Gatherings From Spain Part 2

The Tagus rises in that extraordinary jumble of mountains, full of fossil bones, botany, and trout, that rise between Cuenca and Teruel, and which being all but unknown, clamour loudly for the disciples of Isaac Walton and Dr. Buckland. It disembogues into the sea at Lisbon, having flowed 375 miles in Spain, of which nature destined it to be the aorta. The Toledan chroniclers derive the name from Tagus, fifth king of Iberia, but Bochart traces it to _Dag_, Dagon, a fish, as besides being considered auriferous, the ancients p.r.o.nounced it to be piscatory. Not that the present Spaniards trouble their head more about the fishes here than if they were crocodiles. Grains of gold are indeed found, but barely enough to support a poet, by amphibious paupers, called _artesilleros_ from their baskets, in which they collect the sand, which is pa.s.sed through a sieve.

[Sidenote: NAVIGATION OF THE TAGUS.]

The Tagus might easily be made navigable to the sea, and then with the Xarama connect Madrid and Lisbon, and facilitate importation of colonial produce, and exportation of wine and grain. Such an act would confer more benefits upon Spain than ten thousand _charters_ or paper const.i.tutions, guaranteed by the sword of Narvaez, or the word and honour of Louis-Philippe. The performance has been contemplated by many _foreigners_, the Toledans looking lazily on; thus in 1581, Antonelli, a Neapolitan, and Juanelo Turriano, a Milanese, suggested the scheme to Philip II., then master of Portugal; but money was wanting--the old story--for his revenues were wasted in relic-removing and in building the useless Escorial, and nothing was made except water parties, and odes to the "wise and great king" who _was_ to perform the deed, to the tune of Macbeth's witches, "_I'll do, I'll do, I'll do_," for here the future is preferred to the present tense. The project dozed until 1641, when two other _foreigners_, Julio Martelli and Luigi Carduchi, in vain roused Philip IV. from his siesta, who soon after losing Portugal itself, forthwith forgot the Tagus. Another century glided away, when in 1755 Richard Wall, an Irishman, took the thing up; but Charles III., busy in waging French wars against England, wanted cash. The Tagus has ever since, as it roared over its rocky bed, like an unbroken barb, laughed at the Toledan who dreamily angles for impossibilities on the bank, invoking Brunel, Hercules, and Rothschild, instead of putting his own shoulder to the water-wheel. In 1808 the scheme was revived: Fro Xavier de Cabanas, who had studied in England our system of ca.n.a.ls, published a survey of the whole river; this folio '_Memoria sobre la Navigation del Tajo_,' or, 'Memoir on the Navigation of the Tagus,'

Madrid, 1829, reads like the blue book of one discovering the source of the Nile, so desert-like are the unpeopled, uncultivated districts between Toledo and Abrantes. Ferd. VII. thereupon issued an approving _paper_ decree, and so there the thing ended, although Cabanas had engaged with Messrs. Wallis and Mason for the machinery, &c. Recently the project has been renewed by Senor Bermudez de Castro, an intelligent gentleman, who, from long residence in England, has imbibed the schemes and energy of the foreigner. _Veremos!_ "we shall see;" for hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper, says Bacon; and in Spain things are begun late in the day, and never finished; so at least says the proverb:--_En Espana se empieza tarde, y se acaba nunca_.

[Sidenote: DIVISION INTO PROVINCES.]

CHAPTER IV.

Divisions into Provinces--Ancient Demarcations--Modern Departments--Population--Revenue--Spanish Stocks.

In the divisions of the Peninsula which are effected by mountains, rivers, and climate, a leading principle is to be traced throughout, for it is laid down by the unerring hand of nature. The artificial, political, and conventional arrangement into kingdoms and provinces is entirely the work of accident and absence of design.

These provincial divisions were formed by the gradual union of many smaller and previously independent portions, which have been taken into Spain as a whole, just as our inconvenient counties const.i.tute the kingdom of England; for the inconveniences of these results of the ebb and flow of the different tides in the affairs of man's dominion--these boundaries not fixed by the lines and rules of theodolite-armed land surveyors, use had provided remedies, and long habit had reconciled the inhabitants to divisions which suited them better than any new arrangement, however scientifically calculated, according to statistical and geographical principles.

The French, during their intrusive rule, were horrified at this "chaos administratif," this apparent irregularity, and introduced their own system of _departements_, by which districts were neatly squared out and people re-arranged, as if Spain were a chess-board and Spaniards mere p.a.w.ns--_peones_, or footmen, which this people, calling itself one of _caballeros_, that is, riders on horses _par excellence_, a.s.suredly is not: nor, indeed, in this paradise of the church militant, can the moves of any Spanish bishop or knight be calculated on with mathematical certainty, since they seldom will take the steps to-morrow which they did yesterday.

[Sidenote: PROVINCES.]

Accordingly, however specious the theory, it was found to be no easy matter to carry departementalization out in practice: individuality laughs at the solemn nonsense of in-door pedants, who would cla.s.s men like ferns or sh.e.l.ls. The failure in this attempt to remodel ancient demarcations and recombine antipathetic populations was utter and complete. No sooner, therefore, had the Duke cleared the Peninsula of _doctrinaires_ and invaders than the Lion of Castile shook off their papers from his mane, and reverted like the Italian, on whom the same experiment was tried, to his own pre-existing divisions, which, however defective in theory, and unsightly and inconvenient on the map, had from long habit been found practically to suit better. Recently, in spite of this experience among other newfangled transpyrenean reforms, innovations, and botherations, the Peninsula has again been parcelled out into forty-nine provinces, instead of the former national divisions of thirteen kingdoms, princ.i.p.alities, and lords.h.i.+ps; but long will it be before these deeply impressed divisions, which have grown with the growth of the monarchy, and are engraved in the retentive memories of the people, can be effaced.

Those who are curious in statistical details are referred to the works of Paez, Antillon, and others, who are considered by Spaniards to be authorities on vast subjects, which are fitter for a gazetteer or a handbook than for volumes destined like these for lighter reading; and a.s.suredly the pages of the respectable Spaniards just named are duller than the high-roads of Castile, which no tiny rivulet the cheerful companion of the dusty road ever freshens, no stray flower adorns, no song of birds gladdens--"dry as the remainder of the biscuit after the voyage."

The thirteen divisions have grand and historical names: they belong to an old and monarchical country, not to a spick and span vulgar democracy, without t.i.tle-deeds. They fill the mouth when named, and conjure up a thousand recollections of the better and more glorious times of Spain's palmy power, when there were giants in the land, not pigmies in Parisian _paletots_, whose only ambition is to ape the foreigner, and disgrace and denationalize themselves.

[Sidenote: PROVINCES.]

First and foremost _Andalucia_ presents herself, crowned with a quadruple, not a triple tiara, for the name _los cuatro reinos_, "the four kingdoms," is her synonym. They consist of those of Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Granada. There is magic and birdlime in the very letters. Secondly advances the kingdom of _Murcia_, with its silver-mines, barilla, and palms. Then the gentle kingdom of _Valencia_ appears, all smiles, with fruits and silk. The princ.i.p.ality of grim and truculent _Catalonia_ scowls next on its fair neighbour. Here rises the smoky factory chimney; here cotton is spun, vice and discontent bred, and revolutions concocted. The proud and stiff-necked kingdom of _Arragon_ marches to the west with this Lancas.h.i.+re of Spain, and to the east with the kingdom of Navarre, which crouches with its green valleys under the Pyrenees. The three _Basque Provinces_ which abut thereto, are only called _El Senorio_, "The Lords.h.i.+p," for the king of all the Spains is but simple lord of this free highland home of the unconquered descendants of the aboriginal man of the Peninsula. Here there is much talk of bullocks and _fueros_, or "privileges;" for when not digging and delving, these gentlemen by the mere fact of being born here, are fighting and upholding their good rights by the sword. The empire province of the _Castiles_ furnishes two coronets to the royal brow; to wit, that of the older portion, where the young monarchy was nursed, and that of the newer portion, which was wrested afterwards from the infidel Moor. The ninth division is desolate _Estremadura_, which has no higher t.i.tle than a province, and is peopled by locusts, wandering sheep, pigs, and here and there by human bipeds. _Leon_, a most time-honoured kingdom, stretches higher up, with its corn-plains and venerable cities, now silent as tombs, but in auld lang syne the scenes of mediaeval chivalry and romance. The kingdom of _Gallicia_ and the princ.i.p.ality of the _Asturias_ form the seaboard to the west, and const.i.tute Spain's breakwater against the Atlantic.

[Sidenote: POPULATION]

It is not very easy to ascertain the exact population of any country, much less that of one which does not yet possess the advantages of public registrars; the people at large, for whom, strange to say, the pleasant studies of statistics and political economy have small charms, consider any attempt to number them as boding no good; they have a well-grounded apprehension of ulterior objects. To "number the people"

was a crime in the East, and many moral and practical difficulties exist in arriving at a true census of Spain. Thus, while some writers on statistics hope to flatter the powers that be, by a glowing exaggeration of national strength, "to boast of which," says the Duke, "is the national weakness," the suspicious _many_, on the other hand, are disposed to conceal and diminish the truth. We should be always on our guard when we hear accounts of the past or present population, commerce, or revenue of Spain. The better cla.s.ses will magnify them both, for the credit of their country; the poorer, on the other hand, will appeal _ad misericordiam_, by representing matters as even worse than they really are. They never afford any opening, however indirect, to information which may lead to poll-taxes and conscriptions.

[Sidenote: DIFFERENT RACES.]

The population and the revenue have generally been exaggerated, and all statements may be much discounted; the present population, at an approximate calculation, may be taken at about eleven or twelve millions, with a slow tendency to increase. This is a low figure for so large a country, and for one which, under the Romans, is said to have swarmed with inhabitants as busy and industrious as ants; indeed, the longest period of rest and settled government which this ill-fated land has ever enjoyed was during the three centuries that the Roman power was undisputed. The Peninsula is then seldom mentioned by authors; and how much happiness is inferred by that silence, when the blood-spattered page of history was chiefly employed to register great calamities, plagues, pestilences, wars, battles, or the freaks of men, at which angels weep! Certainly one of the causes which have changed this happy state of things, has been the numerous and fierce invasions to which Spain has been exposed; fatal to her has been her gift of beauty and wealth, which has ever attracted the foreign ravisher and spoiler. The Goths, to whom a worse name has been given than they deserved in Spain, were ousted by the Moors, the real and wholesale destroyers; bringing to the darkling West the luxuries, arts and sciences of the bright East, they had nothing to learn from the conquered; to them the Goth was no instructor, as the Roman had been to him; they despised both of their predecessors, with whose wants and works they had no sympathy, while they abhorred their creed as idolatrous and polytheistic--down went altar and image. There was no fair town which they did not destroy; they exterminated, say their annals, the fowls of the air.

The Gotho-Spaniard in process of time retaliated, and combated the invader with his own weapons, bettering indeed the destructive lesson which was taught. The effects of these wars, carried on without treaty, without quarter, and waged for country and creed, are evident in those parts of Spain which were their theatre. Thus, vast portions of Estremadura, the south of Toledo and Andalucia, by nature some of the richest and most fertile in the world, are now _dehesas y despoblados_, depopulated wastes, abandoned to the wild bee for his heritage; the country remains as it was left after the discomfiture of the Moor. The early chronicles of both Spaniard and Moslem teem with accounts of the annual forays inflicted on each other, and to which a frontier-district was always exposed. The object of these border _guerrilla_-warfares was extinction, _talar, quemar y robar_, to desolate, burn, and rob, to cut down fruit-trees, to "harry," to "razzia."[2] The internecine struggle was that of rival nations and creeds. It was truly Oriental, and such as Ezekiel, who well knew the Phnicians, has described: "Go ye after him through the city and smite; let not your eye have pity, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children and women." The religious duty of smiting the infidel precluded mercy on both sides alike, for the Christian foray and crusade was the exact counterpart of the Moslem _algara_ and _algihad_; while, from military reasons, everything was turned into a desert, in order to create a frontier Edom of starvation, a defensive glacis, through which no invading army could pa.s.s and live; the "beasts of the field alone increased." Nature, thus abandoned, resumed her rights, and has cast off every trace of former cultivation; and districts the granaries of the Roman and the Moor, now offer the saddest contrasts to that former prosperity and industry.

[Sidenote: BUONAPARTE'S INVASION.]

To these horrors succeeded the thinning occasioned by causes of a bigoted and political nature: the expulsion of the Jews deprived poor Spain of her bankers, while the final banishment of the Moriscoes, the remnant of the Moors, robbed the soil of its best and most industrious agriculturists.

Again, in our time, have the fatal scenes of contending Christian and Moor been renewed in the struggle for national independence, waged by Spaniards against the Buonapartist invaders, by whom neither age nor s.e.x was spared--neither things sacred nor profane; the land is everywhere scarred with ruins; a few hours' Vandalism sufficed to undo the works of ages of piety, wealth, learning and good taste. The French retreat was worse than their advance: then, infuriated by disgrace and disaster, the Soults and Ma.s.senas vented their spite on the unarmed villagers and their cottages. But let General Foy describe their progress:--"Ainsi que la neige precipitee des sommets des Alpes dans les vallons, nos armees innombrables detruisaient en quelques heures, par leur seul pa.s.sage, les ressources de toute une contree; elles bivouaquaient habituellement, et a chaque gite nos soldats demolissaient les maisons baties depuis un demi-siecle, pour construire avec les decombres ces longs villages alignes qui souvent ne devaient durer qu'un jour: au defaut du bois des forets les arbres fruitiers, les vegetaux precieux, comme le murier, l'olivier, l'oranger, servaient a les rechauffer; les conscrits irrites a la fois par le besoin et par le danger contractaient _une ivresse morale_ dont nous ne cherchions pas a les guerir."

"So France gets drunk with blood to vomit crime, And fatal ever have her saturnalia been."

Who can fail to compare this habitual practice of Buonaparte's legions with the terrible description in Hosea of the "great people and strong"

who execute the dread judgments of heaven?--"A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth; the land is the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness, yea, and nothing shall escape them."

[Sidenote: REVENUE.]

No sooner were they beaten out by the Duke, than population began to spring up again, as the bruised flowerets do when the iron heel of marching hordes has pa.s.sed on. Then ensued the civil fratricide wars, draining the land of its males, from which bleeding Spain has not yet recovered. Insecurity of property and person will ever prove bars to marriage and increased population.

Again, a deeper and more permanent curse has steadily operated for the last two centuries, at which Spanish authors long have not dared to hint. They have ascribed the depopulation of Estremadura to the swarm of colonist adventurers and emigrants who departed from this province of Cortes and Pizarro to seek for fortune in the new world of gold and silver; and have attributed the similar want of inhabitants in Andalucia to the similar outpouring from Cadiz, which, with Seville, engrossed the traffic of the Americas. But colonisation never thins a vigorous, well-conditioned mother state--witness the rapid and daily increase of population in our own island, which, like Tyre of old, is ever sending forth her outpouring myriads, and wafts to the uttermost parts of the sea, on the white wings of her merchant fleets, the blessings of peace, religion, liberty, order, and civilisation, to disseminate which is the mission of Great Britain.

The real permanent and standing cause of Spain's thinly peopled state, want of cultivation, and abomination of desolation, is BAD GOVERNMENT, civil and religious; this all who run may read in her lonely land and silent towns. But Spain, if the anecdote which her children love to tell be true, will never be able to remove the incubus of this fertile origin of every evil. When Ferdinand III. captured Seville and died, being a saint he escaped purgatory, and Santiago presented him to the Virgin, who forthwith desired him to ask any favours for beloved Spain. The monarch pet.i.tioned for oil, wine, and corn--conceded; for sunny skies, brave men, and pretty women--allowed; for cigars, relics, garlic, and bulls--by all means; for a _good government_--"Nay, nay," said the Virgin, "that never can be granted; for were it bestowed, not an angel would remain a day longer in heaven."

[Sidenote: THE BOLSA.]

The present revenue may be taken at about 12,000,000_l._ or 13,000,000_l._ sterling; but money is compared by Spaniards to oil; a little will stick to the fingers of those who measure it out; and such is the robbing and jobbing, the official mystification and peculation, that it is difficult to get at _facts_ whenever cash is in question. The revenue, moreover, is badly collected, and at a ruinous per centage, and at no time during this last century has been sufficient for the national expenses. Recourse has been had to the desperate experiments of usurious loans and wholesale confiscations. At one time church pillage and appropriation was almost the only item in the governmental budget. The recipients were ready to "prove from Vatel exceedingly well" that the first duty of a rich clergy was to relieve the necessitous, and the more when the State was a pauper: croziers are no match for bayonets. This system necessarily cannot last. Since the reign of Philip II. every act of dishonesty has been perpetrated. Public securities have been "repudiated," interest unpaid, and princ.i.p.al spunged out. No country in the Old World, or even New drab-coated World, stands lower in financial discredit. Let all be aware how they embark in Spanish speculations: however promising in the prospectus, they will, sooner or later, turn out to be deceptions; and whether they a.s.sume the form of loans, lands, or rails, none are _real_ securities: they are mere castles in the air, _chateaux en Espagne_: "The earth has bubbles as the water has, and these are of them."

For the benefit and information of those who have purchased Iberian stock, it may be stated that an Exchange, or _Bolsa de Comercio_, was established at Madrid in 1831. It may be called the _coldest_ spot in the hot capital, and the _idlest_, since the usual "city article" is short and sweet, "_sin operaciones_," or nothing has been bought or sold. It might be likened to a tomb, with "Here _lies_ Spanish credit"

for its epitaph. If there be a thing which "_La perfide Albion_," "a nation of shopkeepers," dislikes, worse even than a French a.s.signat, it is a bankrupt. One circ.u.mstance is clear, that Castilian _pundonor_, or point of honour, will rather settle its debts with cold iron and warm abuse than with gold and thanks.

The Exchange at Madrid was first held at _St. Martin's_, a saint who divided his cloak with a supplicant. As comparisons are odious, and bad examples catching, it has been recently removed to the _Calle del Desengano_, the street of "finding out fallacious hopes," a locality which the bitten will not deem ill-chosen.

[Sidenote: SPANISH "STOCK."]

As all men in power use their official knowledge in taking advantage of the turn of the market, the _Bolsa_ divides with the court and army the moving influence of every _situacion_ or crisis of the moment: clever as are the ministers of Paris, they are mere tyros when compared to their colleagues of Madrid in the arts of working the telegraph, gazette, &c., and thereby feathering their own nests.

The Stock Exchange is open from ten to three o'clock, where those who like Spanish funds may buy them as cheap as stinking mackerel; for when the 3 per cents, of perfidious Albion are at 98, surely Spanish fives at 22 are a tempting investment. The stocks are numerous, and suited to all tastes and pockets, whether those funded by Aguado, Ardouin, Toreno, Mendizabal, or Mon, "all honourable men," and whose punctuality is _un-remitting_, for in some the princ.i.p.al is consolidated, in others the interest is deferred; the grand financial object in all having been to receive as much as possible, and pay back in an inverse ratio--their leading principle being to bag both princ.i.p.al and interest. As we have just said, in measuring out money and oil a little will stick to the cleanest fingers--the Madrid ministers and contractors made fortunes, and actually "did" the Hebrews of London, as their forefathers spoiled the Egyptians. But from Philip II. downwards, theologians have never been wanting in Spain to prove the religious, however painful, duty of bankruptcy, and particularly in contracts with usurious heretics. The stranger, when shown over the Madrid bank, had better evince no impertinent curiosity to see the "Dividend _pay_ office," as it might give offence. Whatever be our dear reader's pursuit in the Peninsula, let him--

"Neither a borrower nor lender be, For loan oft loseth both itself and friend."

Beware of Spanish stock, for in spite of official reports, _doc.u.mentos_, and arithmetical mazes, which, intricate as an arabesque pattern, look well on paper without being intelligible; in spite of ingenious conversions, fundings of interest, coupons--some active, some pa.s.sive, and other repudiatory terms and tenses, the present excepted--the thimblerig is always the same; and this is the question, since national credit depends on national good faith and surplus income, how can a country pay interest on debts, whose revenues have long been, and now are, miserably insufficient for the ordinary expenses of government? You cannot get blood from a stone; _ex nihilo nihil fit_.

[Sidenote: PUBLIC DEBT.]

Mr. Macgregor's report on Spain, a truthful exposition of commercial ignorance, habitual disregard of treaties and violation of contracts, describes her public _securities_, past and present. Certainly they had very imposing names and t.i.tles--_Juros Bonos_, _Vales reales_, _t.i.tulos_, &c.,--much more royal, grand, and poetical than our prosaic _Consols_; but no oaths can attach real value to dishonoured and good-for-nothing paper. According to some financiers, the public debts of Spain, previously to 1808, amounted to 83,763,966_l._, which have since been increased to 279,083,089_l._, farthings omitted, for we like to be accurate. This possibly may be exaggerated, for the government will give no information as to its own peculation and mismanagement: according to Mr. Henderson, 78,649,675_l._ of this debt is due to English creditors alone, and we wish they may get it, when he gets to Madrid. In the time of James I., Mr. Howell was sent there on much such an errand; and when he left it, his "pile of unredressed claims was higher than himself." At all events, Spain is over head and ears in debt, and irremediably insolvent. And yet few countries, if we regard the fertility of her soil, her golden possessions at home and abroad, her frugal temperate population, ought to have been less embarra.s.sed; but Heaven has granted her every blessing, except a good and honest government. It is either a bully or a craven: satisfaction in twenty-four hours _a la Bresson_, or a line-of-battle s.h.i.+p off Malaga--Cromwell's receipt--is the only argument which these semi-Moors understand: conciliatory language is held to be weakness: you may obtain at once from their fears what never will be granted by their sense of justice.

[Sidenote: TRAVELLING IN SPAIN.]

CHAPTER V.

Travelling in Spain--Steamers--Roads, Roman, Monastic, and Royal--Modern Railways--English Speculations.

Of the many misrepresentations regarding Spain, few are more inveterate than those which refer to the dangers and difficulties that are there supposed to beset the traveller. This, the most romantic, racy, and peculiar country of Europe, may in reality be visited by sea and land, and throughout its length and breadth, with ease and safety, as all who have ever been there well know, the nonsense with which c.o.c.kney critics who never have been there scare delicate writers in alb.u.ms and lady-bird tourists, to the contrary notwithstanding: the steamers are regular, the mails and diligences excellent, the roads decent, and the mules sure-footed; nay, latterly, the _posadas_, or inns, have been so increased, and the robbers so decreased, that some ingenuity must be evinced in getting either starved or robbed. Those, however, who are dying for new excitements, or who wish to make a picture or chapter, in short, to get up an adventure for the home-market, may manage by a great exhibition of imprudence, chattering, and a holding out luring baits, to gratify their hankering, although it would save some time, trouble, and expense to try the experiment much nearer home.