112

PEOPLE ON THE ROAD.

in the sun, and its upper floor was a foot higher on one side than on the other. Near at hand was the place from which the building materials were taken, a deep pit in the ground. A tall, grim, slatternly woman, with a prodigiously sharp voice, gave us a sort of breakfast over-seasoned with garlic, but made tolerable by good bread and plenty of grapes. Α dessert in Spain is as much a part of the breakfast as of the dinner, and plates of fruit always conclude the early meal.

When we resumed our journey, we needed not to be told that we were in a great high road between city and city, for it actually swarmed with huge, high-loaded wagons, drawn each by ten or a dozen mules in pairs, heavy-wheeled carts of a like description, trains of loaded mules with their sturdy guides, and peasant men and women, trudging on foot or jogging along on donkeys. Among these were a comfortably dressed man and woman, carrying a child between them, and keeping their donkeys on a gentle trot, whom we passed regularly every day of our journey, and who must have got to Madrid nearly as soon as we. At Gumiel, which we passed in the afternoon, it was a delight to the eyes to see half the country overspread with vineyards, though sallow with the season, and though the plants were low, without stalk or prop, and almost trailed on the ground. Here we fell in with large parties of laboring people, of both sexes, travelling on foot, some astonishingly ragged and dirty, and others in clothes tolerably whole and clean. It was remarkable how the raggedest and dirtiest herded together. They had all a merry look, and were evidently amused at some

thing exotic in our appearance, for they pointed us out to each other, laughing and chatting in what was doubtless very good Castilian. "These are the people that gather the grapes; it is the time of the vintage," said one of our coachmen. The vintage, in fact, is a joyous time in all countries, and I no longer wondered that these ragged people wore such bright faces.

A little before nightfall we reached Aranda, and stopping at a wretched inn, found the dirty streets of that wretched place full of vintagers. I walked out among these blinking Castilians, in their knee-breeches and velvet caps, some of them wrapped in great brown cloaks, lounging and gossiping about. The old pavement of the town had been trodden deep into the earth, and was covered with dust; a large, long building of much pretension, with turrets, probably once a palace, stood unroofed, and moss was gathering on the broken eaves. Beyond it murmured the Duero, flowing under a stately bridge, with a little plantation of locust trees on the opposite bank; but just before I reached the Duero, I was surrounded by an atmosphere which decided me to proceed no further. On my left, close to the road, was a little enclosure of about half an acre, surrounded by a low, broken stone-wall, which, to judge by its appearance, was a place of universal resort for the people of Aranda. If they could quote Shakspeare, it seemed to me that there was not one of them who might not say with reference to that spot,

"Oh, my offence is rank; it smells to heaven."

114

A DIRTY TOWN AND INN.

I returned to our inn, and was almost as much astonished at what I saw in the street which passed under its back windows. The servant women of the house had their faces literally plastered with dirt. They managed, however, to put clean sheets on our beds, and to give us a quarter of roast lamb and some bread for supper. We inquired of our coachman whether there was not a better inn in the place, but he replied that they were all alike, which we afterwards discovered was false, for the diligence companies have established a parador in the place, where travellers are very passably lodged.

We had an uncomfortable time that night with the fleas, which, I suppose, swarmed up from the stables below; and we were not sorry to leave our beds and our dirty inn with early light. We got down stairs by stepping over the bodies of about a dozen muleteers, who, wrapped in their blankets, lay snoring on the floor of an antechamber, and proceeded on our way through a country of vineyards, to which the laborers were going at an early hour. From some of them the fruit had already been gathered, and goats were let in, attended by a keeper, to browse on the foliage. In others, they were collecting the clusters into enormous baskets, which were to be carried to the wine-press on the backs of mules and asses; the animals stood by, waiting to be loaded. We stopped at one large vineyard, asked for some grapes, which were given us with full hands, and the people seemed surprised when we offered to pay for them.

At Boceguillas, where we made our midday halt, we

EVERGREEN

OAKS.

115

found a decent inn, and were waited on by two or three comely and cleanly-looking young women, with whom our two drivers seemed on very friendly terms. A few hours' drive afterwards brought us to what we were glad to see, a grove of scattered evergreen oaks, rising, with their dark green dense tops, out of the ash-colored waste. Fatigued as our eyes were with looking on barren earth and brown rocks, I can hardly describe the delight with which we gazed on those noble trees, close to some of which we passed. This grove, which covers several hundred acres, had doubtless been spared for the sake of its fruit; for it is this oak that produces the bellota, the sweet acorn, gathered and eaten raw by the people; in Madrid it is sold at almost every corner of the streets.

We had a range of mountains before us, and were rising at every step into a chillier atmosphere, when our vehicle stopped for the night in the neighborhood of a little village, at a large, dismal building, called Venta de Juanilla, or Jenny's Tavern. A well-dressed man, with a boy by his side, was standing at the entrance, and as we alighted, hurried into the house, and began to call for rooms. Jenny was not at home, but there were two half-wild servants in the house, one of whom was remarkable for her breadth of chest, resounding voice, and bright, round eyes; and these girls, after some rummaging for keys, got rooms, both for the gentleman's party and our own. We could get nothing to eat, however, till Jenny herself, a short, dark-browed woman, came home from the village and opened her pantry. Our

116

A FAMILY IN A ᏟᎪᎡᎢ .

apartment consisted of a sort of sitting-room, with a bare tile floor, and was scantily lighted by four panes of glass, set in the wooden shutters. Into this sitting-room opened two dark rooms, called alcoves, in each of which were two beds. This arrangement of sitting and sleeping-rooms is very common in Spain, south of the Basque provinces.

The party who had preceded us in getting rooms, consisted of a gentleman and his wife, who were fashionably attired, with two children and two maidservants. They were travelling in a cart, covered with an awning of white calico, and drawn by two mules. They had resorted to this method of travelling, because it was not possible, at this time of the year, to obtain seats for so many in the diligence from Bayonne, and probably, also, because it was less expensive than such a conveyance as our own. These carts are a sort of moving couch, I was told; the bottom is covered with mattress upon mattress, and the passengers travel quite luxuriantly, though, of course, very slowly.

The covered cart, with its passengers, set out before us the next morning; and at five we came from our gloomy rooms, and continued the ascent of the mountain range which divides Old from New Castile. Smooth russet-colored pastures sloped on each side to the road, where trickled a little brook, which, in the course of thousands of years, had worn that narrow pass. At the summit, about sunrise, in a keen, cold atmosphere, we came to the village of Somosierra, seated among rocks and mountain hollows, looking almost like a little nook in the mountains of Switzerland, with rivulets