72

NIGHT TRAVELLING.

From Tolosa, in the afternoon, we followed the same picturesque, green valley, passing by iron mills, the machinery of which was moved by the current of the Oria, until we reached the little village of Bensain, where a yoke of oxen was fastened before our three mules, and we were dragged up into a wild region, among mountain summits and wastes overgrown with prickly shrubs. Here, after we had dismissed our oxen, we entered Villareal, a poor village lying in a little hollow, where we met the first beggars we had seen in Spain. An old woman rang a little bell at one of our carriage windows, and a little boy whimpered a long prayer for alms, in Basque. Not far from this place we took on another yoke of oxen, and slowly climbed a lonely mountain road, full of short turns, while the darkness of the night gathered round us, and drove the rain violently against our carriage windows. Not long after we had reached the summit a light appeared, and when we came opposite to it our coachman stopped his mules, alighted, and went into a little building, where we saw at the windows and the open door several men in a military uniform. It was a station of the Guardia Civil, a body of armed men by whom the highways are watched; presently our coachman reappeared with a lighted segar in his mouth and a flaming military coat on his back. He was followed by a man in the same uniform, carrying a carbine, who took his station on the hinder step of our carriage, kindled a match, took a good look at our party by its flame, lighted his segar by it, and began smoking away quite at his ease. To our questions he returned

VERGARA. A CLEANLY INN.

73

civil and copious answers. times to accompany carriages on that road, but his presence .with us that night was altogether accidental, inasmuch as he happened to be at the station, and wished to go to Vergara. There had been, he added, no robberies thereabouts for some time past-only one, in fact, within the year, and before that none for a long time. I inferred, from the strain of his talk, that he wished to magnify his office; but the rest of our party were confident that it was his regular duty to attend carriages, passing up and down the mountain in the hours of darkness, and protect them from robbers, and that he was with us for that special purpose.

It was his office, he said, some

We now rolled down the mountain, with our new guard clinging faithfully to the back step, rattled through Anzuelo, with its great houses and dark streets, and entering Vergara, stopped at the Parador de las Postas, as nice a place as an English inn, where we found a good-looking landlady and neat-handed domestics, and rooms as clean and bright as a Dutch parlor, with excellent beds. "Do not look for luxuries, or even for what you call comforts, in the inns on your journey to Madrid," said one of our friends at San Sebastian. "These you will not find, but you will find great cleanliness." We have been thus far agreeably disappointed in seeing the promise of cleanliness so well fulfilled.

When we left Vergara, the next morning, the fogs were hanging about the grand rocks and mountains in which the place is embosomed, and here and there touching with their

74

A PEASANT GIRL.

the

skirts the Deva, which brawled through it. We went up stream, through another green valley. At a little distance from the town a healthy-looking young woman, in a white knit basque and blue petticoat, with a gay kerchief tied round her head, and another crossed over her bosom, three strings of red beads round her neck, and a large flat basket strapped over her shoulders, suddenly made her appearance, standing on the step at the back of our carriage. We supposed she was there by some understanding with the coachman; and as she had a bright, cheerful face, we had no objection, and immediately entered into a dialogue with her. Her name, she said, was Eusebia; she could read a little; she subsisted by sewing; she had been on a visit to Vergara, and was now returning to Vitoria, where she had a brother. As we proceeded, we frequently saw peasant boys watching flocks of long-woolled white and black sheep on the mountain sides; and in one place a man and woman were busy in pulling something from the ground. "They are gathering fern," said Eusebia. The whole region, in fact, at certain heights from the valley, was discolored with ferns, which had turned of a dull red. The girl pointed to some large stacks of the same color, standing by the houses of the peasants."They spread them," she said, "under the feet of the cattle."

They have grand names in Spain for ugly villages— Mendragon, Archivaleta, Escoriaza, Castanares-through all which we passed, the good-natured Eusebia naming them for us. At length our coachman, who had made himself

THE

CANTABRIAN

MOUNTAINS.

75

hoarse and tired the day before, with shouting at his mules and flogging them, and was now beginning to urge them forward by the same methods, perceived by the shadow of the carriage on the road-side that he had a superfluous passenger, and giving her a cruel cut or two with the long lash of his whip, compelled her to get down. We were sorry to lose her, since, though not very fluent in Castilian, she told us many things which we wished to know.

As the fog cleared away, lofty peaks of bare rock, of a whitish hue, were seen rising above the greener summits by which we were surrounded. We took on a pair of oxen, and climbed a ridge of the Cantabrian mountains. People were gathering chestnuts along the way; boys, mounted on the trees, were striking off the fruit with poles, and women below were stripping them from their husks, and carrying them away in bags poised on their heads. We passed an old, walled town, Salinas, below which, in a deep ravine, murmured the Deva; and here salt springs break out of the earth, the waters of which are intercepted on their way to the river, and evaporated to salt, by artificial heat. We saw the smoke rising from the salt-works, three or four hundred feet below us.

It cannot be said that every thing stands still in Spain; they are certainly improving their roads, and that is one important mark of progress. We were travelling on an excellent macadamized road; but on the opposite side of the deep glen of the Deva was another, leading around the

76

ROADS IN SPAIN.

curves of the mountain, with a gentler ascent. "That," said our coachman, "is the new road to Vitoria."

66

Why do you not travel it?" I asked.

"Because," he replied, "it is longer. It is not so steep, nor so uneven; but it is a league further to Vitoria by that way."

It is not easy to turn the Spanish people from the old track. They like old customs, old prejudices, old roads.

Beyond Salinas we were accosted a second time by beggars. Several children trotted by the side of the carriage, asking alms, and at the summit of the mountain sat a ragged man, with a head of enormous size, attended by a boy, whom he sent forth as his messenger to the passers-by. We were now in a country of pastures-a cold, high region, from which descending gradually, we emerged into fields of tilth, and found ourselves on the plain of Vitoria. Here the Zadorra eats its way through the crumbling soil, till it issues from the plain by a pass among the mountains to the west. We drove through a dreary straight avenue of poplars, between a vast extent of fields ploughed for the next harvest, and passing by the steep streets of old Vitoria, seated on a hill, entered the new town, between goodly rows of houses built within the last five years.

At the Parador de las Postas, to which we had been recommended, we could find no rooms; and at the Parador Viejo only gloomy ones. We applied at the Parador Nuevo, where a dame of stately person, with the air of one who unwillingly confers a favor, showed us more cheerful ones,