Kitabı oku: «Gatherings From Spain», sayfa 4

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 petitioned 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.”

THE BOLSA

The present revenue may be taken at about 12,000,000l. or 13,000,000l. 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 principal 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 assume the form of loans, lands, or rails, none are real securities: they are mere castles in the air, châteaux 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 assignat, it is a bankrupt. One circumstance 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 Desengaño, the street of “finding out fallacious hopes,” a locality which the bitten will not deem ill-chosen.

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 principal 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 principal 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, documentos, 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 passive, 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.

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 titles —Juros Bonos, Vales reales, Titulos, &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 83,763,966l., which have since been increased to 279,083,089l., 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, 78,649,675l. 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 embarrassed; 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 à la Bresson, or a line-of-battle ship 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.

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 Cockney critics who never have been there scare delicate writers in albums 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.

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

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 passage 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 ships, 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 Marseilles 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.

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 God, 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 passing 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 vertebræ 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.

LEGEND OF SANTO DOMINGO

The mediæval 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 God. 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 title 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 passed 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 cock (pointing to his rôti) 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 cock 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 Logroño.

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 assuredly 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.

ROAD TO LA CORUNA

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 masses 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 principal lines are nobly 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. passed into his Spanish descendants, and during the reigns of Charles III. and Charles IV. communications were completed between the capital and the principal 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 Coruña, 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 class were so admirably constructed at the beginning, that, in spite of the injuries of war, ruts, and neglect, they may, as a whole, be pronounced 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 fashion to England.

The grand royal roads start from Madrid, and run to the principal 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.

TRAVELLING

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, canals, 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 mediæval 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 documentos 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 homogeneity 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 space 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 Españolismo 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 canals for her poor and passive 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 masses 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.”

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 passenger per rail by the dispossessed muleteer, who now performs the functions of steam and rail. He constitutes one of the most numerous and finest classes 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 smashing the luggage-train. What, again, has ever been the recompense which the foreigner has met with from Spain but breach of promise and ingratitude? 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 bumps of operative skill and mechanical construction have yet to be developed.