After we left _Girone_ we passed thro' a fine country, but not equal to
that which is between _Jonquire_ and that town; we lay the first night
at a _veritiable_ Spanish _posada_; it was a single house, called the
_Grenade_. We arrived there early in the afternoon; and though the
inside of the house was but so-so, every thing without was charming, and
our host and his two daughters gave us the best they had, treated us
with civility enough; and gave us good advice in the prosecution of our
journey to Barcelona; for about four leagues from this house, we found
two roads to that city, one on the side of the Mediterranean Sea, the
other inland. He advised us to take the former, which exactly tallied
with my inclination, for wherever the sea-coast affords a road in hot
climates, that must be the pleasantest; and I was very impatient till we
got here.
After we had left the high inland road, we had about three leagues to
the sea side, and the village on its margin where we were to lie; this
road was through a very wild, uncultivated country, over-run with
underwood and tall firs. We saw but few houses and met with fewer
people. When we came near the sea, the country, however, improved upon
us; and the farms, churches, convents, and beacons, upon the high lands,
rendered the prospects every way pleasing. We crossed a shallow river
several times, adorned on both sides with an infinite quantity of tall
beeches, on one of which trees (boy like) I cut my name, too high for
_other boys_, without a ladder, to cut me _out_ again. At length we
arrived at the village, and at a _posada_, than which nothing could be
more dreadful, after the day-light was gone; for beside the rudest
mistress, and the dirtiest servants that can be conceived, there lay a
poor Frenchman dying in the next room to us; nay, I may almost say, in
the same room with us, for it could hardly be called a door which parted
us. This poor man, who had not a shilling in his pocket, had lain twenty
days ill in that house; but was attended by the priests of the town with
as much assiduity as if he had been a man of fashion: he had been often
exhorted by them, it seems, to confess, but had refused. The night we
came, he feared would be his last, and he determined to make his
confession; I was in the room when he signified his desire so to do; and
all the people were dismissed by the parish priest. I returned to my
room, and could now and then hear what the priest said: but the sick
man's voice was too low: his crimes however, I fear, were of an high
nature, for we heard the priest say, with a voice of impatience and
seeming horror, _Adonde--adonde--adonde_?--Where--where--where?
You may imagine, a bad supper, lighted by stinking oil, burning in an
iron lamp hung against the side of a wall, (for there were no candles to
be had) and while the sick man was receiving the last sacrament, would
have been little relished had it been good; that our dirty straw beds
were no very comfortable retreat; and that day-light the next morning
was what we most wanted and wished for. Indeed, I never spent a more
miserable night; but it was amply made up to us by this day's journey to
_Martory_, for we coasted it along the sea, which sometimes washed the
wheels of my chaise At others, we crossed over high head-lands, which
afforded such extensive views over both elements, as abundantly overpaid
us for the sufferings of the preceding evening. The roads, indeed, over
these head-lands were bad enough, in some places dangerous; but between
walking and riding, with a steady horse, we got on very well.
On this coast, we found a village at every league, inhabited by rich
fishermen, and wealthy ship-builders, and found all these artificers
busy enough in their professions; in some places, there were an hundred
men dragging in, by bodily strength, the _Saine_; at others, still more
surprising, ships of two hundred tons were building on the dry land,
where no tide rises to launch them! These villages are built close to
the sea; nothing intervenes between their houses and the ocean but their
little gardens, in which, under the shade of their orange, lemon, and
vine trees, which were loaded with fruit, sat the wives and daughters of
the fishermen, making black silk lace. Though I call them villages, and
though they are in reality so, yet the houses were such, in general, as
would make a good figure even in a fine city; for they were all well
built, and many adorned on the outside with no contemptible paintings.
The town, indeed, from which I write, is situated in the same manner,
but is a little city, and affords a _posada_, (I speak by comparison,
remember) comfortable enough; and the sea a fish, they call the red
fish, than which nothing can be more delicious; I may venture almost to
call it the sea woodcock, for it is eaten altogether in the same manner.
We fared better than my poor horse, for not a grain of oats or barley
did this city afford; nor has he tasted, or have I seen, a morsel of hay
since I parted from my little _Dona_, near the foot of the _Pyrenees_.
Tomorrow we have seven hours to _Barcelona_; I can see the high cape
under which it stands, and from under which, you shall soon hear again
from me.