Gatherings From Spain - Ford Richard

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inveterate condition either of pronounced hostility, or at best of armed neutrality, has long rendered these localities disagreeable to the man of the note-book. The rugged mountain frontiers consist of a series of secluded districts, which constitute the entire world to the natives, who seldom go beyond the natural walls by which they are bounded, except to smuggle. This vocation is the curse of the country; it fosters a wild reliance on self-defence, a habit of border foray and insurrection, which seems as necessary to them as a moral excitement and combustible element, as carbon and hydrogen are in their physical bodies. Their habitual suspicion against prying foreigners, which is an Oriental and Iberian instinct, converts a curious traveller into a spy or partisan. Spanish authorities, who seldom do these things except on compulsion, cannot understand the gratuitous braving of hardship and danger for its own sake – the botanizing and geologizing, &c., of the nature and adventure-loving English. The impertinente curioso may possibly escape observation in a Spanish city and crowd, but in these lonely hills it is out of the question: he is the observed of all observers; and they, from long smuggling and sporting habits, are always on the look-out, and are keen-sighted as hawks, gipseys, and beasts of prey. Latterly some who, by being placed immediately under the French boundary, have seen the glitter of our tourists’ coin, have become more humanized, and anxious to obtain a share in the profits of the season.

THE PYRENEES

      The geology and botany have yet to be properly investigated. In the metal-pregnant Pyrenees rude forges of iron abound, but everything is conducted on a small, unscientific scale, and probably after the unchanged primitive Iberian system. Fuel is scarce, and transport of ores on muleback expensive. The iron is at once inferior to the English and much dearer: the tools and implements used on both sides of the Pyrenees are at least a century behind ours; while absurd tariffs, which prevent the importation of a cheaper and better article, retard improvements in agriculture and manufactures, and perpetuate poverty and ignorance among backward, half-civilised populations. The timber, moreover, has suffered much from the usual neglect, waste, and improvidence of the natives, who destroy more than they consume, and never replant. The sporting in these lonely wild districts is excellent, for where man seldom penetrates the feræ naturæ multiply: the bear is, however, getting scarce, as a premium is placed on every head destroyed. The grand object is the Cabra Montanez, or Rupicapra, German Steinbock, the Bouquetin of the French, the Izard (Ibex, becco, bouc, bock, buck). The fascination of this pursuit, like that of the Chamois in Switzerland, leads to constant and even fatal accidents, as this shy animal lurks in almost inaccessible localities, and must be stalked with the nicest skill. The sporting on the north side is far inferior, as the cooks of the table-d’hôtes have waged a guerra al cuchillo, a war to the knife, and fork too, against even les petits oiseaux; but your French artiste persecutes even minnows, as all sport and fair play is scouted, and everything gives way for the pot. The Spaniards, less mechanical and gastronomic, leave the feathered and finny tribes in comparative peace. Accordingly the streams abound with trout, and those which flow into the Atlantic with salmon. The lofty Pyrenees are not only alembics of cool crystal streams, but contain, like the heart of Sappho, sources of warm springs under a bosom of snow. The most celebrated issue on the north side, or at least those which are the most known and frequented, for the Spaniard is a small bather, and no great drinker of medicinal waters. Accommodations at the baths on his side scarcely exist, while even those in France are paltry when compared to the spas of Germany, and dirty and indecent when contrasted with those of England. The scenery is alpine, a jumble of mountain, precipice, glacier, and forest, enlivened by the cataract or hurricane. The natives, when not smugglers or guerrilleros, are rude, simple, and pastoral: they are poor and picturesque, as people are who dwell in mountains. Plains which produce “bread stuffs” may be richer, but what can a traveller or painter do with their monotonous commonplace?

      In these wild tracts the highlanders in summer lead their flocks up to mountain huts and dwell with their cattle, struggling against poverty and wild beasts, and endeavouring really to keep the wolf from the door: their watch-dogs are magnificent; the sheep are under admirable control – being, as it were, in the presence of the enemy, they know the voice of their shepherds, or rather the peculiar whistle and cry: their wool is largely smuggled into France, and when manufactured in the shape of coarse cloth is then re-smuggled back again.

THE RIVERS OF SPAIN

      CHAPTER III

      The Rivers of Spain – Bridges – Navigation – The Ebro and Tagus.

SPANISH RIVERS

      THERE are six great rivers in Spain, – the arteries which run between the seven mountain chains, the vertebræ of the geological skeleton. These water-sheds are each intersected in their extent by others on a minor scale, by valleys and indentations, in each of which runs its own stream. Thus the rains and melted snows are all collected in an infinity of ramifications, and are carried by these tributary conduits into one of the main trunks, which all, with the exception of the Ebro, empty themselves into the Atlantic. The Duero and Tagus, unfortunately for Spain, disembogue in Portugal, and thus become a portion of a foreign dominion exactly where their commercial importance is the greatest. Philip II. saw the true value of the possession of an angle which rounded Spain, and insured to her the possession of these valuable outlets of internal produce, and inlets for external commerce. Portugal annexed to Spain gave more real power to his throne than the dominion of entire continents across the Atlantic, and is the secret object of every Spanish government’s ambition. The Miño, which is the shortest of these rivers, runs through a bosom of fertility. The Tajo, Tagus, which the fancy of poets has sanded with gold and embanked with roses, tracks much of its dreary way through rocks and comparative barrenness. The Guadiana creeps through lonely Estremadura, infecting the low plains with miasma. The Guadalquivir eats out its deep banks amid the sunny olive-clad regions of Andalucia, as the Ebro divides the levels of Arragon. Spain abounds with brackish streams, Salados, and with salt-mines, or saline deposits after the evaporation of the sea-waters; indeed, the soil of the central portions is so strongly impregnated with “villainous saltpetre,” that the small province of La Mancha alone could furnish materials to blow up the world; the surface of these regions, always arid, is every day becoming more so, from the singular antipathy which the inhabitants of the interior have against trees. There is nothing to check the power of rapid evaporation, no shelter to protect or preserve moisture. The soil becomes more and more parched and dried up, insomuch that in some parts it has almost ceased to be available for cultivation: another serious evil, which arises from want of plantations, is, that the slopes of hills are everywhere liable to constant denudation of soil after heavy rain. There is nothing to break the descent of the water; hence the naked, barren stone summits of many of the sierras, which have been pared and peeled of every particle capable of nourishing vegetation: they are skeletons where life is extinct; not only is the soil thus lost, but the detritus washed down either forms bars at the mouths of rivers, or chokes up and raises their beds; they are thus rendered liable to overflow their banks, and convert the adjoining plains into pestilential swamps. The supply of water, which is afforded by periodical rains, and which ought to support the reservoirs of rivers, is carried off at once in violent floods, rather than in a gentle gradual disembocation. From its mountainous character Spain has very few lakes, as the fall is too considerable to allow water to accumulate; the exceptions which do exist might with greater propriety be termed lochs – not that they are to be compared in size or beauty to some of those in Scotland. The volume in the principal rivers of Spain has diminished, and is diminishing; thus some which once were navigable, are so no longer, while the artificial canals which were to have been substituted remain unfinished: the progress of deterioration advances, while little is done to counteract or amend what every year must render more difficult and expensive, while the means of repair and correction will diminish in equal proportion, from the poverty occasioned by the evil, and by the fearful extent which it will be allowed to attain. However, several grand water-companies have been lately formed, who are to dig Artesian wells, finish canals, navigate rivers with steamers, and issue shares at a premium, which will be effected if nothing else is.

SPANISH BRIDGES

      The rivers which are really adapted to navigation are, however, only those which are perpetually fed by those tributary streams that flow down from mountains which are covered with snow all the year, and these are not many. The majority

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