion. The poor beast was mad with terror, and his struggles soon
brought his mate to the ground beside him. The coachman, so pompous
and dictatorial at the outset, stood helplessly in the road, at a safe
distance, wringing his hands and crying like a baby: "Alas, poor me!
Poor little me! O holy Virgin! Santiago!" The top fares, who had made
good speed to _terra firma_, were wailing in unison and shrieking
senseless counsels. "Kill thou the horse! Kill thou the horse!" one of
them chanted like a Keltic dirge. The coachman supplied the antiphon:
"Kill not my horse! Kill not my horse! _Ave Maria!_ Poor little me!"
"Fools! Sit on his head," vociferated the Englishman in his vain
vernacular. The horses seemed to have as many legs as centipedes,
kicking all at once. The coach was toppling, the luggage pitching, and
catastrophe appeared inevitable, when Santiago, such an excellent
horseman himself, inspired one of the roof passengers to unbuckle a
few straps. The effect was magical. First one nag, and then the other,
struggled to its feet; the coachman sobbed anew, this time for joy;
the Spanish gentlemen, who had been watching the scene with
imperturbable passivity, crawled back into the diligence, the silent
wife followed with the heavy bag which her husband had let her carry
all the way, and the Anglo-Saxon contingent walked on ahead for half
an hour to give the spent horses what little relief we might.
The clocks were striking two when we reached the gates of the sacred
city, where fresh hindrance met us. The customs officials were on the
alert. Who were we that would creep into Compostela de Santiago under
cover of night, in an irregular conveyance piled high with trunks and
boxes? Smugglers, beyond a doubt! But they would teach us a thing or
two. We might wait outside till morning.
[Illustration: MAIDS OF HONOR]
Delighted boys from a peasant camp beyond the walls ran up to jeer at
our predicament. Our coachman, reverting to his dolorous chant,
appealed to all the saints. The top fares shrilled in on the chorus;
the Spanish gentlemen lighted cigarettes, and after some twenty
minutes of dramatic altercation, a soldier sprang on our top step and
mounted guard, while the coach rattled through the gates and on to
the _aduana_. Here we were deposited, bag and baggage, on the
pavement, and a drowsy, half-clad old dignitary was brought forth to
look at us. The coachman, all his social graces restored,
imaginatively presented the three Anglo-Saxons as a French party
travelling for pleasure. "But what am I to do with them?" groaned the
dignitary, and went back to bed. An appalling group of _serenos_, in
slouch hats and long black capes, with lanterns and with staffs topped
by steel axes, escorted us into a sort of luggage room, and told us to
sit down on benches. We sat on them for half an hour, which seemed to
satisfy the ends of justice, for then the _serenos_ gave place to
porters, who said they would bring us our property, which nobody had
examined or noticed in the slightest, after daybreak, and would now
show us the way to our hotel. Our farewell to the coachman, who came
beaming up to shake hands and receive thanks, was cold.
We had engaged rooms by letter a week in advance, but they had been
surrendered to earlier arrivals, and we were conducted to a private
house next door to the hotel. After the delays incident to waking an
entire family, we were taken into a large, untidy room, furnished with
dining table, sewing machine, and a half dozen decrepit chairs. There
was no water and no sign of toilet apparatus, but in an adjoining dark
closet were two narrow cots, from which the four daughters of the
house had just been routed. Of those beds which these sleepy children
were then, with unruffled sweetness and cheeriness, making ready for
us, the less said the better. Our indoor hours in Compostela, an
incessant battle against dirt, bad smells, and a most instructive
variety of vermin, were a penance that must have met all pilgrim
requirements. And yet these people spared no pains to make us
comfortable, so far as they understood comfort. At our slightest call,
were it only for a match, in would troop the mother, four daughters,
maid, dog, and cat, with any of the neighbors who might be visiting,
all eager to be of service. The girls were little models of sunny
courtesy, and would have been as pretty of face as they were charming
in manner, had not skin diseases and eye diseases told the tale of the
hideously unsanitary conditions in which their young lives had been
passed.
But we had come to the festival of Santiago, and it was worth its
price.