Gatherings From Spain Part 3

As our readers live in an island, we will commence with the sea and steamers.

[Sidenote: STEAMERS.]

The Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Company depart regularly three times a month from Southampton for Gibraltar. They often arrive at Corunna in seventy hours, from whence a mail starts directly to Madrid, which it reaches in three days and a half. The vessels are excellent sea-boats, are manned by English sailors, and propelled by English machinery. The pa.s.sage to Vigo has been made in less than three days, and the voyage to Cadiz--touching at Lisbon included--seldom exceeds six. The change of climate, scenery, men, and manners effected by this week's trip, is indeed remarkable. Quitting the British Channel we soon enter the "sleepless Bay of Biscay," where the stormy petrel is at home, and where the gigantic swell of the Atlantic is first checked by Spain's iron-bound coast, the mountain break-water of Europe. Here _The Ocean_ will be seen in all its vast majesty and solitude: grand in the tempest-lashed storm, grand in the calm, when spread out as a mirror; and never more impressive than at night, when the stars of heaven, free from earth-born mists, sparkle like diamonds over those "who go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, and behold the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." The land has disappeared, and man feels alike his weakness and his strength; a thin plank separates him from another world; yet he has laid his hand upon the billow, and mastered the ocean; he has made it the highway of commerce, and the binding link of nations.

The steamers which navigate the Eastern coast from Ma.r.s.eilles to Cadiz and back again, are cheaper indeed in their fares, but by no means such good sea-boats; nor do they keep their time--the essence of business--with English regularity. They are foreign built, and worked by Spaniards and Frenchmen. They generally stop a day at Barcelona, Valencia, and other large towns, which gives them an opportunity to replenish coal, and to smuggle. A rapid traveller is also thus enabled to pay a flying visit to the cities on the seaboard; and thus those lively authors who comprehend foreign nations with an intuitive eagle-eyed glance, obtain materials for sundry octavos on the history, arts, sciences, literature, and genius of Spaniards. But as Mons. Feval remarks of some of his gifted countrymen, they have merely to scratch their head, according to the Horatian expression, and out come a number of volumes, ready bound in calf, as Minerva issued forth armed from the temple of Jupiter.

[Sidenote: SPANISH ROADS.]

The Mediterranean is a dangerous, deceitful sea, fair and false as Italia; the squalls are sudden and terrific; then the crews either curse the sacred name of G.o.d, or invoke St. Telmo, according as their notion may be. We have often been so caught when sailing on these perfidious waters in these foreign craft, and think, with the Spaniards, that escape is a miracle. The hilarity excited by witnessing the jabber, confusion, and lubber proceedings, went far to dispel all present apprehension, and future also. Some of our poor blue-jackets in case of a war may possibly escape the fate with which they are threatened in this French lake. But no wise man will ever go by sea when he can travel by land, nor is viewing Spain's coasts with a telescope from the deck, and pa.s.sing a few hours in a sea-port, a very satisfactory mode of becoming acquainted with the country.

The roads of Spain, a matter of much importance to a judicious traveller, are somewhat a modern luxury, having been only regularly introduced by the Bourbons. The Moors and Spaniards, who rode on horses and not in carriages, suffered those magnificent lines with which the Romans had covered the Peninsula to go to decay; of these there were no less than twenty-nine of the first order, which were absolutely necessary to a nation of conquerors and colonists to keep up their military and commercial communications. The grandest of all, which like the Appian might be termed the Queen of Roads, ran from Merida, the capital of Lusitania, to Salamanca. It was laid down like a Cyclopean wall, and much of it remains to this day, with the grey granite line stretching across the aromatic wastes, like the vertebrae of an extinct mammoth. We have followed for miles its course, which is indicated by the still standing miliary columns that rise above the cistus underwood; here and there tall forest trees grow out of the stone pavement, and show how long it has been abandoned by man to Nature ever young and gay, who thus by uprooting and displacing the huge blocks slowly recovers her rights. She festoons the ruins with necklaces of flowers and creepers, and hides the rents and wrinkles of odious, all-dilapidating Time, or man's worse neglect, as a pretty maid decorates a shrivelled dowager's with diamonds. The Spanish muleteer creeps along by its side in a track which he has made through the sand or pebbles; he seems ashamed to trample on this lordly way, for which, in his petty wants, he has no occasion. Most of the similar roads have been taken up by monks to raise convents, by burgesses to build houses, by military men to construct fortifications--thus even their ruins have perished.

[Sidenote: LEGEND OF SANTO DOMINGO.]

The mediaeval Spanish roads were the works of the clergy; and the long-bearded monks, here as elsewhere, were the pioneers of civilization; they made straight, wide, and easy the way which led to their convent, their high place, their miracle shrine, or to whatever point of pilgrimage that was held out to the devout; traffic was soon combined with devotion, and the service of mammon with that of G.o.d. This imitation of the Oriental practice which obtained at Mecca, is evidenced by language in which the Spanish term _Feria_ signifies at once a religious function, a holiday, and a fair. Even saints condescended to become waywardens, and to take t.i.tle from the highway. Thus _Santo Domingo de la Calzada_, "St. Domenick of the _Paved Road_," was so called from his having been the first to make one through a part of Old Castile for the benefit of pilgrims on their way to Compostella, and this town yet bears the honoured appellation.

This feat and his legend have furnished Southey with a subject of a droll ballad. The saint having finished his road, next set up an inn or _Venta_, the Maritornes of which fell in love with a handsome pilgrim, who resisted; whereupon she hid some spoons in this Joseph's saddlebags, who was taken up by the Alcalde, and forthwith hanged. But his parents some time afterwards pa.s.sed under the body, which told them that he was innocent, alive, and well, and all by the intercession of the sainted road-maker; thereupon they proceeded forthwith to the truculent Alcalde, who was going to dine off two roasted fowls, and, on hearing their report, remarked, You might as well tell me that this c.o.c.k (pointing to his roti) would crow; whereupon it did crow, and was taken with its hen to the cathedral, and two chicks have ever since been regularly hatched every year from these respectable parents, of which a travelling ornithologist should secure one for the Zoological Garden. The c.o.c.k and hen were duly kept near the high altar, and their white feathers were worn by pilgrims in their caps. Prudent bagsmen will, however, put a couple of ordinary roast fowls into their "provend," for hungry is this said road to _Logrono_.

[Sidenote: ROAD TO TOLEDO.]

In this land of miracles, anomalies, and contradictions, the roads to and from this very _Compostella_ are now detestable. In other provinces of Spain, the star-paved milky way in heaven is called _El Camino de Santiago_, the road of St. James; but the Gallicians, who know what their roads really are, namely, the worst on earth, call the milky-way _El Camino de Jerusalem_, "the road to Jerusalem," which it a.s.suredly is not. The ancients poetically attributed this phenomenon to some spilt milk of Juno.

Meanwhile the roads in Gallicia, although under the patronage of Santiago, who has replaced the Roman Hermes, are, like his milky-way in heaven, but little indebted to mortal repairs. The Dean of Santiago is waywarden by virtue of his office or dignity, and especially "protector." The chapter, however, now chiefly profess to make smooth the road to a better world. They have altogether degenerated from their forefathers, whose grand object was to construct roads for the pilgrim; but since the cessation of offering-making Hadjis, little or nothing has been done in the turnpike-trust line.

Some of the finest roads in Spain lead either to the _sitios_ or royal pleasure-seats of the king, or wind gently up some elevated and monastery-crowned mountain like Monserrat. The ease of the despot was consulted, while that of his subjects was neglected; and the Sultan was the State, Spain was his property, and Spaniards his serfs, and willing ones, for as in the East, their perfect equality amongst each other was one result of the immeasurable superiority of the master of all. Thus, while he rolled over a road hard and level as a bowling-green, and rapidly as a galloping team could proceed, to a mere summer residence, the communication between Madrid and Toledo, that city on which the sun shone on the day light was made, has remained a mere track ankle-deep in mud during winter and dust-clouded during summer, and changing its direction with the caprice of wandering sheep and muleteers; but Bourbon Royalty never visited this widowed capital of the Goths. The road therefore was left as it existed if not before the time of Adam, at least before Mac Adam. There is some talk just now of beginning a regular road; when it will be finished is another affair.

[Sidenote: ROAD TO LA CORUNA.]

[Sidenote: CROSS ROADS.]

The church, which shared with the state in dominion, followed the royal example in consulting its own comforts as to roads. Nor could it be expected in a torrid land, that holy men, whose abdomens occasionally were prominent and pendulous, should lard the stony or sandy earth like goats, or ascend heaven-kissing hills so expeditiously as their prayers.

In Spain the primary consideration has ever been the souls, not the bodies, of men, or legs of beasts. It would seem indeed, from the indifference shown to the sufferings of these quadrupedal blood-engines, _Maquinas de sangre_, as they are called, and still more from the reckless waste of biped life, that a man was of no value until he was dead; then what admirable contrivances for the rapid travelling of his winged spirit, first to purgatory, next out again, and thence from stage to stage to his journey's end and blessed rest! More money has been thus expended in ma.s.ses than would have covered Spain with railroads, even on a British scale of magnificence and extravagance.

To descend to the roads of the peninsular earth, the princ.i.p.al lines are n.o.bly planned. These geographical arteries, which form the circulation of the country, branch in every direction from Madrid, which is the centre of the system. The road-making spirit of Louis XIV. pa.s.sed into his Spanish descendants, and during the reigns of Charles III. and Charles IV. communications were completed between the capital and the princ.i.p.al cities of the provinces. These causeways, "_Arrecifes_"--these royal roads, "_Caminos reales_"--were planned on an almost unnecessary scale of grandeur, in regard both to width, parapets, and general execution. The high road to La Coruna, especially after entering Leon, will stand comparison with any in Europe; but when Spaniards finish anything it is done in a grand style, and in this instance the expense was so enormous that the king inquired if it was paved with silver, alluding to the common Spanish corruption of the old Roman via lata into "camino de _plata_," of plate. This and many of the others were constructed from fifty to seventy years ago, and very much on the M'Adam system, which, having been since introduced into England, has rendered our roads so very different from what they were not very long since. The war in the Peninsula tended to deteriorate the Spanish roads--when bridges and other conveniences were frequently destroyed for military reasons, and the exhausted state of the finances of Spain, and troubled times, have delayed many of the more costly reparations; yet those of the first cla.s.s were so admirably constructed at the beginning, that, in spite of the injuries of war, ruts, and neglect, they may, as a whole, be p.r.o.nounced equal to many of the Continent, and are infinitely more pleasant to the traveller from the absence of pavement. The roads in England have, indeed, latterly been rendered so excellent, and we are so apt to compare those of other nations with them, that we forget that fifty years ago Spain was in advance in that and many other respects.

Spain remains very much what other countries were: she has stood on her old ways, moored to the anchor of prejudice, while we have progressed, and consequently now appears behind-hand in many things in which she set the fas.h.i.+on to England.

The grand royal roads start from Madrid, and run to the princ.i.p.al frontier and sea-port towns. Thus the capital may be compared to a spider, as it is the centre of the Peninsular web. These diverging fan-like lines are sufficiently convenient to all who are about to journey to any single terminus, but inter-communications are almost entirely wanting between any one terminus with another. This scanty condition of the Peninsular roads accounts for the very limited portions of the country which are usually visited by foreigners, who--the French especially--keep to one beaten track, the high road, and follow each other like wild geese; a visit to Burgos, Madrid, and Seville, and then a steam trip from Cadiz to Valencia and Barcelona, is considered to be making the grand tour of Spain; thus the world is favoured with volumes that reflect and repeat each other, which tell us what we know already, while the rich and rare, the untrodden, unchanged, and truly Moro-Hispanic portions are altogether neglected, except by the exceptional few, who venture forth like Don Quixote on their horses, in search of adventures and the picturesque.

[Sidenote: TRAVELLING.]

[Sidenote: CONTEMPLATED RAILROADS.]

The other roads of Spain are bad, but not much more so than in other parts of the Continent, and serve tolerably well in dry weather. They are divided into those which are practicable for wheel-carriages, and those which are only bridle-roads, or as they call them, "of horseshoe,"

on which all thought of going with a carriage is out of the question; when these horse or mule tracks are very bad, especially among the mountains, they compare them to roads for partridges. The cross roads are seldom tolerable; it is safest to keep the high-road--or, as we have it in English, the furthest way round is the nearest way home--for there is no short cut without hard work, says the Spanish proverb, "_ho hay atajo, sin trabajo_."

All this sounds very unpromising, but those who adopt the customs of the country will never find much practical difficulty in getting to their journey's end; slowly, it is true, for where leagues and hours are convertible terms--the Spanish _hora_ being the heavy German _stunde_--the distance is regulated by the day-light. Bridle-roads and travelling on horseback, the former systems of Europe, are very Spanish and Oriental; and where people journey on horse and mule back, the road is of minor importance. In the remoter provinces of Spain the population is agricultural and poverty-stricken, unvisiting and unvisited, not going much beyond their chimney's smoke. Each family provides for its simple habits and few wants; having but little money to buy foreign commodities, they are clad and fed, like the Bedouins, with the productions of their own fields and flocks. There is little circulation of persons; a neighbouring fair is the mart where they obtain the annual supply of whatever luxury they can indulge in, or it is brought to their cottages by wandering muleteers, or by the smuggler, who is the type and channel of the really active principle of trade in three-fourths of the Peninsula. It is wonderful how soon a well-mounted traveller becomes attached to travelling on horseback, and how quickly he becomes reconciled to a state of roads which, startling at first to those accustomed to carriage highways, are found to answer perfectly for all the purposes of the place and people where they are found.

Let us say a few things on Spanish railroads, for the mania of England has surmounted the Pyrenees, although confined rather more to words than deeds; in fact, it has been said that no rail exists, in any country of either the new world or the old one, in which the Spanish language is spoken, probably from other objections than those merely philological.

Again, in other countries roads, ca.n.a.ls, and traffic usher in the rail, which in Spain is to precede and introduce them. Thus, by the prudent delays of national caution and procrastination, much of the trouble and expense of these intermediate stages will be economized, and Spain will jump at once from a mediaeval condition into the comforts and glories of Great Britain, the land of restless travellers. Be that as it may, just now there is much talk of _railroads_, and splendid official and other _doc.u.mentos_ are issued, by which the "whole country is to be intersected (on paper) with a net-work of rapid and bowling-green communications," which are to create a "perfect h.o.m.ogeneity among Spaniards;" for great as have been the labours of Herculean steam, this amalgamation of the Iberian rope of sand has properly been reserved for the crowning performance.

It would occupy too much s.p.a.ce to specify the infinite lines which are in contemplation, which may be described when completed. Suffice it to say, that they almost all are to be effected by the iron and gold of England. However this _estrangerismo_, this influence of the foreigner, may offend the sensitive pride, the _Espanolismo_ of Spain, the power of resistance offered by the national indolence and dislike to change, must be propelled by British steam, with a dash of French revolution. Yet our speculators might, perhaps, reflect that Spain is a land which never yet has been able to construct or support even a sufficient number of common roads or ca.n.a.ls for her poor and pa.s.sive commerce and circulation. The distances are far too great, and the traffic far too small, to call yet for the rail; while the geological formation of the country offers difficulties which, if met with even in England, would baffle the colossal science and extravagance of our first-rate engineers. Spain is a land of mountains, which rise everywhere in Alpine barriers, walling off province from province, and district from district. These mighty cloud-capped _sierras_ are solid ma.s.ses of hard stone, and any tunnels which ever perforate their ranges will reduce that at Box to the delving of the poor mole. You might as well cover Switzerland and the Tyrol with a net-work of _level_ lines, as those caught in the aforesaid net will soon discover to their cost. The outlay of this up-hill work may be in an inverse ratio to the remuneration, for the one will be enormous, and the other paltry. The parturient mountains may produce a most musipular interest, and even that may be "deferred."

[Sidenote: DIFFICULTIES OF RAILROADS.]

Spain, again, is a land of _dehesas y despoblados_: in these wild unpeopled wastes, next to travellers, commerce and cash are what is scarce, while even Madrid, the capital, is without industry or resources, and poorer than many of our provincial cities. The Spaniard, a creature of routine and foe to innovations, is not a moveable or locomotive; local, and a parochial fixture by nature, he hates moving like a Turk, and has a particular horror of being hurried; long, therefore, here has an ambling mule answered all the purposes of transporting man and his goods. Who again is to do the work even if England will pay the wages? The native, next to disliking regular sustained labour himself, abhors seeing the foreigner toiling even in his service, and wasting his gold and sinews in the thankless task. The villagers, as they always have done, will rise against the stranger and heretic who comes to "suck the wealth of Spain." Supposing, however, by the aid of Santiago and Brunel, that the work were possible and were completed, how is it to be secured against the fierce action of the sun, and the fiercer violence of popular ignorance? The first cholera that visits Spain will be set down as a pa.s.senger per rail by the dispossessed muleteer, who now performs the functions of steam and rail.

He const.i.tutes one of the most numerous and finest cla.s.ses in Spain, and is the legitimate channel of the semi-Oriental caravan system. He will never permit the bread to be taken out of his mouth by this Lutheran locomotive: deprived of means of earning his livelihood, he, like the smuggler, will take to the road in another line, and both will become either robbers or patriots. Many, long, and lonely are the leagues which separate town from town in the wide deserts of thinly-peopled Spain, nor will any preventive service be sufficient to guard the rail against the _guerrilla_ warfare that may then be waged. A handful of opponents in any cistus-overgrown waste, may at any time, in five minutes, break up the road, stop the train, stick the stoker, and burn the engines in their own fire, particularly smas.h.i.+ng the luggage-train. What, again, has ever been the recompense which the foreigner has met with from Spain but breach of promise and ingrat.i.tude? He will be used, as in the East, until the native thinks that he has mastered his arts, and then he will be abused, cast out, and trodden under foot; and who then will keep up and repair the costly artificial undertaking?--certainly not the Spaniard, on whose pericranium the b.u.mps of operative skill and mechanical construction have yet to be developed.

[Sidenote: BENEFITS OF RAILROADS.]

The lines which are the least sure of failure will be those which are the shortest, and pa.s.s through a level country of some natural productions, such as oil, wine, and coal. Certainly, if the rail can be laid down in Spain by the gold and science of England, the gift, like that of steam, will be worthy of the Ocean's Queen, and of the world's real leader of civilization; and what a change will then come over the spirit of the Peninsula! how the siestas of torpid man-vegetation, will be disturbed by the shrill whistle and panting snort of the monster engine! how the seals of this long hermetically shut-up land will be broken! how the cloistered obscure, and dreams of treasures in heaven, will be enlightened by the flas.h.i.+ng fire-demon of the wide-awake money-wors.h.i.+pper! what owls will be vexed, what bats dispossessed, what drones, mules, and a.s.ses will be scared, run over, and annihilated!

Those who love Spain, and pray, like the author, daily for her prosperity, must indeed hope to see this "net-work of rails" concluded, but will take especial care at the same time not to invest one farthing in the imposing speculation.

Recent results have fully justified during this year what was prophesied last year in the Hand-Book: our English agents and engineers were received with almost divine honours by the Spaniards, so incensed were they with flattery and cigars. Their shares were instantaneously subscribed for, and directors nominated, with names and t.i.tles longer even than the lines, and the smallest contributions in cash were thankfully accepted:--

"L'argent dans une bourse entre agreablement; Mais le terme venu, quand il faut le rendre, C'est alors que les douleurs commencent a nous prendre."

[Sidenote: ANGLO-HISPANO RAILROADS.]

When the period for booking up, for making the first instalments, arrived, the Spanish shareholders were found somewhat wanting: they repudiated; for in the Peninsula it has long been easier to promise than to pay. Again, on the only line which seems likely to be carried out at present, that of Madrid to Aranjuez, the first step taken by them was to dismiss all English engineers and _navvies_, on the plea of encouraging native talent and industry rather than the foreigner. Many of the English home proceedings would border on the ridiculous, were not the laugh of some speculators rather on the wrong side. The City capitalists certainly have our pity, and if their plethora of wealth required the relief of bleeding, it could not be better performed than by a Spanish _Sangrado_. How different some of the windings-up, the final reports, to the magnificent beginnings and grandiloquent prospectuses put forth as baits for John Bull, who hoped to be tossed at once, or elevated, from haberdashery to a throne, by being offered a "potentiality of getting rich beyond the dreams of avarice!" Thus, to clench a.s.sertion by example, the London directors of the Royal Valencia Company made known by an advertis.e.m.e.nt only last July, that they merely required 240,000,000 reals to connect the seaport of Valencia--where there is none--to the capital Madrid, with 800,000 inhabitants,--there not being 200,000. One brief pa.s.sage alone seemed ominous in the lucid array of prospective profit--"The line has not yet been minutely surveyed;" this might have suggested to the n.o.ble Marquis whose attractive name heads the provisional committee list, the difficulty of Sterne's traveller, of whom, when observing how much better things were managed on the Continent than in England, the question was asked, "Have you, sir, ever been there?"

[Sidenote: LONDON RAILROAD MEETINGS.]

A still wilder scheme was broached, to connect Aviles on the Atlantic with Madrid, the Asturian Alps and the Guadarrama mountains to the contrary notwithstanding. The originator of this ingenious idea was to receive 40,000_l._ for the cession of his plan to the company, and actually did receive 25,000_l._, which, considering the difficulties, natural and otherwise, must be considered an inadequate remuneration.

Although the original and captivating prospectus stated "_that the line had been surveyed, and presented no engineering difficulties_," it was subsequently thought prudent to obtain some notion of the actual localities, and Sir _Joshua_ Walmsley was sent forth with competent a.s.sistance to spy out the land, which the Jewish practice of old was rather to do before than after serious undertakings. A sad change soon came over the spirit of the London dream by the discovery that a country which looked level as Arrowsmith's map in the prospectus, presented such trifling obstacles to the rail as sundry leagues of mountain ridges, which range from 6000 to 9000 feet high, and are covered with snow for many months of the year. This was a damper. The report of the special meeting (see 'Morning Chronicle,' Dec. 18, 1845) should be printed in letters of gold, from the quant.i.ty of that article which it will preserve to our credulous countrymen. Then and there the chairman observed, with equal _navete_ and pathos, "that had he known as much before as he did now, he would have been the last man to carry out a railway in Spain." This experience cost him, he observed, 5000_l._, which is paying dear for a Spanish rail whistle. He might for five pounds have bought the works of Townshend and Captain Cook: our modesty prevents the naming another red book, in which these precise localities, these mighty Alps, are described by persons who had ridden, or rather soared, over them. At another meeting of another Spanish rail company, held at the London Tavern, October 20, 1846, another chairman announced "a fact of which he was not before aware, that it was impossible to surmount the Pyrenees." Meanwhile, the Madrid government had secured 30,000_l._ from them by way of _caution_ money; but caution disappears from our capitalists, whenever excess of cash mounts from their pockets into their heads; loss of common sense and dollars is the natural result. But it is the fate of Spain and her things, to be judged of by those who have never been there, and who feel no shame at the indecency of the nakedness of their geographical ignorance. When the blind lead the blind, beware of hillocks and ditches.

[Sidenote: POST-OFFICE.]

CHAPTER VI.

Post-Office in Spain--Travelling with post-horses--Riding post--Mails and Diligences, Galeras, Coches de Colleras, Drivers, and Manner of Driving, and Oaths.

A system of post, both for the despatch of letters and the conveyance of couriers, was introduced into Spain under Philip and Juana, that is, towards the end of the reign of our Henry VII.; whereas it was scarcely organised in England before the government of Cromwell. Spain, which in these matters, as well as in many others, was once so much in advance, is now compelled to borrow her improvements from those nations of which she formerly was the instructress: among these may be reckoned all travelling in carriages, whether public or private.

The post-office for letters is arranged on the plan common to most countries on the Continent: the delivery is pretty regular, but seldom daily--twice or three times a-week. Small scruple is made by the authorities in opening private letters, whenever they suspect the character of the correspondence. It is as well, therefore, for the traveller to avoid expressing the whole of his opinions of the powers that be. The minds of men have been long troubled in Spain; civil war has rendered them very distrustful and guarded in their _written_ correspondence--"_carta canta_," "a letter speaks."

There is the usual continental bother in obtaining post-horses, which results from their being a monopoly of government. There must be a pa.s.sport, an official order, notice of departure, &c.; next ensue vexatious regulations in regard to the number of pa.s.sengers, horses, luggage, style of carriage, and so forth. These, and other spokes put into the wheel, appear to have been invented by clerks who sit at home devising how to impede rather than facilitate posting at all.

[Sidenote: PUBLIC CONVEYANCES.]

Post-horses and mules are paid at the rate of seven reals each for each post. The Spanish postilions generally, and especially if well paid, drive at a tremendous pace, often amounting to a gallop; nor are they easily stopped, even if the traveller desires it--they seem only to be intent on arriving at their stages' end, in order to indulge in the great national joy of then doing nothing: to get there, they heed neither ruts nor ravines; and when once their cattle are started the inside pa.s.senger feels like a kettle tied to the tail of a mad dog, or a comet; the wild beasts think no more of him than if he were Mazeppa: thus money makes the mare and its driver to go, as surely in Spain as in all other countries.

Another mode of travelling is by riding post, accompanied by a mounted postilion, who is changed with the cattle at each relay. It is an expeditious but fatiguing plan; yet one which, like the Tartar courier of the East, has long prevailed in Spain. Thus our Charles I. rode to Madrid under the name of John Smith, by which he was not likely to be identified. The delight of Philip II., who boasted that he governed the world from the Escorial, was to receive frequent and early intelligence; and this desire to hear something new is still characteristic of the Spanish government. The cabinet-couriers have the preference of horses at every relay. The particular distances they have to perform are all timed, and so many leagues are required to be done in a fixed time; and, in order to encourage despatch, for every hour gained on the allowed time, an additional sum was paid to them: hence the common expression "_ganando horas_" gaining hours--equivalent to our old "post haste--haste for your life."

[Sidenote: DILIGENCES.]