CHAPTER VI
WESTERN ASTURIAS
This spirited attempt to corner the entire{114} passenger traffic was hotly resented by a partner in a rival firm; an unprincipled operator who endeavoured to gain control of the market by the most shameless rate-cutting. He would take us across for six reals! for five reals! for four!! He followed us down the street, waving his arms and gesticulating and pitching his voice a tone higher at every bid. But the old dame resolutely headed off all his attempts to get at her convoy; silenced his feebler abuse with broadsides of the bitterest sarcasm; and finally expressed her scorn for competition and equilibrium by a dance of derision executed upon the poop as the boat shoved off into the bay.
RIVADEO An Approach to the Harbour.
RIVADEO
An Approach to the Harbour.
We had made bold to confide somewhat in{115} fortune when we embarked on this stage of our campaign. The map gave no pledge of a road, and the guide-books were equally uncommitted. Borrow, indeed, had traversed the province, with his honest guide, Martin of Rivadeo; but Borrow made his journey on horseback, and his description did not lead one to infer that there was any opening for wheels. Yet our trust in the chapter of accidents brought a suitably generous reward.
Take the mountains of the Lake District, and double their height; plant them under an Italian sky behind a Cornish coast; add plenty of old broad-eaved, balconied houses, not unlike Swiss chalets, a primitive picturesque population clad in bright colours, and draught cattle, ploughs, waggons, pack mules, and other appointments en suite. Such a picture is fairly typical of the scenes that awaited us upon our way. Here the road dipped to carry us past the end of a rocky inlet, where the waves were breaking upon the chesil beach some fifty yards away. Here it rose again to disclose a panorama of sea and mountain, with the thin blue smoke of the charcoal burners’ fires trailing lazily across the plateau or wreathing itself around the shoulders of the hills. To Borrow’s eyes it had all seemed gloomy and desolate; but{116} he had traversed it in the mists of a stormy autumn, and beneath the halcyon skies of summer it is a veritable fairyland.
There is no chance of “shirking the fences.” Each ridge terminates in a bold and lofty headland, each valley in a rocky creek; and seventy years ago those deep narrow gorges must have been ugly places enough. But Borrow’s stony bridle-path is now a fine broad roadway, his “miserable venta” is a comfortable inn; and he certainly would not{117} have troubled to push on to Muros had he found such good entertainment as did we.
THE NAVIA VALLEY
THE NAVIA VALLEY
Mine host was a stout and jovial yeoman with a loud voice and a hearty laugh. He sat very wide at the head of the table, and promised us that we should have our cutlets raw. “What! Were we not Englishmen? And should he set cooked meat before Englishmen? No, indeed; that perfectly comprehended itself. Spaniards ate cooked meat, but Englishmen devoured it raw.” Of course (as a special concession) we might have them cooked—“á la Española.” But this without prejudice to the eternal verity that “á la Inglesa” was “raw.” We struggled in vain to persuade him that we knew as much about England as he did. An Asturian dalesman is commonly reputed capable of driving a nail into a wall with his head. But so long as his principles were not controverted he certainly was excellent company for his guests. He regaled us with a capital white wine, “Vino Castellano” (I suppose from the Medina del Campo district, which is the only place where I know of white wine in Castile); he discoursed to us on the beauties of Právia and the excellence of Asturian cider; and sped us at parting with the assurance that there were very few hills on the road. But{118} this last piece of information (as we subsequently discovered) was to be accepted in a strictly Asturian sense.
The main road drops in to call at Luarca, but it is quite unaware of the existence of Cudillero, and but for the directions of an auspicious waggoner{119} we might have strayed past it altogether. A break-neck descent of a mile or so eventually brought us on to the roofs of some houses; and it presently transpired that the town was “underneath.” Down we plunged into it by a ricketty corkscrew street, as steep as that at Clovelly; ducked under the weather-beaten old church which is plugged like a bung in the outlet; and eventually emerged at the waterside, where the fishwives were sitting in a long parti-coloured fringe along the edge of the quay, armed with their large flat baskets, and awaiting the return of the boats.
I was down in the harbour early in the morning for the purpose of sketching, and so also were a goodly contingent of the townsfolk, intent on their morning dip. It is a libel on the Spanish nation to imagine that they do not wash. Perhaps it is true of the central plains,—poor people, they{120} lack the water, but all along the coast they are much given to bathing. The women stroll unconcernedly down to the beach, armed with a huge towel and a sort of glorified sack which serves as a bathing costume. The huge towel, spread over their heads, envelopes them completely, and under cover of it they make their toilet. At Cudillero the beach where the boats were drawn up was reserved for the women, and the men bathed off the rocks a little distance away. But neither party made any pretence of privacy; and there is an air of primitive innocency about the whole proceeding which forbids all notion of offence.
Another primitive sight, though of a different character, was awaiting me as I re-entered the town. It was Sunday morning, and the early Mass was being celebrated in the church at the stairfoot of the roadway. The building was crowded even beyond its utmost capacity, for a long queue of kneeling worshippers had thrust itself out from the open door, like bees hanging from a hive when they are about to swarm. Whatever may be the case in the cities, it is certain that the peasantry are as devout as ever in their religious observances; and once or twice{121} upon holy days we have found the highway itself absolutely blocked with a crowd of worshippers intent on their orisons before some wayside shrine.
CUDILLERO The Harbour.
CUDILLERO
The Harbour.
We regained the high road above Cudillero by a long winding ascent; and leaving far below us on our left the beautiful estuary of Muros, bore up into the mountains for the secluded vale of Právia at the confluence of the Narcea and the Nalon. “Právia is better than Switzerland,” our host at Bellotas had informed us, and we do not wish to deny it. But the comparison could only be made by one who had never seen Switzerland, for there is nothing in common between the two. Our own Lake District would supply a nearer parallel; but I know nothing quite like Právia except Právia itself; a meeting-place of many valleys with vistas of mountain scenery opening out on every side. Yet the heart of the range still holds remote and invisible. It is not till we have progressed some distance up the Nalon valley, and are drawing near to Oviedo, that we get acquainted with the higher peaks. Then, indeed, the scale becomes truly Alpine, and the valleys which lie across our path would not discredit Piedmont or Savoy.
Oviedo is not a town for which I have ever been able to acquire much enthusiasm. A traveller{122} newly landed from France might find it delightfully Spanish, but to one who is fresh from the interior it has a flavour of underdone French. It lies amid beautiful scenery, but just out of sight of the best of it; and perhaps, as it is bent upon a career of commercial enterprise, this retirement is creditable to its taste. Yet its situation is by no means commonplace, its atmosphere not generally smoky, and its fine old palaces and narrow cobbled calles must be allowed to weigh something in the balance against its boulevards and tram-lines and plate-glass.
The children seem afflicted with an uncontrollable mania for getting their pictures taken. Perhaps{123} there is thought to be luck in it, for even their elders are not entirely exempt. This fact accounts for the presence of the venerable Sereno in the foreground of my drawing of the cathedral. He insisted on shaking hands with me for my kindness in putting him there, although I had conceived the obligation to be all on my side.
These quaint old watchmen are a sort of hall-mark of municipal respectability. No Spanish city “of any degree of ton” would think of dispensing with its Serenos. Indeed, in some instances the Sereno has survived where the city is now little more than a name. Fine picturesque old figures clad in cloaks and slouch hats, and armed with javelins and lanterns,—(the towns are all lighted by electricity, but that is a detail),—they give a deliciously old-world flavour to the deserted streets at night. It is questionable whether they would be much use in a row; for like our own late lamented “Charlies,” they are often aged and infirm. But their pictorial effect is incomparable: and they are real good Samaritans to the belated reveller, for they carry the keys of all the street doors on their beat, so that the errant householder can always steal quietly to cover, after he has awakened half the parish in summoning “Ser-êno-o!{124}”
The people of Oviedo,—and, indeed, all Asturians and Gallegans,—are esteemed an inferior race by your true Castilian. The prejudice is rather puzzling: for “the mountains” are the cradle of the oldest and bluest blood in Spain. But it is of very old standing; for even the Cid Campeador, when administering the oath to Alfonso VI. (who was suspected of complicity in King Sancho’s{125} murder[16]), could devise no more humiliating adjuration than “If you swear falsely, may you be slain by an Oviedan!”
OVIEDO A Street near the Cathedral.
OVIEDO
A Street near the Cathedral.
Perhaps the early warriors who sallied forth to achieve the reconquest despised those who remained quietly behind in the mountains. And when in later days royalty and chivalry made their home in the south, the simpler northerners would come to be regarded as boors. Even to this day the Asturian peasant seems to lack something of the formality of the Castilian. He is less punctilious in enquiring “how you have passed the night” of a morning; less prompt with the regular roadside greeting, “May your honour go with God!” The slurring of these little niceties may possibly be sufficient to brand him as a “bounder”; and there is no stigma more hard to obliterate than this.
For all these courteous trifles are the shibboleth of high breeding to a Spaniard, and a terrible stumbling-block to the blunt-spoken Englishman,—so apt to give unwitting offence. The Spanish generals always waited on Wellington to ask how he had slept, even when they knew that he had watched all night in the trenches. If they omitted{126} the ceremony they feared he would deem himself slighted. “On the contrary,” quoth Alava drily, “he will be very much obliged.”
Storm succeeded storm throughout the night,{127} and the outlook next morning was far from promising. But we took our courage in both hands and started at the first break in the downpour. The valley was choked with mist, and the road in a state of unutterable slabbiness: yet our enterprise was soon rewarded, for the weather had done its worst in the darkness, and the sunshine brought the vapours steaming up out of the meadows and banished them with the clouds across the summits of the hills.
Hitherto the ascent has been gradual; but now the road takes to the side of the mountain, and heaves itself up from shoulder to shoulder in a vast skein of steadily rising zigzags; while the railway which has so far accompanied it wanders off by itself into remote lateral valleys, groping for an easy gradient{128} to help it up its four-thousand-foot climb. Twenty miles by road from Lena, and over thirty by rail, the approach to the summit is long and arduous, though redeemed by most lovely views. We have a vivid recollection of the glass of water which was bestowed upon us by the woman in charge of the level crossing at the foot of the final ascent. She was a Navarrese woman, and the water was the most delicious in the world!
The step which carries us across the Pass of Pajares is one of the most decisive of any we have{129} yet taken. It spans the frontier of Leon and Asturias, the boundary of the realms of cloud and sun. The ridge parts not merely two provinces but two climates, and we seem to enter the tropics at a stride. Behind lies the green and flowery valley, and the heathery slopes half veiled in tender haze; before are the hot bare rocks, and the parched grass toasting itself under the stare of the sunshine; and though the Atlantic clouds bank thick upon the northward, it is only an occasional straggler who ventures across to the south.
The scenery is perhaps less attractive, but on the whole even more striking; for the rocks, as in all Spanish landscapes, take most daring and original forms. The most remarkable example is near the foot of the descent, just before arriving at the village of Pola de Gordon. Here the limestone strata have been tilted up absolutely vertical, hard layers alternating with soft, like the fat and lean in a piece of streaky bacon. The principal hard layer forms the precipitous face of a mountain, and stretches for a mile or more along the river, like a huge surcharged retaining wall. The complementary layers are at first buried in the mass behind; but presently the ridge dips to give passage to the river, and rises again beyond{130} in a bold conical hill, so that all the layers become at once exposed. The soft strata at this point are entirely weathered away, and the hard remain, like huge parallel cock’s-combs, rising as straight and steep as the parapets of a gigantic stairway. These razor-back limestone ridges are a very characteristic feature of Spanish mountain scenery; but nowhere else have I seen them quite so strongly marked as here.
IN THE PASS OF PAJÁRES Near Pola de Gordon.
IN THE PASS OF PAJÁRES
Near Pola de Gordon.
We finally slipped from the valley at the village{131} of La Robla, and mounted onto the bare, brown moorlands that slope towards the city of Leon. The mountains come to a halt behind us as abruptly as if they were toeing a line; and the vast level sweeping away from their feet to the southward is broken only by the deeply grooved valleys of the Esla’s tributary streams. The effect is somewhat similar to the line of the Merionethshire mountains breaking down into the Morfa. But this remarkable emphasising of primary physical features is specially characteristic of the geology of Spain. Leon itself lies low beside the river, and only comes into view when we are close upon it; but the cathedral spires are just high enough to overtop the upland, and form a solitary landmark for several miles around.{132}