89

62

SUFFERINGS FROM THIRST.

belled and arranged, drugs enough to kill twice the number of the inmates of the House of Mercy; but we were gratified to learn that not much use was made of them. One department of the institution is a Hospital, with ample wards and a large number of beds, most of which, I perceived, were unoccupied. Here the same scrupulous neatness seemed to prevail as in the other rooms, and the same careful attention to ventilation. The Hospital is divided into two departments, the medical and surgical; in the surgical department for males there was no patient-beggars do not often break their bones-in that of the women there were but two or three.

In passing through the various compartments of the institution, we were taken into the bread-room, where one of the Sisters of Charity was occupied in dividing the loaves into rations. There was a finer and more delicate kind of bread for the patients in the Hospital, and a coarser kind, yet light and sweet, for the healthy inmates. "You do not let your people suffer from hunger," said I, to the sister who had charge of this room. "No," she replied, "of hunger they never complain; their great suffering is from thirst; they get enough to eat, they acknowledge, but they do not get enough to drink." The history of the Almshouse of San Sebastian is, in this respect, I suppose, like that of other almshouses, and people qualify themselves for admission to it by the same practices.

As we took leave of our smiling and cheerful conductress, a venerable lady presented herself, who held the place of Lady Superior among these Sisters of Charity, and who

THE VALLEY OF LOYOLA.

63

was on a visit to the institution. She inquired from what part of the world we came, and being told from North America, began to speak of her acquaintances in Mexico. It was not easy to make her comprehend the distance of New York from Mexico, so we did not insist much on that point. As we had seen the House of Mercy in San Sebastian, she told us we must see that of Tolosa, which was, if any thing, still more admirably managed; and if we were going to Madrid, we must see the one at Madrid. Finally, she went and brought another distinguished sister, whom she introduced to F., and after a short colloquy, in which the recommendation to visit the House of Mercy at Tolosa, and the one at Madrid, was repeated, they both embraced and kissed my companion, and took their leave.

For myself, I wished to see a little of the environs of the city, in the way in which they could be seen to most advantage, and I strayed off on a pedestrian exercise to the valley of Loyola, a pretty spot on the river Urumea. An excellent road led me to about two miles from the city, along which Basque women with huge baskets on their heads were passing; the younger of them having for the most part fine figures, and some of them pleasing faces. These kept up a lively dialogue with each other as they went, and made the valley ring with their laughter. To my greeting of buenos dias, they replied with the still more idiomatic greeting of agur. The road on which I was passing at length degenerated into a bridle road, over which, however, I could see that the rude carts of the country had stumbled, but it still led by coun

64

VINEYARDS

ABANDONED.

try houses, and fields of Indian corn and apple orchards. Here vineyards once flourished, from the fruit of which a poor wine called chacoli was made, and none of any other kind was allowed to be brought into San Sebastian till the chacoli was drunk out. The repeal of this prohibition, I suppose, led to the abandonment of the grape culture, and now there are no vineyards; yet the vine has taken possession of the soil, and, on each side of the way, twines its unfruitful shoots with the blackberry bushes and hazels, and a sort of green briar, almost as prickly as that of our own country.

It was an oversight not to mention in my last that the House of Mercy at San Sebastian owed its flourishing condition to private beneficence. Many persons have given it large sums; among others, Don Antonio de Zavaleta, a native of the city, who, having emigrated to Havana and become rich, bequeathed to it in 1837 one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. I asked the Sister of Mercy in the thin white hood and blue petticoat, who conducted us over the place, what was the number of its inmates. "We have in the whole," she replied, "about four hundred persons. In the almshouse there are a hundred and four men, about ninety women, mostly old, and ninety boys or more. The girls, who are not so many as the boys, and the patients in the hospitals, make up the number." There is a department of the hospital of which she said nothing, and which, of course, was not shown us, the Sala de Maternidad, or Hall of Maternity, a sort of Lying-in Hospital, a refuge, as it is called in a Spanish pamphlet lying before me, for mujeres

66

GRAVES OF BRITISH OFFICERS.

embarazadas, in which the strictest secrecy is observed as to the name of the person admitted, and the place whence she comes, these being known only to the chaplain. Her only designation is a certain number; so that the news of the morning in this department of the Hospital is that the doctor has been called to Number Three, and that Number Seven is as well as could be expected.

Do not suppose, however, that this is the extent of what the good people of San Sebastian do for the poor. They have their charitable associations here, as well as with us; and sixteen ladies are the agents by whom the contributions thus gathered are distributed among those who, in their opinion, need and deserve relief.

All the English who come to San Sebastian, visit, of course, the graves of the British officers who fell in the siege of the place, in 1813, and in the bloody civil war twentythree years later, in which England took part. They lie almost in the shadow of the citadel, on a part of Mount Orgollo, which looks across the sea towards England, among enormous blocks of stone scattered about, as if a sudden convulsion of the earth had broken them from the mother rock. I cannot imagine a grander place of sepulture than these craggy steeps, beside the ever-murmuring ocean. went up to the top of the citadel, which, by command of the government, is now open to citizens and strangers without distinction, and looked out upon a magnificent panorama of sea and mountain, of which the central part, to the landward, was the valley of Loyola, where it is said the founder of the

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