Ourense

“ Though lacking its sacred associations, Pontevedra in its way is almost as quaint as Santiago. Standing at the head of its lovely Ria, just where the river Lerez joins the bay, it is surrounded by gracious hills backed by the Sierra high aloft. No words can exaggerate the luxuriant character of the vegetation all around. As elsewhere, maize and vines floor the valleys and lower slopes with abundant fruit trees and a wilderness of flowers. ”

“ Lugo stands upon one of the minor ridges which help to compose what Galicia calls a plain; and the river Miño, broad and placid like the Thames at Richmond, flows far beneath it in a deep, well-wooded vale. Like many of the Galician mountain townships, Lugo is roofed with rough, grey slating, and this fact at the first glance gives it a curiously un-Spanish air; yet there is no town in all the Peninsula more thoroughly national in tone.
The massive walls of the city are its greatest and most impressive feature. ”

“ Tuy, the first city of Galicia, is a relic of a past age. Its tortuous narrow streets, mere alleys a few feet wide, are like those of the prehistoric Celtic city of Citania in Portugal: deep channels worn in the living rock and patched where necessary with flat slabs. The city itself is as silent as the grave, and the frowning old castle-cathedral, with its tinkling bell calling to worship, almost alone indicates the presence of the living. ”

“ Vigo is Galicia's chief portal, and offers ready means of access to the other parts of the province. The town affords wonderful contrasts between the old and new worlds which jostle up against each other in every part of North-West Spain. You are in a quaint, strange world as soon as you have stepped ashore and are clear of the Customs and free to roam. In the steep and narrow streets of the old town people lead the primitive life of many generations or centuries ago. ”

“ The Miño is undoubtedly the most beautiful of all the great rivers in Northern Spain, and the variety of its moods is, perhaps, its most attractive feature. Nothing could be wilder than the glen by which it forces the mountains, unless it be the sister-glen by which the Sil comes down to unite with it, brimming with the waters from the Vierzo springs. Yet from the confluence to Orense it flows through an Eden of fertility, its hilly banks{92} festooned with vine and olive, and the meadows beneath them teeming with corn and maize. ”

“ Another important river is the Eo, which, rising in Galicia above Salvatierra, divides this province from that of Asturias, and is the natural boundary line between Lugo and Oviedo. Galicia has upon her coast some of the finest harbours in Europe. Vigo, for one, has often been described as the finest natural harbour in the world; while Ferrol, once so famous as the Arsenal of Spain, is likely to become ere long, in the hands of English shipbuilders, one of the world’s greatest dockyards, and to supply ironclads to all the nations. ”

“ In the middle ages the Christian kings of Asturias (Galicia?) grew more and more powerful, and their territory stretched out to the south and to the east.
On the Miño River, Tuy and Orense were frontier towns, to populate which, bishoprics were erected. To the south of Oviedo, and almost on a line with the two Galician towns, Astorga, Leon and Burgos were strongly fortified, and formed an imaginary line to the north of which ruled Christian monarchs, and to the south Arab emirs. ”

“ There are many parts of Galicia in which the scenery has an English flavour, and the Miño valley at Lugo is one of the cases in point. The fields are green and well-wooded, fenced with rough stone walls or sometimes with slabs set edgewise. The hilltops, rounded and heathy, are plentifully studded with Celtic and Roman earthworks; and when we mount to their summits (an event which happens more frequently than is quite agreeable to the cyclist) it is only like straying from Dorset to Exmoor or the Yorkshire fells. ”

“ In about a fortnight I shall depart for Santiago, where I intend to pass several days; then retracing my steps to Corunna I shall visit Ferrol, whence I shall perhaps shape my course for Oviedo in the Asturias, either along the seashore or by the mountain route, in which latter case I should have to revisit Lugo. Every part of Galicia abounds with robbers and factious, so that almost all travelling is at an end, and the road to Santiago is so bad that no one is permitted to travel it unless in company with the weekly post, which goes attended by a strong military escort. ”

“ The men are well known all over Spain and Portugal as hardy, honest and industrious, but for the most part somewhat unskilled, labourers; indeed the word Gallego has come to be almost a synonym in Madrid for a “hewer of wood and drawer of water.” It is also used as a term of abuse, meaning “boor.” Agriculture engages the greater part of the resident population, both male and female; other industries, except the fisheries, are little developed. The largest town in Galicia is Corunna (pop. 1900, 43,971) ”

“ The Alps allure the climber, but the day is not remote when the sierras of Galicia will irresistibly call those travellers who crave for splendid panoramas and are fascinated by the chance of sport. Wolves and wild boars still roam about the lonely hills, remote from man, and there is abundant fishing everywhere.
The country is well watered, a number of rivers, of which the chief is the Miño, flowing into the bays and the Atlantic through its hills and valleys. ”

“ The whole scene is wonderful and impressive, and the country has the great merit of being almost untravelled by and unknown to ordinary tourists.
From Sobroso's solitude you walk back to the high road where your motor-car or Spanish cab awaits you and resume your journey, or, being untroubled by thoughts of time or vehicles, walk onward in the strangely fascinating twilight of Galicia. You pass the peasant women, and they smile and murmur "Adios," and instinctively you raise your hat in recognition of the salutation. ”

“ COVADONGA AND EASTERN ASTURIAS FAR be it from me to disparage Vizcaya or Galicia, but the prize “for the fairest” must be awarded to Asturias. No other province in Spain—few even in Italy—can show such wealth of natural beauty; and it is the district around the Picos de Europa that is the crowning glory of the whole.
The stranger pays his homage to its scenery, but for the Spaniard it has a more sentimental appeal. ”

“ And the mountain provinces of Galicia and the Asturias, of idyllic hill and dale, yet with seaports fast awakening to commercial life, look with little sympathy on the sluggish province of León that borders them.
Industrial advancement is on its gradual way in Spain, but there is not a hint of its movement in this oldest of the separate kingdoms. Zamora, Astorga, León, Salamanca, the romantic cities of the earlier days of chivalry, lie asleep; the whistle of the railways has failed to rouse them. ”

“ Foaming and tearing its way between dark gorges, broadening here and there into smiling little valleys, the mountains terraced almost to their distant summits with mere steps upon which crops are raised, the river passes through infinite phases of beauty. But the towns, and even villages, are few and far between in these wild regions, and the suave and beautiful inland bays, with the sweet valleys and soaring sierras that surround them, will form for visitors the main attractions of Galicia. ”

“ Whilst travelling in Galicia at this period of the year on horseback, it is always advisable to carry a fine net for the protection of the animal, a sure and commodious means of defence, which appears, however, to be utterly unknown in Galicia, where, perhaps, it is more wanted than in any other part of the world.
Pontevedra, upon the whole, is certainly entitled to the appellation of a magnificent town, some of its public edifices, especially the convents, being such as are nowhere to be found but in Spain and Italy. ”

“ The rivers of the northern versant, such as the Nera, are, like those of Asturias, for the most part short, rapid and subject to violent floods.
The coast-line of Galicia, extending to about 240 m., is everywhere bold and deeply indented, presenting a large number of secure harbours, and in this respect forming a marked contrast to the neighbouring province. The Eo, which bounds Galicia on the east, has a deep estuary, the Rivadeo or Ribadeo, which offers a safe and commodious anchorage. ”

“ Galicia, 1, an old province (1,919) of Spain, formerly a kingdom in the NW. corner of it, fronting the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic; now divided into the four minor provinces, Coruña, Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra; the county is hilly, well watered, fertile, and favoured with a fine climate, but cultivated only very partially; some mining is carried on. 2, A crownland (6,607) in the NE. of Austria, between Russia and the Carpathians; the inhabitants are mainly Slavs, but there is a goodly number of Jews, Germans, Poles, &c. ”

“ Betanzos, an old-world town near Corunna, is associated with this thousand-year-old belief, and one of its quaint thoroughfares is called the Street of the Hundred Maidens.
Galicia is a land of hills. They are seen as soon as the coast is observed, and no journey can be made without beholding them. The hills are not high enough to be called mountains, but their altitude in many cases gives them a noble and dignified appearance. Richard Ford called Galicia the Switzerland of Spain ”

“ The ruined castle of Sobroso, which is within pleasant walking and driving distance of Mondariz, offers an exceptionally fine view of Galician landscape. The country is a wealth of fascinating colour. Hills rise up on every side—pine-clad and lonely; some, if the day is doubtful, suffused in sunshine, some a deep blue—so deep that the details of the hills are lost and the mountain ranges are smoky, mist-topped masses. ”

“ Every step of land visible from Noya is cultivated, every peasant is a proprietor. Yes, I had begun to understand the devotion of the Gallegans to their beautiful native land. Who would not love passionately so sweet a birthplace? Even the Russian loves his steppe, where the scene never changes for thousands of miles. In Galicia, every nook, every crag, every peak, every valley has a distinctive character that is all its own, with its own peculiar beauty. Galicia’s cottage homes are of granite, they last for many generations ”

“ It is bounded on the north by the provinces of Pontevedra and Lugo, on the south by Portugal, on the east by Zamora and Leon, and on the west by Pontevedra and Portugal. Its most important rivers are the Miño, the Sil, the Limia, and the Bibey. The chief town, Orense, is situated in an extensive and luxuriant valley which lies in the midst of mountains, many of them having summits of bare rock devoid of all vegetation. Orense is a clean, bright little town, with more movement in its streets than is usual in Gallegan towns ”

“ La Coruña is charmingly situated, facing a grand landlocked bay, but on the inner side of a narrow ridge, a short walk across which leads to the open sea, which is here very magnificent. The views of the coast, and the openings to the grand bays or rios of Ferrol, Betanzos, and la Coruña, are of unusual beauty, and it is rarely indeed that one sees a more attractive country. ”

“ THE MASMA VALLEY
Near Mondoñedo.
The beautiful bay of Coruña lay still within the curve of our advancing roadway, and every re-entering angle was filled with a gleaming creek. To our right rose rugged hills, plentifully be{111}sprinkled with farmsteads; and more than one rustic township punctuated the stages of the way. The last and most important of the inlets was the great bottle-necked lagoon of Ferrol; and the famous arsenal itself lay half concealed at the mouth of it, close under the guardian headlands that form the gateway to the bay. ”

“ Within convenient access of Ferrol and only two miles from Betanzos is the strikingly situated town of Puentedeume. Formerly this place was noted for a bridge which was a mile long and possessed no fewer than fifty-eight arches; but this was destroyed in 1868, and was replaced by a modern structure. Betanzos is one of the quaintest and most beautifully situated towns in Galicia. It is full of historical charm, and in addition to its old churches possesses the ruins of a Moorish castle. ”

“ At the very most northwestern tip of Spain is the region of Galicia, which everybody thought was the end of the world before Columbus showed them it wasn't. People in Galicia call themselves "Gallegos," and they live in a country of rocky seacoasts, where the ocean pokes long fingers called "rias" back into green hills and fog rolls in almost every day. In Galicia and the neighboring region of Asturias, fathers earn their living by fishing or by farming, and mothers make all the clothes for [Pg 26] their families from cloth they weave themselves. ”

“ It is best seen when entered from the Atlantic. Nature has made a canal in the iron cliffs by cutting a straight slit something like a mile in length, and through this amazing cleft vessels enter the noble sheltered basin which forms the harbour. Ferrol has one of the largest populations of Galicia's towns—over 20,000—and is famous mostly for its arsenal; the town, indeed, is Galicia's Portsmouth. Naval officers and cadets and seamen are met everywhere in the Calle Real and other streets, and splendid views of the harbour and dockyard are easily obtainable. ”

“ Not only can La Toja show an hotel of which any country in Europe might be proud, but, at Mondariz, the establishment in the high valley of the Tea, which Mr. Wood so justly praises, is an hotel that will satisfy the most exacting visitor. If only the terrible exodus of the able-bodied male population can be checked by making the lot of the peasant less cruelly hard than it is, Galicia should be one of the most prosperous regions in Europe. ”