The Bible in Spain. George Borrow
half intoxicated, and soon became three parts so, by swallowing glass after glass of aguardiente. Finding that I made him no answer, he directed his discourse to one of the contrabandistas, to whom he talked in bad Spanish. The latter either did not or would not understand him; but at last, losing patience, called him a drunkard, and told him to hold his tongue. The fellow, enraged at this contempt, flung the glass out of which he was drinking at the Spaniard’s head, who sprang up like a tiger, and unsheathing instantly a snick and snee knife, made an upward cut at the fellow’s cheek, and would have infallibly laid it open, had I not pulled his arm down just in time to prevent worse effects than a scratch above the lower jawbone, which, however, drew blood.
The smuggler’s companions interfered, and with much difficulty led him off to a small apartment in the rear of the house, where they slept, and kept the furniture of their mules. The drunkard then commenced singing, or rather yelling, the Marseillois hymn; and after having annoyed every one for nearly an hour, was persuaded to mount his horse and depart, accompanied by one of his neighbours. He was a pig merchant of the vicinity, but had formerly been a trooper in the army of Napoleon, where, I suppose, like the drunken coachman of Evora, he had picked up his French and his habits of intoxication.
From Estremoz to Elvas the distance is six leagues. I started at nine next morning; the first part of the way lay through an enclosed country, but we soon emerged upon wild bleak downs, over which the wind, which still pursued us, howled most mournfully. We met no one on the route; and the scene was desolate in the extreme; the heaven was of a dark grey, through which no glimpse of the sun was to be perceived. Before us, at a great distance, on an elevated ground, rose a tower—the only object which broke the monotony of the waste. In about two hours from the time when we first discovered it, we reached a fountain, at the foot of the hill on which it stood; the water, which gushed into a long stone trough, was beautifully clear and transparent, and we stopped here to water the animals.
Having dismounted, I left the guide, and proceeded to ascend the hill on which the tower stood. Though the ascent was very gentle I did not accomplish it without difficulty; the ground was covered with sharp stones, which, in two or three instances, cut through my boots and wounded my feet; and the distance was much greater than I had expected. I at last arrived at the ruin, for such it was. I found it had been one of those watch towers or small fortresses called in Portuguese atalaias; it was square, and surrounded by a wall, broken down in many places. The tower itself had no door, the lower part being of solid stone work; but on one side were crevices at intervals between the stones, for the purpose of placing the feet, and up this rude staircase I climbed to a small apartment, about five feet square, from which the top had fallen. It commanded an extensive view from all sides, and had evidently been built for the accommodation of those whose business it was to keep watch on the frontier, and at the appearance of an enemy to alarm the country by signals—probably by a fire. Resolute men might have defended themselves in this little fastness against many assailants, who must have been completely exposed to their arrows or musketry in the ascent.
Being about to leave the place, I heard a strange cry behind a part of the wall which I had not visited, and hastening thither, I found a miserable object in rags, seated upon a stone. It was a maniac—a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb; there he sat, gibbering and mowing, and distorting his wild features into various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping. But the maniac, on his stone, in the rear of the wind-beaten ruin, overlooking the blasted heath, above which scowled the leaden heaven, presented such a picture of gloom and misery as I believe neither painter nor poet ever conceived in the saddest of their musings. This is not the first instance in which it has been my lot to verify the wisdom of the saying, that truth is sometimes wilder than fiction.
I remounted my mule, and proceeded till, on the top of another hill, my guide suddenly exclaimed, “there is Elvas.” I looked in the direction in which he pointed, and beheld a town perched on the top of a lofty hill. On the other side of a deep valley towards the left rose another hill, much higher, on the top of which is the celebrated fort of Elvas, believed to be the strongest place in Portugal. Through the opening between the fort and the town, but in the background and far in Spain, I discerned the misty sides and cloudy head of a stately mountain, which I afterwards learned was Albuquerque, one of the loftiest of Estremadura.
We now got into a cultivated country, and following the road, which wound amongst hedgerows, we arrived at a place where the ground began gradually to shelve down. Here, on the right, was the commencement of an aqueduct by means of which the town on the opposite hill was supplied; it was at this point scarcely two feet in altitude, but, as we descended, it became higher and higher, and its proportions more colossal. Near the bottom of the valley it took a turn to the left, bestriding the road with one of its arches. I looked up, after passing under it; the water must have been flowing near a hundred feet above my head, and I was filled with wonder at the immensity of the structure which conveyed it. There was, however, one feature which was no slight drawback to its pretensions to grandeur and magnificence; the water was supported not by gigantic single arches, like those of the aqueduct of Lisbon, which stalk over the valley like legs of Titans, but by three layers of arches, which, like three distinct aqueducts, rise above each other. The expense and labour necessary for the erection of such a structure must have been enormous; and, when we reflect with what comparative ease modern art would confer the same advantage, we cannot help congratulating ourselves that we live in times when it is not necessary to exhaust the wealth of a province to supply a town on a hill with one of the first necessaries of existence.
CHAPTER VIII
Elvas—Extraordinary Longevity—The English Nation—Portuguese Ingratitude—Illiberality—Fortifications—Spanish Beggar—Badajoz—The Custom House.
Arrived at the gate of Elvas, an officer came out of a kind of guard house, and, having asked me some questions, despatched a soldier with me to the police office, that my passport might be viséed, as upon the frontier they are much more particular with respect to passports than in other parts. This matter having been settled, I entered an hostelry near the same gate, which had been recommended to me by my host at Vendas Novas, and which was kept by a person of the name of Joze Rosado. It was the best in the town, though, for convenience and accommodation, inferior to a hedge alehouse in England. The cold still pursued me, and I was glad to take refuge in an inner kitchen, which, when the door was not open, was only lighted by a fire burning somewhat dimly on the hearth. An elderly female sat beside it in her chair, telling her beads: there was something singular and extraordinary in her look, as well as I could discern by the imperfect light of the apartment. I put a few unimportant questions to her, to which she replied, but seemed to be afflicted to a slight degree with deafness. Her hair was becoming grey, and I said that I believed she was older than myself, but that I was confident she had less snow on her head.
“How old may you be, cavalier?” said she, giving me that title which in Spain is generally used when an extraordinary degree of respect is wished to be exhibited. I answered that I was near thirty. “Then,” said she, “you were right in supposing that I am older than yourself; I am older than your mother, or your mother’s mother: it is more than a hundred years since I was a girl, and sported with the daughters of the town on the hillside.” “In that case,” said I, “you doubtless remember the earthquake.” “Yes,” she replied, “if there is any occurrence in my life that I remember, it is that: I was in the church of Elvas at the moment, hearing the mass of the king, and the priest fell on the ground, and let fall the Host from his hands. I shall never forget how the earth shook; it made us all sick; and the houses and walls reeled like drunkards. Since that happened I have seen fourscore years pass by me, yet I was older then than you are now.”
I looked with wonder at this surprising female, and could scarcely believe her words. I was, however, assured that she was in fact upwards of a hundred and ten years of age, and was considered the oldest person in Portugal. She still retained the use of her faculties in as full a degree