Spain in 1830 (Vol. 1&2). Henry D. Inglis
be found of use. Generally speaking, every thing in Spain is calculated by reals, from the price of a ticket to the bull-fight, up to the State expenditure. The value of a real is nearly 2½d.—so that four reals are equal to a French franc, or 10d. English; all accounts in reals may therefore be easily understood by dividing by four. But in small values, the calculation is made in quartos, eight and a half of which are equal to a real, or 2½d. In stating prices, I shall always make use of these two denominations of money, so that the reader may at once be able to substitute English value.
From Bayonne, into Biscay, the nearest road is not by Vittoria, but along the sea shore by St. Sebastian; but the muleteers considering the coast road unsafe, from the chances of robbery, I was obliged to take the more circuitous line by Vittoria, which I left about five in the morning, after the usual refresco. Chocolate in Spain, is very different from chocolate in England: it is served in a very small cup, about the size of the old India china coffee cup; it is about the consistence of thick cream, and is highly spiced with cinnamon: the traveller in Spain who dislikes chocolate, will often find himself exposed to great inconvenience.
Leaving Vittoria, I entered upon the extensive plain in which it is situated, and proceeded along a good road, and at a pleasant pace, towards the mountains. The plain of Vittoria is entirely a corn country, and, at this early season, harvest had already begun: the soil is naturally bad and scanty; but the proverbial industry of the Biscayans forces from it an unwilling crop. From Vittoria to the entrance of the mountains, is about three leagues; I passed through two or three small villages, and at another, somewhat larger, just on the limits of the plain, we stopped to water the mules: it was Sunday morning; there was a fine display of vegetables and fruit in the market-place, and several hundred villagers and peasants were assembled, waiting the summons to go to mass. I walked round the market-place, and observed with pleasure, not unmixed with surprise, that every individual was clean and well dressed. I was not accosted by a single beggar.
Immediately upon leaving this village, I entered the mountains—a delightful change from a wide treeless plain. About a league from the entrance, at the end of a winding valley, and just before beginning a steep ascent, I noticed a house where guards were to be hired; the muleteer asked me whether I chose to have any, but being at that time rather an unbeliever in the frequency of robbery, and liking the expression of the muleteer’s countenance, I replied in the negative, and we passed on.
The passage of the Biscayan mountains by this road, affords some very magnificent prospects; the lower parts of the mountains are covered with oak and Spanish chestnut, and the summits rise to the height of at least 5000 feet, in the form of numerous fantastic pinnacles of a reddish colour; the road is constructed upon the most scientific principle, reaching the summit by a zigzag, and very easy ascent, and is as broad and as smooth as the best roads in any other country. The descent towards the north-west is much greater than the ascent from Vittoria, proving the great elevation of the province of Alava above that of Biscay Proper; the provinces both of Alava, and of Guipuscoa, are called Biscayan provinces, but Biscay Proper is confined to the country lying to the north of the mountains, and bounded by the sea.
We stopped at Durango, the first town after descending the mountains, to dine, and rest the mules during the hottest part of the day. I was equally pleased and surprised with the excellence of the posada at Durango; the most scrupulous cleanliness was visible in every thing; the dinner was unobjectionable; and I remarked a refinement to which the best French inns are strangers—the knives and forks were changed with every plate. I learned from the Señorita who waited at table, that a sad misfortune had that day befallen the village; the bishop to whose diocese it belonged, had journeyed from Navarre to pay his respects to the Infante at Bilbao; on his return he had stopped at Durango, as it was improper to travel on Sunday, and after condescending to preach a sermon in the village church, he had reproved the levity of the people, and forbade that there should be any dancing in the village that evening; but the girl added, that she would go to another village, half a league distant, to which the injunction did not extend: this trifling trait, added to another which I shall just now record, first led me to suspect, that the influence of the priesthood was on the decline, in Biscay at least. The landlord, having discovered that I was English, asked me how many priests we might have in England in a town such as Durango? I replied, that we might have one or two; “O Dios,” said he, “we have here more than forty!”
After dinner, we continued our journey towards Bilbao. Leaving the town, I remarked on passing the church, that the market was held under the portico, and in the environs I noticed a few specimens of Biscayan enjoyment; groups of men were lying, and sitting under the trees, playing at cards; and women were seen here and there, seated on the grass, singing, and playing the tamborine. The road to Bilbao continued excellent, and lay through a fine fertile valley, bearing luxuriant crops of Indian corn, diversified by meadows, and wood, which also covered the sides of the neighbouring hills. I saw no carriage on the road but my own; carts, and long trains of mules, occasionally passed, and the only travellers I saw, were two gentlemen mounted on mules, accompanied by four guards on foot, each provided with a carabine.
All the way from Vittoria, the muleteer who drove the carriage, sung a remarkably beautiful, but somewhat monotonous air. I was greatly pleased with the muleteer’s song, and was anxious that I should not forget it; but I afterwards found that I need not have been apprehensive of this: every where throughout Castile I heard the same air, and in Madrid, nothing else was sung by the lower orders. I was anxious to purchase it, and applied at one of the music-shops, but they told me they dared not sell it; it was forbidden by the government. The air was old Arragonese, but it was revived to new words, in a little comedy that somehow slipped through the censorship a few months before, and related how a certain friar knew too well the road into a certain convent.
As the road approaches Bilbao, the mountains that inclose the valley increase in height, make a curve, and run directly into the Bay of Biscay; and Bilbao is situated in their bosom: it is this that gives to Bilbao its peculiar character. Mountains generally diminish in height as they approach the sea; but here, this rule is reversed, and Bilbao possesses the singularity of being a sea-port, and of yet being all but surrounded by lofty mountains. Owing to this, nothing can be more striking and novel than the view of the city where it is first seen from the bridge that crosses the small river about a mile before entering it. I was obliged to leave the carriage at the entrance to the town, and walk to the posada; for it is the rule that no wheeled carriages of any kind are allowed to drive through the streets of Bilbao. This regulation has arisen from a praiseworthy desire to preserve the purity of the water, which is conveyed in a stone tunnel under the streets; all goods are therefore carried through the town either in panniers, on mules, or in sledges, which are provided with a contrivance by which they constantly moisten their path with water.
Walking through the streets, to the posada de St. Nicola, the only good inn in Bilbao, and one of the very best in the Peninsula, I was attracted by two curious exhibitions, one of them very forcibly reminding me that I was in Spain: two well-dressed peasants danced before me the whole length of a long street while another walked behind, playing a sort of trumpet; and in the open space before the principal fountain, some boys were amusing themselves with the representation of a bull-fight; one boy was mounted on another’s back, the undermost representing the horse of the picador, the other was armed with a long pole, while a third on foot, his head covered with a basket in which he had fixed two horns, imitated the motions and bellowing of the bull; several others with handkerchiefs, represented the torredores, throwing them in the bull’s face. The bull-fights at Bilbao had newly concluded; the Infante had been treated with eight exhibitions, in which thirty-two bulls were killed. This is the highest mark of respect that Spanish authorities can shew to a visitor, and the greater the number of bulls that are sacrificed, the greater of course is the compliment.
I remained in Bilbao a fortnight, which I found amply sufficient to see all that merited attention, and to inform myself respecting some of the peculiarities of the province of Biscay. I have already spoken of the situation of Bilbao, as striking and beautiful, but the town itself is not remarkable for its beauty or cleanliness; the smells are most offensive; and lying as it does in so deep a basin among the mountains, which even shut it out from the sea, I can scarcely think