Romantic Spain: a record of personal experiences

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http: //books .google .com/I

W, H. SMITH & SON'S
SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY,

lUe, STRAND, LOHOON,

AND AT THE RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS,

Navek«AKi(M«ani«HaHic(ivE(. f

For TWILVB

KOMAI^nC SPAIIs:

-J HEVOm- OF PEBSOXAL EXFEFJENCE::

ROMANTIC SPAIN:

^ ^tjcorb 0f ^zxBonixl ^xptvitntZB.

BY

JOHN AUGUSTUS O'SHEA,

avthor of
"leaves from the life of a special correspondent,"

** AN iron-bound city,* ETC.

" Oh, lovely Sx>aiii! renowned, romantic land I"

Childe Harold.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON :

WAED AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.a

1887.

[All Rights Sutrvtd.]

41

/^:^2/Z^ -/'YO

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

A Tidy City— A Sacred Corpse — Eemarkable Features
of Puerto — A Calesa — Lady Blanche's Castle — ^A
Typical English Engineer — British Enterprise —
"Success to the Cadiz Waterworks !"— Visit to a
Bodega — Wine and Women — The Coming Man — ^A
Strike ? 1-18

CHAPTER II.

The Charms of Cadiz — Seville-by-the-Sea — Cervantes
— Daughters of Eve — The Ladies who Prayed and
the Women who Didn't — Fasting Monks — Notice to
Quit on the Nuns — The Rival Processions— Gutting
a Church — A Disorganized Garrison — Taking it Easy
— The Mysterious " Mr. Crabapple " — The Steamer
Murillo — An Unsentimental Navvy — Bandaged
Justice — Tricky Ship-Owning — Painting Black
White 19-41

CHAPTER III

Expansion of Carlism — A Pseudo-Democracy — His-
toric Land and Water Marks — An Impudent Stow-
away—Spanish Respect for Providence — A Fatal
Signal — Playing with Fire -Across the Bay — Fare-
well to Andalusia— British Spain- - - 42-50

▼i CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

PAGE

Gabriel Tar— A Hard Nut to Crack — In the Cemetery
— An Old Tipperary Soldier — Marks of the Broad
Arrow — The "Scorpions" — The Jaun ting-Cars —
Amusements on the Rock — Mrs. Damages' Com-
plaint — The Bay, the Alameda, and Tarifa— How
to Learn Spanish — ^Types of the British Officer— The
Wily Ben Solomon — ^A Word for the Subaltern-
Sunset Gun— The Sameness of Sutlersville - 51-75

CHAPTER V.

From Pillar to Pillar — Historic Souvenirs — Off to
Africa— The Sweetly Pretty Albert — Gibraltar by
Moonlight — The Chain-Gang — Across the Strait— A
Difficult Landing— Albert is Hurt — " Fat Mahomet "
— The Calendar of the Centuries Put Back — Tangier :
the People, the Streets, the Bazaar — Our Hotel —
A Coloured Gentleman — Seeing the Sights — Local
Memoranda — Jewish Disabilities— Peep at a Photo-
graphic Album — The Writer's Notions on Harem
Life 76-102

CHAPTER VI.

A Pattern Despotism— Some Moorish Peculiarities —
A Hell upon Earth— Fighting for Bread— An Air-
Bath — Surprises of Tangier — On Slavery — The
Writer's Idea of a Moorish Squire — The Ladder of
Knowledge — Gulping Forbidden Liquor — Division
of Time — Singular Customs — The Shereef of Wazan

CONTENTS. vii

PAGE

—The Christian who Captivated the Moor— The
Interview — Moslem Patronage of Spain — A Slap for
England — A Vision of Beauty — An English Desde-
mona : Her Plaint — One for the Newspaper Men —
The Ladies' Battle--Farewell— The English Lady's
Maid — Albert is Indisposed— The Writer Sums up
on Morocco . - . . . 103-135

CHAPTER VII.

Back to Gibraltar— The Parting with Albert — The
Tongue of Scandal— Voyage to Malaga—" No Police,
no Anything"— Federalism Triumphant — Madrid in
Statu Quo — Orense — Progress of the Royalists— Oil
the Road Home — In the Insurgent Country —
Stopped by the Carlists — An Angry Passenger is
Silenced ------ 136-151

CHAPTER VIIL

On the Wing— Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters —
Another Petit Paris — Carlists from Cork — How
Leader was Wounded — Beating- up for an Anglo-
Irish Legion — Pontifical Zouaves — A Bad Lot —
Oddities of Carlism — Santa Cruz Again — Running
a Cargo — On Board a Carlist Privateer — A Descen-
dant of Kings — " Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four
Pounder T' — Crossing the Border— A Remarkable
Guide — Mountain Scenery — In Navarre — Challenged
at Vera — Our Billet with the Parish Priest— The Sad
Story of an Irish Volunteer — Dialogue with Don
Carlos — The Happy Valley — Bugle-Blasts — The

viii CONTENTS.

PAGE

Writer in a Quandary — The Fifth Battalion of
Navarre — The Distribution of Arms — The Bleeding
Heart— Enthusiasm of the Chicos - - 152-187

CHAPTER IX.

The Cura of Vera — ^Fueros of the Basques — Carlist Dis-
cipline — Fate of the San Margarita — The Squadron
of Vigilance — How a Capture was Effected — The
Sea- Rovers in the Dungeon — Visit to the Prisoners —
San Sebastian — A Dead Season— The Defences of a
Threatened City — Souvenirs of War — The Miqueletes
— In a Fix— A German Doctor's Warning - 188-210

CHAPTER X.

Belcha's Brigands — Pale- Red Republicans— The Hyena
— More about the San Margarita — Arrival of a Re-
publican Column — The Jaunt to Los Pasages — A
Sweet Surprise — " The Prettiest Girl in Spain " — A
Madrid Acquaintance— A Costly Pull — The Diligence
at Last — Renteria and its Defences — A Furious Ride
— In France Again — Unearthing Santa Cruz— The
Outlaw in his Lair — Interviewed at Last — The Truth
about the Endarlasa Massacre — A Death- Warrant —
The Buried Gun — Fanaticism of the Partisan-
Priest 211-238

CHAPTER XL

An Audible Battle—" Great Cry and Little Wool"— A
Carlist Court Newsman— The Religious War — The
Siege of Oyarzun— Madrid Rebels — "The Money of

CONTENTS, ix

PAGE

Judas" — A Manifesto from Don Carlos — ^An Ideal
Monarch — ^Necessity of Social and Political Recon-
struction Proclaimed—A Free Church — ^A Broad
Policy — The King for the People — The Theological
Question — Austerity in Alava— Clerical* and Non-
Clerical Carlists — Disavowal of Bigotry — A Repub-
lican Editor on the' Carlist Creed — Character of
the Basques — Drill and Discipline — Guerilleros versus
Regulars ------ 239-268

CHAPTER XII.

Barbarossa — Royalist-Republicans — Squaring a Girl —
At Irun— " Your Papers T— The Barber's Shop— A
Carlist Spy— An Old Chum— The Alarm — A Breach
of Neutrality — Under Fire — Caught in the Toils—
The Heroic Thomas — We Slope — A Colleague Advises
Me— "A Horse ! a Horse !"— State of Bilbao— Don
Carlos at Estella — Sanchez Bregua Recalled— Tolosa
Invites — Republican Ineptitude — Do not Spur a Free
Horse — ^Very Ancient Boys— Meditations in Bed — A
Biscay Storm ----- 269-299

CHAPTER XIII.

Nearingthe End— Firing on the Red Cross — Perpetuity
of War — Artistic Hypocrites — The Jubilee Year —
The Conflicts of a Peaceful Reign— Major Russell —
Quick Promotion — The Foreign Legion — The Aspir-
ing Adventurer — A Leader's Career — A Piratical
Proposal— The "Ojoladeros" of Biarritz — A Friend
in Need — Buying a Horse — Gilpin Outdone — " Fred
Burnaby'* ------ 300-317

■/

"J-

\

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

CHAPTER I.

A Tidy City— A Sacred Corpse — Remarkable Features of
Puerto— A Calesa— Lady Blanche's Castle — A Typical^,
English Engineer — British Enterprise — "Success to :^
the Cadiz Waterworks !"— Visit to a Bodega — Wine
and Women — The Coming Man— A Strike!

Puerto de Santa Maria has the name of- being
the neatest and tidiest city in Spain, and neatness
and tidiness are such dear homely virtues, I thought
I could not do better than hie me thither to see if
the tale were true. With a wrench I tore myself
from the soft capital of Andalusia, dehghtful but
demobilizing. I was growing lazier every day I
spent there ; I felt energy oozing out of every pore
of my body ; and in the end I began to get afraid - ^
that if I stopped much longer I should only be fit

VOL. II. 21

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

to sing the song of the sluggard: — "You have
waked me too soon, let me slumber again.'
Seville is a dangerous place ; it is worse than
Capua; it would enervate Cromwell's Ironsides.
Happily for me the mosquitoes found out my bed-
room, and pricked me into activity, or I might not
have summoned the courage to leave it for weeks,
the more especially as I had a sort of excuse for
staying. The Cardinal Archbishop had promised a
friend of mine to let him inspect the body of St.
Fernando, and my friend had promised to take me
with him. Now, this was a great favour. St. Fer-
nando is one of the patrons of Seville ; he has been
dead a long time, but his corpse refuses to putrefy,
like those of ordinary mortals ; it is a sacred corpse,
and in a beatific state of preservation. Three times
a year the remains of the holy man are uncovered,
and the faithful are admitted to gaze on his incor-
ruptible features. This was not one of the regular
occasions ; the Cardinal Archbishop had made an
exception in compliment to my friend, who is a
rising young diplomat, so that the favour was really
a favour. I declined it with thanks — very much

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

obliged, indeed — pressure of business called me
elsewhere — the cut-and-dry form of excuse ; but I
never mentioned a word about the Inosquitoes. I
told my friend to thank the prelate for his gracious-
ness ; the prelate expressed his sorrow that my
engagements did not permit me to wait, and begged
that I would oblige him by letting the British
public know the shameful way he and his priests
were treated by the Government. They had not
drawn a penny of salary for three years. This was
a fact ; and very discreditable it was to the Govern-
ment, and a good explanation of the disloyalty of
their reverences. If a contract is made it should
be kept ; the State contracted to support the
Church, but since Queen Isabella decamped the
State had forgotten its engagement.

Puerto de Santa Maria deserves the name it has
got It is a clean and shapely collection of houses,
regularly built People in England are apt to
associate the idea of filth with Spain ; this, at least
in Andalusia, is a mistake. The cleanliness is
Flemish. Soap and the scrubbing-brush are not
spared ; linen is plentiful and spotless, and water is

21—2

ROMANTIC SPAIK

used for other purposes than correcting the strength
of wine. Walking down the long main street with
its paved causeways and pebbly roadway, with
its straight lines of symmetric houses, coquettish in
their marble balconies and brightly-painted shutters
and railings, one might fancy himself in Brock or
Delft but that the roofs are flat, that the gables are
not turned to the street, and that the sky is a.
cloudless blue. I am speaking now of fine days ;
but there are days when the sky is cloudy and the
wind blows, and the waters in the Bay of Cadiz
below surge up sullen and yeasty, and there are
days when the rain comes down quick, thick, and
heavy as from a waterspout, and the streets are
turned for the moment into rivulets. But the
effects of the rain do not last long ; Spain is what
washerwomen would call a good drjdng country.
Beyond its neatness and tidiness, Puerto has other
features to recommend it to the traveller. It has a
bookseller's shop, where the works of Eugene Sue
and Paul de Kock can be had in choice Spanish,
side by side with the Carlist Almanack, "by
eminent monarchical writers," and the calendar of

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 5

the Saragossan prophet (the Spanish Old Moore) ;
but it is not to that I refer — half a hundred Anda-
lusian towns can boast the same. It has its de-
molished convent, but since the revolution of '68
that is no more a novelty than the Alameda, or
sand-strewn, poplar-planted promenade, which one
meets in every Spanish hamlet. It has the Atlantic
waves rolling in at its feet, and a pretty sight it is
to mark the feluccas, with single mast crossed by
single yard, like an unstrung bow, moored by the
wharf or with outspread sail bellying before the
breeze on their way to Cadiz beyond, where she
sits throned on the other side of the bay, *' like a
silver cup " glistening in the sunshine, when sun-
shine there is. The silver cup to which the Gadi-
tanos are fond of comparing their city looked more
like dirty pewter as I approached it by water from
Puerto ; but I was in a tub of a steamer, there was a
heavy sea on and a heavy mist out, and perhaps I
was qualmish. Not for its booksellers' shops, for
its demolished convent, or for its vulgar Atlantic
did this Puerto, which the guide-books pass curtly
by as "uninteresting," impress me as interesting,

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

but for two features that no seasoned traveller
could, would, or should overlook ; its female popu-
lation is the most attractive in Andalusia, and it
is the seat of an agreeable English colony. I
happened on the latter in a manner that is curious,
so curious as to merit relation.

I had intended to proceed to Cadiz from Seville
after I had taken a peep at Puerto, but that little
American gentleman whom I met at C6rdoba was
with me, and persuaded me to stop by the story of
a wonderful castle prison, a sort of Tour de Nesle,
which was to be seen in the vicinity, where the
bonne amie of a King of Spain had been built up
in the good old times when monarchs raised
favourites from the gutter one day, and sometimes
ordered their weazands to be slit the next. This
show-place is about a league from Puerto, in the
valley of Sidonia, and is called El Castillo de Dona
Blanca. We took a calesa to go there. My com-
panion objected to travelling on horseback ; he could
not stomach the peculiar Moorish saddle with its
high-peaked cantle and crupper, and its catch-and-
carry stirrups. We took a calesa, as I have said.

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

To my dying day I shall not forget that vehicle of
torture. But it may be necessary to tell what is a
calesa. Procure a broken-down hansom, knock off
the driver's seat, paint the body and wheels the
colour of a roulette-table at a racecourse, stud the
hood with brass nails of the pattern of those em-
ployed to beautify genteel coffins, remove the
cushions, and replace them with a wisp of straw,
smash the springs, and put swing-leathers un-
derneath instead, cover the whole article with a
coating of liquid mud, leave it to dry in a mouldy
place where the rats shall have free access to the
leather for gnawing practice, return in seven years,
and you will find a tolerably correct imitation of
that decayed machine, the Andalusian calesa. It
is more picturesque than the Neapolitan corricolo ;
it is all ribs and bones, and is much given to
inward groaning as it jerks and jolts along. Such
a trap we took ; the driver lazily clambered on the
shafts, and away hobbled our lean steed.

The road to Lady Blanche's Castle is like that to
Jordan in the nigger songs ; it is *' a hard road to
travel" — a road full of holes and quagmires and

8 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

jutting rocks ; and yet the driver told me it had
once been a good road, but that was in the reign of
Queen Isabella. Everything seems to have been
allowed to go to dilapidation since. On the out-
skirts of Puerto we passed an English cemetery ; I
am glad to say it is almost uninhabited. If there
is an English dead settlement there ought to be a
live one, I reasoned, unless those who are buried
here date from Peninsular battles. The first part
of the road to Blanche's Castle is level, and bor-
dered with thick growths of prickly pear ; there is
a view of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned
by a metal bridge — a Menai on a small scale.
Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad,
the country is diversified by swampy flats at one
side and sandy hills at the other. Blanche's Castle
was a commonplace ruin, a complete " sell," and
we turned our horse's head rather savagely. As
we were coming back, the little American shortening
the way by Sandford and Merton observations of
this nature — " Prickly pear makes a capital hedge ;
no cattle will face it ; the spikes of the plant are as
tenacious as fish-hooks. The fibres of the aloe are
unusually strong; they make better cordage than

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 9

hemp, but will not bear the wet so well " — a sight
caught my eyes which caused me to stare. A tall
young fellow, with his trousers tucked up, was
wading knee-deep in the bottoms beside the road.
He wore a suit of Oxford mixture.

" Who or what is that gentleman ?" I asked the
driver.

" An English engineer," was the answer.

I stopped the calesa, hailed him, and inquired
was he fond of rheumatic fever. He laughed, and
pronounced the single word, "Duty." A little
word, but one that means much. A Spanish _ 4

engineer would never have done this ; they are
great in offices and at draughting on paper, but
they seldom tuck up their sleeves, much less
their trousers, to labour out of doors as the young
EngHshman was doing. I made his acquaintance,
and he "willingly consented to show me over the
works in which he was engaged, which were in-
tended to supply Cadiz with water. In England

water is to be had too easily to be estimated at its
proper value. At Cadiz it is a marketable com-
modity. Even the parrots there squeak " agua."
Every drop of rain that falls is carefully gathered

,1^

10 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

in cisterns, and the conveyance of water in boat-
loads from Puerto across the Bay is a regular trade.
An English company had been formed to supply
the parched seaport and the ships that call there
with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated
at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below,
where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our
countryman told me the water was to be sought.
GaUeries had been sunk in every direction in land
which the company had purchased, and pumps and
engines are soon to be erected that will raise the
liquid collected there up to the reservoirs which
have been hewn out of the hills above. These
reservoirs, approached by passages excavated out
of the rough sandstone, are stout and solid speci-
mens of the mason's craft directed by the engineer's
skill. Here we met a second gentleman superin-
tending the labours of the men, but he was surely
a Spaniard ; he spoke the language with the readi-
ness of one bom on the soil ; still, he had a matter-
of-fact, resolute quickness about him that was
hardly Spanish. Doubts as to his nationality were
soon dispelled; the engineer we had surprised in
the swamp presented us to his colleague Forrest,

MOM ANTIC SPA IK. 1 1

ennfineer to Messrs. Bamett and Gale, of West-
minster, the contractors, as thoroughbred an
Englishman as ever came out of the busy town of
Blackburn.

Mr. Forrest at once stood to cross-examination
by the American, who had all the inquisitiveness
of his race.

" We employ a couple of hundred men, on an
average, here," he said, " all of whom, with but two
exceptions, are Spaniards, and very fair hard-
working fellows they are ; in the town below we
have a small colony of English, and if you don't
take it amiss I shall be happy to present you to
our society."

I know little of the technicalities of engineering,
but I saw enough of this work to be certain that
it was well and truly done, and I heard enough of
the scarcity of water in Cadiz to be convinced it
will be a great boon when finished. The reservoirs
are constructed in colonnades, supported by ashlar
pillars and roofed with rubble ; for the water must
be shaded from the sun in this hot climate ; the
pillars are buttered over with cement, and there
is over a foot of cement concrete on the flooring,

12 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

to guard against filtration. As we paced about
the sombre aisles, echo multipHed every syllable we
uttered; the repetition of sound is as distinct as
in the whispering gallery of St. Paul's, and I could
not help remarking, "What a splendid robber's
cave this would make !"

" Too tell-tale," said the practical American ;
" make a better cave of harmony."

"The only pipes that are ever likely to blow
here are water-pipes," smilingly put in the engineer ;
" we intend to lay them from this to Cadiz, some
twenty-eight miles distant. Roughly speaking, we
are about ninety feet above the level of the place,
so that the highest building there can be supplied
with ease."

The Romans were benefactors to many portions
of this dry land of Spain ; they built up aqueducts
which are still in use, but they neglected Cadiz.
The town has been dependent on these springs of
La Piedad for its water supply, except such as
dropped from heaven, for three hundred years,
and attempts to obtain water from wells or borings
in the neighbourhood have invariably failed. The

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 13

water which is found in this basin, held by capillary
attraction in the permeable strata through which
it soaks till the hard impermeable stratum is met —
retained, in short, in a natural reservoir — is excel-
lent in quality, limpid and sparkling. Puerto has
been supplied from the place for time out of mind,
and Puerto has been so well supplied that it could
afford to sell panting Cadiz its surplus. With
English capital and enterprise putting new life into
those old hills, and cajoling the precious beverage
out of their bosom, which unskilled engineers let
go to waste, Cadiz should shortly have reason to
bless the foreign company that relieves its thirst.
Clear virgin water, such as will course down the
tunnels to bubble up in the Gaditanian fountains,
is the greatest luxury of life here ; " Agua fresca,
cool as snow," is the most welcome of cries in the
summer, and temperate Spain is as devoted to the
colourless liquid that the temperance lecturer
Gough and his compeers call Adam's ale, as ever
London drayman was to Barclay's Entire. Success,
then, to the Cadiz Waterworks Compr*ny : we drank
the toast on the hill-side of "Piety" they were

14 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

making fruitful of good, drank it in tipple of their
and nature's brewing, but had latent hopes that
Forrest or his colleague would help us to a bumper
of the generous grape-juice for which the district
is famed, when we got down to the pleasant com-
panionship of the English colony below.

Nor were our hopes disappointed. There are
innumerable bodegas, or wine-vaults, in the town,
in which bottles and barrels of wine are neatly
caged in labelled array, according to age, quality,
and kind. Very clean and roomy these stores of
vinous treasure are^ with an indescribable semi-
medicinal odour languidly pervading them. We
visited a bodega belonging to an Englishman, who
ranks as a grandee of the first-class, the Duke of
Ciudad Eodrigo and eke of Vitoria, but who is
better known as the Duke of Wellington. The
natural wine of this district is too thin for insular
palates. They crave something fierj% and, by my
word, they get it. Like that Irish car-driver who
rejected my choicest, oily, mellow " John Jameson,*'
but thanked me after gulping a hell-glass of new
spirit, violent assault Uquefied, thev want a drink

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 16

that will catch them by the throat and assert its pre-
rogative going down. What a beamy old imposition
is that rich brown sherry of city banquets, over
which the idiot of a connoisseur cunningly smacks
his lips and rolls his moist eyes. If he were only
told how much of it was real and how much
artificial, would he not gasp and crimson! It
would be unmerciful to inform him that his pet
cordial is charged with sulphuric acid gas, that it
is sweetened with cane-sugar, that it is flavoured
with "gamacha dulce," that it is coloured with
plastered must and fortified with brandy, before
it is shipped. Let us leave him in blissful
ignorance. We tasted many samples before we
left, but I own I have no liking for sherries^
simple or doctored. Among Spanish wines I far
prefer the full-bodied astringent sub-acidity of the
common Val de Penas, beloved of Cervantes. But
the Queen of wines is sound Bordeaux. To that
Queen, however, a delicate etherous Amontillado
might be admitted as Spanish maid-of-honour, pre-
ceding the royal footsteps, whfle the synipy Malaga
from the DoradiUo grape might follow as attendant
in her train*

16 ROMANTIC SPATN.

From wine to women is an easy transition. • Both
are benedictions from on high, and I have no
patience with the foul churl who cannot enjc»y the
one with proper continence, and rise the better and
more chivalrous from the society of the other.
Wine well used is a good familiar creature — kindles,
soothes, and inspirits : the cup of wine warmed by
the smile of woman gives courage to the soldier
and genius to the minstrel. With Bums — and he
was no ordinary seer — I hold that the sweetest
hours that e*er we spend are spent among the
lasses. I will go farther and say the most profit-
able hours. And some sweet and profitable hours
'twas mine to spend among the fawn-orbed lasses of
Puerto, with their childlike gaiety, their desire to
please, and their fetching freedom from affectation.
Would that the wines exported from the district
were half as unsophisticated! These lasses were
not learned in the *'ologies" or the "isms," but
they were sincere ; and their locks flowed long and
free, and when they laughed the coral sluices
flying open gave scope to a full silvery music
cascading between pales of gleaming pearl. An

.-,v^*^

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 17

admixture of this strain with the fair-skinned men
of the North should produce a magnificent race ;
and, indeed, if we paid half the attention to the
improvement of the human animal which we do to
that of the equine or the porcine, the experiment
would not have been left untried so long. In-and-
in breeding is a mistake, and can only commei^d
itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the, Aztec in
physique and the imbecile in mind. The families
which take most pride in their purity are the
most degenerate; the stock which is the most
robust and handsome is that which has in it a
liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion,
the coming man, the highest form of well-balanced
qualities — moral, intellectual, and masculine — the
nearest approach to perfection, must ultimately be
developed in the United States.

Puerto has a wide-spread reputation as the
nursery-ground for bull-fighters. To the arena it is
what Newmarket is to the British turf. Everybody
there walks about armed, but murder is not more
rife in proportion than in London. As it happened,
a fellow was shot while I was there, but that would

VOL. II. 22

18 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

not justify one in coming to the conclusion that
homicide was a flourishing indigenous product.
Still, the natives did not escape the contagion of
unrest of their countrymen. For example, the last
news I heard before leaving my EngUsh friends
was that the men in the vineyards had struck work.
These lazy scoundrels had the impudence to de-
mand that they should have half an hour after
arrival on the ground, and before beginning work,
to smoke cigarettes, the same grace after the break-
fast hour, two hours for a siesta in the middle of
the day, another interval for a bout of smoking in
the afternoon, and finally that each should be
entitled to an arroba (more than three and a half
gallons EngUsh) of wine per acre at the end of the
season. They go on the same basis as some trades'
unions we are acquainted with — reduction of hours
of labour and increase of wages, " Will you give
in to them ?" I asked of an EngUsh settler, in the

wine trade. " Give in " but it is unnecessary

to repeat the expletive ; " PU quietly shut up my
bodega."

CHAPTER II.

The Charms of Cadiz— Seville-by-the-Sea— Cervantes-
Daughters of Eve — The Ladies who Prayed and the
Women who Didn't— Fasting Monks — Notice to Quit
on the Nuns — The Rival Processions — Gutting a
Church — A Disorganized Garrison — Taking it Easy —
The Mysterious "Mr. Crabapple" — The Steamer
Murillo — An Unsentimental Navvy — Bandaged Justice
— Tricky Ship-Owning— Painting Black White.

The man who pitched on Cadiz as the site of a city
knew what he was about. Without exception it is
the most charmingly-located place I ever set foot
in. Its white terraces, crowded with white pin-
nacles, belvederes, and turrets, glistening ninety-
nine days out of the hundred in clear sunUght, rise
gently out of a green sea flecked with foam ; the
harbour is busy with commerce, |^crowded with
steamers and sailing ships coming and '"going from
the Mediterranean shores, from France, from
England, or from the distant countries beyond the

22—2

20 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Atlantic ; the waters around (for Cadiz is built on a
peninsula, and peeps of water make the horizon of
almost every street) are dotted with fishing craft or
scudding curlews ; the public squares are everlast-
ingly verdant with the tall fern-palm, the feathery
mimosa, the myrtle, and the silvery ash, which only
recalls the summer the better for its suggestive
appearance of having been recently blown over with
dust ; the gaze inland is repaid with the sight of
hills brown by distance, of sheets of pasture, and
pyramidal salt-mounds of creamy grey; and the
gaze upwards — to lend a glow to the ravishing
picture — is delighted by such a cope of dreamy
blue, deep and pure, and imstained by a single
cloudlet, as one seldom has the happiness of looking
upon in England outside the doors of an exhibition
of paintings. The climate is dry and genial, and not
so hot as Seville. The Sevillanos know that, and
come to Cadiz when the heats make residence in
their own city insupportable. Winter is imknown ;
skating has never been witnessed by Gaditanos,
except when exhibited by foreign professors, clad
in furs, who glide on rollers over polished floors :

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 21

and small British boys who are fond of snowballing
when they come out here are obliged to pelt each
other with oranges to keep their hands in. One
enthusiastic traveller compares it to a pearl set in
sapphires and emeralds, but adds — lest we should all
be running to hug the jewel— there is little art here
and less society.

" Letters of exchange are the only belles-lettres."
Indeed. Now this is one of those wiseacres who are
in a community, but not of it, who materially are
present, but can never mentally, so to speak, get
themselves inside the skins of the inhabitants. That
city cannot be said to be without letters which has
its poetic brotherhood, limited though it be, and
which reveres the memory of Cervantes, as the
memory of Shakespeare is revered in no English
seaport. Wiseacre should hie him to Cadiz on the
23rd of April, when the birth of Cervantes is cele-
brated, for in spite of intestine broils, Spaniards are
true to the worship of the author of " Don Quixote,"
and his no less immortal attendant, whom Gandalin,
friend to Amadis of Gaul, aflfectionately apostro-
phizes thus :

22 MOM ANTIC SPAIN.

" Salve I Sancho with the paunch,
Thou most famous squire,
Fortune smiled as Escudero she did dub thee
Tho' Fate insisted 'gainst the world to rub thee.
Fortune gave wit and common-sense,

Philosophy, ambition to aspire ;
While Chivalry thy wallet stored,
And led thee harmless through the fire/'

With the respect he deserves for this wandering
critic and no more, I will take the Kberty of saying
that there is art, and a great deal of art, in the site
of the clean town ; and that there is society, and
good society, in that forest of spars in the road-
stead, and in the fishing and shooting in the
neighbourhood. When the Tauchnitz editions
have been exhausted, and when the stranger has
mastered Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Espronceda,
Larra, and Kivas, there is always that book which
Dr. Johnson loved, the street, or that lighter litera-
ture which Moore sings, " woman's looks," to fall
back upon. I am afraid some prudes may be
misjudging my character on account of the fre-
quency of my allusions to the sex lately ; but I beg
them to recollect that this is Andalusia, and that
woman is a very important element in the popula-

MOM AN TIG SPAIN, 23

tion of Cadiz. She rules the roost, and the courtly
Spaniard of the south forgets that there was ever
such an undutiful person as Eve. Woman played
a remarkable part in tlio events of the couple of
months after the Royal crown was punched out of
the middle of the national flag. She is political
here, and is not shy of declaring her opinions.
Ladies of the better classes of Cadiz are attentive
to the duties of their religion; kneeling figures
gracefully draped in black may be seen at all hours
of the day in the churches during this Lenten
season, telling their beads or turning over their
missals. Those ladies are Carlist to a man, as
Paddy would say ; they naturally exert an influence
over their husbands, though the influence falls
short of making their husbands accompany them
to church except on great festivals such as Easter
Sunday, or on what may be called occasions of
social rendezvous, such as a Requiem service for a
deceased friend. The men seem to be of one mind
with the French freethinker, who abjured religion
himself, or put off* thoughts of it till his dying day,
but pronounced it necessary for peasants and whole-

24 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

some for women and children. But lea femraes du
peuple, the fishwives, the labourers' daughters, the
bouncing young fruit-sellers, and the like, are not
religious in Cadiz. They have been bitten with the
revolutionary mania ; they are staunch Eed Repub-
licans, and have the bump of veneration as flat as
the furies that went in procession to Versailles at
the period of the Great Revolution, or their great
granddaughters who fought on the barricades of
the Commune. The nymphs of the pavement
sympathize strongly with the Republic Ukewise;
but their ideal of a Republic is not that of Senores
Castelar and Figueras. They want bull-fights and
distribution of property, and object to all religious
confraternities unless based on the principles of
"the Monks of the Screw," whose charter-song,
written by that wit in wig and gown, Philpot
Curran, was of the least ascetic :

" My children, be chaste— till you're tempted ;
While sober, be wise and discreet,
And humble your bodies with — fasting,
Whene'er you have nothing to eat."

So long ago as 1834 a sequestration of convents
was ordered in Spain, but the Gaditanos never had

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 25

tlie courage to enforce the decree till after the
revolution that sent Queen Isabella into exile. A
few years ago the convent of Barefooted Carmelites
on the Plaza de los Descalzados was pulled down ;
the decree that legalized the act provided an
indemnity, but the unfortunate monks who were
turned bag and baggage out of their house never
got a penny. They have had to humble their
bodies with fasting since. For those amongst them
who were old or infirm that was a grievance ; but
for. the lusty young fellows who could handle a
spade there need not be much pity, for Spain had
more of their sort than was good for her. Even at
that date the revolutionists of Cadiz had some
respect left for the nunneries. But they pro-
gressed; the example of Paris was not lost upon
them. The ayuntamiento which came into power
with the Eepublic was Federal Barcelona and
Malaga were stirring; the ayuntamiento made up
its mind that Cadiz should be as good as its neigh-
bours and show vigour too. The cheapest way to
show vigour was to make war on the weak and
defenceless, and that was what this enlightened

26 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

and courageous municipaUty did. The nuns in the
convent of the Candelaria were told that their
house and the church adjoining were in a bad
state, that they must clear out, and that both
should be razed in the interests of public safety.
It was not that the presence of ladies devoted to
God after their own wishes and the traditions of
their creed was offensive to the Republic ; no, not
by any means. The nuns protested that if their
convent and church were in a dangerous condition
the proper measure to take was to prop them up,
not pull them down. But the blustering heroes of
the municipality would not listen to this reasoning ;
they were too careful of the lives of the citizens,
the nuns included; down the edifices must come.
The Commime of Paris over again. The ladies
of Cadiz, those who pass to and fro, prayer-book
in hand, in the streets, and startle the flashing
sunshine with their solemn mantillas, were wroth
with the municipality. They saw through its
designs, and they resolved to defeat them. To
the number of some five hundred they formed a
procession, and marched four deep to the Town-

ROMANTIC JSPAIK 27

house to beg of their worships, the civic tyrants,
to revoke their order. If the convent and church
were in ruins, the ladies were prepared to pay out
of their own pockets the expense of all repairs.
That procession was a sight to see ; there was the
beauty, the rank, the fashion, and the worth of the
city, in " linked sweetness long drawn out," coiling
through the thoroughfares on pious errand. The
fair petitioners were dressed as for a fete ; diamonds
sparkled in their hair, and the potent fan, never
deserted by the Andalusians, was agitated by five
hundred of the smallest of hands in the softest of
gloves. But the civic tyrants were more severe
than Coriolanus, They were not to be mollified
by woman's entreaties, but rightly fearing her
charms they fled. When the procession arrived at
the Town-house, there was but a solitary intrepid
bailie to receive it. They told him their tale.
He paid them the usual compliments, kissed their
feet in the grand Oriental way individually and
collectively, said he would lay their wishes before
his colleagues, but that he could give no promise
to recall the mandate of the municipality — it was

28 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

more than he dare undertake to do, and so forth.
The long and short of it was, he politely sent them
about their business. They came away, working
the fans more pettishly than ever, and liquid voices
were heard to hiss scornfully that the Republic,
which proclaimed respect for all religions and
rights, was a lie, for its first thought was to
trample on the national religion, and to dispossess
an inoflfensive corporation of cloistered ladies of
their right to their property. Here the first act of
the drama ended.

The second was, if anything, more sensational,
though infinitely less attractive. The Federals bit
their thumbs, and cried :
" Ah, this is the work of the priests !"
So it was ; not a doubt of that. The Federals
meditated, and this was the fruit of their medita-
tions :
" Let us organize a counter-procession!"
That counter-procession was a sight to see, too ;
the feature of elegance was conspicuous by its
absence, but there was more colour in it Harri-
dans of seventy crawled after hussies of seventeen ;

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 29

bare amis and bandannas urere more noticeable
than black xeik and fans ; the imprcboi^ GadUano^,
known of old to certain lively satirists. Martial and
Javenal by name, turned out in force. Mayhap it
is prejudice^ but Republican females, methinks, are
rather muscular than good-looking. Still they
have influence s(»Detimes, and when they said
their say at the Town-house the ladies plainly
betraj'ed how much they dreaded that influence.
They wrote to Madrid praying that the munici-
pality should be arrested in its course. Sefior
Castelar did send a remonstrance; some say he
ordered the local authorities not to touch the
church or convent, but they laughed at his letter,
and contented themselves by reflecting that he was
not in possession of the facts — that is, if they
reflected at all, which is doubtful.

Act the third was in representation during my
stay. I passed the Candelaria oue morning.
Scaffolding poles were erected in the street along-
side in preparation for the demolition of the
building, and a party of workmen in the pay of
the municipality were engaged gutting the church

30 BOH ANTIC SPAIN,

of its contents, and carting them off to a place of
depodt, where they were to be sold by public
auction. These workmen looked cheerful over
their sacrilege. A waggon was outside the door
laden with ornaments ripped from the waUs, gilt
picture-frames, fragments of altar-rails, and the
head of a cherub. Half a doz«i rough fellows in
guernseys had their shoulders imder a block of
painted wood-carving. As far as I could make out,
it was the efl&gy of one of the Evangelists. I was
refused admittance to the building, but I was told
the sacramental plate had been removed with the
same indifference. The nuns escaped without
insult, thanks to the good offices of some friends
outside, who brought up carriages at midnight to
the doors of the convent and conveyed them to
secret places of safety put at their disposal by
the bishop.

The people who committed this mean piece of
desecration were all Federal Republicans. They
disobeyed orders from Madrid, and would disobey
them again. They were as deaf to the commands
of Senor Castelar as to the prayers and entreaties

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 31

of the wives and daughters of respectable fellow-
citizens. And all this time that the central
authority were defied, artiUeiymen and linesmen
were loitering about the streets of Cadiz. Eventually
it was plain they would be disarmed, as they were
disarmed at Malaga; and they would not offer
serious opposition to the process. Their officers
were barely tolerated by them. - The Guardia Civil
were true to duty, but when the crisis came, what
could they do any more than their comrades at
Malaga ? They were but as a drop of water in a
well Disarmament is not liked by the old soldiers
who have money to their credit, but there is a
large proportion of mere conscripts in the ranks,
and they are glad to jump at the chance of return-
ing home.

Troubles worse than any may yet be in store;
meanwhile the sun shines, and Cadiz, like Seville,
takes it easy. But there is a bad spirit abroad, and
it is growing. A pack of ruffians forcibly entered a
mansion at San Lucar, and annexed what was in it
in the name of Republican freedom ; the " volun-
teers of liberty " have taken the liberty of breaking

32 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

into the houses of the consuls at Malaga in
search for arms ; an excited mob attacked the
printing-office of El Oriente at Seville after I left,
smashed the tjrpe, and threatened to strangle the
editor if he brought out the paper again ; and the
precious municipality of Cadiz has nothing better
to do than order that no mourners shall be allowed
in future to use religious exercises or emblems, to
sing litanies or carry crosses, at the open graves of
relatives in the cemeteries.

In the merchants' club (of which I was made
free) they were saddened at the disrupted state of
society, but took it as kismet, and seemed to think
that all would come right in the end, by the inter-
position of some Deiis ex machind. But who that
God was they could not tell : he was hidden in the
womb of Fate. As Cadiz accepted its destiny with
equanimity, I accommodated myself to the situa-
tion, and did as the natives did. I helped to fly
kites from the flat housetops — a favourite pastime
of mature manhood here ; I opened mild flirtations
with the damsels in cigar-shops, and discovered
that they were not slow to meet advances ; I ex-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 33

pended hours every day cheapening a treatise on
the mystery of bull-fighting, with accompanying
engravings, in vain — its price was above rubies.
But my great distraction was a strange character I
met at dinner at the house of the British Consul.
I did not catch his name at our introduction, so I
mentally named him Mr. Crabapple. He was short
and stout, had a round wizened face freckled to the
fuscous tint of a russedon apple, and was endowed
with a voice which had all the husky sonority of a
greengrocer's. He was beardless and sandy-haired,
and one of those persons whose age is a puzzle to
define; he might have been anything between
fifteen and five-and-thirty. As he talked of Harrow
as if he had left it but yesterday, I was disposed to
set him down as a queer public-school boy on
vacation, until I was astounded by some self-pos-
sessed remark on Jamaica dyewoods. We stopped
in the same hotel. One morning he descended the
stairs, a sort of dressing-case in hand, and yelled to
an urchin at the door :

" Here, you son of a sea-calf, take this down to
the waterside for me !'*

VOL. 11. 23

34 ROMANTIC &FAIN.

'' Will he understand you ?" I said.

" Bound to," Mr. Crabapple replied ; " never talk
to them any other way, anyhow. 'Tis their business
to understand. Ta, ta — deuce of a hurry."

" Where are you going, may I ask ?"

"Eead the Church Service — ^rather a bore —
Sunday, you know."

The nondescript, then, was a chaplain.

The same evening he returned to the hotel, and
on the following morning I saw him again descend-
ing the stairs, the same dressing-case in hand. He
nodded salute, slung his luggage to the same
urchin with the cry, " Hook it, you lubber !" and,
turning to me, said, " Ta, ta, sheering off again."

" Where to now ?"

" Mediterranean."

" There's no boat to-day."

" There is, though — there's mine ;" and he was
off.

The supposed chaplain was a stray-away from
a novel by Marryat, commanded her Majesty's
gunboat Catapulty and was at Cadiz on the duty of
protecting British interests. At the moment his

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 35

mission was to carry important despatches to
Gibraltar.

My mission to Cadiz was, partly, to ascertain the
progress of the inquiry into the case of the Murillo
steamer, more than suspected of having run down
the Northfieet, a vessel laden with railway-iron and
navvies, off Dungeness, on the night of the 22nd of
January previous. Three hundred lives had been
lost on the occasion. I knew something of that
wreck, for I had seen and spoken with the sur-
vivors in the Sailors' Home at Dover oyi the follow-
ing evening. A dazed, stupid lot they were, of an
exceedingly low standard of intelligence. The
sense of their own rescue had overcome the poign-
ancy of grief. I envied them their stolidity, which
I explained to my own mind by the rush of the
engulfing waters still swirling and singing knell of
sudden doom in their ears.

" Guv'nor," said one clown to me, " I seed my ole
'ooman go down afore my eyes, and I felt that
grieved a'most as if I was agoin* down myself, and
I chewed a bit o' baccer."

I saw the Murillo lying quietly a little distance

23—2

36 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

off the land — a handsome, shapely craft, fine in the
lines, with a sharp stem fashioned Hke that of a
ram. She was painted black, with the exception
of a band of pink above the water-line, where she
was coated with Peacock's mixture. The British
Consul informed me that he understood the inquiry
into the guilt of the master was to be carried on
secretly. He would not be allowed to attend it.
Copies of the depositions of the accused, and per-
mission to see them, had also been denied to the
agents of the British Government, who appUed
for them for the purposes of the Board of Trade
inquiry. Though Spaniards, in private conversa-
tion, own that the Murillo is the criminal ship,
they seem, for some unaccountable reason, to be
anxious that she should escape the penalty of her
wickedness, as if the national honour were con-
cerned, and the national honour would be served
by cloaking an offence cruel and mean in itself, and
awful in its consequences.

There is a sentence in the Comminations which
would keep running in my mind every time I
thought of that emigrant ship sent to the bottom

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

off Dungeness — "Cursed is he who smiteth his
enemy secretly." But if he who smites his enemy
secretly is accursed, what is he who smites his
neighbour and then flees away like a coward in the
dark ? Is he not twice and thrice wicked, and to
be branded with malediction deeper still ? Such a
thing the MuHUo steamer did — there could be no
manner of doubt about it ; every seafaring man and
every Spaniard admits her blood-guiltiness ; yet
there she lies off Puntales, near the Trocadero,
calmly expecting soon to be under weigh again
with her criminal master and crew on board, with
no punishment registered agamst her or them. The
Consul-General of Spain in London wrote to the
papers after the loss of the Northfleet, saying if
this man was the wrongdoer he would be punished,
and sent to Ceuta or Tetuan. But he is the wrong-
doer, and he will never be sent to Ceuta or Tetuan.
The master of the Murillo and the sailors of the
watch on the fatal night are in prison, but they will
never be brought to serious account. The figure
of Justice in these latitudes is true to the sculptor's
ideal in one sense : the eyes are bandaged, not that

38 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Justice shall be impartial, but that she may not
see.

This instance of the MuriUo is but one of many,
and as it illustrates an artifice of tricky ship-
owning, it will be well to state why the MuriUo
will go scot-free, and may audaciously turn up
again in British waters disguised by a few coats of
paint, exhibiting a fresh figure-head, and bearing a
new name in gilt lettering on her stem.

In the first place, the Murillo belonged not to
Spanish so much as EngUsh owners. The line of
steamers of which she was one was the property of
a company of shareholders. The company was
anxious that their vessels should fly the Spanish
flag, so they made one Don Miguel Styles the
nominal head of the firm. This individual was a
mere clerk in their office, a man of straw, and at
the date of the catastrophe Don Miguel Styles had
no more substantial existence than our old friend
John Styles : he was dead, and in his grave.

Nextly, Mr. Daniel Macpherson, one of the most
eminent merchants in the port of Cadiz and Lloyd's
agent, had been served with an instrument claiming

ROMANTIC SPA IK 39

damages to the amount of 50,000 pesetas (£2,000),
because that he had calumniated the good ship
Murillo, and caused her prejudice and injury by
detaining her a couple of months in the waters of
Cadiz. The persons who instituted this action for-
get that the Spanish courts have no jurisdiction in
the matter of libels published in England. And as
for the prejudice caused to the vessel, it is incredible
that the British Government should be so weak as
to wait for letters from Lloyd's agent before opening
an inquiry into the deaths of some three hundred
of its subjects and the identity of the dastardly
scoundrel who was the cause of their deaths, who
disabled the ship that held them, and then slunk
off, leaving them to the mercy of the midnight sea.
That the Murillo was that vessel, even those who
maintain that she cannot be proved legally guilty
do not attempt to deny. It is true, as they say,
that moral certainty is one thing, legal certainty
another. But there was seldom a clearer chain of
circumstantial evidence pointing to the perpetrator
of any crime than that which convicted the Murillo
of being the misdemeanant. She was off Dungeness

40 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

at the hour of the disaster, and she was in contact
with a ship ; this the imprisoned master admitted
in his log. But he alleged that the ship could not
have been the Northfleet He said he came into
collision with a vessel ; that he stood by her for half
an hour ; that one of her boats put off with some per-
sons on board carrying a lantern ; that they went
round her examining whether there was anything
^vTong ; and that no call having been made to him
for assistance he steamed away. But there was-a.
discrepancy between the entry in his log and that
in the log of the engineer. The latter, an English-
man, stated that the engines of the Murillo were
backed before the collision, that she went astern
afterwards, and then went on ahead. The delay
altogether was only for a few minutes. No mention
of the half-hour. The engineer had no object in
telling a lie. The master of the Mimllo had. No
other ship was in collision ofiF Dungeness that night.
Besides, what meant the order to the MuHlIo to
come on at once to Cadiz if she had been in collision,
and not stop at Lisbon, whither she was bound as
port of call, if not to get her into limits where justice

ROMANTIC 8FAIN. 41

is notoriously blind and halt? Argument is un-
necessary and childish ; it was the Murillo which
cut down the Northfleet But Spain will never
exact retribution for the destruction of the property
and the sacrifice of the lives of aliens. Cosas de
Espaiia.

CHAPTER III.

Expansion of Carlism — A Pseudo-Democracy — Historic
Land and Water Marks — An Impudent Stowaway —
Spanish Eespect for Providence — A Fatal Signal —
Playing with Fire— Across the Bay — Farewell to
Andalusia — British Spain.

TowAKDS the close of February, a grave official
report was published in the Gaceta of Madrid,
announcing that an engagement had been fought
with the Carlists and a victory scored, one of the
enemy having been killed. We were now in April,
some six weeks later, and Carlism still showed
lively signs of existence, notwithstanding the death
of that solitary combatant. The statement of the
troops employed against it will be the best measure

of its importance. These consisted of a battalion and
two companies of Engineers, four companies of Foot
Artillery, a battery of Horse and five batteries of
Mountain Artillery ; eight squadrons of Cuirassiers,

ROMANTIC SFAIF. 43

seven of Lancers, four of Hussars, a section of
Mounted Chasseurs (Tiradores), and eighteen bat-
talions of Infantry of the line, with five of Cazadores,
or light infantry. Behind this force of regulars
were the Francos or Free-shooters of Navarre (who
were about as good as their prototypes, the francs-
tireura of France — no better), some mobilized
Volunteers, and the Carabineros, or revenue police.
There were some who imagined that the hosts of
Don Carlos might crown the hills of Vallecas, and
present themselves before the gate of Atocha to
the consternation of Madrid, as did those of his
predecessor in the September of 1837. But the
Federals of the south did not mind. What did not
touch them, they cared not a jot for. They were
of the pseudo-democracy which wants to live with-
out working, consume without producing, obtain
posts without being trained for them, and arrive at
honours without desert — the selfish and purblind
pseudo-democracy of incapacity and cheek.

As I had no pecuniary interest in salt, wine,
phosphate of soda, hides, or cork — the chief exports
of Cadiz — I left the much-bombarded port on the

44 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Vinuesa, one of the boats of the Alcoy line plying
to Malaga. My immediate destination was the
Rock, but we went no nearer than Algeciras, the
town on the opposite side of the bay, off which
Saumarez gave such a stem account of the Spanish,
and French combined on the 12th of July, 1801.
The sea was without a ripple. The bright coasts
of two Continents were in view. On such a day
as this the first adventurers must have crossed
from Africa to Europe. Hero might almost have
swum across. Even Mr. Brownsmith of Eastchepe
might rig a craft out of an empty sugar hogshead,
set up his walking-stick for mast, tie his pocket-
handkerchief to it for sail, and trust to the
waves in safety — that is, if Mr. Brownsmith of
Eastchepe had in him the heart of Raleigh, not of
Bumble. Some men are born to be drivers of tram-
cars, some to be captains of corsairs. The pioneer
of navigation must have been cut out by nature to
be a High- Admiral of bold buccaneers.

We were only five passengers on the steamer, and
we amused ourselves comparing notes. One told of
a voyage from Barcelona to Alicante which he had

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 46

once undertaken. The first night out they lost a
sailor ; he was seized with a fit and died ; and then
came the poser. When they would arrive at
Alicante and muster the crew for the inspection of
the health officers one would be wanting ; suspicions
would be aroused that he had fallen a victim to con-
tagious disease, and they ran the hazard of being
stuck into quarantine unless they could succeed
in buying themselves oft* with an exorbitant bribe.
While they were in a quandary, a white head popped
above a gangway forward and a voice sang out :

" I'll get you out of the hole for a consideration."

"Who the deuce are you? Where did you
spring from ?" cried the skipper.

" A stowaway, — a flour-barreL I'll parade as the
dead man's substitute for ten dollars and a square
meal."

In the end they were glad to accept the impudent
proposal ; the corpse was flung overboard, and the
stowaway entered the port of Alicante an honest
British tar, looking the whole world in the face like
Longfellow's village blacksmith, and jingling ten
dollars in his pocket.

46 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

We passed by Barrosa, where Graham gave the
French such a thrashing in 1811, and the 87th
Irish Fusiliers earned their glorious surname of the
" Eagle-takers ;" and over the waves of Trafalgar
where Nelson did his duty, and was smitten with a
bullet in the spine ; and passing into the Straits and
rounding the point by Tarifa, stood in for the Bay
of Gibraltar. A spacious swelling spread of live
water it is, and safe, except, as one of my fellow-
passengers informed me, for a rock off the Punta
del Camero, or Mutton Point. The rock is covered
when the tide is high (for there is a tide here), but
rears its tortoise-like back over the surface for
some hours at the ebb. The Channel squadron
was coming out of Gib some years before when an
ironclad grounded on this rock, but was got off
without more damage than a scraping. As the
danger to the navigation was outside the limits of
the fortress, the British authorities applied to the
Spanish for permission to clear away the obstruc-
tion. It was easily to be accomplished. A party
of sappers could set a caisson round it, bore a
gallery, insert a charge, and blast the rock into

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 47

smithereens with safety and despatch. But the
Spaniards would not consent to such an interference
with the designs of Providence ; the poor fishermen
on the coast were often dependent for their liveli-
hood on what they could pick up from wrecks, and
if this rock were removed Nature would be sacri-
legiously altered, and the interesting wreckers de-
prived of many an honest coin. I tell the tale as
it was told to me. I wonder should it be dedicated
to the amphibious corps.

Another story bearing on the successful revolu-
tion inaugurated by Prim is worth relating, as it
deals with an episode of Spanish politics which is
repeated almost every other year with slender
variations. The play is the same ; the scene and
the draTTvatis personce are merely shifted. One of
the stereotyped military risings was to be initiated
at Algeciras on the arrival of Prim from England.
The intimation that he was at hand was to be
made by the firing of two rockets from the ship
which carried him. On a certain night at the close
of August, 1868, two rockets blazed in the sky,
and were noticed by the impatient conspirators at

48 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Algeciras, who flew to arms to cries of " Down with
the Queen," and " Live Prim and Liberty." But no
Prim landed. The alarm was premature, the rising
a flash in the pan. What they had taken for the
bright herald of the advent of " El Paladino " was
the signal of a Peninsular and Oriental steamer
which had arrived on her passage to Port Said.
For the sake of appearances, a number of un-
fortunate fools were set up against a wall and
had their brains blown out in tribute to law
and order. But the fruit was ripening. Within
little more than a fortnight came the insurrection
of the fleet at Cadiz, upon the appearance in that
port of the popular hero, and before the end of the
month Queen Isabella had fled over the French
frontier, never to return to Spain as a sovereign.
Prim's plot was attended with a fortune in excess
of his most sanguine hopes ; he entered Madrid in
triumph in October, and was created a Marshal in
November. All was joy and enthusiasm, but the
hapless tools of ambition who had helped to prepare
the way for him below in Algeciras were not of the
jubilee.

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 49

At first sight the rock looms up large like a
frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the
Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect
it above the sea-level until almost right upon it.
We left the Vinuesa and entered a boat with a
couple of sturdy rowers, who oflfered to pull us
across the Bay for five dollars. As I dipped a hand
in the brine one of them raised a cry of " Take care !"
there were "mala pesca" there. Mr. Shark, who
is an ugly customer, had been cruising in the
neighbourhood, and had taken a morsel out of an
American swimmer a little time before. There
were three masts protruding over the water at one
spot, the relics of some gallant ship, and index to
one of those godsends which the Spanish Govern-
ment is solicitous to guarantee to the distressed
and deserving local fishermen. What a pity it was
not the Murillo! That would have been poetic
retribution.

No matter : with all thy faults I like thee, Spain,
and especially that brown dusty province of An-
dalusia, with its oranges and pomegranates; its
dancing fountains splashed with sunshine; its win-

VOL. II. 24

60 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

some damozels with such lisping languors of voice ;
its philosophic waiters upon the morrow, happy in
a cigarette, a melon and a guitar; its muleteers
crooning snatches of lazy song ; its peasants with
hair tied in beribboned pigtail ; its tawny boys in
Manola colours ; aye, and its artistic beggars.

"Ah! now you see the Neutral Ground; that
village to the left is Lineas, where you can get a
glass of Manzanilla cheap," exclaimed a companion.

I do not set exceeding store by your pale thin
Manzanilla, nor do I care to load my mouth with
the flavour of a drug store.

" There are the sheds we put up the time Prim
was expected; they are on the Neutral Ground,
ha, ha ! where the soil is supposed to be inviolate ;
but we have forgotten to take them down since.
We were too many for them."

And now we are by the landing-stairs, and the
Customs' officer demands our passport in English.
We answer him cheerily that we need none, and to
his smiling welcome we step on the soil of British
Spain ; but it would be unpardonable to begin
describing it at the tail of a chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

Gabriel Tar— A Hard Nut to Cra<;k— In the Cemetery— An
Old Tipperary Soldier— Marks of the Broad Arrow —
The "Scorpions" — The Jaunting-Cars— Amusements
on the Eock — Mrs. Damages' Complaint — The Bay,
the Alameda, and Tarifa— How to Learn Spanish —
Types of the British GflGicer— The Wily Ben Solomon
— A Word for the Subaltern — Sunset Gun — The
Sameness of Sutlersville.

Where I went to school, we had a droll lad, whose
humour developed itself in mispronunciation. In
my nonage I considered that imique. Now I
know it is a rather common order of quaintness.
Hugh used to call Sierra Leone, "Sarah Alone;"
Cambodia, " Gamboge ;" StromboH, " Storm-boiler ;"
and Gibraltar, "Gabriel Tar." How we used to
wrinkle with laughter at his sallies, launched with
an artistically unconscious air, imtil the swooping
cane came swishing down on our backs ! And here
I was in Gabriel Tar. I vow the first inclination I

24—2

62 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

felt was to write to Hugh with the date engraved
on the note-paper, and indeed so I should have done,
but that I had not seen him for nigh twenty
years, and when last I heard of him he was
married, and had learned to be serious and to
speak with precision. The fun had been driven
out of him by responsibiUty. Propriety had come
with J)rosperity.

Call it by what name you will, Gabriel Tar, or
Gibraltar, that infinitesimal scrap of territory over
which the Union Jack floats, is supremely unpalat-
able and insolently insulting to the Spaniard. It
is a bitter piU to swallow, an adamantine nut to
crack. I suppose he is welcome to take it — when
he can ; but he knows better than to try. It is the
gate of the Mediterranean. Logically, it is an
injustice that a stranger should sit in the porter's
lodge and swing the key at his girdle ; but it is as
well that the porter is one who is too surly to
barter his trust for gold. So Gabriel Tar will
remain intact, until the porter grows feeble or
falls asleep.

British Spain, or "the Rock," or Gib, as it is

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 53

indiflferently termed, or Sutlersville, as I prefer to
name it, can be converted into an island at the
will of its defenders. The sandy spit of Neutral
Groimd at one side of which Tonmiy Atkins, fresh-
faced, does his sentry-go in brick-red timic and white
pith-helmet, and at the other side of which swarthy
Sancho Panza y Toro, in projecting cap and long
blue coat, fondles a rifle in the bend of his arm,
can readily be flooded; and the bare, sheer, lofty
north front, with scores of cannon of the deadUest
modem pattern lying in wait behmd the uregular
embrasures that grimly pit its surface, hardly
invites attack. It frowns a calm but determined
defiance; and even the Cid himself might be
excused if he turned on his heel and puffed a
meditative cigarette after he had surveyed it.

British Spain is small, being but one and seven-
eighth square miles English in area; but it is
mighty strong. The population, comprising the
garrison, is less than fifteen thousand ; but behind
that slender cipher of souls are the millions of the
broadest and biggest of empires. I do not know
what the population of the cemetery is, but it

54 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

receives rapid and numerous accessions at each
periodical outbreak of cholera. I paid a visit to
it — I have a fondness for sauntering in God's acre —
and arrived in time to witness a funeral. When
the coffin was laid in the grave, a young man»
probably the husband of the deceased, threw him-
self prone on the turf beside the open burial-trench,
and burst into such a passionate tempest of heart-
rending sobs and moans and wailings, that I had
to move away. These Southerners are more demon-
strative in their grief than the men of the North. I
question if their sorrows spring from deeper depths,
or are so lasting. The caretaker of the cemetery, an
elderly Tipperary soldier, with a short dvdheen in
his mouth, was seated smoking on a head-stone by
a goat-willow. We got into conversation.

"There were worse places than Gib — singing-
birds were raysonable here, and some of them had
rayl beautiful plumage."

My countryman, Uke the Duke of Argyll, had a
weakness for ornithology.

" That spread of land beyant was where the races
were held, and small-arm parties from the fleet

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 55

sometimes kem ashore and practised there. They
used to play cricket there, too. The symmetry
wasn't a gay place, but there were worse. There
were some beautiful tombs — now there was a parable
ov wan; 'twas put up by their frinds to some
officers who were dhrownded while they were cross-
ing a flooded sthrame on their way back from a
shooting excursion. The car-drivers, who were
dhrownded wid them, had no monmnent. 'Twas
a quare world; a poor man had the chance of
dying wid a rich man, but was not to be berrid
in his company. Well, he supposed it was for
the best," and here he hammered the heel-tap out
of his pipe on the side of his shoe ; "when the last
bugle soimded a field-officer would feel uncomfort-
able like if he had to be looking for his bones in
the same plot wid a lance- corporal"

Truly, a queer world. Death with impartial
summons knocks at the cabin of the poor and the
palace of the wealthy; but in the undertaker's
interest the equality of the grave must not be
conceded. The plebeian who commits felo cfo se is
served properly if he is hidden at the cross-roads by

66 ROM ANT W SPAIN.

night and a stake driven through his body. The
lunatic King who drowns himself, and drags his
doctor to the same fate — who is a suicide dupli-
cated with the suspicion of murder — is embalmed
and laid to rest in consecrated ground amid incense
and music, lights and flowers, the tolling of bells,
and the chanting of dirges.

The funeral was over; they were just finishing
the De Profundis. My countryman had to quit
me. " Oyeh ! that fellow who was making such a
lamentation might be married agin in a twelve-r
month. The army plan was the best ; after the
'Dead March' in Saul came 'Tow-row-row' —
another so'jer was to be had for a shilling. He
did not drink ; he thanked me all the same— had
taken the pledge from Father Mathew whin he was
a boy, and meant to stick by it ; but he would
accept the price of a singing-bird he had set his
mind upon, since it was pressed upon him."

Gibraltar is but a huge garrison. In the moat
by the gate, as I re-entered, a big drummer and a
tiny mannikin-soldier with cymbals were prac-
tising how to lead off a marching-past tune. The

MO MA NTIG SPA IK. 67

" Fortune of War " tavern elbows " Horse-Barrack
Lane ;" a print of " The Siege of Kars " is side by
side in a shop- window with Dr. Bennett's " Songs
for Soldiers." The Plazas and Calles of the main-
land of Spain have been parted with. The names of
streets, hostelries, and stores are English. Instead
of tiendas and almacenes and fondas, you have fancy
repositories, regimental shoe-shops, and porter-
houses. There, for example, is the celebrated
"Cock and Bottle," and farther on "The Calfs
Head Hotel" If you traverse Cathedral Square,
no larger than an ordinary-sized skittle-alley, you
arrive by Sunnyside Steps to the Europa Pass.
Notices are posted by the roadside cautioning
against plucking flowers or treading on the beds
under pain of prosecution. But the bazaar be-
wilders you with its alien %ures, its confusion of
tongues, and its eccentric contrasts of dress. In
five minutes you meet Spanish officers; nuns in
broad-leaved white bonnets ; a bearded sergeant
nursing a baby ; bare-legged, sim-bumished Moors ;
pink-and-white cheeked ladies'-maids from Kent ;
local mashers in such outrageously garish tweeds ;

68 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

stiff brass-buttoned turnkeys; Jews in skull-cap
and Moslems in fez; and while you are lost in
admiration of a burly negro, turbaned and in
grass-green robe, with face black and shiny as a
newly-polished stove, you are hustled by a sailor on
cordial terms with himself who is vigorously attempt-
ing to whistle " Garry Owen."

But above and before all, the sights and sounds
are military. Sappers and linesmen and artillerists
pullulate at every comer ; fatigue-parties are con-
fronted at every turn ; the bayonet of the sentinel
flashes in every angle of the fortress from the
minute the sun, bursting into instantaneous radiance
from behind the great barrier of craggy hill, Kghts
up the town and bastions and moles, until the boom
of the sunset-gun gives signal for the gates to be
closed. Every tavern looks Kke a canteen; the
gossip is of things martial ; the music is that of the
reveille or tattoo — the blare of brass, the rub-a-dub
of parchment, or the shrill soimd-revel of Highland
pipes (for there is usually a Scotch regiment here).
The ladies one meets all have husbands, or fathers,
or uncles in the Service ; even the children — ^those

ROMANTIC SPAIN 59

of English parents well understood — keep step as
they walk, and the boys amongst them compliment
any well-dressed stranger with a home face by
rendering him the regulation salute. This is highly
gratifying to the civihan sojourning in the place ;
for he insensibly succumbs to the genius loci^ squares
his shoulders, expands his chest, and feels that if he
is not an oflScer he ought to be one.

Except the enterprising gentry who devote them-
selves to cheating the Spanish excise by smuggling
cigars and English goods across the border, the
Scorpions live by and on the garrison, and
therefore do I name their habitat Sutlersville.
"Scorpion," I should iadd, for the benefit of the
uninitiated, is the sobriquet conferred by Tommy
Atkins on the natives of the Kock, as that of
"Smiches" is merrily applied by him to the
Maltese, and of " Yamplants " to the denizens of St.
Helena. There is a tolerable infusion of English
blood among the Scoi'pions, but it is hardly of the
healthiest or most respectable.

Gib is familiar to thousands of Englishmen, but
it must be imfamiliar to many thousands more.

60 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

This is my excuse for exhuming some notes of my
stay there. Don't be afraid, I am not going to
pester you with guide-book erudition. Let others
take you to the galleries and caves, lead you up the
ascent to the Moorish tower, inform you that the one
spot in Europe where there is an indigenous colony
of monkeys (the patriarch of which is styled the
** town major ") is here, and enlighten you as to the
interesting fact that this is the only locality out of
Ireland where the Irish jaunting-car is to be objur-
gated. Mine be a himibler task.

Society in Gib is select, but limited. It is
uniform, like the clothes of the influential portion
of the inhabitants. Gib is the wrong place to bring
out a young lady, though Major Dalrymple's
daughters, immortalized in Lever's novel, could not
well have found a better hunting-ground. But
then Major Dalrymple's daughters were regular
garrison hacks — so the irreverent subs of the Kovers
used to call them — and never stood a chance beside
the daughters of the county families. There are
racing and chasing at the station, and theatricals
and balls. I arrived at the wrong season. The

ROJIASTIC SPAIX, 61

three days' kieal man^ far hrases of ereij Ineed
but KngliiJi, was over, and most of the men were
going to Cadiz bj special boat next day, en route
for the Jeiez laees, which are the best — indeed, I
might ahnost saj the solitair — meeting in Spain.

'' There are only two things in this land worth
talking about,*' said an English merchant to me at
Cadiz ; ** the steamers of Lopez and the races of
Jerez."

The hunting (thanks to brave old Admiral
Fleming for having started that diversion) was over
too. The meets have to come off, naturally, out-
side the firontier of British Spain. The sport is
pretty good — one cannot quite expect the Melton
country, of course — the riding hard, and the horses
invariably Spanish; no English horses would do,
for no English horse would be equal to climbing up
a perpendicular bank with sixteen stone on his
back^ and that is a feat the native steeds, bestridden
by British warriors in pink who follow the Calpe
pack, have sometimes to accomplish. There is a
Spanish lyrical and theatrical troop in the town;
but it is Holy Week, and lyricals and theatricals

62 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

are under taboo. Occasionally charity concerts are
given by amateurs, and plays are even performed in
Lent. Champagne, of the Fizzers, has won a
reputation by his success on the boards when he
dons the habiliments of lovely woman beyond a
certain age. But, as I told you before, I arrived at
the wrong season. There are no balls at the Convent,
which is the Governor's residence; and, touching
these balls, I have a grievance to ventilate, at the
request of Mrs. Quartermaster Damages. She
specially imported frilled petticoats from England
to display in the mazy dance, and she assured me
they were turning sere and yellow in her boxes.
She never gets a chance of bringing them out
except once in the twelvemonth, when she is asked
to the "Quartermasters' Ball." But there is a
reason for everything, and Mrs. Quartermaster
Damages is fat and forty, and not fair, and — ^tell it
not out of mess — they say she has a tongue.

At this particular time, you perceive, this fortified
fragment of the empire was dull ; but usually it is
gay, and the oflBcer quartered there has always an
excellent opportunity of learning his trade and

ROMA NTIG SPA IN. 63

acquiring skill in the gentlemanly game of billiards.
He can make maps and surveys of the neutral
groimd, and watch the guard mounting on the
Alameda, or read the account of the siege in Drink-
water's days ; and when he tires of the green cloth
and its distractions, and of his own noble profes-
sion, he can throw a sail to the breeze in the
unequalled Bay, or take a flying trip to Tarifa to
sketch the beautiful from the living model, or go to
Ceuta to see the Spanish galley-slaves and disci-
plinary regiments, forgetful of our own chain-gangs ;
or steam across to Tangier to riot in Nature and a
day's pig-sticking.

The Bay, the Alameda, and Tarifa — these are the
three delights of Gibraltar.

You have heard of the Bay of Naples, and the
Bay of Dublin, which equals it in Paddy Murphy's
estimation. I know both ; and Gibraltar, the little-
spoken-of, leaves them nowhere. The sky, and the
undulating mirror below that reflects it, are such a
blue ; the rocks are such an ashen-grey ; the
Spanish sierras such a leonine brown, with summits
wrapped in clouds like rolling smoke; and the

64 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

sun goes down to his bath in the west *mid such
a vaporous glow of yellowing purple and rosy-
gold!

The Alameda is a bower of Venus cinctured by
Mars. Here is a gravelled expanse bounded by hill
and sea, with cosy benches under the shade of
palmitos — the civilization of the West in alliance
with the rich vegetation of the East Sometimes,
in the morning, five hundred men or more — ^garrison
artillery, engineers, and infantry — ^muster there,
previous to marching to their posts ; there is a
banging of drums, a blowing of bugles, a bobbing
vision of cocked-hats, and a roar of hoarse words of
command— all the pomp and pride and circum-
stance of glorious war before the •fighting begins.
Sometimes, in the evening, a band plays, and the
Alameda is the resort of fashion and of nursery-
maids.

Tarifa, shining in the sunset across the water, is
a tempting morsel for the landscape-painter, and
the dwellers in Tarifa are the best teachers of
Spanish. A British subaltern bent on improving
his mind could encounter an infinitely better pre-

ROMANTIC SPAIN 65

ceptor there than "Jingling Johnny," the self-
appointed professor to the garrison, who hires
himself on Monday, makes you a present of a
gnitar-tutor on Tuesday, and asks you to favour
him with six months' payment in advance on
Wednesday. To be sure, the Spanish those Tarifans
speak is. slightly Arabified ; but their tones of voice
are persuasive, and their methods of teaching
agreeable. The professor taken by the British sub-
altern is invariably a female, and the females of
Tarifa are not the ugliest in the world. They still
retain many customs peculiar to their Moorish
ancestors. They wear a manta, not a mantilla — a
sort of large-hooded mantle, with which they hide
the light of their coimtenance, except an eye — but
that is a piercer, ye gods ! and they keep it open
for business. When a stranger passes, especially if
he looks like a sucking lieutenant from the fortress
beyond, the manta falls, disclosing the soft loveli-
ness beneath, and the wearer affects a pretty con-
fusion, and hastens with judicious slowness to
re-adjust its folds. The British subaltern reels to
his quarters seriously wounded, and may be seen
VOL. II. 25

66 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

the foUowing morning, with his hair blown back,
spouting poetry to the zephyrs on Europa Point.
Oh no! — that only occurs in romances; but he
may be seen drinking brandy-and-soda moderately
in the Club-House.

Poor British subaltern! How SutlersviUe does
exploit him ! He is a sheep, and bears his fleecing
without a kick. Watch those lazy, lounging, able-
bodied, smoking, and saKvating loons who prop up
every street-comer, and monopolize the narrow
pathways — these all live by him ; they eat up his
substance, and fatten thereupon. These are the
touting and speculating sons of the Kock, the
veritable Scorpions, who are ever ready to find the
" cap'n " a dog or a horse or a boat, or something
not so harmless, to help him on the road to ruin,
and whisper in his ear what a fine fellow he is —
**As ver fine a fellow — real gemman — as Lord
Tonmoddy, who give me such a many dollars when
he go away." The first word these loons pronounce
after coming into the world must be baksheesh.
They are bom with beggary in their mouths, and
the British subaltern acts as if he were bom to be

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 67

their victim. There he is below, of every type,
lolling outside the hotel-door that looks on that
Commercial Square which is so thorough a barrack-
square, with its romping children, its dogs, its dust,
its guard-house with chatting soldiers on a form in
front, and the important sentinel pacing to and fro,
regular and rigid as a pendulum, keeping vigilant
watch and ward over nothing in particular. We
have a rare company to-day; besides the engineers
and bombardiers, and the linesmen of the 24th,
31st, 71st, and 81st, the four infantry regiments on
the station, we have men on leave from Malta.
They came up to the races, and are waiting for the
P. and 0. steamer to take them back. That fat
little customer is your sporting sub. I only wonder
he is not in cords, tops, and spurs. What a hearty
voice he talks in ! He asks for the Field as if he
were giving a view-halloo. Then there is the moist-
eyed, mottle-cheeked, pu%, convivial sub, who is
knowing on the condition of ale, and is too friendly
with Saccone*s sherry. The convivial sub, I am
happy to say, is dying out. Then there is the prig,
who is " going in " for his profession. I call him a

25—2

68 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

prig, because when people are going in for any-
thing they should have the good sense not to blow
about it. To hear Mr. SheUs and his prattle about
Hamley and Brialmont and Jomini, kriegspiel and
the new drill, you would imagine he was bound to
put the extinguisher on Marlborough, Wellington,
Wolseley, and the rest of them; and yet the
chances are, if you meet him twenty years hence,
he will be a captain on the recruiting service, with
no forces to marshal but six growing children.
Then there is the sentimental sub, the perfect
ladies' man, who plays croquet and the flute, pleads
guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a
simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with
having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of
scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pair-
ing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks
against time, and can write his initials with a
hundredweight hanging from his index-finger.

Happy dogs in the heyday of life, all of them ;
how I envy them their buoyant spirits, their
rollicking enjo3nnent of to-day, and their contempt
for the morrow ! But the morrow will come never-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 69

theless, and with it Black Care will come often.
Gib is a haunt of the Hebrews; they or their
myrmidons beset the subaltern at genial hours,
after limcheon or after mess, pester him with
vamped-up knick-knacks for sale, appeal to him
to patronize a poor man by bujdng articles he does
not and never by any means can want — " pay me
when you likes, Cap'n, one yearsh, two yearsh."
The " cap'n," who may have left Sandhurst but six
months, may be weakly good-natured, and ignore
the fact that his income is not elastic; some day
that he thinks of taking a run to England Ben
Solomon, who seems to be able to read the books
in the Adjutant-General's OflBce through the walls,
pounces upon him with his little bill, and he is
arrested if he cannot satisfy his Jewish benefactor.
Loans are advanced at a high rate " per shent " by
the harpies^ and enable him to stave off the tempo-
rary embarrassment ; the " cap'n " is happy for the
moment, but the reckoning is only deferred that it
may grow. The arrival of Black Care is adjourned,
not averted. The plain truth of it is, Gibraltar is a
den of thieves, and has been the burial-pit of many

70 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

-

a promising young fellow's hopes. There are two
tarife for everything— one for natives, the other for
the British subaltern and the British tourist ; and
the British subaltern and the British tourist are
foolish enough to submit to the extortion in most
cases. With some half-dozen honourable excep-
tions, the traders are what is popularly known as
"Jews" in their mode of dealing. They cozen
on principle, sell articles that will not last, and
charge preposterous prices for them; they impose
upon the young officer's softness or delicate gentle-
manly feeling, and consider themselves smart for
so doing. In this manner Gibraltar, with all its
discomforts, is dearer than the most expensive and
luxurious quarter in the British Isles.

But we have other specimens of the genus officer
in the lounging slaughterers by profession, who are
so busy killing time. The lean bronzed aristocratic
major, whose temper long years in India have not
soured ; the squat pursy paymaster (why are pay-
masters so fearfully inclined to fat?); the raw-
boned young surgeon with the Aberdeen accent;
** the ranker," erect and grizzled, and looking ever

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 71

SO little not quite at his ease, you know, for the
languid lad with fawn-coloured moustache strad-
dling on the chair beside him is an Honourable;
the jovial portly Yorkshireman, who is in the
Highland Light Infantry, naturally ; and the lively
loud-voiced Irishman, laughing consumedly at his
own jokes — aU are here, conversing, smoking, mildly
chaffing each other, and exchanging " tips " as to
the next Derby. They make a book in a quiet way,
and occasionally invest in a dozen tickets in a
Spanish lottery. What will you? One cannot
perpetually play shop, and the British officer has
a rooted objection to it, although he does his duty
like a man when the tug of war arises. Better that
he should join in a regimental sweepstakes, or lose
what he can afford to lose to a comrade, than give
way to the blues. He does not gamble or curse,
like his Spanish confrere; his potations are not
deep, nor is he quick to quarrel Then let him
race on the Neutral Ground; let him hunt with
the Calpe pack ; and let him back his fancy for the
big event at Epsom. Those are his chief excite-
ments at Gib, and help to give a fiUip to life in that

72 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

circumscribed microcosm, pending the anxiously
expected mom when the route will come, or,
mayhap, the call to active service, in one of those
petty wars which are constantly breaking the
monotony of this so-called pacific reign.

"Guard, turn out!" cries the Highland Light
Infantry sentinel under my window, and the smart
soldier laddies fall in for the inspection of the
officer of the day. What a thoroughly military
town it is! By-and-by the evening gun booms
from the heights above, where Sergeant Munro,
taking time from his sun-dial and the town major,
notifies the official sunset. Bang go the gates.
We are imprisoned. Anon the streets are traversed
by patrols in Indian file to warn loiterers to return
to barracks, the pipers of the 71st skirl a few wild
tunes on Commercial Square, the buglers sound the
last post, the second gun-fire is heard, and a hush
falls over the town, broken only by the challenges
of sentries or their regular echoing footfalls on their
weary beats. The thunder of artillery wakes you
in the morning anew, and if you venture out for a
walk before breakfast you thread your way through

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 73

waggons of the army train or fatigue-parties in
white jackets. You stumble across cannon and
symmetric pyramids of shot where you least expect
them ; the line of sea-wall is intersected by figures
in brick-red tunic, moving back and forward on
ledges of masonry ; the morning air is alive with
drum -beats and bugle and trumpet-calls; every-
thing is of the barrack most barrack-like; the
broad arrow is indented in large deep character
on the Bock. It is impossible to shake off the
Ordnance atmosphere. The Irish jaunting-cars are
all driven by the sons of soldiers' wives ; the clergy-
men are all military chaplains; those goats are
going up to be milked for the major's delicate
daughter ; that lady practising horse exercise in a
ring in her garden is wife to Pillicoddy of the
Control Department, and is merely correcting the
neglected education of her youth ; the very monkeys
— diminishing sadly, it grieves me to say — recall
associations of the mess-room, for you never fail to
hear of that terrible sportsman, " one of Cardwell's
gents," who thought it excellent fun to shoot one
some time ago. Luckily, the rules of the service

74 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

did not permit him to be tried by court-martial, or
the wretched boy might have been ordered out for
instant execution, so great was the indignation.
But if he was not shot he was roasted as fearfully
as ever St. Laurence was; he was reminded a
thousand times if once that fratricide is a fearful
crime, and if ever Nemesis visits his pillow it will
be in the shape of a monkey without a tail.

One wearies of the same scenes of beauty, and
would fain barter the Cork Woods for the chestnuts
in Bushy Park; the bright Bay and the watchet
sky pall on the senses, and a dull river and drab
clouds would be welcomed for change. The day
xises when the conversation of the same set, the
stories repeated as often as that famous one of
grouse in the gun-room, and the stale jokes anent
the Sheeref of Wazan and the rival innkeepers of
Tangier, black Martin and " Lord James," cloy like
treacle ; the fiction palmed upon the latest novice
that he must go and have a few shots at the
monkeys, if he wishes to curry favour at head-
quarters, misses fire; the calls of the P. and 0.
steamers, and the thought that their passengers

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 75

within a week either have seen^ or will see, the
little village works its effect ; even bull-fighting is
adjudged a bore^ and one sighs for Regent Street
and the ''Rag and Famish/' flaxen ringlets, and
roast bee£ A twelvemonth might pass pleasantly
on the Rock ; but afiber that the '' damnable itera-
tion " of existence must jar on the nerves like the
note of a cuckoo. Still, aa my phUosopher of the
cemetery remarked, there are worse places — far
worse, Assouan and Aden, for example ; so let not
the gallant gentleman repine whom Fate has
assigned to a round of duty in Sutlersville. For
Tommy Atkins of the rank and file, it is wearisome
when he is young ; he should not be asked to stay
there longer than a twelvemonth while he is at the
age which yearns for novelty, and during that
twelvemonth he should be drilled as at the depot*
For the old soldier it is a good station, and should
be made a haven of rest

CHAPTER V.

From Pillar to Pillar— Historic Souvenirs— Off to Africa—
The Sweetly Pretty Albert— Gibraltar by Moonlight —
The Chain-Gang— Across the Strait— A Difficult Land-
ing— Albert is Hurt— " Fat Mahomet ''—The Calendar
of the Centuries Put Back— Tangier : the People,
the Streets, the Bazaar— Our Hotel— A Coloured
Gentleman — Seeing the Sights — Local Memoranda —
Jewish Disabilities— Peep at a Photographic Album —
The Writer's Notions on Harem Life.

I WAS gradually getting into the mood of Pistol,
and cried a foutra for the world of business and
worldlings base. My soul was longing for " Africa
and golden joys/' Here I was at the elbow, so to
speak, of the mysterious Continent, where the
geographers set down elephants for want of towns.
Why should I not visit it ? I might never have
such a chanc^ again. I stood in the shadow of one
Pillar of Hercules. Why not make pilgrimage to
the other ? Having notched Calpe on my staff, I
resolved to add Abyla to the record.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 77

I was the more inclined to this, as I had recol-
lection that Tangier had been part of the British
dominions for one-and-twenty years. In 1662
Catharine of Braganza, the ^'olivader-complexioned
queen of low stature, but prettily shaped/' whose
teeth wronged her mouth by sticking a little too
far out, brought it as portion of her dowry to
Charles IL The 2nd, or Queen's Own Regiment^
was ndsed to garrison the post^ and sported its
sea-green fiEkcings, the favourite colour of her
Majesty, for long in the teeth of the threatening
Moors. The 1st Dragoons still bear the nickname
of ^ the Tangier Horse,'' and were originally formed
from some troops of cuirassiers who assisted in the
defence of the African stronghold for seventeen
years ; and the 1st Foot Regiment owes its title of
"^ Boyal '' to the distinction it gained by capturing
a flag froai the Moors in 16S0. That was the year
when old John Evelyn noted in his diary that
Lord Ossorie was deeply touched at having been
appointed Governor and General of the Forces,
** to regaine the losses we had lately sustained
from the Moors, when Inchqueene was Governor/'

78 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

His lordship relished the commission so little
indeed, it was a forlorn errand — that he took a
malignant fever after a supper at Fishmongers'
Hall, went home, and died. In 1683 the Merry
Monarch caused the works of Tangier to be blown
up, and abandoned the place, declaring it was not
worth the cost of keeping. The Merry Monarch
was not prescient. A century afterwards Gibraltar
was indebted for a large proportion of its supplies,
during the great siege, to the dismantled and
deserted British- African fortress. For many reasons
Tangier was not to be missed.

By a happy coincidence a party of three in the
Club-House Hotel — a retired army captain, his
wife, and a lady companion — were anxious to take
a trip to Africa. We agreed to go together, and
had scarcely made up our minds, when another
retired captain, who habitually resided in Tangier,
gratified us by the information that he was return-
ing there, and would be happy to give us every
assistance in his power. Retired Captain No. 1
was a jolly fellow, fond of good living and not
overburdened with sestheticism — a capital specimen

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 79

of a hearty Yorkshireman. He looked after the
provand. His wife, portly and short of temper,
was as good-natured as he. She insisted on dis-
charging the bills. The lady-companion was thin,
accomplished, and melancholy. She kept us in
sentiment. Retired Captain No. 2 was a fellow-
countryman of mine, bright-brained and waggish.
He was the walking guide-book, with philosophy
and friendship combined. I was nigh forgetting
one, and not by any means the least important,
member of the party — Albert. Mra Captain
introduced him to me as a sweetly pretty creature.
At her request I looked after him. Tastes vary as
to what constitutes beauty, but I candidly think a
broad thick head, crop ears, a flattish nose, and
heavy jowls could not be called sweetly pretty
without straining a point; and all these Albert
possessed. He was a bull-dog (I believe his real
name was Bill, and that he had been brought up in
Whitechapel). As a bull-dog he had excellent
points, and might be esteemed a model of symmetry
and breeding by the fancy, or even pronounced a
beauty and exquisitely proportioned by connois-

80 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

seurs; but sweetly pretty — ^never! I could not
stomacli that, especially when Albert growled and
laid bare his ruthless set of sound white teeth.

Before leaving Gibraltar I had two novel sensa-
tions, nocturnal and matutinaL The first was a
view of the Bay by moonlight, the white crescent
shining clearly down on a portion of Hie inner
waters brinded by shipping, and on the outer spread
of sleepy, cadenced wavelets rippling phosphores-
cently under the pallid rays. By the Mole were
visible the outlines of barques, steamers, coal-brigs,
and xebecs ; away to the left were the GatapvZt and
a few of her mosquito companions; and far out
rode at anchor a stately frigate of the United
States' fleet. The twinkling lamps of the city
afloat sending out reddish lines, and the fiiUer,
clearer, luminous penclllings of the gas-lamps of
the city ashore, made a not ungrateftd contrast to
the quivering chart of poetic moonbeams. Bending
over their edge were the deep shadows of the
massive Rock ; and bounding them, at the other
side, the barren foot-hills of Algeciras mellowed into
a phantom softness by distance and the night.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 81

Next morning, as I strolled by the sea-wall
towards the Bagged Staff Battery, I saw a sight
that took away my appetite for breakfast. Pacing
slowly to their work to the music of clanking
chains was a column of wretched convicts * What
haggard faces, with low foreheads, sunken eyes, and
dogged moody expression or utter blankness of
expression ! Purely animal the most of that legion
of despair and desperation looked, and sallow and
sickly of complexion. They were a blot on the
fresh simshine. How hideous their coarse garb of
pied jackets branded with the broad arrow, their
knickerbockers and clumsy shoes ! Wistfully they
moved along, hardly daring to glance at me,
through fear of the turnkeys with loaded rifles
marching at their sides. I almost felt that, if I
had the power, I would demand their release, as
did the Knight of La Mancha that of the criminals
on their way to the galleys, although they might
have been as ungrateful as Gines de Passamonte ;
but those hang-dog countenances banished im-
pulses of chivalry.

^ Gibraltar is no longer a penal settlement
VOL. II. 26

82 ROMANTIC SPAIF.

The little steamer, the Spahi, which conveyed
us across the Strait, was seaworthy for all her
cranky appearance, and made the passage of thirty-
two miles quickly and comfortably for all her
roughness of accommodation. She was a cargo-
boat, but her skipper was English, and did his best
to make the ladies feel at home. Besides, Captain
No, 1 had brought a select basket of provisions
and a case of dry, imdoctored champagne. One of
our first experiences as we cleared Algeciras, with
turrets like our martello-towers sentinelling the
hills, and the three-masted wreck — " Been twenty-'
one days there," said the skipper, "and not an
effort has been made to raise it yet, and not even a
warning hght is hung over it at night "—was to
sight a bottle-nosed whale puffing and spewing its
predatory course.

• " What are those ruins upon the Spanish shore
for r asked the accomplished lady.

When she was informed that they were the
beacons raised in the days of old, when the Moorish
corsairs haunted that coast, and that the moment
the pirate sail was descried in the offing (I hope

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 83

this is correctly nautical) the warning fire blazed
by night, or the warning plume of smoke went up
by day, to summon Spain's chivalry to the rescue,
she was enchanted, and recited a passage from
Macaulay's " Armada."

We made the transit in a little over three hours,
and, rounding the Funta de Malabata, cut into the
Bay of Tangier, and eased off steam at some distance
from the Atlantic- washed shore. There is no pier,
but a swell and discoloration, projecting in straight
line seawards, marks where a mole had once stood.
That was a piece of British handiwork; but the
Moor, who is no more tormented by the demon of
progress than the Turk/ had literally let it slide,
until it sank under the waters.

The Sultana of Moorish cities Tangier is some-
times called, and truly she does wear a regal,
sultana-like air as seen from afar, cushioned in
state on the hillside, her white flat roofs rising
one above another like the steps of a marble
staircase, the tall minarets of the mosques piercing
the air, and the multitudinous many-coloured flags
of all nations fluttering above the various consu-

26—2

84 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

lates. But in this, as in so many other instances,
it is distance Y^hich lends enchantment to the
view.

We went as near to the shore as we could in
small boats, and when we groimded, a fellowship
of clamouring, unkempt, half-naked Barbary Jews,
skull-capped, with their shirts tied at their waists
and short cotton drawers, rushed forward to meet
us, and carry us pickaback to dry land. The
ladies were borne in chairs, slung over the shoulders
of two of these amphibious porters, or on an im-
provised seat made by their linked hands, but to
preserve their equilibrium the dear creatures had
to clasp their arms tightly roimd the necks of the
natives. This would not look well in a picture,
above all if the lady were a professional beauty.
But there was nothing wrong in it, any more than
in Amaryllis clinging to the embrace of Strephon in
the whirling of a waltz. Custom reconciles to every-
thing. On stepping into the small boat I had my
first difficulty with Albert. I trod on his tail.
The dog looked reproachfully, but did not mpan.
His mistress scowled, and warned me to take care

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 85

what I was about for an awkward fooL Her
husband, with a pained look on his face, mutely
apologized for her, and I humbly excused myself
and vowed amendment. I am not revengeful, but
I did enjoy it when one of the porters, tottering
under the weight of the fat lady, made a false step
and nearly gave her k sousing. I clambered on
my particular Berber's back, dear Albert in my
arms, and we splashed merrily along ; but Captain
No. 1, who turned the scales at seventeen stone two
pounds, had not so uneventful a landing. Twice
his bearer halted, and the warrior, abandoning
himself to his fate, swore he would make the
Berber's nose probe the sand if he stumbled.

As I was discharged on the beach, I was con-
fronted by a majestic Moor. His grave brown
face was fringed with a closely-trimmed jet-black
beard, and his upper lip was shaded with a jet-
black moustache. He wore a white turban and a
wide-sleeved ample garment of snowy white, flow-
ing in graceful folds below his knees ; and on his
feet were loose yellow slippers, peaked and turned
up at the toes. This was Mahomet Lamarty, better

86 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

known as " Fat Mahomet," who had acted as inter-
preter to the British troops in the Crimea, and
who, at this period, was making an income by
supplying subalterns from Gib with masquerade
suits to take home and horses to ride. Mahomet
in his sphere was a great man. He was none of
your loquacious valets de place, no courier of the
Transcendental school. He had made the pilgrim-
age to Mecca and was a Hadji ; he was a chieftain
of a tribe in the vicinity, and had fought in the
war against the Spanish mfidels; he could borrow
his purest and finest Arab from the Kadi ; he was
free to the sacred garden of the Shereef, or Pope-
Sultan, one of the descendants of the Prophet,
Allah be praised !

Mahomet, who was known to both the Captains,
passed our small impedimenta through the custom-
house — there is an orthodox custom-house, though
there is no proper accommodation for shipping —
and we trailed at his heels up the close, crowded,
rough alleys which did duty as streets. It would
be hard to imagine a more thorough-going change
than our scurr}- across the waves had effected. We

ROMANTIC SPA IN. 87

were in another world completely. We had been
transported as on the carpet of the magician. It
was as if the calendar had been put back for
centuries, and the half-forgotten personages of the
" Thousand-and-One Nights" were revivified and
had then- bemg around us.

Tangier is a walled and fortified town; but
Vauban had no hand m the fortifications, and it is
my private opinion the walls would go down before
a peremptory horn-blast quicker than those of
Jericho. It swarms with a motley population much
addicted to differences in shades of complexion.
The Tangerines exhaust the primitive colours and
most of the others in their features. There are
lime-white Tangerines, copper and canary-coim-
tenanced Tangerines, olive and beetroot -hued
Tangerines, Tangerines of the tint of the bottom
of pots, Tangerines of every — ^no, I beg to recall
that, there are no well-defined blue or green
Tangerines; at least, none that came imder my
ken. The town is as old as the hills and coura-
geously uncivilized. There is no gasholder, no
railway-station, no theatre, no cab-stand, no daily

88 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

paper, and no drainage board to go into controversy
over. It is unconsciously backward, near as it is to
Europe — a rifle-shot off the track of ships plying
from the West to the ports of the Mediterranean.
It preserves its Eastern aroma with a fine Moslem
conservatism. Its ramparts of crumbling masonry
are ornamented with ancient caimon useless for
offence, useless for defence. There is said to be a
saluting-battery ; but the legend runs that the
gunners require a week's clear notice before firing a
salute.* There is no locomotion save in boxes and
on the backs of quadrupeds; and quadrupeds ot
the inferior order are usually, when overtaken by
death, thrown in the streets to decompose. But if
the irregularity of the town would galvanize the
late Monsieur Haussmann in his grave, its situation
would satisfy the most exacting Yankee engineer.
It is huddled in a sheltered nest on the fringe of a
land of mUk and honey ; it has the advantage of a

^ That has all been changed since. There are serviceable
rifled guns at Tangier now, and the Sultan has some
approach to a regular army, organized by an ex-English
soldier.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 89

spread of level beach, and rejoices in the balmiest
of climes.

The streets are so narrow that you could light a
cigar from your neighbour's window on the opposite
side ; but there is no window, neither at this side
nor the other. A hole with a grating is the only
window that is visible. Moors are jealous, and to
be able to appreciate their household comforts you
must first succeed in tummg their houses inside
out. Those who have dived into the recesses say
the &uit is as savoury as the husk is repulsive.
The windowless houses with their backs grudgingly
turned to the thoroughfares are low for the most
part, and the thoroughfares are — oh ! so crooked —
zigzag, up and down, staggering in a drunken way
over hard cobble-stones and leading nowhere.
There are mosques and stores entered by horse-
shoe arches, a bazaar dotted over with squatting
women, cowled with dirty blankets, sellmg warm
griddle-cakes ; moving here and there are the same
spectral figures, similar dirty blankets veiling them
from head to foot; over the way are cylinders of
mat, with nets caging the apertures at each end, to

90 ROMANTIC SPA IN.

hold the cocks and hens, rabbits and pigeons,
brought for sale by Kiffians, descendants of the cor-
sairs of that ilk, stalwart, brown, and bare-legged,
with heads shaven but for the twisted scalp-lock left
for the convenience of Asrael when he is dragging
them up to Paradise. Hebrews have their standings
around, and deal m strips of cotton, brass dishes,
and slippers, or change money, or are ready for
anything in the shape of barter. Seated in the
shade of that small niche in the wall, as on a
tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary,
selling advice to a client ; in the alcove next him is
a worker in beads and filigree ; from a dusty forge
beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked
smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-
shoes. Mules with Bedouins perched, chin on shin,
amid the bales of merchandise on their backs, cross
the bazaar at every moment ; or files of donkeys,
stooping under bundles of faggots, pick their careful
way. By-and-by — but this is not a frequent sight —
a Moslem swell ambles past on a barb, gorgeous in
caparisons, the enormous peaked saddle held in its
place by girths round the beast's Jbreast and

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 91

quarters, and covered with scarlet hammer-cloth.
If we move about and examine the stalls, we see
lumps of candied sweetmeats here ; charms, snuff-
boxes made of yoimg cocoanuts and beads there ;
and jars of milk or baskets of dates elsewhere. At
the fountain yonder, contrived in the wall, and
approached by rugged, sloppy steps, water-carriers,
wide-mouthed negro slaves, male and female, with
brass curtain-rings in their ears, and skins blacker
than the moonless midnight, come and go the whole
day long, and gossip or wrangle with loafers in
coarse mantles and burnous of stuff striped like
leopard-skin. Beside the sUent, gliding, ghost-like
Mahometan women and the Hottentot Venus, you
have Rebecca in gaudy kerchief and Dona Dolores
in silken skirt and lace mantilla from neighbouring
Spain. In the mingling crowd all is novelty, all is
noise, all is queer and shifting and diversified.

The hotel where we put up was owned by
Bruzeaud, formerly a messman of a British regi-
ment. It was approached by a filthy lane, and
commanded a prospect of a square not much larger
than a billiard-table. In the middle of this square

92 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

was the limp body of a deceased mongoose. At
the opposite side of it was a Mahometan school,
where the children were instructed in the Koran,
and their treble voices as they recited the inspired
verses in unison kept up drone for hours. The
build and surroundings of the hostelry left much
opening for improvement, but we had no valid
ground for complaint. The beds were clean,
Bruzeaud was a good cook, the waiter was attentive
and smiled perpetually, which made up for his
stupidity; we had a single agreeable fellow-guest
in a Frenchman, who spoke Arabic, and had lived
in the city of Morocco as a pretended follower of
the Prophet ; and, besides, there was that dry un-
doctored champagne, which it is permissible to
drink at all meals in Africa.

There was another hotel in Tangier, a more pre-
tentious establishment, owned by one Martin —
surname unknown. Martin was a character. He
was an unmitigated coloured gentleman, blubber-
lipped and black as the ace of spades, with safiron-
red streaks at the corners of his optics. He was a
native of one of the West India Islands, I believe.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 93

but I will not be positive. Mahomet Lamarty
pressed me to tell him in what English county
Englishmen were bom black, and when I said in
none, he gravely ejaculated that in that case
Martin was a liar, and habitually ate dirt. To
avert possible complications into which I might
have been drawn, I had to hasten to explain that
Martin might possibly have been bom in a part of
England known as the Black Country. He had
served in the steward's department on the ship of
war where the Duke of Edinburgh, then Prince
Alfred and a middy, was picking up seamanship.
Hence his Jove-like hauteur. He had rubbed
skirts with Royalty, and to his fetter-shadowed
soul some of the divinity which hedges kings and
their relatives had adhered to him. I never met a
darkey who could put on such fearful and won-
derful airs. Where he did not order he conde-
scended. He showed me an Irish constabulary
revolver which he had received from "his old
friend. Lord Francis Conyngham — 'pon honour,
he was delighted to meet him. It was good
for sore eyes — who'd a-thought of his turning up

94 ROMANTIC SPAIN

there!" Splendidly inflated Martin was when he
spoke of "his servants." This thing was enter-
taining until he grew presumptuous. If you are
polite to some people they are familiar, and want to
take an ell for every inch you have conceded. And
then you have to tell them to keep their place.
But Martin, with the instincts of his race, saw in
time when it was coming to that. What a misery it
must be for a coloured gentleman of ambition that
the tell-tale odor stirpis cannot be eliminated !
Martin spent extraordinary amounts of money on
the purchase of essences, but to no effect ; he could
not escape from himseK; the scent of the nigger, che
puzzo ! would hang roimd him still. He was a great
coward with all his magniloquence, and when cholera
attacked Tangier, left it in craven terror,and seques-
tered himseK in a coimtry house a few miles offl

The two captains and I "did" Tangier con-
scientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a
yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a
Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We
crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house,
and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 95

cups ; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes
mitil we fell off into a state of visionary stupor
known as "kiff ;" we paid our respects to the E^adi,
exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down
cross-legged on mats as if we were the three tailors of
Tooley Street; we almost consented to have our-
selves bled by a Moorish barber — Mahomet La-
marty's particular, who lanced him in the nape of
the neck every spring — for the Moorish barber still
practises the art of Sangrado, and also extracts
teeth. But in my note-taking I was sorely handi-
capped by my ignorance of the language. Arabic
is spoken in the stretch extending from Tetuan to
Mogador by the coast, and for some distance in the
interior ; Chleuh is the dialect of the inhabitants of
the Atlas range, and Guinea of the negroes.
Spanish is slightly understood in Tangier and its
vicinity, and is well imderstood by the Jews. The
houses are generally built of chalk and flint (tahia)
on the ground-floor, and of bricks on the upper
story. Moorish bricks are good, but rough and
crooked in make. The houses inhabited by Jews
are obliged to be coated with a yellow wash, those

96 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

of natives are white, those of Christians may be of
any colour. The Jews are made to feel that they
are a despised stock, and yet with Jewish subtlety
and perseverance they have managed to get and
keep the trade of the place in their hands. That
fact may be plainly gathered from the absence of
business movement in the bazaars and public
resorts of Tangier on the Jewish Sabbath. Your
Hebrew does not poignantly feel or bitterly resent
being reviled and spat upon, provided he hears the
broad gold pieces rattling in the courier-bag slung
over his shoulder. He nurses his vengeance, but
he has the common sense to perceive that the
readiest and fullest manner of exacting it is by
cozening his neighbour. At this semi-European edge
of Africa he enjoys comparative license, although
he is forced to appear in skull-cap and a long
narrow robe of a dark colour something like a
priest's soutane. But the son of Israel when he
has a taste for finery (and which of them has not ?)
compensates for the gloom of his outer garment by
wearing an embroidered vest, a girdle of some
bright hue, and white drawers.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 97

The daughters of Israel — ^but my conscience
charges me with want of gallantry towards them in
a previous chapter, and now I can honestly relieve
it and win back their favour. They are the only
beautiful women who moUify the horizon of Tan-
gier : the Mahometan ladies are not visible, those
of Spanish descent are coarse, and of English are
washed-out; while their lips are against the
negresses. I have a batch of photographs of
females in an album — aye, of believers in the
Prophet amongst them, for it is a folly to imagine
you cannot obtain that which is forbidden.
Hercules, I fancy, must have overcome with a
golden sword the dragon that watched the gardens
of the Hesperides — which, by the way, were in the
neighbourhood of Tangier, if ApoUodorus is to be
credited. On looking over that album, the majoricy
of the faces are distinctly those of Aaronites, and
most favourable specimens of the family, too
There are melting black orbs curtained with pen-
sive lashes, luxuriant black hair, regular features,
and straight, delicately chiselled noses. These
Jewesses generally wear handkerchiefs disposed in

VOL. IL 27

98 ROMA NTIC SPA IN.

curving folds over their heads, and are as fond of
loudly-tinted raiment and the gauds of trinketry
as their sisters who parade the sands at Bamsgate
during the season. There is a photograph before
me, as I write, of a Jewish matron, fat, dull, double-
chinned, and sleepy-eyed, who must have been a
belle before she fell into flesh. She wears massy
filigree ear-rings, two strings of precious stones as
necklaces, ponderous bracelets, edgings of pearls
on her bodice, and rings on all her fingers. Her
shoulders are covered with costly lace, and the
front of her skirt is like an altar-cloth heavy with
embroidery. I dare say, if one might peep under it,
she has gold bangles on her ankles. It would
surprise me if she had an idea in her head beyond
the decoration of her person. As we turn the leaf,
there is a full-blooded negress with a striped napkin
twisted gracefully turban-wise round her haii, and
coils of beads, large and small, sinuously dangling
on her breast, like the chains over the Debtor's
Door at Newgate* A very fine animal indeed, this
negress, with power in her strong shiny features;
a nose of courage, thin in the nostrils, and cheek-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 99

bones high, but not so high as those of a Bed
Indian. If she were white, she might pass for a
Caucasian, but for that gibbous under-lip. She
lacks the wide mouth and the hinted intelligent
archness of the Two-Headed Nightingale, and has
not the moody expression and semi-sensuous, semi-
ferocious development of the muscular widows of
Cetewayo ; but for a negress she is handsome and
well-built, and would fetch a very good price in
the market The slave-trade still flourishes in
Morocco. On the next page we meet two types of
young Moorish females : one a peasant, taken sur-
reptitiously as she stood in a horse-shoe archway ;
the other a lady of the harem, taken— no matter
by what artifice. The peasant, swathed from tip
to heel in white like a ghost in a penny booth, and
shading her face with a cart-wheel of a palm-leaf
hat looped from brim to crown, and with one
extremity of its great margins curled, is a pre-
maturely worn, weather-stained, common-looking
wench, with a small nose and screwed-up mouth.
She is a free woman, but I would not exchange
the dusky bondswoman for five of her class.

27—2

100 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Centuries of bad food, much baby-nursing, and
field-labour sink their imprint into a race. The
harem lady, whose likeness was filched as she
leaned an elbow against a low table, is in a state of
repose. She squats tailor-fashioM, her fingers are
twined one in another in her lap, her eyes are
closed, and her expression is one of drowsy, listless
voluptuousness. She is fair, and her dress (for she
is not arrayed for the reception of visitors) is
simple — a peignoir, and a sash, and a fold of silk
binding her long rich tresses. A soft die-away
face, with no sentiment more strongly defined than
the abandonment to pleasure and its consequent
weariness. By no means an attractive piece of
flesh and blood, and yet a good sample of the class
that go to upholster a seraglio.

I have never had the slightest anxiety to pene-
trate the secrets of the Moslem household, and I
consider the man who would wish to poke his nose
into its seclusion no better than Peeping Tom of
Coventry — an insolent, lecherous cad. I would
not traverse the street to-morrow to inspect the
champion wives of the Sultan of Turkey and Shah

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 101

of Persia amalgamated ; and I deserve no credit;for
it, for I know that they are puppets, and that more
engaging women are to be seen any afternoon
shopping in Regent Street or pirouetting in the
ballets of half-a-dozen theatres.

Your lady of the harem is an insipid, pasty-
complexioned doll, nine times out of ten, and would
be vastly improved in looks and temperament if
she were subjected to a course of shower-baths, and
compelled to take horse-exercise regularly and earn
her bread before she ate it.

How do I know this? it may be asked. Who
dares to deny it ? is my answer.

But here is a digression from our theme of the
condition of the Jews at Tangier, and all on
accoimt of a few poor photographs ! In one sen-
tence, that condition is shameful. It is a reproach
to the so-called civilized Powers that they do not
interfere to influence the Emir-al-Mumenin to be-
have with more of the spirit of justice towards his
Jewish subjects. In Fez and other cities they have
to dwell in a quarter to themselves — " El Melah "
(the dirty spot) it is called in Morocco city ; and

102 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

when they leave the Melah they have to go bare-
footed They are not permitted to ride on mules,
nor yet to walk on the same side of the street as
Arabs.

The late Sir Moses Montefiore, a very exemplary
old man in some respects, visited Morocco in his
eightieth year to intercede on behalf of his co-
religionists, and promises of better treatment were
made ; but promises are not always kept.

CHAPTER VI.

A Pattern Despotism— Some Moorish Peculiarities—A
Hell upon Earth— Fighting for Bread— An Air-Bath
— Surprises of Tangier — On Slavery — The Writer's
Idea of a Moorish Squire — The Ladder of Knowledge
— Gulping Forbidden Liquor— Division of Time-
Singular Customs— The Shereef of Wazan— The Chris-
tian who Captivated the Moor— The Interview— Moslem
Patronage of Spain — A Slap for England — ^A Vision of
Beauty — An English Desdemona : Her Plaint— One for
the Newspaper Men — The Ladies' Battle — Farewell —
The English Lady's Maid— Albert is Indisposed— The
Writer Sums up on Morocco.

The Government in Morocco would satisfy the
most ardent admirer of force. It is an imbridled
despotism. The Sultan is head of the Church as
of the State, and master of the lives and property
of his subjects. He dispenses with ministers, and
deliberates only with favourites. When favourites
displease him, he can order their heads to be taken
off. Favourites are careful not to displease him.

104 JttOMANTIC SPAIN.

The land is a terra incognita to Europeans, and is
rich in beans, maize, and wool, which are exported,
and in wheat and barley, which are not always per-
mitted to be exported. Altogether the form of
administration is very primitive and simple. It is
a rare privilege for a European to be admitted into
the Imperial presence, and indeed the only occasions,
one might say, when Europeans have the privilege
are those furnished by the visits of foreign Missions
to submit credentials and presents. It is advisable
for a private traveller not to go to the chief city unless
attached to one of these official caravans ; but by
those who have money a journey to Fez may be com-
passed with an escort. This escort consists of the
Sultan's very irregular soldiers, who are armed with
very long and very rusty matchlocks, of a pattern
common nowadays in museums and curiosity shops.
Ostensibly the escort is intended to protect the
traveller from the regularly organized bands of
robbers which infest the interior; but the ex-
perience of the traveller is that when the robbers
swoop down he has to protect the escort. Chris-
tians are looked upon as dogs by all the self-satisfied

ROJiASTia SPAiy. 1«

iuUiTes» and treated so by some of them when they
can be saocy with impunity. It was my lot to be
called a dog by a small &natie> who hissed at me
with the asperity and industry of a disturbed
gander, and pelted me with stones. But two can
play at that game, and that boy will think twice
before he lapidates a fuQ-grown Christian again.
But he will hate him for evermore, and when he
has reached man's estate will teach his son to
repeat the doggerel : ** The Christian to the hook,
the Jew to the spit, and the Moslem to see the
sight"

The Sultan collects his revenue (estimated at
half a million pounds sterling a year, great part of
which is derived from the Qovemment monopoly
of the sale of opium) by the aid of his army ; but
as he never nears the greater portion of his
dominions, there must be some nice pickings off that
revenue by minor satraps before it reaches his
sacred hands. There is quite a phalanx of under-
strappers of State in this despotism. For instance,
at Tangier there is a Bacha or Qovornor, a CtUiph
or Yice-Govemor, a Nadheer or Administrator of

106 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

the Mosques, a Mohtasseb or Administrator of the
Markets, and a Moul-el-Dhoor or Chief of the
Night Police. There is a leaven of the guild
system, too, as in more advanced countries. Each
trade has its Amin, each quarter its Mokaderrin.
There is a Kadi, or Minister of Worship and Justice,
to whom we paid our respects. Justice is quick
in its action, and stem in the penalties it inflicts.
The legs and hands are cut off pilferers, heads are
cut off sometimes and preserved m salt and cam-
phor, and the bastinado is an ordinary punishment
for lesser crimes. But the Moors must be thick in
the soles, nor is it astonishing, as the practice is
to chastise children by beating them on the feet.
Mahomet Lamarty volunteered to procure a criminal
who would submit to the bastinado for a peseta.
In the market-place I compassionated an unfor-
tunate thief minus his right hand and left leg.
We took a walk to the prison, which is on the
summit of the hill. Captain No. 1 thoughtfully pro-
viding himself with a basket of bread. What a
heU upon earth was that sordid, stifling, noisome,
gloomy keep, with its crowds of starvmg sore-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 107

covered inmates. In filth it was a pig-sty, in smell
a monkey-house, in ventilation another Black-hole
of Calcutta. Turn to the next page, reader mine,
if you are squeamish. Heaven be my witness, I
have no desire to minister to morbid tastes ; but I
have an object in describing this dreadful oubliette,
for it still exists — exists within thirty-two miles of
British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort
is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the
bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts
of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam
of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become ac-
customed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweat-
ing, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to
so many gaimt wild beasts. Some are gibbering
like fiends, others jabbering like idiots. They are
there young and old ; a few — the maniacs those —
are chained ; all are crawled over by vermin, most
are crusted with excretions. The sight made me
feel faint at the time, the very recollection of it to
this day makes my flesh creep. We were fascinated
by this peep at the Inferno. The moment these
caged wretches caught a glimpse of us they rushed

108 ROMANTIC SPAIF.

to the door, and on bended knees, or with hands
uplifted, or with pinched cheeks pressed against
the bars, raised a clamour of entreaty. We drew
back as the rancid plague-current smote our faces,
and questioned Mahomet by our looks as to what
all this meant.

" They want food," he explained.

These prisoners are allowed two loaves a day
out of the revenues of the Mosques; but two
loaves, even if scrupulously given, which I doubt,
are but irritating pittance. They may make
cushions or baskets, but their remuneration is un-
certain and slender. Those who are lucky get
sustenance from relatives in the town, but the
majority are half-starving, and are dependent for a
full meal on the bounty of chance visitors. We
poked a loaf through the bars. It was ravenously
snapped at, torn into little bits, and devoured
amid the howls of those who were disappointed.
Then a loaf was cast over the door. What a savage
scramble ! The bread was caught, tossed in the air,
jumped at, and finally the emaciated rivals fell
upon one another as in a football scrimmage, and

ROMANTIC SPAiy. 109

there was a moving huddle of limbs and a diabolical
chorus of shrieks and yells. That could not be
done again ; it was too painful in result Mahomet
undertook to distribute the remainder of our stock
through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away
sick in head and heart from that den of repulsive
degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty, selfishness,
and all infuriate and debased passion — that dam-
nable magazine of disease physical and moral It
is undeniable that there were many there whose
fEUses were passport to the Court of Lucifer — ^mur-
derers, and dire malefactors; but better to have
decapitated them than to have committed them to

the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There
were inmates who had been immured for years —
inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the
fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh
hollow-soimding jangle, and whose brows had fixed
themselves into the puckers of a sullen, hopeless,
apathetic submission to fate. Their lack of intelli-
gence was a blessing. Had they been more sen-
Bitive they would have been goaded into raging
lunacy.

no ROMA NTIG SPA IN.

Let us to the outer freshness and make bold
endeavour to fling off this weight of nightmare
which oppresses us. Passing by the ruinous gate
yonder with its wild-looking sentry, we reach the
open space where crouching hill-men are reposing
on the stunted grass, and ungainly camels, kneeling
in a circle, are chewing the cud in patience,
or venting that uncanny half-whine, half-bellow,
which is their only attempt at conversation. Let
us take a long look at the country beyond with its
gardens teeming with fruit and musical with bird-
voices; walk up to the crown of that slant and
survey the valleys, the plateaux, the brushwood,
the flower-patches, spreading away to the hills
that swell afar until the peaks of the Atlas, cool
with everlasting snow, close the view. One is
tempted to linger there lovingly, though darkness
is falling. There is a gift of blandness and brisk-
ness in the very breathing of the air. When you
have had your fill of the beauties on the land side,
turn to the sea, meet the evening breeze that comes
floating up with a flavour of iodine upon it, range
round the sweeping vista, from giant Calpe away

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 111

over the Strait flecked with sails on to Tra-
falgar, smiling peacefully as if it had never been
a bay of blood, and finish by the vision of the
great globe of fire descending into the Atlantic
billows.

Our stay in Tangier was most gratifying because
of its variety and unending surprises. Existence
there was out of the beaten track, and kept curiosity
on the constant alert It was a treat to pretend
to be Legree, and to negotiate for a strong likely
growing nigger-boy. I discovered I could have
bought one for ten pounds sterling, a perfect
bargain, warranted free from vice or blemish ; but
as I was not prepared to stop in Africa just then,
I did not close with the ofifer. It may be a shock*
ing admission to make, but if I were to settle down
in Morocco, I confess, I should most certainly
keep slaves. There is a deal of sentimental drivel
spouted about the condition of slaves. Those I have
seen seoned very happy. In Morocco they are
well treated ; and if desirous to change masters the
law empowers them to make a demand to that
effect It is true that a slave's oath is not deemed

112 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

valid, but Cuffy bears the slight with praiseworthy
equanimity. I am sure if Cuflfy were in my service he
would never ask to leave it, and I would teach him
to appraise his word as much as any other man's
oath (except his master's), by my patented plan for
negro-training, based on Mr. Rarey's theories. As
the land about Tangier was rated at prairie value —
an acre could be had for a dollar — I might have
been induced to invest in a holding of a couple of
hundred thousands of acres, but that my ship had not
yet come within hail of the port. What a healthy,
free, aristocratic life, combining feudal dignity with
educated zest, a wise man could lead there — if he
had an establishment of, say, three hundred slaves,
a private band, a bevy of dancing girls, Bruzeaud
for chef, an extensive library, sixteen saddle-horses,
and relays of jolly fellows from Gibraltar to help
him chase the wild boar and tame bores, eat
couscoussu, and drink green-tea well sweetened. He
should Moorify himself, but he need not change his
reUgion, and if he went about it rightly, I am sure,
like the village pastor, he could make himself
to all the country dear. Take the educational

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 113

question, for example. If he were diplomatic he
would pay the school-fees of the urchins of Tangier.
These are not extravagant — a few heads of barley
daily, equivalent to the sod of turf formerly carried
by the pupils to the hedge academies in dear
Ireland, and a halfpenny on Friday. He should
affect an interest in the Koran, and make it a point
of applauding the Koran-learned boy when he is
promenaded on horseback and named a bachelor.
He might — ^indeed he should — follow the career of
his proUgd at the Mhersa, where he studies the
principles of arithmetic, the rudiments of history,
the elements of geometry, and the theology of
Sidi-Khalil, until he emerges in a few years a
Thaleb, or lettered man. Perhaps the Thaleb may
go farther, and become an Adoul or notary, a Fekky
or doctor, nay — who knows ? — an Alem or sage.
Ah ! how pleasant that Moorish squire might be by
his own ruddy fire of rushes, palm branches, and
sim-dried leaves ; and what a profit he might make
by judicious speculation in jackal-skins, oil, pottery,
carpets, and leather stained with the pomegranate
bark 1 He would have his mills turned by water

VOL. XL 28

114 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

or by horses ; he would eat his bread vitjji its
liberal admixture of bran ; he would rear his storks
and rams. The professors who charm snakes and
munch Uve-coals would all be hangers-on of his
house ; and he would have periodical concerts by
those five musicians who played such desert lullabies
for us — conspicuously one patriarch whose double-
bass was made from an orange-tree — and would
not forget to supplement their honorarium of five
dollars with jorums of white wine. Sly special
pleaders ! They argue with the German play-
wright : " Mahomet verbot den Wein, dock vom
Champagner sprach er nicht"

From the Frenchman at the hotel, whose know-
ledge of Morocco was " extensive and peculiar," I
acquired much of my information on the manners
and customs of the people. Watches are only worn
and looked at for amusement. Instead of by hours,
time is thus noted : El Adhen, an hour before sun-
rise ; Fetour (repast) el Hassoua, or simrise ; Dah
el Aly, ten in the morning ; El Only, a quarter past
twelve ; El Dhoor, half-past one ; El Asser, from a
quarter past three to a quarter to four ; El Moghreb,

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 115

sunset ; El Achsi, half-an-hour after sunset ; and El
Hameir, gun-shot. Meals are taken at Dah el Aly,
El Asser, and El Moghreb. The houses are built
with elevated lateral chambers, but there is a
narrow staircase leading to the Doeria, a receptionr
room, where visitors can be welcomed without
passing the ground-floor. The walls are plastered,
and covered with arabesques or verses of the Koran
incrusted in colours. The wells inside the houses
are only used for cleansing linen ; water for drinking
purposes is sought outside.

Among many singular customs — singular to us —
I noted that a popular remedy for iUness is to play
music and to recite prayers to scare away the devil.
An enlightened Moor might think the practices of
the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question
the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-
halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are
hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I
submit, is no more imreasonable than many English
funeral usages, such as incurring debt for the pomp
of mourning. At Moorish weddmgs the bride is
carried in procession in a palanquin to her husband's

28—2

116 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

house amid a fantasia of gunpowder — the reckless
rejoicing discharges of ancient muskets in the
streets. Well, white favours, gala coaches, and fenx
de joie at marriages of the great are not entirely
unknown among us. Nobody sees the Moorish
wife for a year, not even her mother-m-law, which
I consider a not wholly unkind dispensation. The
Moorish wife paints her toe-nails, which, after all,

is a harmless vanity, and less obtrusive than that of
the ladies who impart artificial redness to their
lips. And, lastly, the Moorish wife waits on her
husband. Personally, I fail to discover anything
blamable in that act, though I must concede that
it is eccentric, very eccentric. These allusions to
the Moorish wife in general lead up naturally to
one in particular in whom I took a professional
interest, for she was as remarkable in her way as
Lady Ellenborough or Lady Hester Stanhope, or
that strong-minded Irishwoman who married the
Moslem, Prince Izid Aly, and whose son reigned
after his father's death.

The Shereef has been mentioned. He is the
great man of the district, with an authority only

MOMANTIG SPAIF. 117

second to that of the Sultan himself. Claiming to
be a lineal descendant of Mahomet, he is entitled to
wear the green turban. His name at full length is
long, but not so long as that of most Spanish
Infantes — Abd-es-Selam ben Hach el Arbi. He is a
saint and a miracle-worker. He has been seen
simultaneously at Morocco, Wazan, and Tangier,
according to the belief of his co-religionists, wherein
he beats the record of Sir Boyle Koche's bird, which
was only in two places at once. Like Jacob, he has
wrestled with angels. He is head of the Muley-
Taib society, a powerful secret organization, which
has its ramifications throughout the Islamitic world.
He draws fees from the mosques, and has gifts
bestowed upon him in profusion by his admh-ers,
who feel honoured when he accepts them. Exalted
and wide - spreading is his repute where the
Moslem holds sway, and unassailable is his ortho-
doxy, yet he has had the temerity to take to
himself a Christian wife. This lady had been a
governess in an American family at Tangier. There
the Shereef made her acquaintance, wooed and won
her. They were married at the residence of the

118 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

British Minister Plenipotentiary; the oflScers of a
British man-of-war were present at the ceremony,
and slippers and a shower of rice, as at home,
foUowed the bride on leaving the buUding. The
Shereef and, if possible, the Shereefa were personages
to be seen, and Mahomet Lamarty was the very
man to help us to the favour. His Highness lived
four miles away, and we formed a cavalcade one
afternoon and set off for his garden, the ladies
accompanying us. We passed through cultivated
fields of barley and dra (a kind of millet), crossed
the river Wadliahoodi, and ascended a road which
faced abruptly towards the hills. An agreeable
road it was, and not lonesome ; we had the carol of
birds and the piping of buU-frogs to lighteji the
way, and leafy branches made reverence overhead.
There were abundance of fruit and such beautiftd
shrubs that I rail at myself for not being botanist
enough to be able to enlarge upon them. There
were orange-groves, yellow broom, dog-rose, and
apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, pomegranates,
figs, and vines. It was such an oasis as a very
young Etonian in the warmth of a midsummer vaca-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 119

tion might have likened to Heaven. The range of
hills of El Jebel rose left and right, and at parts
presented a steep cliff to the ocean. This ridge is
about twelve miles in width, and its ifertile slopes
amply merit to be lauded as the best fruit-
producers in the empire, " as bounteous as Paradise
itself."

Mahomet Lamarty, who was our guide, entered
the Shereef s grounds to prepare for our introduc-
tion; and now the ladies, who had insisted on
coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they
would not salute the Shereefa as " Your Highness."
They were impatient to see her, but they declined
to give countenance to a Christian who had de-
meaned herself by wedding a heathen.

" The visit was of your own seeking, ladies," I
said ; " if you are not willing to treat Her Highness
with deference, better stay outside."

They were not equal to that sacrifice after riding
four miles.

" Who'll start the conversation ?" said Captain
No. 1. '^You start it" (to me) " like a good fellow,
and I'll take up the running."

120 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Captain No. 2 said he would hang about for us
outside.

Mahomet beckoned to us and we ventured into
the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an
austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height.
He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of
Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous,
l>^ggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish
slippers. It was the Shereef I had agreed to
open the interview, but when it came to the trial
my Arabic (I had been only studying it for two
hours) abandoned me. Mahomet did the needful.
I thanked His Highness for his kindness in admit-
ting us to his demesne, and he smiled a modest,
solemn smUe, and looked greeting from his smaU
eyes. When he discovered that I had been
travelling in Spain, he asked me — always through
Mahomet — what they were doing there. On having
my reply — that they were tasting the miseries of
civil war — translated to him, he shook his head,
shrugged his shoulders, and slowly ejaculated :

" Unhappy Spain ! Silly, unfortunate people !
That is the way with them always. They are at
perpetual strife one with another."

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 121

And then Mahomet interposed with a parenthesis
of his own depreciatory of the Spaniards, whom he
loathed and despised. He had fought against them
in the war of 1859-60, and the Shereef had also
headed his coimtrymen, and had shown great
courage and coohiess in action. His presence had

infused a high spirit of enthusiasm into the un-
disciplined troops.

"Bismillah!" grunted Mahomet "The Spaniard
is beneath contempt. He was almost licked in one
battla He was four months here, and how far did
he get into the interior ?"

Mahomet conveniently forgot the defeat of Guad-
el-ras, the occupation of Tetuan, and the indemnity
of four himdred millions of reals which was exacted
as the price of peace ; but he was literally correct,
the victorious O'Donnell did not flaunt his flag
beyond a very exiguous strip of the territory of
Sidi-Muley-Mahomet

We were walking as we talked, and by this time
had reached the brow of a wooded rise which com-
manded an uninterrupted prospect of the ocean.
The flowery cistus flourished on the eminence, and

122 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

cork-trees, chestnuts, and willows shielded us from
the fierceness of the sun. Behind and aroimd were
a succession of richly-planted gardens. We halted,
and the Shereef, scanning the horizon in the direc-
tion of the Kock, suddenly put a question to me
which almost took my breath away :

" Do they buy commissions over the way still ?"
" No ; that system has been abolished."
" It is well," he remarked, with a scarcely
suppressed sneer. " It was incredible that a great
nation and a fighting nation should make a traflSc
of the command of men, as if a clump of spears
were a kintal of maize," and as he relapsed into
silence a soldierly fire gleamed in his irides, his
frame seemed to straighten and swell, and the
nature of the prophet retired before that of the
warrior.

From where we stood we could ferret out a house
with a veranda in front, built on a terrace and
begirt with trees. That was the residence of His
Highness ; but we turned our eyes in another
direction, lest we should be suspected of rude
curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 123

to divine the tally of years out host had num-
bered. Xo Arab knows his own age, and here it
may be oseful to tell the reader wherein th6
distinction lies b^ween the Moor and the Arab.
Virtually they are the same ; but the name of Moor
is given to those who dwell in cities, of Arab to
those who roam the plains. Mahomet came to my
aid. His Highness had whiskers when Tanker
was bombarded by Prince de Joinville. That was
in August^ 1844, a good nine-^md-twenty years
before, so that Abd-es-Salem must have long
doubled the cape of forty, which would leave him
considerably the senior of his Prankish wife«

We turned at a noise — the creak of a rustic
wooden gate on its hinges; a figure approached.
And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her
EQghness the Sbereefa of Wazan. She was not
called Zukaka^ but Enuly — ^her maiden name had
been Keene, and she came not from the rose-
bordered bowers of Bendemeei^s stream, nightingale-
haunted^ but from the prosaic levels of South
L^MidcOy where her father was governor of a gaoL
Traly ifbe was a vision of gratefulness in that

124 BOMANTIC SPAIN.

paynim tract — a rich brunette, with large black
eyes, long black ringletted tresses, and a well-filled
shape with goodly bust. Her attire was neat and
graceful and not Oriental. She was clad in a
riding-habit of ruby brocaded velvet, with jacket to
match, had a cloud of lace round her throat, and
an Alpine hat with cock's feather poised on her
well-set head. She might serve as the model for a
Spanish Ann Chute. Bracelets on her plump wrists
and rings on her taper fingers caught the sunshine
as she occasionally twirled her cutting- whip. Her
voice was bell-like and melodious, with the faintest
accent of decision, and her manner, after an opening
flush of embarrassment, was cordial and debonair.
The embarrassment was because of her mabihty to
extend to us the hospitality she desired. She ex-
plained that she had to receive us in the garden as
the house was undergoing repairs. After the cus-
tomary commonplaces, she freely entered into con-
versation, and took opportunity at once to deny
that she was a renegade ; she wore European cos-
tume, as we saw, and attended the rites of the
EngUsh Church, for it was one of the stipulations

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 125

%

m

of the marriage contract that she should have
perfect liberty to foUow her own faith.

"I wish every English girl were as happily
married as I," she said, "and had as loving a
husband,"

It was gratifying, therefore, to note that she found
herself as women wish to be who love their lords.
She had been married on the 27th of January, and
as the Shereef had entered into his present resi-
dence but recently, they were still at sixes and
sevens. It was his habit to spend the winter in
the country and the summer in town. She had
been but two years in Morocco, and had not yet
mastered Arabic.

" His Highness understands English ?"
She shook her head, and quickly interpreting a
lifting of my eyelids, she smilingly added,
" Spanish was the medium of our courtship."
And then, as we promenaded the garden path,
she became communicative, and dwelt with par-
donable expansion on the virtues of her lord and
master, who followed behind side by side with the
portly Yorkshireman. His charity, she said, was

126 liOMANTIG SPAIN.

unbounded. Slaves were frequently sent to him as
presents, but he kept none. He was modest on his
own merits, and yet he was the most enlightened
of Moors. He had visited Marseilles, a war-ship
having been put at his disposal by the Frencli
Government, and was most anxious to take a tour
to Paris and Vienna, and above all to England. It
was his desire that railways should be constructed
in Morocco, and he was glad when he was told that
there was some UkeUhood of a telegraph cable being
laid to Tangier.

''Then," interrupted T, "with your Highness's
influence on the tribes around, exercised through
your husband, there should be a fair prospect of
pushing civilization here."

" Ah, yes 1" she exclaimed, with a glow on her
cheeks, " that is one of my dearest hopes, that is
my great ambition. I believe that my marriage,
which has been cruelly commented upon in
England, may effect good both for these poor mis-
understood Moors and my own country people."

"Is the Shereef on friendly terms with the
Sultan ?"

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 127

- rv •

" No, I am Sony to say there is a feud between
them at the moment. The Sultan objects to my
husband for using an English saddle."

"Hum!" (to myself mentally) "if the august
Muley cannot brook an English saddle, what must
he think of an English wife ? Or do these Moslems,
like some Christians I know, strain at a gnat and
swaUow a camel ? Mayhap it is even so. The
pigeon-prompted camel-driver, who built up his
creed with plentiful blood-cement, saw fit to add a
new chapter to the Koran, when he fell in love
with the Coptic maiden, Mary."

The Shereefa told me that her father and mother
had come out to see her. They were averse to the
alliance at 'first, but were satisfied that she had
done the right thing when she told them how
content she was, and with what high-bred con-
sideration for her wishes in the matter of religion
her husband had behaved. Their intention was to
stop for four days, but they extended their visit to
fourteen. " And now," she continued, " I can use
to my lord the words of Ruth to Naomi, * Whither
thou goest I will go ; and where thou lodgest I will

128 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

lodge ; thy people shall be my people ' " — a pause —
" yes, and ' thy God my God/ for there is but one "
— archly — " the matter of the Prophet we shall
leave aside."

I admired the lady's pluck, and if I were that
Moorish squire I have tried to sketch, I should
esteem it an honour to have her on my visiting list.
But I am a theological oddity, and my wallet of
prejudices, it is to be feared, is sadly unfurnished.
I never could rise to that sublimated self-sufficiency
of intellect that I could consign any fellow-creature
to everlasting pains for the audacity of differing
in dogma with myself. I have met good and bad
of every creed, Mahometans I could respect — ^whose
word was their bond — and so-called Christians and
Christian ministers with a most uncharitable
spiritual pride, whom I could not respect. The
liver of the persecutor was denied me. Were the
fires of Smithfield to be rekindled, my prayers
would be sent up for the floods of Heaven to
quench them, and for the lightnings of Heaven to
annihilate the fiends who had piled the faggots.

" By-the-bye," said the Shereefa, " do you know

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 129

any of those people who write for the papers in
London ?"

I admitted that I had that misfortune.

" Some of them are fools as well as cowards," she
went on. "They have written articles about me
full of ignorance and malice. Have they no con-
sideration for the feelings of others ?"

" I am afraid, your Highness, some of them are
more brilliant than conscientious ; they would
rather point an epigram than sacrifice style to truth
or good-nature."

" One of them in particular,'' she said, and there
was an irritated ring in her voice, " has singled me
out for attack, and given me in derision a name
which he behoves to be Mahometan, but which is
really Jewish."

And with her cutting- whip she viciously snapped
off the heads of some poppies. The episode of
Tarquin's answer to the emissary of Sextus occurred
to me, and I felt that if my colleague, Horace St.

J , were there, he would have passed a very bad

quarter of an hour.

The females of our party joined us, and I formally

VOL. II. 29

130 ROMAI^TIG SPAIN.

presented them, taking a malicious pleasure in
emphasizing the "your Highness." The Shereefa
received them right graciously, but it was easy to
notice that a chill came over the conversation.
They were careful never to use the title to their
English sister. In fact, it was a tacit ladies'
battle.

It was time to leave, and the Shereefa presented
her visitors with two nosegays, gathered by her
own hands. The act had in it something very
royal, with the smallest trace of sly condescension.
The Shereef accompanied us to the outer gate. On
the way I motioned to Captain No. 1 to offer him
a cigar. He did ; his Highness accepted it^ bowed,
and gravely put it in his pocket. As we stood on
the road at parting, a peasant was passing with a
load of twigs on his shoulders. He cast them off,
threw himself on his knees, kissed the hem of the
holy man's garments, and the back of his proffered
hand.

We were descending the hill when a rustle in the
bushes attracted me, and a white face peeped out
and a voice besought me in English to stop. It

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 131

was the Shereefa's London lady's-maii She could
not resist the temptation of enjoying a few sen-
tences with one of her own race. From her I
learned that there were twenty-seven Moorish
women in her master's household ; that there was
' a tank at Wazan large enough to float a ship ; that
her master had been married before, and had two
sons and a lovely Mahometan child, a daughter, to
whom the Shereefa was teaching English and the
piano ; " but remember, please," and here she grew
important, asad had all the dignity of a retainer,
with a great sense of what was due to her caste and
the proprieties, " that my mistress's children, if she
have any, will be Europeans !"

As we got back to our hotel the muezzins were
summoning the faithful to their vesper orisons, and
Albert was moaning ruefully under the sideboard,
Mrs. Captain had out her sweetly pretty pet at once,
and covered him with caresses and endearments.

"Somebody has given him something that has
disagreed with him. Was it you ?" she said to me,
and there was that in her tone which made me
quake in my shoes.

29—2

132 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Meekly and truthfully I protested that I had
not ; I had fed him in the morning in her own pre-
sence ; the darling was in his usual health and
spirits when we left, but— mtercede for me, Puck,
and you aerial imps of mischief, for no other
spirit will — ^I could not help murmuring in audible
soliloquy, " The carcase of that mongoose, which
was on the square outside this morning, is no
longer there/*

The scene that followed, to borrow the hackneyed
phrase, beggars description. The house was turned
upside down ; to my mental vision arose sal vola-
tile and burnt feathers, swoons and hysterics.
Mahomet's dove alone can teU how aU might have
ended had not the Frenchman suggested a bolus.
Captain No. 1 and I were commissioned to inquire
into the mystery of the disappearance of that
baleful mongoose. When we got out of earshot of
the hotel there was the popping of a cork, and we
emptied effervescing beakers to the speedy re-
covery of Albert the Beloved. Certes, that bull-
dog had a very bad fit of dyspepsia ; but the bolus
did him a world of good, and before we retired to

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 133

rest we had the felicity to hear him crunching a
bone. Peace spread its wings over our pillows.

The next day we took a trip to the lighthouse
on Cape Spartel, the women labouring in the field
making curious inspection of the cavalcade as it
wended by, but quickly turning away their faces as
we males tried to snatch a look at them. The road
was no better than a rugged track on a stony
plateau. There was a spacious view from the Phare,
which was an iron and stone building put up at
the cost of three or four of the European Powers (1
forget which now), the keepers being chosen from
each of the contributory nations. The Sultan had
given the site, but refused to hand over a blankeel
towards the expenses, arguing that as he had no
fleet, he had no personal object in making pro-
vision against wrecks. We were well mounted, but
these Barbary cattle have a nasty trick of lashing
out, so that it is prudent to give a wide range to
their hind-hoofs. Mahomet, riding with very short
stirrups, led the party. My saddle was an ancient,
rude, and rotten contrivance, and as I loitered on
rtie road home, giving myself up to idle fantasy,

134 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

my friends got on far ahead. Waking from my
day-dream I gave the nag the heel, and as it sprang
forward at a canter the girth turned completely
roimd, and I was pitched over in unpleasant near-
ness to a hedge of cactus. The ground was soft^
and I was not much bruised; but when I rose the
nag had disappeared roimd a comer, and I was left
alone in the African twilight. Presently a sinewy
fiery-eyed Moor came with panther-step in sights
leading me back the nag. He had a basket
of oranges on his back, and gave me one with a
respectful salaam as I vaulted on my Arab steed
and galloped Tangier-ward bareback.

Judgmg from the scanty rags upon him, this
man was of the poorest, yet he asked for nothing ;
there were sympathy, innate politeness and inde-
pendence withal in his bearing. To hun I aban-
doned the saddle ; it was the least he might have
for his friendly act. Talking over this incident
with the Frenchman at Bruzeaud's, who knew the
country, he told me that the Moor was intelligent,
honest, faithful to his engagements, and had a go
in him that, imder advantageous circumstances,

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 135

would enable him to spring again to his fonner
height of power and riches. But he struck me
as happy, although some of his social customs
recalled the feudal age, and he lived imder
the always-present contingency of decapitation.
May it be long before speculation rears the horrid
front of a joint-stock hotel in Tangier, or the pros-
pectors go divining for copper, coal, iron, silver and
gold. I could wish the Moorish women, however,
would wash their children's heads occasionally, and
not take them up by the ankles when they spank
them. After a sojourn in every way pleasurable —
pshaw ! Albert's illness was a trifle, and we soon
resigned ourselves to the miseries of the prisoners
on the hill — ^we ate our last morsel of the Jewish
pasch-bread of flour and juice of orange, cracked
our last bottle of champagne, and took our leave of
the Dark Continent with lightsome heart. The
impression this little by-journey left upon me was
so agreeable that I could not avoid the enticement
to communicate it to the reader. If I have wan-
dered from romantic Spain, it was only to take him
to a land more romantic still.

CHAPTER VIL

Back to Gibraltar — The Parting with Albert — The Tongue
of Scandal— Voyage to Malaga — " No Police, no Any-
thing''— Federalism Triumphant — Madrid in JStatu
Quo — Orense — Progress of the Royalists— On tlie Road
Home — In the Insurgent Country— Stopped by the
Carlists— An Angry Passenger is Silenced.

" How like a boulder tossed by Titans at play !'*
said the sentimental lady, as we approached
Gibraltar on our return.

"More like a big-sized molar tooth," broke in
Mrs. Captain.

And, indeed, this latter simile, if less poetic, gave
abetter idea of the conformation of the fortified hill,
with the gum-coloured outline of all that was left of a
Moorish wall skirting its side. The tooth is hollow,
but the hollow is plugged with the best Woolwich
stuffing, and potentially it can bite and grind and
macerate, for all the peaceful gardens and frescades

MOM ANTIC SPAIN. 137

of the Alameda that circle its base like a belt of
faded embroidery. At Gibraltar our party separated,
the Yorkshire Captain and his Mends taking the
P. and O. boat to Southampton, my countryman
going back to Tangier after having made some pur-
chases, and I electing to voyage to Malaga by one
of Hall's packets, which was lying at the mercantile
Mole discharging the two hundred tons of Govern-
ment material which it is obliged to carry by
contract on each fortnightly voyage. When Albert
and I parted no tears were shed ; we resigned our-
selves to the decree of destiny with equanimity.
But I humbly submit that Mrs. Captain, when
thanking me for my good intentions towards him,
might have spared me the ironical advice not to
volunteer for duties in future which I was not
qualified to fulfil. "Volunteer," ye gods! when
she had absolutely entreated me to take liim in
charge.

Before leaving the Club-House, I was prcHScd U)
relate our adventures in Africa. I had no pig-
sticking exploits to make boast over; but I
tinned the deaf side of my bead U) certain

138 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

whispers about holy men who imported wine in
casks labelled "Petroleum," who affected to be
delivering the incoherent messages of inspiration
when they were merely trying to pronounce " The
scenery is truly rural " in choice Arabic, and who*
accounted for the black eye contracted by collision
with the kerb by a highly-coloured narrative
of an engagement in mid-air with an emissary of
Sheitan. Neither did I accord any pleased atten-
tion to anecdotes of a " lella," or Arab lady, who
tempted the Scorpions to charge ten times
its value for everything she bought by telling
them to send them to a personage whose title
was exalted. Gib is a very small place, and, like
most diminutive communities, is a veritable school
for scandal. I took my last walk over the Rock,
past the "Esmeralda Confectionery,'* which still
had up the notice that hot-cross buns were to be
had from seven to ten a.m. on Good Friday, and
paced to the light-house on the nose of the pro-
montory, where the meteor flag, ringed by a brace-
let of cannon, flies in the breeze. And then I
meandered back, and began to ask myself, had

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 139

Marryat aught to do with the sponsorship of this

outpost of the British Empire ? Shingle Point,

#

Blackstrap Bay, the Devil's Tower, O'Hara's
Folly, Bayside Barrier, and Jumper's Bastion —
the names were aU redolent of the Portsmouth
Hard ; and I almost anticipated a familiar hail at
every moment from the open door of " The Nut,"
and an inquiry as to what cheer from the fog-
Babylon.

The trip to Malaga on one of the Hall steamers
which trade regularly between London and that
port, calling at Cadiz and Gibraltar, was very agree-
able, and the change to such dietary as liver and
bacon was a treat. We were but three passengers —
a steeple-chasing sub of the 71st, Senor Heredia,
of Malaga, and myself. And now I have to make
an open confession. I am unable to decipher the
log of that passage. I have a distinct recollection
of the liver and bacon, but more important events
have worn away from my mind. There are the
traces of pencil-marks before me ; I dare say they
were full of meaning when I scrawled them down,
but now I have lost the key. " Jolly captain — left

140 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

his wife — forty years — electric light deceives on a
low beach — ^fourteen children — El Cano — ^break in
the head of wine-casks": there is a literal copy
of the contents of a page, which may mean nothing
ox anything, frivoHty or a thesaurus of serious
information. Memory, what a treacherous jade
thou art! It may be said, why did I not take
copious notes in short-hand ? I would have done
so were I a stenographer ; but I am not. I tried
to acquire the accomplishment once, and ignobly
failed. I could write short-hand slightly quicker
than long-hand, but when written, I could not
transcribe my jottings.

Flanking a beautiful coast, mostly hill-fringed
— with hills, too, of such metallic richness that lead
and iron were positively to be quarried out of their
bosoms — we steamed into the harbour of Malaga,
and landed at the Custom-House quay. But there
were no Customs' officers to trouble us with inquiry.
A red-bearded, flat-capped, dirty fellow in bare feet,
holding a bayoneted rifle with a jaunty clumsiness,
accosted Sefior Heredia with a laughing voice.
He was a sentinel of the provisional government

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 141

»

established in Malaga. The nature of that govern-
ment may be judged from his frank avowal : " WeVe
no police — no anything." There were French and
German war-vessels at anchor, which was some
guarantee of protection for strangers. A novel
tricolour of red, white, and a washed-out purple
had replaced the national flag. The Federal Ke-
public existed there, and yet the city was quiet;
and official bulletins were extant, recommending the
citizens to preserve order. But this quietude was not
to be relied on over-much. One of the magnificoes
under the new r4gi7ne was a dancing-house keeper,
and his principal claim to administrative abiHty
lay in the ownership of a Phrygian cap. Another,
who styled himself President of the Kepublic
of Alhaurin de la Torre, a territory more limited
than the kingdom of Kippen, had stabbed a lady at
a masked ball a few months previously, for a con-
sideration of sixty-five duros. Still, it would be
unfair to infer from that example that every Mala-
gueno was a mercenary ruffian. Senor Heredia
related to me an anecdote of a poor man who had
found a purse with value in it to the amoimt of

142 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

thirty thousand reals, and had given it up without
mention of recompense. But a city where the
wine-shops had nine doors, and potato-gin was
dispensed at a peseta the bottle, and there were " no
police — no anything," was not a desirable residence ;
and, as I had no call there, and weeks might
elapse before another revolution might be spnmg, I
gladly took train to the capital.

Madrid was tranquil, but with no more con-
fidence in the duration of tranquillity than when I
left it. The army was still in a state akin to
disruption, with this difference — the rascals who
had rifled the pockets of the dead Ibarreta a few
weeks before, would sell the bodies of their slain
officers now, if there was any resurrectionist near to
make a bid. Worse; I was given to understand
that there were suspicions that the gallant stafi-
colonel had been shot by his own men. The
dismissed gunners were still wearily beating the
pavements, and a subscription organized on their
behalf among the officers of the other branches
of the service by the Gorrecr Militar was open.
What were these gentlemen to do ? There was a

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 143

rumour that they had been invited to enter the
French service, to which they would have been an
undoubted acquisition, bringing with them skill,
scientific knowledge, and experience. But they
were Spaniards, not soldiers of fortune, and would
decline to transfer their allegiance, even if France
were disposed to bid for it. Still, what were they to
do ? In Spain as in Austria — ,

'* Le militaire n'est pas riche,
Chacun sait 9a."

But the militaire must live. Othello's occupation
being gone, the artillery officers had no alternative
but to do what Othello would have done had he
been a Spaniard — conspire.

The usual manoeuvring and manipulations were
going on as preparation for the election of the Con-
stituent Cortes, and the extreme Republicans were
full of faith in their approaching triumph all along
the line. They were awaiting Senor Orense, but if
he did not hasten it was thought events so im-
portant would eclipse his arrival that, when he
did come, the Madrilenos would pay as small heed
to him as the Parisians did to Hugo when he sur-

144 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

veyed the boulevards anew after years of exile.
They would honour him with a procession, and no
more. The venerable Republican, by the way, is a
nobleman, Marquis of Albaida. But he is not equal
to the democratic pride of Mirabeau, marquis, who
took a shop and painted on the signboard, " Mira-
beau, raarchand de draps"
" If you are a true Republican, why don't yoii

renounce your title?" somebody asked once of
Orense.

" If it were only myself was concerned I would
willingly," responded the Spaniard ; ** but I have a
son!" Rousseau was a freethinker, but Rousseau
had his daughters baptized all the same.

Meanwhile the Carlists were making headway.
The Vascongadas, Navarre, and Logrono, with the
exception of the larger towns and isolated fortified
posts, were now in their power. Antonio Dorre-
garay, who was in supreme command, was re-
ported to have 3,200 men regularly organized, well
clad, and equipped with Remingtons. The Reming-
ton had been selected so that the Royalists might
be able to use the ammunition they reckoned upon

ROMANTIG iSFAlN. 145

helping themselves with from the pouches of the
Nationalists. In addition to this force of 3,200,
which might be regarded as the regular army of
Oarlism, there were formidable guerrilla bands
scattered over the provinces. Our old acquaint-
ance, Santa Cruz, had 900 followers in Guip6zcoa.
The other cabecillas in that region were Fran-
cisco, Macazaga, Garmendia, Iturbe, and Cule-
trina, all men with local popularity and intimate
knowledge of the mountains. In Biscay, the com-
mander was Valesco, and his heutenants were
Belaustegui, del Campo, and the Marquis de Val-
despina, son of the chieftain who raised the
standard of revolution at Vitoria in 1833. Their
factions were estimated at 2,500. After Dorregaray,
the most dangerous opponent to the Government
troops was Olio, an old ex-army officer, who was
licking the volunteers into shape ; and after Santa
Cruz, the most noted and dreaded chief of irre-
gulars was Rada, who was also opierating in " the
kingdom," as their "province is proudly called by
the daring Navarrese. The elements in which the
Boyalists were wanting were cavalry and artillery ;
VOL. n. 30

146 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

but they had some money, foreign friends were
active, the French frontier was not too strictly
watched nor the Cantabrian coast inaccessible, and
Don Carlos — Pretender or King, as the reader
chooses to call him — was biding his time in a villa
not a hundred miles from Bayonne. When the
hour was considered favourable, he was ready to
cross the border and take the field, or rather the
hills ; and his presence, it was calculated, would be
worth a corps dHarmAe in the fillip it would give to
the enthusiasm of his adherents.

And yet the " only court " held its tertulias, and
the dofias talked millinery, and bald poUticians
sighed for a snug post in the Philippines, and the
gambling-tables and the bull-ring retained their
spell upon the community. It was the old story :
Kome was on the verge of ruin, and the senate of
Tiberius discussed a new sauce for turbot.

As I saw no immediate prospect of the outburst
of those important events, which were cloud-
gathering over Madrid, and nearly all my colleagues
had departed, I resolved to pursue my journey to
London. I had carle blanche to return when I

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 147

deemed there was no further scope for my pen;
but there was an obstacle in the way. Miranda
was the terminus of the rail to the north; the
track thence to the Bidassoa had been closed by
order of the lieutenants of his Majesty in nubibus,
King Charles VII. In other words, 179 kilometres
of the main iron line, the great artery of com-
munication with France, were held by the insur-
gents. Obstacles are made to be met, and, if
steadily met, to be overcome. Surely, I reasoned,
there must be some intercourse carried on in these
districts. I passed through territory occupied by
Carlists before. Why not again ? Besides, I had
nothing to fear from the Carlists, the tramp carols
in the presence of the footpad (which, I submit,
is a neat paraphrase of a classic saw) ; and if I did
chance to meet them, . there would be that dear
touch of romance for which the lady-reader has
been looking out so long in vain.

I started. The journey to Miranda I pass by.
One is not qualified to write an essay on a country
from inspection through the windows of a railway-
carriage in motion, more particularly at night.

30—2

148 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

■* — —— — .

As well attempt to describe a veiled panorama,
imroUing itself at a hand-gallop. At Miranda,
which was crowded with soldiers, there was a
diligence that plied to San Sebastian by tacit
arrangement with the knights of the road — that is,
the adherents of Don Carlos. As the fares were
very expensive, I suspect the speculator who ran
the coach was heavily taxed for the privilege, and
recouped himself by shifting the imposition to the
shoulders of passengers. The day was fine, the
roads were good, the vehicle was well-horsed, and
we got away from the boundary of republican
civilization at a rattling pace. My fellow- voyagers
were mostly French, some of them of the gentle
sex, and chattered like pies imtil they fell asleep.
I believe it is admitted by those who know me best
that I can do my own share of sleep. On the
slightest provocation — ^yea, on what might be con-
demned as no reasonable provocation — I can drop
my head upon my breast and go off into oblivion.
Nor am I particular where I sit or if I sit at all.
Any ordinary person can fall asleep on a sofa or at
a sermon, but it requires a practitioner with an

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 149

inborn faculty for the art to achieve the triumphs of
somnolence which stand to my credit. I have
taken a nap on horseback; I have marched for
miles, a musket on my shoulder, in complete
slumberous unconsciousness ; I have nodded while
Phelps was acting, snoozed while Mario was singing,
^.nd played the marmot while Eemenyi was fiddling ;
awfiil confession, I have dozed through an im-
portant debate in the House of Commons ! I am
yawning at present. It is to be hoped the reader
is not. And so I burned daylight the while we
drove through a country reputed to be pregnant
with surprises of scenery until, at long last, the
diligence drew up in the straggling street of
"tolosa. We halted here for dinner, and resumed
our journey with a fresh team at an enlivening
speed, until about two miles outside the town we
came to an abrupt stop.

" An accident, driver ?"

" No, seiior, but the Carlists."

Some of my fellbw-passengers turned pale, the
ladies did not know whether to scream or consult
their smelling-bottles ; and before they could decide.

150 ROMANTIC SPAIN

a tall, slight, gentlemanly-looking man of some four-
and-twenty years, with a sword by his side, a
revolver in his belt, an opera-glass slimg across his
shoulder, and a silver tassel depending from a
scarlet boina, the cap of the country, appeared at
the hinder door of the diligence, bowed, and asked
for our papers. He glanced at them much as a
railway-guard would at a set of tickets, inquired if
we were carrying any arms or contraband de-
spatches, and being answered in the negative, gave
us a polite " Go you with God," and motioned to the
driver that he might pass on. As we galloped oft*,
all eyes were turned in the direction of the
stranger ; he leisurely walked over a field towards a
hill, two peasants equipped with rifles and side-arms

«

following at his heels. They were young and
strong, and wore no nearer approach to uniform
than their oflScer.

" This is abominable," cried a French commercial
traveller (so I took him to be), as soon as we had
got out of hearing of the trio. "The notion of
these three miscreants stopping a whole coachful
of travellers in broad daylight is atrocious !"

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 151

" They did not detain us long," said I.

" They did us no harm," said another.

"And that oflScer, I am sure, was very polite,
and looked quite a D'Artagnan — so chivalrous and
handsome," added one of the ladies.

" They are no better than bandits," said the
conmiercial traveller. "Driver, why did you not
resist ?"

For reply, the driver pointed with his whip to a
wall, under the lee of which a party of at least lifty
armed men, portion of the main body from which
the outpost of three had been' detached, were
smoking, chatting, or sleeping. The commercial
traveller relapsed into silence. We met with no
further adventure in our ride to the frontier, but
experienced much fatigue.

CHAPTER VIII.

On the Wing— Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters —
Another Petit Paris— C&rli&ts from Cork— How Leader
was Wounded— Beating-up for an Anglo-Irish Legion
— Pontifical Zouaves — A Bad Lot — Oddities of
Carlism — Santa Cruz Again — Running a Cargo — On
Board a Carlist Privateer — A Descendant of Kings —
" Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four Pounder !" —
Crossing the Border— A Bemarkable Guide — Mountain
Scenery — In Navarre — Challenged at Vera — Our Billet
with the Parish Priest— The Sad Story of an Irish
Volunteer — Dialogue with Don Carlos — The Happy
Valley — Bugle-Blasts — The Writer in a Quandary —
The Fifth Battalion of Navarre — The Distribution
of Arms — The Bleeding Heart — Enthusiasm of the
Chicos.

After a short stay in London I was despatched
to Stockholm, to attend the coronation of Oscar 11.
of Sweden and his spouse, which took place in the
Storkyrkan, on the 12th of May. At the Hotel
Rydberg I met my Madrid acquaintance, Mr.
Russell Young, who was a bird of passage like

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 153

myself, and had just arrived from Viemia, where
he had been detailing the ceremonial at the
opening of the International Exhibition in the
Prater. While enjoying myself at a ball at the
Norwegian Minister's, I received a telegraphic
message, ordering me at once to the Austrian
capital. I was very sorry to leave, for I was
delighted with peaceful airy Stockholm and the
free-hearted Swedes — it was such a change after
Spain; but I had neither license nor leisure to
grumble, and flitted to Vienna as fast as steam
could carry me. The Weltausstellung did not
prove to be a lodestone, although in justice it
must be admitted it was one of the finest shows
ever planned, and was fixed in one of the most
agreeable of sites. It was too far away, however,
to attract the British public, and there were
rumours of cholera lurking in the Kaiserstadt ; so
I was recalled, but to be sent to Spain once more.
My mission was to penetrate, if possible, to the
headquarters of the Carlists, with the view of
giving a fair and full report of the strength, pecu-
liarities, and prospects of their movement.

154 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

At the London office of the sympathizers with the
cause I was furnished with the address of certain
Carlists in confidential positions in France, and
letters were sent on in advance, so as to secure me
a favourable reception. Armed with a sheet of
flimsy stamped in blue with the escutcheon of
Charles VII., and the legend "Secretaria Militar
de L6ndres," and with, what was more potent, a
big credit on a banking-house, I started afresh
on the now familiar route.

Before undertaking the journey into the territory
in revolt I halted at Bayonne to procure the
necessary passes. These were obtained with ease
from the Junta sitting in the Rue des Ecoles, the
members of which professed that they desired
nothing so much as the presence of the representa-
tives of impartial foreign journals, so that the
truth about the struggle should be made known
to the rest of Europe. From Bayonne I proceeded
to Biarritz, where I had a conference with the Duke
de La Union de Cuba, a warm Carlist partisan,
to whom I had an introduction, and thence I went
to St. Jean de Luz, a drowsy, quaint, world-

ROMA NTIG SPA IN. 1 55

forgotten nook. A petit Paris it was called in
a vaunting quatrain by some minstrel of yore.
But Brussels may be comforted. It is nothing of
the kind, but something infinitely better. The
breezes from the main and the mountains, from
the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, conspire to
supply it with ozone. There is music in the
boom of the surf as it pulsates regularly on the
velvet sands of a semicircular inlet, where dogs
frisk and youngsters gambol in the sunshine.

In a hotel on the edge of that inlet, the Fonda
de la Playa, where I put up, a young Irish gentle-
man named Leader was recuperating from a severe
wound in the leg. He had received it in the
service of Don Carlos, in a skirmish near Azpeitia,
where he was the only man hit. He was out with
A party of the guerriUeros, and came across a
company of the Madrid troops. To encourage his
own people, or rather the people with whom he
had cast in his fortunes, he went well to the front,
and mounting on a bank of earth, hurled defiance
at the enemy. He was picked down by a stray
shot, and if he had been taken prisoner it is pro-

156 ROMANTIC SPAIN

bable that he would have paid for his temerity with
his life. The Spaniards were not clement towards
foreigners who interposed in their domestic quarreL
Leader was carried off by his companions and
secreted in a peasant's hut. The troops, swearing
vengeance, searched the hut next to it, but, by
some accident, failed to continue the quest to the
refuge of the wounded man. He bled profusely,
but the haemorrhage was finally arrested by some
rude bandaging, and at night he was helped astride
a donkey, and conveyed across the frontier into
France. He told me he had suffered excruciating
torments at every jolt of the jog-trotting animal on
that mountain journey. Had the bullet struck him
an inch higher he would have had to suffer ampu-
tation ; but his luck stood to him, and at the time
we met he was getting on fairly towards recovery,
thanks to youth, a good constitution, and the
healthy air of St. Jean de Luz. I could not under-
stand the ardour of Leader's partisanship for the
Carlists. He spoke the merest smattering of
Spanish, and had no profound intimacy with the
vexed question of Spanish politics or the rights of

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 157

the rival Spanish houses. The ill-natured whispered
that he was crying " Viva la Rep6blica " when he
was knocked over. It is possible, for he had fought
for the French Republic with Bourbaki's army,
and may, in his excitement, have forgotten under
what flag he was serving. I take it he was a
soldier by instinct, and ranged himself on the side
of Don Carlos more from the love of adventure
than from any other motive. He was a fine
athletic young fellow, with a handsome determined
cast of features. He had been an ensign in the
30th Foot, and had resigned his commission to
enjoy a spell of active service when the Franco-
German war was proclaimed. That he had behaved
bravely in the campaign which led to internment
in Switzerland was evidenced by the ribbon of
the Legion of Honour which he wore. Leader
was very anxious that an Anglo-Irish legion
in aid of Don Carlos should be organized I
felt it my duty to warn those to whom he appealed
to think twice before they embarked on such a
crusade. He was very wroth with me for having
thrown cold water on the project, but that did

158 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

not aff'ect me. I had more experience of such
follies than he, and my conscience approved me.
A man may be justified in playing with his own
life, but he should be slow in playing with the
lives of others. He prepares a vexing responsibility
for himself if he is sensitive.

In the next room to Leader was a fellow-
enthusiast, Mr. Smith Sheehan, an ex-officer of
Pontifical Zouaves, and son* of a popular and
eccentric town-councillor of Cork. He was an
agile stripling, skilled in all gymnastic exercises.
He had also done some fighting with the Carlists,
and was in France on furlough, which the soldiers in
the Eoyalist force appeared to have no insuperable
difficulty in getting. He told me there was a
large infusion of his old regiment amongst the
guerrilleros, and that they helped to bind the
partisan levies in the withes of discipline. Most
of them had smelt gunpowder at Montana and
Patay. The famous cabecilla, Saballs, had been a
captain at Rome, and Captain Wills, a Dutchman,
who had been killed in a brush at Igualada, had
been sergeant-major in Sheehan's company.

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 159

There was another ex-British officer of short
service, who had a remarkably imposing and well-
cultivated growth of moustache. He was a violent
doctrinaire Carlist, but suffered from a chronic
malady which prevented him from taking the
field; still there was none who could plot with a
more tremendous air of mystery. He was a Carlist
because it was " the correct thing " to be one in the
fashionable ring at St. Jean de Luz, where he had
settled, and because he inherited a name asso-
ciated with chivalric insurrection. For the sake
of his family I shall call him Barbarossa. He was
no honour to his house, for he was an inveterate
gambler, and was not careful in discharging the
obligations he wantonly contracted. He is dead.
His death was no loss to society. In fact, if the
whole host of gamblers, lock, stock and barrel, were
swept by a fairy-blast to the regions of thick-ribbed
ice, the world would be the gainer.

When I left Spain, Carlism was to be put down
in a fortnight — ^in Madrid. Now it threatened to
last as long as a Chinese play. The Royalists — I
suppose they had earned the title to be so named

160 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

by their perseverance — ^had achieved numerous
small successes which had raised their morale, and
they were being supplied with arms of precision
from abroad, and trained to their use. They had
even taken some mountain-guns from their enemy.
Leader made me laugh with his accounts of
Lizarraga shouting "Artilleria al frente!" and a
couple of mules, with one wretched little piece,
moving forward; and of the intimidating clatter
made by three shnmk cavaliers in cuirasses a
world too wide for them, and alpargatas, trotting
up a village street. The alpargata is the mountain-
shoe of canvas, with a hempen sole, worn by the
Basque peasants. The association of surcoats of
mail and rope slippers is incongruous; but what
does that reck? Those cuirasses were spolia
opima.

And Santa Cruz ?

The honest gentleman had retired into private
life. His excesses had raised such a storm of
opprobrium against the Carlists that they had to
request him to desist. Lizarraga summoned him
to render himself up a prisoner. " Come and take

MOMAFTIC SPAIK 161

me," replied Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz had near two
thousand followers ; Lizarraga a few hundred. Lizar-
raga declined the invitation. But the priest caused
seven-and-twenty Carabineros, taken prisoners at the
bridge of Enderlasa, near Irun, to be shot, and
this filled the cup to overflowing. The Carlists
averred they would slay him ; the Eepublicans
vowed they would garrote him for a Madrid
holiday; the French Government declared its in-
tention of putting him under lock and key if it
caught him within its jurisdiction. His band was
disarmed "by order of the King," and dispersed,
and the Cura himself nebulously vanished — ^whither
we may see anon.

There was a large accretion to the population of
St. Jean de Luz in Iberian refugees, and as they
sat and conversed under the foliage of the public
promenade, frequent sighs might be overheard, and
remarks that if this sort of thing were to go on,
" Spain would soon be in as bad a condition as
France." At all hours there came to the beach
poor exiles of Spain, who turned their eyes sadly
to the line where sky met ocean. Of what were their

VOL. II. 31

162 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

thoughts — of home and friends, of the flutters of the
casino or the ecstasies of the bull-ring ? If they
were looking for the Spanish fleet they did not see
it, for a reason as old as the " Critic." It was not in
sight. They came down in numbers in front of
my hotel at nine o'clock on the morning of
Monday, July 28th, a few days after my arrival,
when a strange yellow funnel turned the point,
and a long low Ked-Koverish three-masted schooner-
yacht steamed into Socoa, the roadstead of St. Jean
de Luz. If the exiles were correctly informed, that
was the Spanish fleet in a sense — the notorious
Carlist privateer, the San Margarita, which had re-
cently landed arms and ammimition for the Royalists
at Lequeieto and elsewhere. She had been doing a
stroke of business in the same line that morning.
In the grey dawn she had dropped into the em-
bouchure of the Bidassoa, at a few hundred yards
from the town of Fontarabia. The work was well
and quickly done. Boats requisitioned by friends
on land put off" to her, and returned laden with
bales of merchandise. These artless bales were
packages of breechloaders, with bayonets to match,

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 163

wrapped in sail-cloth. As soon as they were
received on shore they were distributed amongst
some thousands of Carlists in waiting, who at once
proceeded to fix bayonets, fall into ranks, and with
shouts of exultation march off in good order.

Meanwhile, the "volunteers of liberty," as the
Basque Republicans called themselves, ensconced
their persons out of range in a sort of castle beside
the church of Fontarabia's "wooded height," and
amused themselves takmg pot-shots at the rising
Sim. But they did not venture from their shelter ;
they knew a large body of armed Royalists were
watching their movements from the summit of
Cape Higuer, and only awaited the provoke [to
pounce down upon and swallow them. A detach-
ment of Frenchmen from the frontier hamlet of
Hendaye quietly took up ground on the strand to
see that there was no breach of neutrality, and had
an uninterrupted view of the whole operation. As
soon as the daring little privateer had done her
work she innocently steamed to Socoa ; the Carlists
on the hills waved adieu and disappeared; the
French soldiers returned to their quarters ; and the

31—2

164 ROMANTIC SPA IN.

Fontarabian "volunteers of liberty" — well, most
probably they swore terribly, and effected a masterly
retrograde movement on the nearest posada.

I had a caU to board the San Margarita. Not a
boat could be had in St. Jean de Luz for love or
money ; the passage from the sea into the harbour
is narrow, and the fishermen, though hardy navi-
gators, are shy of facing the current when the sea
is rough. Leader and myself walked by the goat-
path on the crags leading to the southern side
of the harbour so as to avoid the bar, and suc-
ceeded in chartering a skiff at Socoa. A quarter of
an hour's pull brought us alongside the yacht, and
on sending up our cards we were at once invited on
board by the owner. To my surprise I discovered
that the entire crew was British, as reckless a set of
dare-devils as ever cut out a craft from under an
enemy's guns. The skipper, Mr. Travers, was a
Cork man, an ex-officer of the Indian Navy, who
had lost a finger during the Mutiny ; but the life
and soul of the enterprise was an ex-officer of the
Austrian and Mexican armies, Charles-Edward
Stuart, Count d'Albanie, great-grandson of "the

MOM ANT 1 C SPA IN. 1 65

Young Pretender." His uncle, John Sobieski Stuart,
had resigned his claim to the throne of England on
his behalf,* so that I actually shook the hand of the
man who under other circumstances might be
wielding the sceptre of that empire on which the
sun never sets. Instead of a crown he wore the
genuine old Highland bonnet — not that modem in-
novation, the military feather-bonnet. In face this
descendant of royalty was an unmistakable Stuart,
with the characteristic aquiline nose, and a proud
dignity of expression. He might have sat for the
portrait of Charles the Martyr-King, by Vandyck,
in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest sup-
porter of the claims of Cdrlos S^ptimo, whom he
regarded as a cousin, and a sort of modem counter-
part of the young ChevaUer, the " darling Charlie "
of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the
hospitality of his nation, and we had a long chat as

^ Stuart married Lady Alice Hay, grand-daughter of
William IV., in London, in 1874, and is now dead. He left
no heir, so that the House of Hanover may rest easy. The
story that the Cardinal of York (" Henry IX.'O, who died
in 1807, was the last of the Stuart line, is all bosh. Charles-
Edward had a son by the daughter of Prince Sobieski.

166 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

we paced the deck briskly, the Count discussing
the prospects of the rising, and then verging off
into gay anecdotes of his military career in
Austria, and inquiries after mutual acquaintances in
London. By-and-by Captain Travers made his
appearance, a tall weather-beaten navigator in
orthodox naval dress, with a glass in his eye. He
bowed severely to the Stuart, who as coldly
returned his salute. It was easy to perceive that
there was a restraiQt in the demeanour of the men
on both sides ; but there was a tacit armistice for
the occasion. I heard afterwards that they did not
talk to each other, except on strict matters of duty,
and when taking their short walks on deck, one
confined himself religiously to the larboard, the other
to the starboard. Travers took me in tow, while
the alert Count with his quick manner strode to
and fro with Leader, and kept up a jerky fire of
conversation nearly all to himself, occasionally
twirling his peaked beard. Travers and I lolled
over the bulwarks, and laughed and sampled the
contents of an aqua-vitae bottle, "Special Jury"
whisky from teland, and I learned that this ill-

ROMANTIC SPA IN. 167

i — » ■ ■■ ■ ^ I ■ — ■■ ■ - ■ I ■ I ■ ■^-. — ■ III. ■ I I ■■ - ■- ^ ■ ■

assorted pair had been sharing some close hazards
on their audacious cruiser.

A few days previously they had been chased by
El Aspirante, a Spanish gun-boat, which gave
them eight shots. One caught them on the port
quarter, and shivered some timbers, but effected no
more serious damage.

" I wish we had only an Armstrong twenty-four
pounder close handy," said the mate, " and we'd
have saved them 'ere dons the price of a coflSn, I'd
take my davy !"

From what I saw of the seamen, I think this was.
no empty boast. Some of them had served with
one Captain Semmes on a certain craft called the
Alahaw/iy and had been picked up after the fight
with the Keasarge, off Cherbourg, by Mr. John
Lancaster's yacht, the Deerhound. There is no
need for concealment now, so that I may freely
admit that the Deerhound and the San Margarita
were one and the same. Travers, who was in love
with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to
the screw he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship
in the Spanish navy. At leaving, I was asked to

168 ROMANTIC 6PAIN.

take a trip with them; they were about to visit
their floating arsenal in the Bay of Biscay, load,
and try to run another cargo. I respectfully de-
clined — fortunately for myself; my orders were to
get to the Carhst headquarters, not to go playing
Paul Jones.

Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross
the border, and readily acceded to my request to
form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next
morning and looked out of window for the San
Margarita. The roadstead of Socoa was a blank.
She had steamed away during the night. After
the customary chocolate we started blithely, in a
light basket-carriage with a pair of fast-trotting
ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours to
the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight,
the road up the mountain being impracticable for
vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to show us
over the border by the smuggler's path — a wild
short-cut through a labyrinth of brushwood. The
guide was a remarkable youth in his way; he
imderstood not a syllable of French or Spanish,
and spoke only Basque which none of us com-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 169

prehended, so that our parley with him was some-
what uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit
the opinions of that guide. A lad who could
strike the path up the mountain with such truth
might, by some instinct, have seen his way through
Spanish politics. Our walk was a trial of endur-
ance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and
that was fatiguing enough in all conscience ; but
now the sim was beating cruelly on the parched
herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like
treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-
dozen times before we reached the summit; and
yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all
three on his head, kept on with a springy step and
serene smile, like the youth in " Excelsior." It was
an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me,
with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I
arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the
ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile
of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There
was no further need to be wary, for this was
Spain. We were over the border, and now my
companions could breathe freely in every sense.

170 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

Before they had passed the imaginary line they
were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes, con-
ducted back and interned, for they had that about
their persons which betrayed that they were no
innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a scud
was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles
by the wayside, and an advance party of one was
thrown out to reconnoitre. The precautions were
superfluous, if we knew but alL From the 15th of
July, the French patrols had got the hint to be
blind. So lax was the cordon on the day we
crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a
repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in
his belt, might have gone into Spain and never
have had their sight ofiended by a solitary French
uniform.

The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped
on a sunny day, repays all the toil and trouble of
the ascent ; and looking round, one begins to
realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On
one side extend the plains of France, washed by the
greenish-blue waves of the Bay of Biscay, and
studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 171

Fontarabia, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne,
and so on northwards till the vision fails. On the
other side rise in convolutins: swells the mountains
of Navarre and Guiplizcoa, their slopes dyed in every
shade of green from grass and lichen, shrub and
tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting with
ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are aU
to be found in the bosom of the earth in this
richest and most beautiful of lands. Nature has
been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead ot
using her gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for
generations to the purposes of guerrilla warfare
and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this
high moral tone hardly sits weU on a man who was
aiding and abetting the entry of a couple of foreign
free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent, and
perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own
account. We suffered no molestation ; but others
might not have escaped unpleasantness. The
agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had
to pay toll, if the story were true that a few of the
dispersed "Black Legion" had got off with their
rifles and started a joint-stock company in the

172 ROMANTIC SPAIN,

-- -' I..L. - I ■■■■I ^

bush- whacking Ime, and were doing a pretty fair
business.

The descent on the Spanish side was almost
precipitous, and had to be effected with exceeding
care. At times we ran down the track, rugged
with sharp crags, almost head foremost, and only
saved ourselves from falling by cUnging to the
nearest sapling. But there is an end to everything,
and at last we came on the road that dips into the
village of Echalar, in the district of Pampeluna,
province of Navarre. Here we dismissed our
guide, and here I encountered, for the first time, a
regularly organized Carlist company, detached from
the 'fifth battalion of Navarre, which was in
garrison at Vera, some eight miles distant ; but as
I shall have opportunity to speak of the entire
battalion soon, I defer comment on its appearance.

My companions were desirous of pushing forward,
and the provisional alcalde of the village gave us
a trap to take us on. There is an excellent road
by the mountain-side, until a tunnel to the right
is reached, when we entered a most picturesque,
well- wooded defile, through which • the Bidassoa

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 173

pours its waters. We dashed along gaily until we
came in sight of the steeple of the church of Vera
at twilight.

A cry of " Who goes there ?" from the gloom
arrested us at the entrance of the town.
Leader sung out, " Espana."
Again came the sentinel's cry, " What people V*
and cheerily ran the answer, "Voluntaries de
Cd,rlos S^ptimo !"

" Pass," was the reply ; and we took the street
at a trot, and pulled up at the door of the parish
priest's dwelling, where the Irish soldiers of
fortune promised me a billet for the night. The
kindly pastor was equal to expectations ; we had a
cordial welcome, a good dinner, and beds with clean
sheets.

Sad tidings met my companions — those of the
death of a young friend, Mr. John Scannel Taylor,
a native of Cork, in the service of Don Carlos. A
few months previously he had been a promising
law student in the Queen's University of Ireland,
with every prospect of a bright career before him.
He arrived from England in the middle of June,

1 74 ROMANTIC SPA IN.

and attached himself to the partida of General
Lizarraga in order to be near his fellow-coimtiyman.
Smith Sheehan. Previous to Mr. Sheehan's re-
turning to Bayonne with despatches, he tossed up
a coin to decide whether he or Taylor should have
the choice of the duty. Poor Taylor won, and
elected to remain with Lizarraga, as there was like-
lihood of fighting at hand. The very next day
Yvero, where the Republicans held a strongly-
intrenched position, was attacked, and the young
Irish volunteer made himself conspicuous in the
onset. While advancing in the open, setting a
pattern of bravery to all by the steady way he
delivered his fire, the gallant fellow was struck by
a bullet in the leg. He kept on limping until
he was touched a second time in the arm, but
still he persevered with a dogged courage, when a
third bullet struck him in the forehead, and he
dropped with outspread arms, raising a little cloud
of dust. He must have been stone-dead before
he reached the ground. His conduct was "muy
valiente," so said his Spanish comrades. He was
picked up after the affair, and decently interred

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 175

side by side with two officers who met their deaths
in his company. This was the first time he was
under fire, as it was the last; but there is a fatality
in those things.

This young Irishman, Taylor, was luckier than
some of his fellows in one respect. Short as he
had been in the service, he had attracted the notice
of Don Carlos. His comrade Sheehan and he were
pointed out to "the King" by Lizarraga as two
modest deserving young soldiers who had offered to
fight in the ranks — a trait of unselfishness that
must have astonished the Carlist leaders, as most
of the volunteers they had from France came out
with the full intention of commanding brigades,
when divisions were not to be had.

"I wish I had a thousand like them," said
Lizarraga, who was a genuine soldier, and one of
the few Spaniards not unjust to foreigners.

Don Carlos shook hands with Mr. Taylor and
thanked him. His Majesty spoke some few minutes
in French with Mr. Sheehan, and, as the conversa-
tion gives some insight into CarUsm, I may venture
to repeat it.

176 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Don Carlos. — " You have served before ?"
Irish Soldier. — "Yes, sire, in the Pontifical
Zouaves."

Don Carlos. — " Ha ! good. In the same company
with my brother, perhaps ?"

Irish Soldier. — " No ; but I had the privilege of
knowing Don Alfonso."

Don Carlos. — " He is in Catalonia now, and has
many of your old companions in arms with him.
You are serving the same cause here as in Rome —
the cause of religion and of order and of legitimate
right."

Irish Soldier (bowing). — " I should not be here if
I did not feel that, your Majesty."

Don Carlos (smiling). — "I thank you sincerely.
General Lizarraga teUs me you are Irish."

Irish Soldier. — " I come from the south of Ireland,
sire."

Don Carlos. — " A country I feel much sympathy'-
for. She has been very unhappy, has she not ?
Are things better now ?"

Irish Soldier. — " For some years Ireland has been,
improving, sire."

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 177

Don Carlos. — " That is welL She deserves better
fortune, for she has a noble, faithful people."

Don Carlos drew back a pace and made a stiff
military nod; the Irishman brought his rilBe to
the "present arms," turned on his heel, and
marched back to the ranks, and thus the interview
terminated.

The valley in which the Uttle town of Vera
nestles might have been that where Rasselas was
brought up, so secluded, smihng, and peaceful it
looks. The Bidassoa, famous in tales of the
Peninsular War, iBows through it, no doubt; but
the Bidassoa here is a trout stream winding through
meadows and fields of maize, and thoughts of blood-
shed are the last that would occur to toyone
contemplating its mild current. The mountains
walling in the vale are lined with growths of
heather, fern, and blossoming furze to their very
crests, and the verdurous picture they hem is one
of poetic calm and plenty. Labourers are digging
away in the fields below, the tinkle of cow-bells is
heard firom the pastures, and anon blends with their
Arcadian music the soft chiming of church-bells

VOL. II. 32

178 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

summoning to prayer; there is a mill with its
clacking wheel, and a foundry with a tuft of smoke
curling from its chimney ; orchards and vineyards
lie side by side with patches of com, and along the
high-road peasants pass and repass, shortening their
way with song and laughter, and strings of miiles
or droves of swine scamper by. Another Sweet
Auburn of Goldsmith, in another Happy Valley of
Johnson, this cosy Vera with its river and trees
would seem to any English tourist ignorant of its
history; but how the English tourist would be
misled ! Though the peasants laugh and sing, and
the labourers dig, and there are outer tokens of
peace, there is no peace in the valley or town;
there are sights and sounds there of war, and that
of the worst kind — civil war. The mill is grinding
com for the commissariat stores, the foundry turns
out shot instead of ploughshares, the boxes on the
mules' backs are packed with ammunition. If you
listen, you will hear the roll of drums and the shrill
blowing of bugles more often than the soothing
bells ; if you watch, you will notice that not one
man in ten is unprovided with a firearm, for this

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 179

quiet-looking place is the very hotbed of Carlism ;
the insurrectionary headquarters for the province
of Navarre ; the arsenal and recruiting dep6t for
all the provinces in revolt. The disciples of the
rod have fled from it, and those of the musket have
come in their stead.

At half-past four on the morning after our arrival
in the mountains, I was roused from a profound
sleep by the sound of the bugle. A solitary per-
former was blowmg spiritedly into his instrument ;
what piece of music he was trying to execute I
could not make out, but that his primary object
was to "murder sleep" was evident, and he suc-
ceeded. Losing all note of time and place, I thought
for a moment I was in London, and that this was a
visit from the Christmas waits. But there was a
liveliness in the tones incompatible with the season
when the clarionet, trombone, and comet-^-piston
form a syndicate of noise, and parade the streets for
halfpence. The bugle was in a jocular mood.
Judge of my astonishment when I learned that this,
merry melody was the Carlist's reveille ! The in-
surgents had got so far with their military organiza-

32—2

180 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

tion that they had actually buglers and bugle-
calls. Nay, more, they had drummers and a brass
band!

Now I think of it, there is an inadvisability in
my calling them insurgents while in their power ;
but what phrase am I to employ ? In the pass in
my pocket I am recommended to " the Chiefs of the
Koyal Army of his Catholic Majesty Charles VII.,"
as an inoffensive "corresponsal particular," to whom
aid and protection may be safely extended. But
then there are the Kepublicans, and if they catch
me giving premature recognition in pen-and-ink to
the Koyalist cause, they may rightly complain that
a British subject is flying in the face of the great
British policy of non-intervention. I think I have
discovered an escape from the dilemma. The
Carlists speak of themselves as the Chicos, "the
bhoys," so Chicos let them be for the future, and
their opponents the troops — not that it is by any
means intended to be conveyed that the troops so
called are much more martial than the Chicos.

Well, the boys have got buglers who bugle with
a will. They blow a blast to rouse us, another for

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 181

distribution of rations ; they have the assembly, the
retreat, the " lights out," and all the rest, as regular
as the Diddlesex Militia. I got up in the Cura's
house, looked at the Cura's pictures — ^which were
more meritorious as works of piety than as works
of art-r-and hastened to the Plaza, where I was told
there was about to be a muster of the Chicos, and I
would have a leisurely opportunity of passing them
imder inspection. The Plaza is a flagged space
enclosed on two sides by houses, some of which are
over a couple of centuries old, with armorial bear-
ings sculptured over the doors ; on the third by the
Municipality ; and on the fourth by a grey church,
lofty and large, seated on an eminence and ap-
proached by a flight of stone steps. The Munici-
pality is a massive building, level with the street,
with a colonnaded portico, and a front over which
some artist in distemper had passed his brush.
This facade is eloquent with mural painting, if one
could only understand it all. There are symbolic
figures of heroic size, coveys of cherubs, hatch-
ments, masonic-looking emblems, and inscriptions.
A Carlist sentry, dandling a naked bayonet in the

182 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

hoUow of his arm, was pacing to and fro in the
portico, and the remaining warriors of the post
were lounging about, cigarette in mouth, much as
our own fellows do outside the guard-house on
Commercial Square, at Gibraltar. I was curious to
see the Carlist uniform. Assuredly the uniform
does not make the soldier, but it goes a great way
towards it. Uniformity was the least striking
featiu-e in the dress of the men before me. They
were clad in the ordinary garb of the mountain-
peasants. Short coarse jackets and loose trousers,
confined at the waist by a faja, or girdle of bright-
coloured wooUen stuff, were worn by some;
blouses of serge, knee-breeches, and stockings or
gaiters, by others ; but all, without exception, had
the boina, or pancake-shaped woollen cap of the
Basque provinces, and the alpargatas, or flat-soled
canvas shoes. By-and-by was heard a bugle-blast
and the quick, regular tread of marching men, and
the head of a company came in sight. In perfect
time the company paced, four deep, into the Plaza,
halted, and fell into line in two ranks. Thus,
in succession, seven other companies arrived, form-

ROMANTTG SPAIN. 183

ing the fifth battalion of Navarre, a vigorous, wiry
set of men, impressing the experienced eye as ex-
cellent raw material for soldiers, albeit got up in
costume very much resembling that of brigands of
the Comic Opera. Physically, the natives of the
hilly Northern provinces are the pick of Spain.
The battalion had its flag, white between two stripes
of scarlet, on which was inscribed the name of the
corps, and the legend, " The country for ever, but
always in honour." This was, of course, written in
Basque, of which my rendering is rather free, but
it gives exactly the sense of the sentiment. It was
soon palpable to anybody, who knows anything of
such matters, that the Chicos were weak in oflScers
of the proper stamp, and still more so in under-
officers. Smoking was common in the ranks, and
when the men stood at ease, they stood very much
at ease indeed. The officers, in some cases, were
distinguished in dress from the privates solely by
gold or silver tassels dependent from their boinas,
and their boinas were of blue, white, brown, or even
Republican red, according to the fancy of the
wearer. All the officers had revolvers and swords.

184 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

The men were armed somewhat indiscriminately,
one company with Chassepots^ another with Rem-
ingtons ; there were carbines, and percussion rifles,
and smooth-bores, and even a few flint-locks ; but I
failed to discern a single specimen of the trabuco,
the bell-mouthed blunderbuss we are accustomed to
associate with the Spanish knight of the road.
Ammunition was carried in a waist-belt, with a
surrounding row of leather tubes lined with tin,
each of which held a cartridge — ^in fact, the Cir-
cassian cartouch-case. There were many grizzled
weather-stained veterans in the ranks who had
fought with Zumalacdrregui and Mina in the Seven
Years* War ; but as a rule the Chicos were literally
boys in age, and here and there a child of twelve or
fourteen might be seen measuring himself beside a
patriotic musket. In relief to the peasant dresses
were to be noticed frequent attempts at more
soldierly costume in the shape of worn tunics of
the French National Guards or Moblots, and some
half-dozen uniforms of the Spanish Line, with the
glazed k^pi exchanged for the boina. On the top
of many of the boinas, fastening the tassel, was a

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 185

huge brass button, with the monograixi of the
" King/' and the inscription, " Voluntarios, Dios,
Patria, y Bey.** Another sign particular of this
irregular force that impressed me much was a
bleeding heart embroidered on a small scrap of
cloth, and sewn on the left breasts of nearly all on
the ground This appeared to be worn as a charm
against bullets ; and with a strong notion that it
would protect them in the hour of danger, I am
convinced nine out of ten of those peasants carried
it. It may be as well to add that inside that
embroidered patch were written, in Spanish, the
words, " Stop ; the heart of Jesus is here ; defend
me, Jesus/* Many others of the Carlists carried
scapulars, rosary beads, and blessed medals a^ pious
reminders. The habit of wearing this representa-
tion of the heart of the Saviour over the region of
the human heart dates so far back as the Yendean
War, and had been introduced in the present
instance by M. Cathelineau, grandson of the cele-
brated French Eoyalist leader.

The battalion had assembled on the Plaza to
give up their old arms, and to receive a portion of

186 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

those whieh had been landed from the San Mar-
ga/rita. They deposited those they had with them
by sections in the Mimicipality, and emerged with
the others, bright, brand-new Berdan breechloaders.
They seemed proud of their weapons ; some went
so far as to kiss them; and, if looks were any
criterion of feelings, their glowing faces said, as
emphatically as it could be said, "Now that we
have good tools, we shall show what good work
we can do." Boxes of metallic ball-cartridges,
centre-primed, were pUed on the Plaza, and wete
quickly and quietly opened and distributed. Not
an accident occurred in the process. Many a less
wonderful phenomenon has been advertised as a
miracle. I fully expected to have my coat spattered
with some warrior's brains every other moment,
with such a reckless rashness were the rifle-muzzles
poked about. One shot did go off, while a high
private was trying if his cartridge fitted to the
chamber ; the charge singed the hair of a captain,
and the bullet lodged in the middle of the word
"Prudencia" on the fa5ade of the Municipality.
The captain would have it that he was killed.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 187

spun round on his own centre like a humming,
top, and finally, coming to himself, shook out his
clothes in search of the lead. There was a roar of
laughter, and the careless soldier who had en-
dangered the life of his officer was aUowed to pass
without rebuke. That was the worst point in
Carlist discipline I had seen yet. There was too
much familiarity towards superiors ; the rank and
file lacked that fear and respect for the officers
which are the strongest cement of the military
fabric. This was to be explained partly because
the officers were not above the men in social
position, and partly because any enterprising gen-
tleman who bought gold braid and tassels, sported
a sword, and appraised himself an officer, was
accepted at his own valuation.

CHAPTER IX.

The Cura of Vera — Fueros of the Basques — Carlist Discip-
line — Fate of the San Margarita — ^The Squadron of
Vigilance— How a Capture was Effected — The Sea-
Rovers in the Dungeon — ^Visit to the Prisoners — San
Sebastian — A Dead Season — The Defences of a
Threatened City— Souvenirs of War— The Miqueletes
— ^In a Fix— A German Doctor's Warning.

These horrible and bloodthirsty Carlists turned out
to be amiable individuals on acquaintance. I sup>
pose they could put on a frown for their enemies,
but for my companions and myself they had nothing
but open smUes and hearty hand-grips. One great
recommendation was our being billeted on the
parish priest. His reverence had none of the Santa
Cruz in him ; he was a gentle, zealous, studious clergy-
man, yet was filled with the purest enthusiasm for
the cause of what he regarded as legitimacy.
The Don Carlos who raised the standard in

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 189

1833, he maintained, was the rightful heir to the
throne of Spain. The law by which the succession
had been changed was an ex pod facto law, passed
after his birth, and not promulgated until Ferdi-
nand VII. had a female child. In May, 1845, that
Don Carlos, really Charles V., resigned in favour of
his son, Charles VI., and in September, 1868, he, in
his turn, relinquished his rights to the present
claimant to the throne, Charles VIL, whom might
God preserve.

The Cura was unusually civil towards us because
we were Irish, and as Irish were presumably of
clean lineage — ^that is to say, free from kinship
with Jews or infidels. As reputed descendants of
settlers from Bilbao, we were entitled to a full share
in all the privileges of the province of Biscay. This
was as well to know. It was a consolation to us to
learn that it was an advantage to be Irish some-
where under the sun. The King of Spain is but
Lord of Biscay, and has to swear under the oak-
tree of Guernica to respect the fueros or customs of
the province. Don Carlos had so done ; he was in
Spain, it was true, but where he was at the moment

190 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

the Cura was unable to say ; his court was peram-
bulatory.

The fiieros were abolished by the Cortes in
1841 and but partially restored in 1844, so that
in inscribing them as one of the watchwords
on their banner, the Basques were fighting for
something more solid than glory. They cling to
their rights as Britons do to Magna Charta, only
with this difference — they have a clearer conception
of what they are. I had been trying to arrive at
some knowledge of the fueros, and obtain^ed miich
information from a volume by the late Earl of
Carnarvon.* Guiplizcoa, Alava, and Biscay, though
an integral part of the Spanish monarchy, for ages
enjoyed their own laws, and a recapitulation of
some which were in force in Biscay will be a fair
sample of alL Biscay was governed by its own
national assemblies, arranged its own taxation,
yielded contributions to the Sovereign as a free
gift, had no militia laws, was exempt from naval

* Eeview of the social and political state of the Basque
Provinces, at the end of a book on ** Portugal and Galicia,"
published in 1848 by John Murray.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 191

- — *• — ■ ■ ^.^ - - . -■■■■■

impressment, provided for its own police in peace
and its own defence in war. No monopoly, public
or private, could be established there. Only
Biscayans by birth could be nominated to eccle-
siastical appointments; every Biscayan was noble,
and his house was inviolable; there was perfect
equality of civil rights. In short, those Basques
flourished under the amplest measure of Home
Kule, and had all the benefits of the Habeas Corpus
Act under another name long before that Bill was
legalized by the Parliament of Charles II. The liberty-
loving Basques were tolerant as well as independent.
The Inquisition was never vouchsafed breathmg-
room in their midst. When Protestants escaped
from France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
they were treated to asylum amongst them.*

We moved about among the guerrilleros. They
were mostly light-limbed and stalwart men, and
were none the worse for the sprinkling of seniors
of sixty and lads of sixteen. Many had the bow-
legs of the mountaineer, buUt like the hinder pair

* It should be noted that in July, 1876, directly after the
war was over, the fueros were entirely done away with by a
special law.

192 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

of artillery-horses — the legs that tell of muscularity
and lasting stamina. Their drill was very loose>
and skill in musketry left much to be desired.
They had no perception of distance-judging, and
some were so grossly ignorant of the mechanism of
their weapons that they knocked off the back-
sights of their rifles, alleging that they hindered
them from taking correct aim. The Marquis de la
Hormazas — a meagre, tall, elderly man — was com-
mandant of the battalion, and was stem in the
exaction of discipline. During the stay of the
Navarrese at Vera, a captain was degraded to the
ranks for having entered the lists of illicit love.
The Frenchwoman who was the partner of his
amour was politely shown over the mountain and
warned not to return.

The battalion left for the interior of the province.
Leader was still too weak to enter on a campaign ;
Sheehan had to look after the belongings of his
comrade Taylor, and break the news of his death to
his mother ; and I saw plainly that it was out of
the question attempting to catch up the flitting
headquarters of Don Carlos without a horse.

ROMANTIC 8FAIN. 193

Besides, I had to complete arrangements for the
transmission of letters and telegraphic messages
when I had any to send, and for the reception of
money ; in sum, to open up communication with a
base. So we returned to France as we came.

On arriving at St. Jean de Luz, a startling
rumour awaited us. The steel-built Carlist priva-
teer had been captured at the mouth of the Adour ;
she had been taken a prize to San Sebastian;
Stuart and Travers were in close custody ; and there
were alarmists who whispered that they would be
tried by drum-head as pirates, and hung up in
chains in the cause of humanity. It was well
for me I did not accept the invitation to that
water-party. I ran over to Bayonne to ascertain
what particulars I could, saw the CarKst Junta, the
British and Spanish Vice-Consuls, and from their
combined and conflicting narratives was able to sift
some grains of the authentic. But the sudden first
report was undeniable. The weasel had been caught
asleep.

The San Margarita was a serious loss to the
cause. She had cost £3,500. She was very fast,

VOL. II. 33

194 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

being capable of a speed of between ten and eleven
knots an hour, and should be equal to fourteen
knots if her lifting screw had another blade. A
three-bladed screw had been provided, and was to
have been fitted to her stem on her return from the
ill-fated expedition which put an end to her roving
career. It was true that the descendant of kings
was under bolts and bars. The French journals
described him as a "Monsieur Stuart, a Scotch
colonel, entrusted by the English Catholics with
collections for the Carlist cause." They had never
heard of his royal lineage, of his connection with
the Austrian cavalry, or of his exploits by the side
of the unhappy Maximilian in Mexico. He assumed
the responsibility of ownership of the vessel. The
hue-and-cry description of him was "a man of
forty to forty-five years of age, over middle height,
figure spare, features thin, and resolute in ex-
pression."

The burly bronzed Corkonian was also in
durance, and with the pair of officers were a picked
crew of thirteen Englishmen, including engineers,
steward, stokers, and able-bodied seamen, and

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 196

one Spanish cabin-boy. A Basque pilot, an old
smuggler, familiar with every nook and crevice of
the Bay of Biscay, had escaped.

If reports were credible, the San Margarita
had already landed two millions of cartridges, and
an immense quantity of arms. Much vexation was
caused to the officers of the Spanish navy in those
quarters by the stories of the daring feats she had
achieved, absolutely discharging a cargo once on
the very wharf of Lequeieto, as if she were a peace-
ful merchantman, and on another occasion sending

ojff rifles and ammunition by small boats in the
dead of night, a man-of-war lying sleepily obhvious
of what was going on just outside her. It was felt
that her continued impunity was a reproach, and
three small vessels of the Spanish navy were com-
missioned to cruise between Bilbao and Bayonne
on the look-out for her. This little squadron of
vigilance consisted of El Aspirante and El
Capricho, gun-boats, and the Buenaventura, a
three-gun steam-brig. On Tuesday, August 12th,
the Buenaventura, flying a George's Jack at her
peak, was oS Fontarabia for a portion of the day.

33—2

196 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

close in shore. At night&U she disappeared — ^it is
now supposed into the sheltered and almost in-
visible inlet of Los Fasages^ between Fontarabia
and San Sebastian. Before daybreak on Wednes-
day, the Carlists under Dorregarray swarmed down
from the hills covering Cape Higuer. The San
Margarita came in sight, and began landing arms
in the same spot where the undisturbed landing of
the 28th July had been effected. Not more than
three hundred stand had been put on shore, and
about one hundred thousand cartridges in boxes,
labelled in English "metallic rolled cartridges,
centre-primed," when she had to get away, as the
daylight began to play the informer. She dropped
down towards Bayonne, and appears to have
reached a point some four miles from the French
shore (the exact distance is a moot question),
where she laid to and allowed her furnaces to cooL
The men were " dead tired out " after their night's
work, and the captain considered that he was
within the protection of French waters. But there
is a very ancient proverb about a pitcher and a
veil, and the period of its realization had been

EOMA NTIG SPAIN. 197

reached at last Whilst the San MargaHta was
effecting the landing, a coastguard's boat had
slipped from under the heights of Fontarabia, and
given notice of what was going on to the Buenor
Ventura in Los Pasages, and the brig steamed out,
still with the British colours at her peak. Whilst
the Carlist privateer was motionless in fancied
security — there was some want of prudence or
vigilance there, surely— the gun-brig crept down
and overhauled her before alarm could be given,
and the rakish schooner-yacht, the skimmer of the
seas, had the hmniliation of falling a prey to a
wretched slow boat that she could laugh at with
steam up in the open sea. The arrest was made in
the usual manner, and the captors behaved with
the customary naval courtesy. They were over-
joyed at their good fortime, and gave their
prisoners to eat and to drink — champagne to the
officers and chacoli to the men. They towed their
prize into the bay of St. Sebastian, and there was
triumph. The yellow and scarlet flag of Spain was
over the wee San Margarita as she entered, and
Colonel Stuart and Captain Travers and their com-

198 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

panions must have felt sore, for all the good cheer
and generous wine. Still there was quite a courtly
scene on board — hand- shakings and reciprocal com-
pliments — as they were marched off to the dungeon
of the Castillo de la Mota on a hill in the city,
where they were incarcerated. There they did not
fall on such pleasant lines as afloat. The Re-
publicans lost no time in imloading the vesseL
They took off her, with a hurry that betrayed
apprehension, 1,545 carbines and six Berdan breech-
loaders, with a number of armourer's tools. It was
remarked that the rifles supplied to the regular
troops from Madrid were sighted to eight hundred
metres, but that the range of those seized from the
Carhsts did not exceed five hundred.

I went over to San Sebastian by tug from Socoa
on the 16th of August, and sent up my card to
M. de Brunet, the British Vice-Consul. He said he
had called on the prisoners, and that the sailors
murmured at their treatment. If I went to the
citadel, after three — as it was Saturday afternoon,
and visiting hours commenced then — I could see
them without difficulty I did clamber up the hill.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 199

and found this was not the case. On owning that
I had no pass from the military governor, I was
denied admittance. Happening to meet the com-
mandant, I represented what I wanted, and he
very civilly granted me leave to visit the prisoners
"para un memento." As the gates were thrown
open Stuart advanced and met me, grasping my
hand cordially, and slipping a letter up the sleeve
of my coat. He had caught sight of me labouring
up the hill, and had immediately hastened to
scribble a few lines which he trusted to my sym-
pathy with misfortune to smuggle to their destina-
tion for him. He was not mistaken, and in so
domg I had no qualm of conscience. I accompanied
him to his cell, and he told me the story of the
capture of the San Margarita. It was substantially
as I have related; they thought they were in a
mare claiusum, at all events they had drifted out
of it on the tide of fate ; but there was a nice ques-
tion of international law. The ruse of hoisting the
British flag was legitimate if the Buenaventura
substituted her own flag before proceeding to board
them. The San Margarita had the flags of more

200 ROMANTIC SPATK

than one nation in her lockers ; but the gun-brig-
had no power to act the policeman in neutral waters.
There was the point, Travers was in a separate
lodging; they had been accommodated at first in
the one cell, but they could not agree — ashore as
afloat the old feud existed. However, both as-
sented to a truce in order to have a talk with
me. They were cheerful, had cigars ad libitum (at
their own expense, of course), and were permitted
to get their rations from the H6tel de Londres in
the city. The cells they occupied were bare, white-
washed, low-ceiled rooms, some eight paces by six.
They were not so clean or well- ventilated as New-
gate cells, and the beds were spread on the floor.
The captives had access to newspapers and writing
materials, and it is but the due of the oflBcers in
charge to testify that they were extremely affable
and disposed to make their prisoners as comfortable
as possible. Still, in the close, stifling weather, to be
locked up within the narrow circuit of a dungeon
was limbo. The pair wore their own clothes,
Travers still retaining a navy-jacket with brass
buttons engraved with the initials of some yacht

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 201

club, and did not complain of having been sub-
jected to indignities. While I was with them the
shadow of a face darkened the window ; it was a
Carlist prisoner who had hoisted himself up on the
shoulders of a comrade from a yard below ; he had
a letter in his mouth. I took it, and slipped him
a bimdle of cigars for distribution among his fellow
cage-birds. From this it may be deduced that the
gaol regulations were not very stringent. The
Carlists were treated as forfeit of war, not felons,
and had no honest chance of illuminating their
brows with the martyr halo of Baron von Trenck
or Silvio PeUico.

San Sebastian is the most modem town in the
Peninsula, having been re-built in 1816, three years
after its destruction by the incensed allied troops.
It is a great summer resort of wealthy Spanish
idlers— a sort of Madrid-super-Mare. The attrac-
tions of the capital are to be had there, with the
supplementary advantages of pure air, mountain
scenery, and luxurious sea-bathing on a level sandy
beach. There is a public casino, and a score of
clandestine hells where a fortune can be lost in a

202 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

night at monte — ^in short, every infernal facility for
Satanic gambling. Cigarettes are cheap, and so
are knives. There is an Alameda, where the band
plays, and a passable imitation, of the Puerta del
Sol, less the fountain, in the broad arcaded Plaza
de la Constitucion. There is a small theatre, a
spacious bull-ring, and several commodious churches,
where Pepita can talk the language of fans to her
heart's content. Every attraction of Madrid which
could reasonably be expected is to be had, I repeat,
and hidalgos and sloe-eyed senoras speckle the
promenades in the gloaming, and impart a mingled
aroma of garlic and gentility, pomade and preten-
tiousness, to the chief town of Guiptizcoa. San
Sebastian would be for Madrilenos what Paris is
for Bostonians, if a few of the attractions of the
"only court," which could not reasonably be ex-
pected, were not lacking — say an occasional walk
round of the Intransigentes, to show their political
muscles; a grandiloquent, frothy word-tempest in
the Congress, and the Sunday cock-fight. I am
speaking, be it understood, of San Sebastian in
ordinary summers. A short twelvemonth before

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 203

my visit, a pair of pouting English lips told me it
was " awfully jolly."

At the date with which I am concerned, it was
anything but " awfully jolly." The fifteen thousand
rich visitors who were wont to flock into the city
during the season had gone elsewhere to recruit
their health on the sands and lose their money at
the gaming-tables. They had been frightened to
the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism,
and San Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and
her coffers were empty. The campamento of
bathing-huts was ranged as usual on the velvet
rim of the ear-like bay, but no bathers were there.
There were more domestics than guests in the hotels ;
and at the tahU dJhdte three sat down in a saloon
designed for a hundred to breakfast in; and we
had no butter. The peasants in the country round
were afraid to bring in the produce of their dairies
and barn-yards. The bull-ring was to let; con-
scientious barbers shaved each other or dressed the
hair on the wax busts in their windows, in order
to keep alive the traditions of their craft; the
fiddlers in the concert-room of the casino scraped

204 EOMA NTIG SPAIN.

lamentations to imaginary listeners. A Sahara
of dust had settled on the curtain of the theatre,
and fleet-footed spiders made forages athwart it
from one cobwebby stronghold to another. The
once festive resort had lost its spirits completely, and
all on account of this civil war. It was suniTner,
but the city was in a state of hibernation. No
business was done in the shops, the caf^s were
empty, most of the resident population who could
afford it had emigrated, and the pubhc squares
were as vacant as if there were a perpetual siesta.
There was no sign of animation, as we understand
it in England. There were but three vessels in
the west bay — the Buenaventura^ a merchant
steamer, and the San Margarita, pinioned at last,
her yellow funnel cold. Sojourn in the place was
insupportable. I knew not how to kill the tedious
hours. I climbed again to the Castle of the Mota,
inspected some English tombs on the slope of the
acclivity, and noticed that if the citadel is still a
position of strength, nature deserves much of the
credit. The defences recently thrown up had been
devised and executed carefully, and if the defenders

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 206

were only true to themselves, the Carlists, with no
better artillery than they possessed, might as well
think of taking the moon as of entering San
Sebastian. They would have a formidable fire
from well-planted cannon to face; stockades, and
strong earthworks, and more than one blockhouse
cunningly pierced with loopholes, to carry. Even
if San Sebastian was entered, the configuration of
the streets was such as to give every aid to
disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros.
The city is built in blocks, on the American
system; the wide thoroughfares cross each other
at right-angles, and all of them could be swept as
with a besom by a few guns en barbette behind a
breastwork at either end. In this sort of work,
accuracy of aim is not called for, as in that warfare
up in the mountains. If it were, not much re-
liance could be placed on the Republican artillery.
General Hidalgo had well-nigh nullified that arm
of the service. A Carlist leader, in whose in-
formation and whose word confidence could be
reposed, assured me that not a single Carlist had
yet been killed or wounded by the Republican

206 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

gunners. The estimated Ksts of the enemy's
casualties given by both parties during the
struggle, I may remark en passant, were grossly
exaggerated. The butcher's bill was very small
in proportion to the expenditure of gunpowder.
Returning to the question of the defence of San
Sebastian — even on the supposition that the main
works and town were to fall into the hands of
the Carlists, the citadel still remained, where a
determined leader could hold out till relief came,
as long as his provisions lasted. This lofty
citadel is almost impregnable. It was hither the
French retired in 1813, and it took General
Graham all that he knew to dislodge them. If I
were asked what were the prospects of the Carlists
getting into the place, I should say there was but
one — ^by crossing over a golden bridge. But that
implied the possession of money, and money was
precisely what the Carlists declared they needed
most.

There was always the remote hazard of a Carlist
rising in San Sebastian, for there were in the city
the children of settlers from the rural districts

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 207

who bit their thumbs at the sight of the muzzled
San Margarita, and prayed that Charles VII. might
have "his ain again." But they were in the
minority. The Miqueletes, a soldierly body of men
in scarlet Basque scones very like to the Carlist
head-gear, and a blue capote with cape attached,
garrisoned the citadel. They were brave and loyal
to the Kepublic, and the object of deep grudge to
the Chicos, for they were Basques of the towns.
Many of these provincial militiamen had come in
from the small pueblos in the neighbourhood, where
they ran the risk of being eaten up by " the bhoys ;"
and this was the only accession to the population
which redeemed the dismal, tradeless port from the
appearance of having been stricken by plague and
abandoned, and lent it at intervals an artificial
bustle.

I sickened of San Sebastian, with its angular
propriety ; its high, haughty houses, holding up
their heads in architectural primness; its wide
geometrical streets, where there is no shade in the
sun, no shelter in the wind. I began to hate it
for its rectilinearity, and dub it a priggish, stuck-

208 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

up, arrogant upstart among cities. What business
had it to be so straight and clean and airy ? Fain
would I shake the dust off my feet in testimony
against it ; but here was the trouble. How to get
away — that was a knotty problem. The railway
had been torn up for months, and the armour-
vested locomotives were rusting on the sidings at
Hendaye. The dirty hot little tug, the Alcorta,
that plies between the quay and Socoa, had left ;
and I grieved not, for the thought of a passage by
her was nausea. Three more torturing hours never
dragged their slow length along for me than those I
spent on board her coming over. Try and call up
to yourself three hours in a low-class cook-shop,
coated an inch thick with filth, and fitted over the
boiler of a penny steamer dancing a marine break-
down on the Thames, opposite the outlet of the
main-drainage pipes. That, intensified by strange
oaths and slop-basins, was the passage by the
Alcorta. But dreary, lonely San Sebastian was
not to be endured. Those poor fellows above,
accustomed to the wild freshness and freedom of
the sea, how they must mourn and repine ! By

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 209

some means or other I must get back to the world
that is not petrified. No diligences dare to affront
the dangers of the short journey to the Irun
railway-station, since three were stopped some
days before, the traces cut, the horses stolen, the
windowiS shattered, the woodwork burned, and the
charred wreck left on the roadside, a terror to those
who neglect to obey the commands of the Royalist
leaders.

"Royalist prigants, serr!" shouted a corpulent
German doctor, connected with mines in the neigh-
bourhood, who retained fierce recollections of
having been robbed of a "boney, capitalest of
boneys for crossing a mountain."

I told the doctor I was about to trust to luck,
and set out on foot if I could persuade nobody to
provide me with a vehicle.

" Serr, you air mad, foolish mad," said the doctor.
"Those horrid beebles, I tell you, are worse than
prigants ; if you hayff money, they will dake it ; if
you hayff not money, they will stroke your pack
fifty times, pecause you hayff it not. They wiU

VOL. II. 34

210 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

cut your ears off; they will cut your nose off; they
are plack tevils !"

I determined to trust to luck all the same. The
black devils might not be all out so black as they
were painted.

CHAPTER X.

Belcha's Brigands — Pale-Red Republicans — The Hyena —
More about WiQ San Margarita — Arrival of a Republican
Column — The Jaunt to Los Pasages— A Sweet Surprise
— " The Prettiest Giri in Spain " — A Madrid Acquaint-
ance—A Costly Pull — The Diligence at Last — Renteria
and its Defences — A Furious Ride^In France Again —
Unearthing Santa Cruz — The Outlaw in his Lair —
Interviewed at Last — The Truth about the Enderiaza
Massacre — A Death-Warrant — The Buried Gun —
Fanaticism of the Partisan-Priest.

There is fine scope for exaggeration in civil war ;
but he who wants the truth about the Montagues
does not consult the Capulets. There must be bad
characters amongst the Carlists, I reflected; and
when they are on outpost duty at a distance from
officers, and have taken a drop of aguardiente too
much, they may sometimes fail to appreciate the
nice distinction between meum and tuum. The
band of one Belcha, which was hovering in the

34—2

212 UOMANTIG SPAIN.

neighbourhood of San Sebastian, had a shady
reputation. It would be unjust to tempt these
simple-minded guerrilleros with the sight of a
Derringer, a hunting-watch, a tobacco-pouch, or a
reconnoitring-glass. All these articles are useful
on the hills. But even Belcha's looters had
some conscience; they drew the line at money
and wedding-rings. Besides, in cases of robbery
restitution was invariably made when the chiefs of
the revolt were appealed to in proper form, so that
on the whole the Carlists did not deserve the name
the German doctor had given them. Regular
soldiers do not always carry the Decalogue in their
kit; there was marauding in the Peninsula, not-
withstanding the iron discipline of the Iron Duke ;
the Summer Palace at Pekin was despoiled of its
treasures by gentlemen in epaulettes, and the
Franco-German War was not entirely unconnected
with stories about vanishing clocks. So I would
not be diverted from my purpose.

Before leaving San Sebastian I tried to obtain
permission for a second visit to the citadel-prison
in order to see the crew of the San Margarita, but

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 213

without avail Yet the officers in charge (all of
the regular army), and indeed the privates of the
local militia, were anything but truculent gaolers ;
they seemed willing to strain a point to oblige.
The Republicanism of the officers was of a very
pale red; but there was one hirsute Volunteer of
Liberty who acted as chief warder, and took a
delight in the occupation. He rattled his bunch of
keys as if their metallic dissonance were music,
grumbled at the urbanity of his superiors, and bore
himself altogether as if their politics were suspi-
cious ; and he, a pure of the pure, were there as
warder over that too. I nicknamed him the hyena
in my own mind; but I could not conceive him
laughing anywhere save in front of a garrote with
a Royalist neck in the rundel, and then his laugh
at best would be but the inward chuckle of a
Modoc.

Stuart took the hyena coolly, regarding him
as an amusing phenomenon; Travers surveyed
him as he would the portrait of the Nabob on
London hoardings, and pronounced him a whim-
sical illustration of Republican sauce. Stuart, I

214 UOMANTIG SPAIN.

should have stated, was anxious that it should be
known that he had caused the name of the whilom
Beerhound to be erased from the list of yachts,
when he chartered her as a merchant-steamer, re-
named her, and went into the contraband-of-war
line. It was contrary to his wish to compromise
any club. The confiscated cargo was the last he
had intended delivering, but he told me with a
smile that ten thousand stand of rifles had already
found their way to Vera. There was no legitimate
explanation of the capture of the hare by the
tortoise, although Travers was prepared to swear
he was in French waters — ^he thought he was, no
doubt — but he was just on the wrong side of the
limit. There was one comfort. On the way to
Bayonne a boat-load of men had been landed at
Socoa on leave, amongst them the Basque pilot,
who might otherwise have been helped to a short
shrift, and the dog's death from a yard-arm.

Carlist sympathizers endeavoured to procure me
& conveyance to Irun, but nobody cared to afifront
the loss of horses, for Belcha's band requisitioned
the cattle even of those identical in political feel-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 215

ing — the good of the cause was their plea — so at
last I was forced to say I should be glad of a trap
to Los Pasages, a few miles oflF, whence I might be
able to go forward on foot.

While I was waiting for the arrival of the vehicle,
and reading El Diario, the local daily paper — a
sheet the size of the palm of one's hand — until I
had the contents by rote, an incident occurred to
beguile suspense. The vanguard of the corps of
Sanchez Bregua, the commander of the Republican
Army of the North, rode into the city. They had
come from Zarauz, it seaside village four leagues
away — a section of mounted Chasseurs in a uniform
like to that of the old British Light Dragoons.
The troopers were in campaign order, with rifled
carbines slung over their backs, pugarees hanging
from their shakoes over their necks, and were dust-
covered and sunburnt, but soldierly. They were
horsed unevenly, and for light cavalry carried too
great a burden. But that is not a fault peculiar to
Spanish light cavalry. The average weight of the
British Hussar equipped is eighteen stone. A
quarter of an hour later the main body came in

216 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

sight, a long column of infantry marching by fours.
It was headed by a party of Civil Guards, acting as
guides. As the column reached the open space by
the quay, it deployed into line of companies, a move-
ment capitally executed. The men were bigger
and tougher than those of the French Line. Their
uniform was similar, except that they had wings to
their capotes instead of worsted epaulettes. All
wore mountain-shoes, but were not hampered with
tenting equipage on their knapsacks. Each batta-
lion was led by a staff-officer, who was splendidly,
or wretchedly, mounted, as his luck had served
him. The company officers carried alpenstocks,
and their orderlies had officers' cast foraging-caps
on top of their glazed shakoes. I noticed a batta-
lion of Cazadores, distinguished by the emblematic
brass horn of chase wrought on their collars, and
two companies of Engineers in uniforms entirely
blue, with towers on their collars. These latter
were robust, sinewy young fellows. After the
infantry came a company of the 2nd Regiment of
Mountain Artillery with four small pieces, each
drawn by a single mule, and behind them a

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 217

squadron of Mounted Chasseurs, and a long caval-
cade of pack-horses and mules.

After a deal of exploration a driver was dug up,
and after a deal of negotiation he consented to take
me to Los Pasages. Thanks to Kepublican vigil-
ance, but principally it may have been to the nature
of the ground, the road thither was clear. We
started at six o'clock in the evening, and after a
lively spin through sylvan scenery drew up in
less than an hour at the outskirts of a village on
the edge of a quiet pool, which we had bordered
for nigh a mile. No papers had been asked for,
on leaving, at the bridge over the Urumea, where a
post of volunteers kept guard by an antique and
stumpy bronze howitzer, mounted on a siege-car-
riage, and furnished with the dolphin-handles to be
seen on some of the last-century guns in the Tower
Arsenal. No papers were asked for either at the
Customs' station, some hundred yards farther on ;
but the Carabineros looked upon me as a lunatic,
and significantly sibilated. None were asked for
at the approach to the village. Scarcely had I
alighted when a fishwife ran out of a cabin and

218 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

addressed me in Basque. I could not understand
her, and motioned her away, when a winsome
lassie of some eighteen summers, tripping up
the road, came to my aid, and began speak-
ing in French as if she were anticipating my
arrival

" Monsieur wants a shallop to go to France V*

I was taken aback, but answered, " Yes."

" Monsieur will follow me."

And she gave me a meaning sign — half a wink,
half a monition. I followed, and examined my
volunteer guide more attentively. What a prize of
a girl ! Hair black as night, but with a glossy
blackness, was parted on her smooth forehead, and
retained behind, after the fashion of the country,
by a coloured snood, but two thick Gretchen plaits
escaped, and hung down to her waist, making one
wish that she had let her whole wealth of tresses
wander free. Eyes blue-black, fall by turns of soft
love and sparkling mischief; Creole complexion,
with blood rich as marriage-wine coursing in the
dimpled cheeks ; teeth white as the fox's ; lips of
clove-pink. And what a shape had she — ripe, firm,

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 219

and piquant ! Do you wonder that I followed her
with joy ? Do you wonder that I began weaving a
romance ? If you do, I pity you. Did I want a
shallop ? Of course I did ; but alas ! might I not
have echoed Burger's lament :

" The shallop of my peace is wrecked
On Beauty's shore.'*

She was a Carlist, I was sure of that. All the
comely maidens were Carlists. In the service of
the King the most successful crimps were " dashing
white sergeants " in garter and girdle. And she
took me for an interesting Carlist fugitive, and she
was determined to aid in my escape. How ravish-
ing ! She was a Flora Macdonald, and I — would
be a Pretender. I had fully wound myself up to
that as we entered Los Pasages.

Los Pasages consists of rows of houses built on
either side of a basin of the sea, entered by a
narrow chasm in the high rocky coast. Sailing by
it, one would never imagine that that cleft in the
shore-line was a ^ate to a natural harbour, locked
against every wind, and large enough to acconmio-

220 ROMANTIC JSFAIN.

date fleets, and whose waters are generally placid as
a lake. This secure haven, statlo benefida carinie^
is hidden away in the lap of the timbered hills,
imd is approached by a passage (from which its
name is borrowed) which can be traversed in fifteen
•minutes. The change from the boisterous Bay of
Biscay, with its " white horses capering without,
to this Venetian expanse of water in a Swiss valley,
dotted with chalets and cottages, must have the
effect of a magic transformation on the emo-
tional tar who has never been here before, and
whose chance it was to lie below when his ship
entered. The refuge is not unknown to English
seamen, for there is a stirring trade in minerals
with Cardiff, in more tranquil times. But now
Los Pasages is deserted from the bar down to the
uttermost point of its long river-like stretch inland,
except by the smacks and small boats of the native
fishers, a tiny tug, and a large steamer from Seville
which is lying by the wharf. There is no noise of
traffic ; the one narrow street echoes to our tramping
feet as I follow my charming cicerone, who has
started up for me like some good spirit of a fairy-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 221

tale. She leads me to an inn, bids me enter, and
flies in searcli of the owner of the shallop. The
landlord comes to greet me, and I recognise in him
an acquaintance — ^Maurice, a former waiter in the
Fonda de Paris, in Madrid. I questioned Maurice
as to my chances of getting across to Iran by land
that night ; but he assured me it was too late, and
really dangerous; that the road was infested by
gangs of desperadoes ; and that it would be safer for
me to travel, eT«i in the day-time, without money
or valuables. The owner of the shallop came, but
as he had the audacity to ask eighty francs for
transporting me round to Fontarabia, and as I had
found Maurice, I resolved to stop in Los Fasages
for the night

"You have only to cross the water to-morrow
morning,'' said Maurice, "and you are in Renteria,
where you will be sure to get a vehicle."

The backs of the houses all overlook the port,
and all are balconied and famished with flowered
terraces, from which one can fish, look at his reflec-
tion, or take a header into the water at pleasure.
A glorious nook for a reading-party's holiday, Los

222 MOM ANTIC SPAIN.

Pasages. Not if fair mysteries like my friend crop
up there; but where is she, by-the-way? She
does not re-appear; but Maurice will help me to
discover who and what she is.

" Maurice, are there any pretty girls here ?"

Maurice looks at me reproachfully.

" Senor, you have been conducted to my house
by one who is acknowledged to be the prettiest in
all Spain."

That night I dreamt of Eugenia, the baker's
daughter, the pride of Los Pasages, who was wait-
ing for a husband, but would have none but one
who helps Charles VII. to the throne. I recorded
that dream for the bachelors of Britain, and con-
jured them to make haste to propose for her — not
that the Carlist war was hurrying to a close ; but I
have remarked that girls inclined to be plump at
eighteen sometimes develop excessive embonpoint
about eight-and-twenty. On inquiry, I found a key
to the enigma which had filled me with sweet
excitement. Eugenia, who had been to the citadel-
prison to carry provisions to a friend in trouble,
had seen me speaking to Colonel Stuart, and was

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 223

anxious to serve me because of my supposed Carlist
tincture. My supposed Carlist tincture did not
prevent a lusty Basque boatman from charging five
francs next morning for the five minutes' pull across
the water to the road to Renteria, where I caught a
huge yellow diligence, which had ventured to leave
San Sebastian at last with the detained mails of a
week. The machine was horsed in the usual
manner^ — that is, with three mules and two nags —
but how different from usual was the way-bill!
With the exception of the driver and his aide, a
youngster who jumped down from the box every
hundred yards, and belaboured the beasts with a
wattle, there was not one passenger fit to carry
arms. We had a load of women and babies, a
decrepit patriarch, and two boys under the fighting
age. We halted at Renteria, harnessed a fresh
team to our conveniency, and sent on a messenger
to ascertain if the Carlists had been seen on the
road. Everybody in Renteria carried a musket.
All the approaches were defended by loopholed
works, roofed with turf, and a perfect fortress was
constructed in the centre of the town by a series

224 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

of communications which had been established
between the church and a block of houses in front
by caponnUrea. The church windows were built
up and loopholed, and a semicircular tambour,
banked with earth to protect it from artillery, was
thrown up against the houses in the middle of the
street, so as to enfilade it at either side in case of
attack. There were troops of the line in Kenteria,
but no artillerymen, nor was there artillery to be
served. Without artillery, however, the place, if

properly provisioned, could not be taken, if the
defending force was worth its salt.

The messenger having returned with word that
all was right, we went ahead at a fearful pace on a
very good road, lined with poplars, and running
through a neat park-like country. Over to the
right we could see the church-spire of Oyarzun,
and the smoke curling from the chimneys ; a little
farther on we passed the debris of a dnigence on
the wayside; the telegraph wires along the route
were broken down, and the poles taken away for
firewood; we dived under a railway bridge, but
never a Carlist saw we during the continuous brief

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 225

mad progress over the eight miles from Renteria to
the rise into Irun.

We clattered up to the railway- station at a hand-
gallop, the people rushing to the doors of the
houses, and beaming welcome from smiling coun-
tenances. There was a faint attempt to cheer us.
At the station a number of officials, a couple of
Carabineros, and a knot of idlers were gathered.
The driver descended with the gait of a conquering
hero, and turned his glances in the direction of a
cottage close by. An old man on crutches, a
blooming matron with rosary beads at her waist,
and a nut-brown maid with laughing eyes stood
under the porch, embowered in tamarisk and
laurel-rose. The driver strode over to them, crying
out triumphantly :

" El primero ! Lo ! I am the first."

"How valiant you are, Pedro!" said the nut-
brown maid, advancing to meet him.

" How lucky you are !" said the matron, with a
grave shake of the head.

" How rash you are !" mumbled the grandfather ;
" you were always so."

VOL. 11. 35

226 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

I envied that driver, for the nut-brown maid
kissed him, as she had the right to do, for she
was his affianced, and had not seen him for five
days.

From the Irun station to Hendaye was free from
danger. I walked down through a field of maize
to the Bidassoa, crossed by a ferry-boat to the other
side, where a post of the 49th of the French Line
were peacefully playing cards for buttons in the
shade of a chestnut, and a few minutes afterwards
was seated in front of a bottle of Dublin stout with
the countryman who forwarded my letters and
telegrams from over the border.

Naturally I had a desire to ascertain the where-
abouts of Santa Cruz. The man had almost grown
mythical with me. I had heard at San Sebastian
that ten thousand crowns had been oflfered for his
scalp at Tolosa, and the fondest yearning — the one
satisfying aspiration of the hyena — was to tear him
into shreds, chop him into sausage-meat, gouge out
his eyes, or roast him before a slow fire. Which
form of torment he would prefer, he had not quite
settled. A sort of intuitive faculty, which has

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 227

■ .. ■ ■ '

seldom led me astray, said to me that Santa Cruz
was somewhere near. I revolved the matter in my
mind, and fixed upon the man under whose roof he
was most likely to be concealed. I went to that
man and requested him bluntly to take me to the
outlawed priest— I wished very much to speak to
him.

He smiled and answered, " He is not here."

"The bird is flown," I said, "but the nest is
warm. He is not far away."

"True," he said, "come with me."

We drove some miles — I will not say how many
— and drew up at an enclosed villa, which may have
been in France, but was not of it. To be plain, it
was neutral territory, and my host, who knew me
thoroughly, disappeared for a few moments, and
said Santa Cruz was sleeping, but that he had
roused him, and that he would .be with us
presently.

I was sitting on a garden-seat in front of the
house where he was stopping, when he presented
himself on the threshold, bareheaded, and in his
shirt-sleeves. The outlaw priest was no slave to

35—2

228 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

the conventionalities of society. He did not adjust
his necktie before receiving visitors. I am not sure
that he wore a necktie at all. Let me try and draw
his portrait as he stood there in the doorway, in ques-
tioning attitude. A thick, burly man under thirty
years of age, some five feet five in height, with
broad sallow face, brawny bull-neck, and wide
square-set shoulders — a squat Hercules ; dark-
brown hair, cut short, lies close to his head ; he is
bearded, and has a dark- brown pointed moustache ;
shaggy brows overhang his small steel-gray eyes ;
his nose is coarse and devoid of character ; but his
jaws are massive, his lips firm, and his chin deter-
mined. He is dressed like the better class of peasant,
wears sandals, canvas trousers, a light brownish-
gray waistcoat, and has a large leathern belt, like a
horse's girth, round his waist. His expression is
severe, as of one immersed in thought; with an
occasional frown, as if the thought were disagree-
able. His brows knit, and a shadow passes over
his features when anything is mentioned that dis-
pleases him; but I was told when he smiled, the
smile was of the sweetest and most amiable. I

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 229

cannot say I saw him in smiling mood, but I saw
him frown, and never did anyone so truly translate
to me the figure of speech of " looking black." He
advanced with self-possession, returned my salute
without coldness or empressement, as if it were a
mere matter of form, and sat down beside me. We
had a long chat. Santa Cruz did not take much
active part in it, but listened as his host spoke,
punctuating what was said with nods of assent, and
now and again dropping a guttural sentence. His
maxim was that deeds were of more value than
words, and he adhered to it. His host, I may
interpose, was the most devoted of Carlists, and
had given largely of his means to aid the cause.
He had great faith in Santa Cruz, and told me in
his presence (but in French, which the Cura under-
stood but slightly) that while Santa Cruz was in the
northern provinces, the King had half-a-man in his
service, and that if he would now call on Cabrera he
would have a man and a half, for that Santa Cruz
would act with Cabrera.

" If Don Carlos does not consent to that," said
my host, " you will see that he will have to return

230 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

into France, and live in ignominy for the rest of
his days !"

This Cura, represented in the Madrid play-house
as half-drunk and dancing lewdly, was the most
abstemious and chastest of men, and neither smoked
nor drank wine. His fame went on increasing, as did
the number of his followers. He effected prodigies
with the means at his command. His friends in
France supplied him with two cannon, which were
smuggled across the border. He turned the foundry
at Vera into a munition factory ; employed women
to make uniforms for his men; and insisted that
the intervals between his expeditions should be
given up to drill. He was dreaded, respected,
admired by his band ; he was strong and hardy ;
faced perils and privations in* common with the
lowest, but used no weapon but his walking-stick.
The priest, the anointed of God, may not shed
blood. The affair of Enderlasa was the coping-
stone of his career. Various accounts were related
of that event ; it is only .fair to let Santa Cruz
himself speak. This is what he told me :

At three one morning he opened fire on the

ROMANTIC iSFAIN. 231

guard-house occupied by the Carabineros, at the
bridge over the Bidassoa, between Vera and
Irun. A white flag was hoisted on the guard-
house. He ordered the fire to cease, and ad-
vanced to negotiate the conditions of surrender.
The enemy, who had invited him to approach, by
the white flag, fired and wounded one of his men.
He issued directions to take the place, and spare
nobody. The place was taken, and nobody was
spared. Twenty-seven dead bodies littered the
Vera road that morning.

" Is it true that you pardoned two ?" I asked the
priest.

" No, ninguno ! Porqu^ ?" he answered with
astonishment. " Not one. Why should I ?"

The reason I had asked was that I had been told
that a couple of the Carabineros had plunged into
the Bidassoa and tried to swim to the other side ;
but the Cura, on his own avowal, with Rhadaman-
thine justice had commanded them to be shot as
they breasted the current, and they were shot. He
was no believer in half-measures.

A lady partisan of his, who had dined with him

232 ROMANTIC SPAIN. '

the day before, told me he never breathed a syllable
of the attack he meditated, to her or any of
his band. An English gentleman, who visited
the ground while the corpses were still upon it,
assured me that the sight was horrifying, and, such
was the panic in Inm, that he verily believed
Santa Cruz might have taken the town the same
afternoon, had he appeared before it with four
men.

To pursue the story of the redoubtable Cura.
The bruit of his exploits had gone abroad, and
among certain Carlists it seemed to be the opinion,
as one of them remarked to me, that '' R a fait de
grandes choses, mais de graoules betises aussi!' He
was making war altogether too seriously for their
tastes. Antonio Lizarraga was appointed Com-
mandant-General of GuipAzcoa about that period,
and ordered Santa Cruz to report to him. Santa
Cruz, who was in the field before him, and had five
times as many men under his control, paid no heed
to his orders. Lizarraga then sent him a death-
warrant, which is so curious a document that I
make no apology for appending it in full :

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 233

I ' ll ■ — • —

Translation.

(A. seal on which is inscribed " Royal Army of the North,
General Coramand of Guipiizcoa.")

" The sixteenth day of the present month, I gave orders
to all the forces under my command, that they should pro-
ceed to capture you, and that immediately after you had
received the benefit of clergy they should execute you.

" This sentence I pronounced on account of your insub-
ordination towards me, you having disobeyed me several
times, and having taken no notice of the repeated commands
I sent you to present yourself before me to declare what
you had to say in your own defence in the inquiry insti-
tuted against you by my directions.

"For the last time I ask of you to present yourself
to me, the instant this communication is received ; in de-
fault of which I notify to you that every means will be used
to effect your arrest ; that your disobedience and the un-
qualifiable acts laid to your charge will be published in all
the newspapers ; and that the condign punishment they
deserve will be duly exacted.

" God grant you many years.

" The Brigadier-General Commanding.

(Signed) " Antonio Lizabbaga.

" Campo Del Honor, 28th of March, 1873.
" Senor Don Manuel Santa Cruz."

"Note. — Have the goodness to acknowledge this, my
communication ."

This missive was received by Santa Cruz, but he
never acknowledged it. His host permitted me to
read and copy the original.

234 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

— — I — — I

" Is not that arbitrary f he said to me in English;
** very much like what you call Jedburgh justice ;
hanging a man first and trying him afterwards.
Lizarraga says, * This sentence I pronounced * — all
is finished apparently there ; and yet he cites the
man whom he has ordered to be immediately
executed to appear before him to declare what he
has to say !"

Another phrase in this death-warrant, which es-
caped the host, impressed me with its naavet^ :

" God grant you many years.*'

But Lizarraga, in this politeness of custom, meant
no more, it is to be presumed, than did the Irish
hangman who expostulated with his client in the
condemned cell :

" Long life to ye, Mr. Hinery ! and make haste,
the people are getting onpatient"

Santa Cruz bit his way out of the toils, however,
but not so his band. They were surrounded at
Vera, caught, with a few exceptions, disarmed,
assembled and addressed in Spanish by the Marquis
de Valdespina, whose remarks were translated to
them into Basque by the Cura of Olio. They cried

MOMANTIG SPAIN. 235

"Viva el Rey!" Their arms were subsequently
restored to them, and the men were distributed
among other battalions. But they still regret their
old leader, and Santa Cruz is popular by the firesides
of the mountaineers of Guiplizcoa. One of his
mountain guns fell into the hands of Lizarraga,
but the other was buried in some spot only known
to himself and a few trusted companions.

During my interview I made it my business to
study the priest attentively, and this is what I
honestly thought of him. He was a fanatic, a
sullen self-willed man with but one idea — the
success of the cause ; and but one ambition — that it
should be said of him that it was he, Santa Cruz,
who put Don Carlos on the throne of his ancestors.
The globe for him was bounded by the P3nrenees
and the sea ; he had but one antipathy after the
heretics (all who did not worship God as he did)
and the Liberals, and that was Lizarraga. I con-
sidered it a mistake that Lizarraga was not the
Cura of Hemialde, and Santa Cruz the Com-
mandant-General of Guiptizcoa. The priest had a
natural military instinct — I would almost go so far

236 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

as to say a spice of military genius ; and had he had a
knowledge of the profession of arms would probably
have developed into a great general of the Cossack
type. His hatred to Lizarraga led him into little-
ness and injustice. He chuckled at the idea of
Lizarraga not being able to find the buried gun, as
if that were any great triumph over him; and he
sneered at the idea of Lizarraga, who was not able
to take Oyarzun, meditating an attempt on Tolosa.
I could thoroughly understand that the Carlist
priest bore malice to the officer who supplanted
him and condemned him to death. But what
Lizarraga did was done in compliance with the
King's will At the same time there could be no
doubt that Santa Cruz was treated with scant
courtesy after all he had accomplished, and had a
right to feel himself ill-used, and the victim of
jealous rivalry. He said that he was prepared, any
day the King permitted him, to traverse the four
provinces, and hold his enemies in terrorem with
five hundred men. And he was the very worthy
to do it. He complained bitterly that three of his

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 237

followers had been shot by Lizarraga. One story
relates that they stole mto GuipAzcoa to levy black-
mail, another that they merely went to dig up
some money that was interred when the legion was
disbanded. In any case they appeared in arms in
a forbidden district, and incurred the capital
penalty. Santa Cruz went to Bordeaux to beg for
their lives at the feet of Dona Margarita. She
received him most graciously, and promised to
send a special courier to her husband to intercede
in their behalf. Before the King's reprieve could
possibly have arrived the three were executed.

As we were about to leave, a colleague who was
with me asked the Cura if he would permit him to
visit his camp, if it came to pass that he took
up arms again in Spain.

"We shall see," said Santa Cruz ; " wait till I am
there."

My own conviction is that the priest held corre-
spondents in abhorrence, and that his first impulse
would have been to tie a zealous one up to a tree,
and have thirty-nine blows given him with a stick.

238 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Perhaps I did him wrong, but if ever he did take
up arms again, it was my firm intention to be south
when he was north, for he was about the last
person in creation to whose tender mercies I
should care to entrust myself.

CHAPTER XI.

An Audible Battle— " Great Cry and Little Wool"— A
Carlist Court Newsman — A Keligious War — The
Siege of Oyarzun— Madrid Kebels— "The Money of
Judas" — A Manifesto from Don Carlos — An Ideal
Monarch— Necessity of Social and Political Reconstruc-
tion Proclaimed— A Free Church — A Broad Policy —
The King for the People— The Theological Question —
Austerity in Alava— Clerical and Non-Clerical Carlists
— Disavowal of Bigotry— A Republican Editor on^ the
Carlist Creed — Character of the Basques— Drill and
Discipline — Guerilleros verms Regulars.

When a man's ofiBce is to chronicle war and he is
within hearing of the echoes of battle, but cannot
reach a spot from which the scene of action might
be commanded, it is annoying in the extreme.
Such was my strait on the 21st of August, a few
days after my arrival from San Sebastian. I was
at Hendaye, the border-town of France. From the
Spanish frontier the report of heavy firing was
audible for hours, apparently coming from a point

240 ROMANTIC SPAIN. *

between Oyarzun and Renteria. First one could
distinguish the faint spatter of musketry, and after-
wards the undeniable muffled roar of artillery.
Then came a succession of sustained rolls as of
volley-firing. About noon the action must have
been at its height. The distant din was subse-
quently to be caught only at long intervals, as if
changes of position were in course of being eflfected;
but at three o'clock it regained force, and raged
with fury until five, when it suddenly died away.

I was burning with impatience, and made several
unavailing attempts to cross the Bidassoa. The
ferryman, acting under instructions from the gen-
darmes, refused to take passengers. By the evening
train a delegate from the Paris Society for the
Succour of the Wounded arrived from Bayonne
with a box of medicine and surgical appliances.
He, too, was unable to pass into Spain. Meantime,
rumour ran riot. Stories were current that there
had been fearful losses.

"At eleven o'clock men were falling like flies,"
said one eye-witness, who succeeded in running
away from the field before he fell

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 241

Not a single medical man would leave France in
response to the call of the Paris delegate for volun-
teers to accompany him. Were they all Republi-
cans ? Did they fear that Belcha might take a
fancy to their probes and forcipes ? Or did they
look upon the big battles and tremendous lists of
casualties in this most uncivil of civil wars as illus-
trations of a great cry and little wool? If the
latter was their notion, they were right. Three
days after this serious engagement, I learned the
particulars of what had taken place. General
Loma, a brigadier under Sanchez Bregua, with a
column of 1,500 men, came out from San Sebastian
to cover a working-party while they were en-
deavouring to throw up a redoubt for his gims on
an eminence between Irun and Oyarzun, so as to
put an end to the tussle over the possession of the
latter hamlet, which was a .perpetual bone of con-
tention. The Carlists fired upon him from behind
the rocks in a gorge to which he had committed
himself, but were outnumbered. Word was sent to
the cabecilla, Martinez, at Lesaca, and he arrived
with reinforcements at the double, and encompassed
VOL. II. 36

242 EOMANTIG SPAIN.

Loma with such a cloud of sulphurous smoke that
the Republicans had to fall back upon San Sebas-
tian. The casualties in this Homeric combat were
not appalling; there was more gunpowder than
blood expended. The losses on the Bepublican
side were one killed and fifteen wounded. On the
Carlist side they were less, for the Carlists kept under
cover of the fern and furze. But then it must be
considered that the firing only lasted nine hours !

Don Carlos was not slow in caUing the printing-
press to his aid. One of his first acts after his
entry into his dominions was to start an official
gazette, El Cuartel Real, the first number of which
is before me as I write. I have seen queer papers
in my travels, from the Bugler, a regimental record
brought out by the 68th Light Infantry in Burmah,
to the Fiji Times, and the Epitaph, the leading
organ of Tombstone City, in the territory of
Arizona; but this assuredly was the queerest. It
was published by Crist6bal Perez, on the summit
of Pena de la Plata, a Pjrrenean peak. There might
be less acceptable reading than a risv/mi of its con-
tents.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 243

El Cimrtel Real does not impose by its mag-
nitude. It is about one-eighth the size of a London
daily journal ; but if it is not great by quantity it
is by quality. Over the three columns of the opening
page figure the three watchwords of the Royal
cause, " God, Country, King." The paragraph which
has the post of honour is headed " Oficial," and has
in it a flavour of the Court NewsToan, Here it is
as it appears in the original, boldly imprinted in
black t3rpe :

"S. M. el Rey (q.D.g.) contin6a sin novedad al
f rente de su leal y valiente eje'rcito.

" S. M. la Reina y sus augustos hijos contintian
tambien sin novedad en su importante salud."

As it is not vouchsafed to everyone to understand
Castilian, I may as well give a rough translation,
which read herewith :

" His Majesty the King (whom God guard) con-
tinues without change at the front of his loyal and
valiant army.

" Her Majesty the Queen and her august children
also continue without alteration in their precious
health."

36—2

2U BO MAN TIG SPAIN,

Then El Cuartel Real appends what takes the
place of its leading article — a reproduction of a
letter from Don Carlos to his "august brother,"
Don Alfonso, setting forth the principles on which
he appeals for Spanish support. This document
is so important that I must return to it anon.
Then comes a circular from the " Keal Jimta Guber-
nativa del Keino de Navarra," in session at Vera.
The purport of this, epitomized in a sentence, is to
raise money. Next, we arrive at the "Seccion
Oficial," the most important paragraph of which an-
nounces that the Chief, Merendon, has inaugurated
a Carlist movement in Toledo, with a well-armed
force, exceeding 280 men — to wit, 150 horsemen
and 130 infantry — and that he hopes shortly to
gather numerous recruits. The " Seccion de Noti-
cias " makes up the body of the paper, and is richer
in information. We are told that the most ex-
cellent and illustrious Bishop of Urgel, accom-
panied by several sacerdotal and other dignitaries,
arrived in the town of Urdaniz, at half-past seven on
the previous Wednesday evening. His Lordship
rested a night in the house of the Vicar, and left

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 245

the following morning, escorted by his friend and
host, the said Vicar, Brigadier Gamundi, and
Colonel D. Fermin Irribarren, veterans of the
Carlist army, for Elisondo. From that the prelate
was reported to have started to headquarters, " to
salute the King of Spain, august representative of
the Christian monarchy, which is the only plank
of safety in the shipwreck of the country."

The Cvxirtel Real warmly congratulates the
Bishop on the fact of his having come to the con-
viction that " the present war is a religious war, and
on that account eminently social" — (social in
Spanish must have some peculiar shade of meaning
imknown to strangers, for otherwise there is no
sequence here) — and proceeds to speak with an
eloquence that recalls that wretched Republican,
Castelar, of the standard of faith in which resides
Spanish honour and — here come two words that
puzzle me, la hidalguia y la caballerosidad ; but
I suppose they mean nobility and chivalry, and
everything of that kind. The next notice in the
royal gazette is purely military, and makes known
that the siege of the important town of Oyarzun

246 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

has begun. "On the 20th the batteries opened
fire, and, according to report, the enemy had one
hundred men hors de combat" The batteries I
There is a touch of genius in that phrase. Beading
it, one would imagine that the Royalists had a royal
regiment of artillery, and that eight pieces of
cannon, at the very least, played upon the unfor-
tunate Oyarzun. A jennet with a 4-pounder at its
heels would be a more correct representation of the
strength of the CarKst ordnance.

To resume the story of the siege of Oyarzun.
"On the 21st," adds El Cuartel Heal, "there was
talk of a capitulation, and it is possible that the
place has surrendered at this hour." The para-
graph that succeeds it is a gem: "Of the 1,010
armed rebels in Eibar (Guiptizcoa), 210 betook
themselves to San Sebastian, when they suspected
the approach of the Royal forces, and the 800 re-
maining gave up to General Lizarraga their rifles,
all of the Remington system." There is no quibble
about the latter statement. The Carlists had
easier ways of procuring arms than by running
cargoes from England. But is there not something

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 247

inimitable in the epithet " rebels *' ? There can be no
question but that everyone is a rebel in romantic
Spain — in the opinion of somebody else. The only
question is, Who are the constituted authorities?
Until that is settled the editor of El Cuartel Real
is perfectly justified in treating the volunteers of
liberty, in those districts where Charles VII. vir-
tually reigns, as armed rebels. Although this town
of Eibar had frequently risen up against the
legitimate authorities named by his Majesty, it is
pleasant to learn that General Lizarraga did not
impose the slightest chastisement on the popula-
tion, thus giving a lesson of forbearance to the
" factious generals." Next we are informed that on
the day the Royal forces entered Vergara, the
ignominious monument erected by the Liberals in
record of the greatest of treasons (the treaty
between the treacherous Maroto and Espartero in
1839) was destroyed amidst enthusiasm, and the
parchment in the municipal archives commemo-
rating its erection was taken out and burned in the
public square. I may add (but this I had from
private sources) that the coin dug up from under

248 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

■ — *P^ ■ ■ ■■■■■ ■ !■■■■■■■ m ■■!» ^^^^^■^^1^— I ,

the monument was cast to the wmd as the money
of Judas. Navarre, continues El Cuartd Meal^ is
dominated by our valiant soldiers under the skilful
direction of his Majesty; Lizarraga has occupied
in a few days Mondragon, Eibar, Plasencia, Azpeitia,
Vergara, and other important places in Guiptizcoa,
and obtained "considerable booty of war;" the
standard of legitimacy is waving triumphantly in
Biscay, and Bilbao is blockaded. There the tale of
victory ends ; but we arrive at matters not less
gratifying in another sense. The distinguished
engineer, Don Mariano Lana y Sarto, has been
appointed to look after the repair of the bridges
destroyed by Nouvilas. Don Matias Schaso Gomez,
a member of the press militant, has been promoted
to be a commandant for his valour at Astigarraga,
and is nominated for the laurelled cross of San
Fernando; and the illustrious doctor, Seiior Don
Alejandro Kodriguez Hidalgo, has been named
chief of the sanitary staff, and entrusted with the
estabUshment of military hospitals.

The last paragraph in this curious little gazette,
printed up amid the clouds on the summit of the

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 249

Silver Hill, states that the Royal quarters were at
Abarzuzu on the 17th instant, and that Estella,
close by, was stubbornly resisting, but would soon
be in the power of the Royalists. A column which
had attempted to reheve the garrison was energeti-
cally driven back towards Lerin by two battalions
commanded by his Majesty in person. But by the
time El Cuartel Real came under my notice Estella
had fallen, and the Carlists had put to their credit
a genuine success.

As the question of Carlism is still one of pro-
minent interest — is, indeed, what the French term
an " actuality," and may crop up again any day, the
letter of the claimant to the throne to Don Alfonso
(alluded to some sentences above) is worth translat-
ing. It is the authoritative exposition of the aims
of the would-be monarch, and of the line of policy
he intended to pursue should he ever take up his
residence in that coveted palace at Madrid. Its
date is August 23rd, 1873, and the contents are these :

" My dear Brother,

" Spain has already had opportunities en^^iw**

to ascertain my ideas and sentiments ;

250 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

King in various periodicals and newspapers. Yield-
ing, nevertheless, to a general and anriously ex-
pressed desire which has reached me from all parts
of the Peninsula, I write this letter, in which I
address myself, not merely to the brother of nay
heart, but without exception to all Spaniards, for
they are my brothers as well.

" I cannot, my dear Alfonso, present myself to
Spain as a Pretender to the Crown. It is my duty
to believe, and I do believe, that the Crown of
Spain is already placed on my forehead by the
consecrated hand of the law. With this right I
was bom, a right which has grown, now that the
fitting time has come, to a sacred obligation ; but I
desire that the right shall be confirmed to me by
the love of my people. My business, henceforth, is
to devote to the service of that people all my
thoughts and powers — to die for it, or save it.

" To say that I aspire to be King of Spain, and
not of a party, is superfluous, for what man worthy
to be a king would be satisfied to reign over a
party ? In such a case he would degrade himself
in his own person, descending from the high and

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 251

serene region where majesty dwells, and which is
beyond the reach of mean and pitiful triflings.

" I ought not to be, and I do not desire to be,
King, except of all Spaniards ; I exclude nobody,
not even those who call themselves my enemies,
for a king can have no enemies. I appeal affec-
tionately to all, in the name of the country, even to
those who appear the most estranged ; and if I do
not need the help of all to arrive at the throne of
my ancestors, I do perhaps need their help to es-
tablish on solid and immovable bases the govern-
ment of the State, and to give prosperous peace
and true liberty to my beloved Spain.

" When I reflect how weighty a task it is to com-
pass those great ends, the magnitude of the under-
taking almost oppresses me with fear. True, I am
filled with the most fervent desire to begin, and the
resolute will to carry out, the enterprise; but I
cannot hide from myself that the difficulties are
immense, and that they can only be overcome by
the co-operation of the men of notability, the most
impartial and honest in the kingdom ; and, above
all, by the co-operation of the kingdom itself.

252 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

gathered together in the Cartes which would truly
represent the living forces and Conservative ele-
ments of Spain.

"I am prepared with such Cortes to give to
Spain, as I said in my letter to the Sovereigns of
Europe, a fundamental code which would prove, I
trust, definitive and SpanisL

"Side by side, my brother, we have studied
modern history, meditating over those great catas-
trophes which are at once lessons to rulers and
a warning to the people. Side by side, we have
also thought over and formed a common judgment
that every century ought to have, and actually has,
its legitimate necessities and natural aspirations.

" Old Spain stood in need of great reforms ; in
modem Spain we have had simply immense con-
vulsions of overthrow. Much has been destroyed ;
little has been reformed. Ancient institutions,
some of which cannot be revivified, have died out.
An attempt has been made to create others in their
place, but scarcely had they seen the light when
symptoms of death set in. So much has been
done, and no more. I have before me a stupendous

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 253

labour, an immense social and political reconstruc-
tion. I have to set myself to building up, in this
desolated country, on bases whose solidity is guar-
anteed by experience, a grand edifice, where every
legitimate interest and every reasonable personality
can find admittance.

"I do not deceive myself, my brother, when I
feel confident that Spain is hungry and thirsty for
justice; that she feels the urgent and imperious
necessity of a government, worthy and energetic,
severe and respected; and that she anxiously
wishes that the law to which we all, great and
small, should be subject, should reign with undis-
puted sway.

"Spain is not willing that outrage or offence
should be offered to the faith of her fathers,
believing that in Catholicity reposes the truth she
understands, and that to accomplish to the full its
divine mission, the Church must be free.

"Whilst knowing and not forgetting that the
nineteenth century is not the sixteenth, Spain is
resolved to preserve from every danger Catholic
unity — the symbol of our glories, the essence of our

264 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

laws, and the holy bond of concord between all
Spaniards.

" The Spanish people, taught by a painful experi-
ence, desires the truth in everything, and that the
Bang should be a king in reality, and not the
shadow of a king ; and that its Cortes should be the
regularly appointed and peaceful gathering of the
independent and incorruptible elect of the con-
stituencies, and not tumultuous and barren assem-
blies of office-holders and office-seekers, servile
majorities and seditious minorities.

" The Spanish people is favourable to decentrali-
sation, and will always be so ; and you know well,
my dear Alfonso, that should my desires be carried
out, instead of assimilating the Basque provinces to
the rest of Spain, which the revolutionary spirit
would fain bring to pass, the rest of Spain would be
lifted to an equality in internal administration with
those fortunate and noble provinces.

" It is my wish that the municipality should retain
its separate existence, and the provinces Ukewise,
proper precautions being employed to prevent pos-
sible abuses.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 256

" My cherished thought as constant desire is to
give to Spain exactly that which she does not
possess, in spite of the lying clamour of some
deluded people — that liberty which she only knows
by name; liberty, which is the daughter of the
gospel, not liberalism, which is the son of disbelief
{de la proteata) ; liberty, in fine, which is the
supremacy of the laws when the laws are just —
that is to say, conformable to the designs of nature
and of God.

"We, descendants of kings, admit that the
people should not exist for the King so much as
the King for the people ; that a king should be the
most honoured man amongst his people, as he is

the first caballero ; and that a king for the future
should glory in the special title of * father of the
poor ' and ' guardian of the weak.'

" At present, my dear brother, there is a very for-
midable question in our Spain, that of the finances.
The Spanish debt is something frightful to think
of; the productive forces of the country are not
enough to cover it — bankruptcy is imminent. I do
not know if I can save Spain from that calamity ;

256 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

but, if it be possible, a legitimate sovereign alone
can do it. An unshakable will works wonders. If
the country is poor, let all live frugally, even to the
ministers; nay, even to the King himself, who
should be one in feeling with Don Enrique El
Doliente. If the King is foremost in setting the
example, aU wiU be easy. Let ministries be sup-
pressed, provincial governments be reduced, offices
be diminished, and the administration economized
at the same time that agriculture is encouraged,
industry protected, and commerce assisted. To put
the finances and credit of Spain on a proper footing
is a Titanic enterprise to which all governments
and peoples should lend aid."

Here foUow a repudiation of free trade as
applied to Spain, and a few weU-tumed periods
dealing in the usual Spanish manner with the
duties of the ruler, laying down, among other
axioms, that " virtue and knowledge are the
chiefest nobility," and that the person of the
mendicant should be as sacred as that of the
patrician.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 257

At the close there is a very sensible sentence,
affirming that one Christian monarch in Spain
would be better than three hundred petty kings
disputing in a noisy assembly. "The chiefs of
parties," continues the letter, " naturally yearn for
honours or riches or place ; but what in the world
can a Christian king desire but the good of his
people ? What could he want to be happy but the
love of his people ?"

The letter winds up by the affirmation that Don
Carlos is faithful to the good traditions of the old
and glorious Spanish monarchy, and that he be-
lieved he would be found to act also as " a man of

«

the present age." The last sentence is a prayer to
his brother, "who had the enviable privilege of
serving in the Papal army," to ask their spiritual
king at Rome for his apostolic benediction for Spain
and the writer.

If this document was written proprid manu by
Don Carlos, he must be endowed with higher intel-
lectual faculties than most Kings or Pretenders
possess. It is undeniably clever, and is more
progressive than one would expect from an

VOL. II. 37

268 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

upholder of the doctrine of Divine right. It may
be, as Tennyson sings, that the thoughts of men
(even when they are Bourbons) are widened with
the process of the suns. But I protest that there
is such a masterly mistiness in it here and there,
such a careful elusion of rocks and ruggednesses
political, and such a fine wind-beating flourish of
the banner of glittering generality, that I think
there were more heads than one engaged in the
concoction of the manifesto. I have studiously
refrained from the introduction of the religious
topic as far as I could in this work — ^it is outside
my sphere ; but I should be unjust to the reader
did I not give him some information (not from the
controversial standpoint) on a subject which will
obtrude itself in any discussion on the merits of the
conflict which has twice distracted Spain and may
divide the country again. It is unfortunately in-
disputable that religion was poked iuto the quarrel
The struggle was described in El Cuartel Real as a
religious war; the theological allegiance of the
partisans of Don Carlos was appealed to, and their
ardent attachment to the Papacy was worked upon.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 259

as in the concluding sentence of the proclamation
of Don Carlos. In those portions of the north
where Carlism was all-powerful, the authorities
were emphatically showing that those who served
under them must be practical Roman Catholics
nolentea volentes. An austere placard, signed by
Barona, member of the Carlist war committee, was
posted in the province of Alava, and ordained
among other articles : Firstly, that the town coun-
cillors of every municipality should assist in a body
at High Mass; secondly, that the mayors should
interdict, under the most severe penalties, all games
and pubKc diversions, and the opening of all pubUc
establishments during Divine service ; and thirdly,
that all blasphemers, and all who worked on a
holiday, who gave scandal, or who danced in-
decently, should be scourged. The. first of these
articles is lawful enough in a country which is
almost exclusively Roman Catholic. In England
nothing can be said against it, seeing that British
soldiers of all denominations are compelled to attend
Church parade, and the prisoners in all gaols have
to register themselves as belonging to some religion,

37—2

260 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

There is just this theoretical objection, however —
the article implies that municipal honours are to be
limited to members of one creed, which is intolerant.
That which underlay the antipathy of numeious
Conservatives outside Spain to the Royalist cause,
was the belief entertained that the success of Don
Carlos would lead to the re-assertion of clerical pre-
ponderance, would destroy liberty of conscience as
understood in most European nations, and would
set up a political priesthood. The manifesto of
Don Carlos does not deal with those points in the
full and categorical manner desirable. I was told
there were two parties in the Carlist camp, the
clerical and — ^for want of a better name, let it be
called — the non-clericaL The former, the Basques,
and those who gave Carlism its great primary im-
pulsion, were as zealously Roman Catholic as ever
Manuel Santa Cruz was. They looked forward to
the re-acquisition of the ecclesiastical domains and
the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in all
its ancient supremacy of wealth and power. The
non-clericals knew that the Basques, even assuming
them all to be Cariists, were but 660,000 in number,

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 261

a small minority of the population, and that the
existence of a State unduly influenced by a Church
— ^things temporal controlled by personages bound
to things spiritual — was antagonistic to the feelings
of the majority of Spaniards.

Having met a nobleman distinguished for his
services to Carlism, I put it to him bluntly,
" Would Don Carlos on the throne mean a relapse
into religious bigotry ?"

He answered me with candour, " I am a Roman
Catholic, and if I thought so I should be the last
man to lend a penny to his cause."

"But," I urged, " that is the general impression in
England, where he is trying to negotiate a loan,
and if it is left uncorrected it does him injury.
Why does he not repel the impeachment ?"

"The truth is," he said, "Don Carlos has made
too many public explanations."

I returned to the charge, challenging my ac-
quaintance to deny that many of the supporters of
Don Carlos would fall away if they had not the
thorough belief that his cause was as much identi-
fied with the triumph of Roman CathoUcism as

262 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

with that of legitimacy. His reply was not a denial,
but an admission of the fact, with the addition that
in war one must not be too particular as to the
means of enlisting aid, and stunulating the enthu-
siasm of supporters, which is an argument as true
as it is old. Don Carlos, m his manifesto, goes on
the assumption that the Bepublicans are all atheists,
or something very like it. It is only fair to let the
Bepublicans speak for themselves, and explain what
is the Kepublican estimate of the Carlist religion.
The San Sebastian newspaper. El Diarioy may be
assumed to be a fair exponent of the sentiments of
the anti-Carlists, and thus emphatically, and not
without a spice of antithesis, it delivers itself:
"The religion which has the commandment,

* Thou shalt not kill,' forbids murder.

"The religion which has the commandment,

* Thou shalt not steal,' forbids robbery.

"The religion which is peace, obedience, and
love, is no friend of war, rebellion, and massacre.

" Kesigned and joyous in other days, its martyrs
went to death in the amphitheatre of Rome, and
on the plains of Saragossa, pardon in their souls

ROMANTIC SPAIK 263

and prayer on their lips; to-day pardon is ex-
changed for wrath, and prayer for reproach. In-
stead of the martyr's pahn, we have the Berdan
breech-loader and the flash of petroleum.

"Anointed of the Lord, ministers of Him who
died invoking blessings on His enemies, kindle the
fires of fratricidal strife, which they call a sacred war^
and lead on and inflame their dupes by the pretence
that the gates of Paradise are to be forced open by
gunshot.

"Meanwhile the bishops are silent, Kome is
dumb, the moral law sleeps, the canon law is for-
gotten ; and these pastors, transforming their flocks
into packs of wolves, scour the plains, blessing
murder and sanctifying conflagration,

" 'King by Divine right,' they cry, like the legists
of the Lower Empire ; * Die or believe,* like the
sons of the Prophet. Apostles without knowing it,
they seek to achieve the triumph of a Pagan prin-
ciple by a Saracenic process.

" They say that reUgion is lost, because it is shorn
of the honour and power their kings gave it ; that
the portals of heaven are barred, because they have

264 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

forfeited their tithes and first-fruits, their rents and
fat benefices ; and they try to convince us by dis-
charges of musketry that our whole future life
depends, on the one h&nd, on a question of vanity,
and on the other, on a question of stomach.

" Holy Apostles, disciples of Him who had not
a stone whereon to lay His head, you who con-
quered the earth with no arms but those of word
and example, oh! would you not say if you re-
turned here below, * Those who preach by the voice
of platoons ; those who evangelize from the mouth
of cannon ; those are not, cannot be, our disciples
and successors, for they are not fishers of souls, but
fishers of snug posts under government 7

" And you, glorious martyrs of the Roman circus
and Saragossan fields, oh ! would you not say, * No,
this Christianity, which goes about sowing battle^
desolation, tears, and blood wherever it passes, is
not ours — no, this Christianity at the bottom of
the slaughter of Enderlasa, of the hecatomb of
Cirauqui, of the sack of Igualada, and of a hundred
other cruelties, is not ours. Our religion says
" Kill not," and this murders ; says " Steal not," and

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 265

rtiis robs. No, this is not the Christian, but the
Carlist religion ' ?"

That is a good -specimen of the rhetorical
school of writing popular in Spanish newspapers;
but all that is written is not gospel. Frotn per-
sonal observation it was evident to me that these
Kepublicans of the Spanish towns of the north were
not so scrupulous in the outward observances of
religion as the tone of this indignant Christian
leading article would convey; neither were the
Carlists the " packs of wolves " they were repre-
sented to be.

Let us see how this inflamed sense of so-called
religion affected the rank and file among the
adherents of Don Carlos.

Indubitably the Koyalists, with a very few excep-
tions, were more than moral — they were sincerely
pious, and esteemed it a grateful incense to the Most
High to kill as many of their Republican country-
men as they could without over-exertion. They
bowed their heads and repeated prayers with the
chaplains who accompanied them ; as the echoes
of the Angelus bell were heard they were marched

266 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

to Divine worship every evening, when they were
in the neighbourhood of a church; they were
palpably impressed with deep devotional con-
victions, and yet they were not sour-faced like
the grim Covenanters of Argyle, nor puritanically
uncharitable like the stem propounders of the
Blue Laws of Connecticut. Their beads returned to
the pocket or the prayers finished, they laughed
and jested, were frolicsome as schoolboys in their
playhour, and the slightest tinkle of music set
them dancing. Hospitable and fanatic, faithful
and ignorant, temperate and dirty — such are some
prominent traits in the character of the brave
Basque people of the rural districts who wished to
govern Spain, but who were Spaniards neither by
race, nor language, nor temperament, nor feeling.

Taken all in all, they are a right manly breed,
and, with education to correct inevitable preju-
dices, would be capable of great things. But before
they could become efficient soldiers, they needed a
severe course of training. In the flat country,
south of the Ebro, it would be cruel and foolish to
oppose them to regular troops. As guerrilleros.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 267

they were without parallel, being content with short
commons, and ever ready to play ball after the
longest march ; but they were ignorant of soldier-
ing as technically understood. In the copses and
crags of their own provinces they were invincible,
and could carry on the struggle while there was a
cartridge or an onion left in the land. But where
the tactics of the " contrabandista '* no longer
availed, where surprises were impossible and myste-
rious disappearances not easy, and where the bulk
of the people were not willing spies, the aspect of
aflTairs was different. They were mediocre marks-
men with long-range arms of precision, and had
no proper conception of allowances for wind or sun.
Target-practice was not encouraged, and yet it was
not through thrift of ammunition, for the waste of
powder in every skirmish was extravagant, and one
could not rest a night in a village held by the
Carlists without being disturbed by frequent care-
less discharges.

With the bayonet, as far as I could learn, they
were impetuous in the onset, and stubborn, especi-
ally the Navarrese. But bayonet-charges cannot^

268 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

carry stone walls or mud-banks ; and in the face of
the ahnost incessant peppering of breech-loaders,
rushes of the kind have become slightly old-
fashioned. To the Carlists, in any case, was due the
credit of readiness to have recourse to the steel
whenever there was a rift for hand-to-hand fight-
ing. Their military education unfortunately con-
fined itself to the rudiments of the drill-book.
They fell in, dressed up, formed fours by the rights
extended into sections on column of march and
went through the like movements very well — so
well that it was a pity they had not an opportunity
of adding to their stock of knowledge. They had
an instinctive aptitude for skirmishing, and were
expert at forming square, the utility of which, by
the way, is as questionable nowadays as that of
charging.

More attention was paid to discipline than to
drill. Pickets patrolled the towns into which they
entered, and repressed all disorder after nightfall ;
outpost duty was strictly enforced ; " larking " was
not tolerated, and punishments were always
inflicted for known and grave breaches of order.

CHAPTER XII.

Barbarossa— Royalist-Republicans — Squaring a Girl — At
Irun~" Your Papers 1"— The Barber's Shop— A Carlist
Spy— An Old Chum— The Alarm — A Breach of Neu-
triJity — Under Fire — Caught in the Toils — The Heroic
Tomas — We Slope — A Colleague Advises Me — "A
. Horse ! a Horse !"— State of Bilbao — Don Carlos at
Estella — Sanchez Bregua Recalled — Tolosa Invites —
Republican Ineptitude — Do not Spur a Free Horse —
Very Ancient Boys— Meditations in Bed— A Biscay
Storm.

Barbarossa, who had never been over the border,
suggested to me that I should take a trip to Irun,
which was held by the anti-Carlists. It would be
incorrect to write them down as Republicans ; they
were sprung from the Cristinos of the previous
generation, and as such were opposed to any scion
of the house against which their fatheriS had fought
for years. All of them were de facto Republicans,
and had more knowledge and enjoyment of Repub-
lican freedom than those who prattled and raved

270 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

^»^— I .11 ■- ■■■■■■^» I m^^t^^ ■■M. > Bill. ^

of Republicanism in Madrid and the south; but
they did not take kindly to the name. As my
friend the late J. A. MacGahan wittily said of
them — "They were the Royalist-Republicans of
Spain." They were as fond of their fueros as any
Carlist in the crowd, but they stood up for Madrid
less that they cared for the policy or personages of
the central government, than that they had a deep-
seated hereditary hatred of their neighbours of the
rural districts. At heart they were in favour of a
restoration of the throne, and on that throne they
would fain seat the yoimg Prince of the Asturias.
In tihose latitudes the lines of John Byrom a cen-
tury before would well apply :

'^ Grod bless the King, I mean the faith's defender ;
God bless — ^no harm in blessing — the Pretender ;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all — that's quite another thing !"

" If you go to Irun," said Barbarossa, stroking his
moustache, " I am game to go with you."

" I am satisfied," said I ; " but recollect, you
undertake the job at your own risk. You are
known as an associate of Carlists, and suspected to

JiOMATTIC dSFAHL 271

SdB iud iP(FBi^iBd fill tiiat, jod 'WBB 1^1% to iaoe
pi»^bLk j BrTk ^Bnt 3ie ^wbs not £t lo undBx^
proisdite ist^gaes. 5e bdiiM fiit j£t ji gxi»n talile
in jbh iIl-i^BiitiLatBd ntnrtnfggihBBB 133£ Tnght, long, Imt
Is eDiQd nolnmlk iBiFBennlfiB jd a stzsiteBi. ^S^ather
Dould Iffi (an jiiBDoimt of Ins, ilhkESB) vtmUirb an
lioEEBbiiidL To fdBiact & cxosEong l]|y 1^ imtwB}^
Imdge iram. Sendi^ to Inm ^wb£ ont of Ihe goes-
tian ; it wssb hBrrvw inq^mBtzs^ilfi. The JjnnRhTDHn
-rodlfliiDt allow yon to p« ii yoor own inteiBBt;
l2i£ :^»anicrd decImBd Id judnnt jau in l:^ so-
BnTwndffTsd inisresL To take l3i£ inuuiiluIiHniiile
'WBB tB£aiK, find in tiie ci^ of BBrbarcffita not to
'be tiion^it of ; the Tiridge oF Thiflfirliga, wsm hrckssst
— fi TDosi contaitBd ^Bcameu of JErtistae Slfijndalian.

To te sure, rmp BDuld Tnimiig p. Id fSCBB^ tO l3b© DtifflT

fii& Itj* l3ie fiiOmiBi^d eo^niig of li]£ ^psas^pstt, S
adorned .^ ^ laOamang powas of b ic5«-

"WAQiSr JCE^ '&S Irnatnhnn^ of A lUti^VJ'- Silt

£sadbtiu*oitt& "WBB mit JL ??1 muffin ssdSl 3iud not Jl
^pb^sski canstitnlian proof agmrwt, a wtjiiiiig. I

272 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

had got across that bridge once, holding on by my
teeth and nails, and retained recollection of it in
a fit of the cold shivers ; but I did not care to
repeat the operation. In our dilemma, Barbarossa,
who was a plucky knave, hit upon the plan
which ought to have commended itself to us at
first.

" Let us stray up the river-bank a few hundred
yards," he said, "seize a boat, and row ourselves

across."

No sooner was the proposition made than it was
adopted; but we were saved from the ephemeral
disgrace of posing as petty amphibious pirates,
degenerate Schinderhannes of the Bidassoa. We
saw a boat; a girl was near. The boat was her
father's; she engaged to take us over for a con-
sideration — I am certain she had set her heart on a
string of straw-coloured ribbons and a sky-blue
feather in a shop-window in Hendaye — and to
await our return at nightfall. We arranged the
signal, and stealthily stole across, drifting diagonally
most of the way ; and I entrusted the speculative
French damsel with my revolver and my Carlist

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 273

pass, and paid her a farewell compliment on her
face and figure as I stepped ashore. Giving her
the revolver and pass enlisted her confidence. We
strolled along with apparent carelessness, entered a
posada on the road by the waterside and had
refreshments. I said I should feel much obliged if
they could let us have a trap to Irun and back, as
we had business there, and my friend was tired and
not much of a pedestrian. An open carriage was
provided, and off we drove by the skirt of the hill
of St. Marcial, where the Spaniards gave Soult such
a dressing in 1813, passed a series of outer defences
with their covering and working parties, and entered
one of the gates of the town, and never a question
was asked. Ditches had been dug round the place
and earthworks thrown up ; but the principal re-
liance of the garrison seemed to be in loophooled
breastworks made of sand -bags superimposed.
Here and there were walls of loose stones — ^more
of a danger than a protection — rude shelter-
trenches, and mud-built, wattle-knitted refuges,
round-topped, and disguised with branches. They
had made the position strong; but they should
VOL. n. 38

274 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

have gone in for more spade and less stones, more
mole and less beaver.

We trotted over the narrow paved street, with its
flagged sidepaths, and drew up on the Plaza, over-
looked by the solid square-stone mansion of the
Ayuntamiento. The windows were screened with
planks, and armed groups lounged in front ; there
were barrels of water and heaps of gravel at inter-
vals upon the ground ; memories of Paris rose to
my mind — Irun was preparing for bombardment.
If the Carlists had no serious artillery in fact, they
had a powerful ordnance in the apprehensions of
their adversaries. Perhaps this was the explanation
of the rhodomontade about the batteries in El
Cuartel Real. We were congratulating ourselves
on the ease with which we had nm the blockade,
when an ofiScer of the Miqueletes approached our
carriage and demanded our papers. I showed my
Foreign OflBce passport, with the visa of the
Spanish Consulate at London upon it. He gave a
cursory look at it, bowed, and returned it to me.
Then came the turn of Barbarossa, and there was
a flash of shrewd spitefulness in his eyes.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 275

" Your papers, senor ?"

"I have none. I didn't think any were re-
quired."

" Ah ! doubtless you thought Irun was in Carlist
occupation. You are wrong."

" No ; I knew it was not in Carlist occupation.
What has that to do with me ? I am an English-
man," producing a packet of letters.

" I don't want to see them. I know you. What
do you want here ?"

" To see a friend."

" Who is your friend ?"

Barbarossa was not in the least nonplussed. He
said he had heard a fellow-countryman, a comrade
of his, was in the town.

" You will have to turn back the way you came,
and thank your stars you are permitted."

" But I am hungry."

"And the horse wants a feed," interposed the
driver, who no doubt had his own object to serve.

" Well, you may stay here for refreshment, but
you must get outside our gates before dark."

We drove to the principal inn, where we alighted

38—2

276 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

and ordered dinner. Barbarossa sat down, and I
went out to look at the place and search for a
barber's shop, for I sorely needed a shave. Irun is
a well-constructed town on the shelving slope of a
smaller rise between Mounts Jaizquivel and Aya,
not far from the coast. It has a population of
some 5,000, and in ordinary years does a good
trade in tiles and bricks, tanned leather, and smith's
work, besides sending wood to Los Pasages for the
purposes of the boat-builders. The Bidassoa at its
base branches, and thus forms the islet of Faisanes,.
off which the prosperous fisherman can fill his
basket with trout, salmon, and mullet, aye, and
lumpish eels, if his predilections so tend.

But I have no intention to describe Irun, Theo-
phile Gautier has done that before me, and I am
not sacrilegious. There was another customer in
the barber*s shop. As I left after the shave he
followed, and accosted me on the flagway confi-
dentially.

" How are you, captain ?"

"You are in error," I answered. "I am no
captain."

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 277

" What ! Did I not see you take a boat for the
San Margarita at Socoa ?"

I

" That may be ; but I only boarded her through
curiosity."

" Do not be afraid," he whispered. " How is Don
GuiUermo ?"

" What Don Guillermo ?"

" Senor Leader. I was with him when he was
wounded ; I am a Carlist. I am here on the same
mission as yourself; to spy what the vermin are
doing."

" Ha ! good ; ramble on, and don't notice me. It
is dangerous."

He sauntered along the causeway, hands in
pockets and whistling, and presently popped into a
tavern, and I re-entered the fonda. Hardly had I
set foot over the threshold when I was stupefied by
a welcome in a familiar voice, none other than that
of Mr. WiUiam O'Donovan, who had been my
comrade and amanuensis throughout the irksome
beleaguerment of Paris.* We did not throw our

♦ See my last book, " An Iron-Bound City.'* Poor Willie
died in New York of a complication of diseases on last

278 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

arms round our respective necks, hug and kiss each
other — I reserve my kisses for pretty girls, newly-
washed babes, and dead male friends, and then
kiss only the brow — but we did join hands cor-
dially and long. In answer to my query as to what
had brought him to this queer comer at the back
of God-speed, he explained that he was acting as
correspondent of a Dublin paper ; for, it appeared,
the people of Ireland were consumed with anxiety
as to the progress of the Carlist rising — details of
which, of course, they could not obtain in the mere
London papers — and were particularly desirous to
have record of the doings of the Foreign Legion, a
great majority of whom were sons of the Emerald
Isle. His younger brother, a medical student, was
likely to come out to join that Legion, and as for
Kaspar (a name by which we knew his brother
Edmond, afterwards triumvir at Merv), he was sure
to turn up. Mother Carey's chicken hovers near
when the elements are at strife. He was immensely

Easter Sunday — an anniversary of hopefulness. His path of
existence here was thorny. Unsurfeiting happiness be his
portion in the meads of asphodel !

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 279

satisfied with his diggings, he said, liked the
natives, and considered this a splendid chance for
improving his Spanish. He was reading « Don
Quixote " in the vernacular. In a sense, I looked
upon his presence as a perfect godsend to us, as he
came in most appropriately as a Beua ex machind to
create the character of Barbarossa's invented friend.
O'Donovan was in good standing with the Repub-
licans of the town, as he was a staunch Republican
himself, and could spin yams of the Republics of
antiquity, and of the greatness of Paris, and the
glories of the United States. He was getting on
famously with Castilian, and was charmed with the
redundancy of its vocabulary of vituperation, which
was only to be equalled by the Irish, of which his
father had been such a master. I made Barbarossa
and my old chum known to one another, and we
dined together, pledging the past in a cup of wine
tempered with the living waters which bubbled up
in the sacristy of the parish church, and were
distributed in bronze conduits through Irun. After
the meal and the meditative smoke of custom,
O'Donovan sat down to write a letter, which I

280 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

guaranteed to post for him in France, and Bar-
barossa and I sallied forth for a walk.

We were lounging about the Calle Mayor gazing
at the escutcheons over every hall-door — ^your
bellows-mender and cobbler in this democratic
town were invariably of the seed of Noah in right
line — ^when the alarm was raised that fifty horses
had been carried off by the Carlists almost at
the gates, and that two shots had been heard.
The bugler sounded the call "To arms," and
forthwith a little company consisting of thirty-
two men, the bugler aforesaid, and a captain, set
out at a quick step for a high ground beside a
signal-tower at one end of the town. We hurried
forward with them, and passed out through one of
the four gates, on the side next the mountains.
The soldiers took a position on the slope of a hill
a couple of himdred yards from the gate, and
Barbarossa and I sheltered ourselves behind an
orchard-wall, from which there was an uninter-
rupted view of the billowy tract of meadow and
pasture land beneath, cut into patches by thick
hedges. Quick on our heels emerged from the

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 281

town some half-dozen intrepid "volunteers of
liberty," and the inevitable small boy, a red cap
stuck jaimtily on three hairs of his head and a largo
cigarette in his mouth. One of the volunteers — ^he
who had demanded our papers on the Plaza —
looked viciously at Barbarossa, who assumed a
most artistic pretence of stolidity.

" Come here, senor, and you will have a better
vision of your friends," he said with mock suavity.

Barbarossa smiled, thanked him, and walked
quietly to the place indicated, an exposed opening
beside the wall.

" I can see nothing," he said

I adjusted my long-distance glass, and ranged
over the wide stretch of landscape, but could see
nothing either. As I shut it up and returned it to
the case, a sergeant advanced from the party of
soldiers on the slope and marched directly towards
me. I was puzzled and, I own, a trifle unnerved.

"Senor," he said to me, "I carry the compli-
ments of my captain, and his request that you
would lend him your glass, as he has forgotten his
own."

282 ROMANTIC SPA IF.

"With pleasure/' I answered readily, much re-
lieved. "I will take it to him myself, as it is
London-made, and he may not understand how it
is sighted."

This may have been a breach of neutrality, but
what was I to do ? If I refused, the glass would
have been taken from me, and I should have been
compromised. I handed it to the oflBcer with
my best bow, explained its mechanism to him ;
he bowed to me, and from that moment I felt that
I was under his wing. I may be wrong, but I have
a notion that in a skirmish it is much better to be
near regulars than volunteers, and I stood in a line
with the miUtary a few paces away.

Suddenly there was a spark and a report away
down in a field of maize, some six hundred yards
below us, and the whizz of a bullet was heard.

" Steady, men !" said the captain ; " don't dis-
charge your rifles."

The sight was very pretty as they stood in a
group on the green hillside in attitude of suspense,
their weapons held at the ready, and all eyes fixed
on the front, from which the smoke was rising. It

ROMANTIC SPAIN, 283

was very like to the celebrated picture by Protais,
familiar in every cabaret in France, '' Avant le
Combat;** but even more picturesque than that,
for these soldiers were dressed most irregularly —
some in tattered capote, others in shirt-sleeves,
some in shako, others in bonnet de police, A few
civilians had crept out of the town by this time,
and the chief of the Miqueletes roared peremptorily
to have that gate shut. This was not an agreeable
position for Barbarossa and myself Our retreat
was cut off. We were unarmed. If one of those
amateur warriors were killed, we ran the imminent
hazard of being massacred by his comrades. On
the other hand, there was the liabihty of being
ourselves shot by the Carlists. How were they to
distinguish a neutral or a sympathizer from their
foes ? I confess I could not help smiling as the
thought occurred to me what a piece of irony in
action it would be if Barbarossa were to be helped
to a morsel of lead by his friends, the enemy.
With a cheerful equanimity I contemplated the
prospect of his receiving a very slight contusion
from a spent bullet on a soft part of his frame.

284 BOM ANTIC SPAIN.

Ping, ping, came a few reports, but evidently out
of range. Each smoke- wreath was in a diflferent
direction.

"This may get hot," I said to myself; "the
Carlists may not be sharpshooters, but this clump
of uniforms in relief on the grass must present a
blur that will be an enticing target for them. I
dare not go back to the wall, but it might be dis-
creet to lie down. There is no disgrace in offering
them a small elevation of corpus." I stretched my-
self on the sward, acted nonchalance, and lit a cigar.

The volunteers could no longer be held in con-
trol. They opened action on their own account, one
fellow distinguishing himself by the rapidity of his
fire, and the intensity with which he aimed at some-
thing—or nothing.

*'Ah, that's Tomas!" said a portly civilian
connoisseur, with his hands in his pockets. " We
know him, he is making music ; he wants to get
himself remarked."

The soldiers did not deliver a shot, but the
volunteers kept cracking away, and the invisible
Carlists replied. Nobody was hit, though bullets

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 285

could be heard whizzing overhead for twenty
minutes, and one did actually knock a chip off
a wall. That was the sole damage done to the
Republican position; the damage to the Carlist
must have been less. Two of the Miqueletes
ventured stealthily down a road leading towards
the point from which the nearest jets of smoke
curled, following the ditch by the side, stooping
and peering through the bushes. There was a
volley from afar. They hesitated and stood, as if
undecided whether to advance.

" Sound the retire for those men," said the
captain ; and as the call rang out they returned.

That volley was the last sign the Carlists gave ;
and after waiting ten minutes, the captain shut up
my glass, returned it to me, and remarked that the
attack was a feint, and had no object beyond worry-
ing his men. He gave the order " March," the gate
was opened, Barbarossa rejoined me, and we re-
turned to Irun, taking care to keep as near the
regulars as we could. " Nada — ^nothing," cried the
captain to an inquiring lady on a balcony, and the
town-gates were closed after the volunteers had

286 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

returned and tramped to the Plaza with the proud
bearing of citizens who had done their duty.

How that heroic Tomas did strut ! A fighter
he of the choicest brand, one not to stop at trifles ;
there was martial ire in his flaming glance ; defiance
breathed from his nostrils ; triumph sat on his lips ;
he swung his arms like destructive flails ; and as he
entered a tavern one could only fancy him calling
in a voice of Stentor for a jug of rum and blood
plentifully besprinkled with gunpowder and
cayenne pepper to assuage the thirst of combat.

O'Donovan gave me his letter. Barbarossa
hinted that it was our best course to slope, and
slope we did, as soon as the horse was harnessed.
As we passed down the street a grinning face
saluted me from a doorway. It was that of my
acquaintance from the barber's shop. He gave me
a meaning wink. The artful Carlists had evidently
succeeded in their object, whatever it might have
been. On the river-bank our fair and faithful
ferry-maid awaited us. We were conveyed over in
safety, and at the hotel of Hendaye soon forgot
the perils we had encountered.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 287

Barbarossa was dead-beat, and threw himself on
a sofa, where he sank back heavy-eyed and ex-
hausted ; and I . almost feared that he would drop
into a coma, as the penalty of overstraining nature,
until the sight of a pack of cards restored him as if
by a spell to his normal wakefulness.

Even in a disturbed region it is needful to have
a change of linen, so we got back next morning to
St. Jean de Luz, where I had left my baggage.
There I met M. Thieblin, a colleague, whom I
had seen last at Metz, previous to the siege of
that fortress in the Franco-German war. He was
now representing the New York Herald, and had
just returned from Estella, at the taking of which
place, the most important the Carlists had yet
seized, he had the luck to be present. He assured
me that it was utter fatuity to dream of following the
Carlists, except I had at least one horse — but that
it would be sensible to take two if I could manage
to procure them. It was more than an ordinary
man was quahfied to cope with, to make his obser-
vations, write his letters, and look after their trans-
mission, without having to attend to his nag, and

288 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle
was how to get the horse — a sound hardy animal
that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse
a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium,
but he thought I might be able to ha^e what I
wanted at Bayonne, on payment of an extravagant
price. A requisition for forage and com could be had
through the Junta ; and I should have no trouble
in getting an orderly on appl3dng with my creden-
tials to the chief of staff of any of the Carlist
columns to which I might attach myself We had
a long conversation, and Thieblin frankly informed
me that in his opinion the Carlists had not the
ghost of a chance outside their own territory.
There they were cocks of the walk. What the end
might be he could not pretend to vaticinate, but
"El Pretendiente " would never reign in Madrid.
The conflict might last for months — might last for
years ; but the Carlists owed the vitahty they had
as much to the divisions and ineflSciency of their
adversaries as to their own strength. There would
be no important engagements — to dignify them by
the epithet — until the organization of the insurrec-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 289

tionary forces wa^ regularized, and they had a
stronger artillery and an adequate cavalry. M.
Thieblin did not stray far from the bull's-eye in his
prophecy.

I went to bed in the mood of Crookback on
Bosworth Field, and felt that my dream-talk would
shape itself into the cry, " A horse ! a horse !"

Until that coveted steed had been lassoed,
stolen, or bought, I must only endeavour to justify
my existence — that is to say, render value for the
money expended on me by picking up "copy"
anywhere and everjrwhere.

I was advised to go to Bilbao by sea, but the
advice came too late. The last steamer from
Bayonne had ventiured there four-and-twenty hours
before I sought my passage, and even on that last
steamer the few voyagers were imable to insure
their lives with the Accidental Company, although
they consented to promise that they would de-
scend into the hold the instant they heard a shot.
It was almost as full of jeopardy to travel to Bilbao
by s^a as to sail down the Mississippi with a racing
captain and a lading of rye-whisky on board.

VOL. IL 39

290 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

One Monsieur Gueno, master of the barque Nwmay
of Vannes, made moan that he was seriously
knocked about while he lay in the Nervion, off the
Luchana bridge, during a skirmish between the
Carlists and the troops. They both fought vigor-
ously, but they gave him most of the blows. One
of his crew, in a punt behind, was killed, and
twenty-five bullets were embedded in a single mast.
He had the tricolour flying all the time. A fellow-
countryman of his. Monsieur Jarmet, of the ship
Pierre-Alcide, of Nantes, sent in a claim for an
indemnity of £160 for damages sustained by his
vessel much in the like manner. A Spanish war-
craft, moored behind him, began pelting the Carlists
with shot; the Carlists replied, and the Pierre-Alcide
came in for the bulk of the favours distributed.
Three bullets penetrated the captain's cabin, and
four rent holes in the French flag. Neither pilots
nor tugs were for hire at Bilbao, and captains of
sailing vessels had only to whistle for a favouring
wind and rely on their own good fortune and skilL
Bilbao had to be dismissed on the merits.

Taking it for granted that I had that evasive

MOM ANTIC SPAIN. 291

horse, I reasoned, as I tossed on my bed, to the
restless whunper of the Bay of Biscay, over which a
storm was brewing, that " el Cuartel Real," the head-
quarters of the King, was the natural goal. There
first information was to be had, and it was felt that
it was about the safest place to be ; but the King
seldom stopped under the same roof two nights
successively, and no one could tell where he would
be two days beforehand. If he was at Estella
when one started, he might be at Vera or Durango,
or goodness knows where, when one got to Estella.
So far his progress had been a success; he was
present at the taking of Estella, and exercised his
Royal clemency by releasing the captured pri-
soners. It would have been more politic to have
demanded an exchange, for there were partisans of
his own in Republican dungeons (Englishmen
amongst them) ; but then prisoners have to be fed
and guarded, so on the whole it was as well they
were set free. It was very much the case of the
man who won the elephant at a raffle. If the
stories, spread assiduously by the RepubUcans, of
the massacre and maltreatment of captives by the

39—2

292 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

Carlists were correct, here was the opportunity for
the exercise of wholesale cruelty ; but there was
not a particle of truth in such charges, which, by
the way, one hears in every civil war. Where Don
Carlos might advance next, or where severe fightings
— ^not such brushes as that I witnessed at Irun —
might take place, was a mystery. The movements
of the Republican leaders were inexplicable, and
conducted in contravention of all known principles
of the art of war. They harassed their men by
long and objectless marches. They ordered towns
to be put in a state of defence at first, and then
withdrew the garrisons. Thej' engaged whole
columns in defiles, where a company of invisible
guerrilleros could tease them. They acted, in
most instances, as if they had no information or
wrong information. ThQ latter, I believe, was
nearer the truth. Their system of espionage was
inefficient, as the information they got was untrust-
worthy, and always would be, in the northern pro-
vinces, for the feeling of the masses of the people
was against them. Instead of making headway
they were losing ground every day, and would so

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 293

continue until they received reinforcements with
fibre, and were commanded by oflScers who really
meant to win, and had the knowledge or the
instinct to conceive a proper plan of campaign.
The generals could hardly be censured, for their
hands were tied ; they were forbidden to be severe ;
they dared not squelch insubordination. Capital
pimishment, even in the army, and at such a crisis
as this, was abolished. There had been, I heard,
something suspiciously resembling a mutiny in the
column of Sanchez Bregua. A certain Colonel
Castanon was put under arrest on a charge of
Alfonsist proclivities ; but the Cazadores and
Engineers threatened to rebel unless he was
liberated; and Sanchez Bregua, instead of deci-
mating the Cazadores and Engineers, as Lord
Strathnairn would have done, liberated the Colonel.

But to that question of my route. Peradventure
the presence to my dozing vision of the General
commanding the Republican troops of the north
that had been might help me towards a solution.

"That had been" is written advisedly, for
Sanchez Bregua had been recalled to Madrid, not a

294

ROMANTIC SPAIN.

day too soon. He was one of those generals whose
spine had been curved by lengthened bending over
a desk. Loma, who was active and dashing, and
had the rare gift of confidence in himself, had
taken his stand at Tolosa, and was awaiting the
advent of Lizarraga. All his men, and every able-
bodied male in the town, were diligently excavating-
ditches and making entrenchments. Until Tolosa
was captured by the Carlists, no serious attack on
Pampeluna was probable ; and that attack was
likely to assume the form of an investment.
Estella was to the south of Pampeluna, and all the
country round, from which provisions could be
drawn, was in the occupation of the Carlists.
Tolosa was the objective point of the moment, and
to Tolosa I determined to go. An attempt on San
Sebastian could not enter into the calculations of
the Carlist leaders at this stage of their revolt. The
stronghold was almost inaccessible on the land side,
and men, munitions, and provisions could be easUy
thrown into it by water. Irun, Fontarabia, and
even Renteria (were artillery available) could be
seized whenever the comparatively small sacrifice of

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 295

lives involved would be advisable. But the game
was not worth the candle yet. Were Irun or Font-
arabia in the hands of the Carlists, there was the
always-present danger of shells being pitched into
them from a gunboat in the Bidassoa ; and Renteria,
outside of which the Repubhcan troops only stirred
on sufferance, was to all intents as serviceable to
the Carlists as if it were tenanted by a Carlist
garrison, which would thereby be condemned to
idleness.

That whirlwind ride from Renteria to Inm would
come before me as the storm battalions mustered
outside, and the waves began lashing themselves
into violence of temper. What if I had to go to
Madrid while such weather as this was brooding ?
To get to the capital one is obliged to embark at
Bayonne for Santander, and proceed thence by rail
— so long as no CarUst partidas meddle with the
track. Romantic Spain !

But are not those Repubhcans who affect that
they know how to govern a country primarily and
principally to blame ? Only consider the continued
interruption of that short piece of road between

296 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

San Sebastian and Irun. Is it not disgraceful to
them? One of our old Indian officers, I dare
venture to believe, with eighteen horsemen and a
couple of companies of foot, could hold it open in
spite of the Carlists. But such a simple idea as the
establishment of cavalry patrols of three, keeping
vigil backwards and forwards along the line of
eighteen miles, with stout infantry posts always on
the alert in blockhouses at intervals, seems never to
have entered into the obtuse heads of those officers
lately promoted from the ranks. Seeing that the
intercourse of diflferent towns with each other and
with the coast and abroad has been so long broken
up, I cannot fathom the secret of how the popu-
lation lives. The troops arrive in a village one day
and levy contributions, the guerrilleros arrive the
next and do the same ; the fields must be neglected,
trade must droop, yet nobody apparently wants
food. True, the land is wonderfully fat ; but some
day the cry of famine will be heard. No land could
bear this perpetual drain on its resources. And
then I thought of Carlists whom 1 met in France,
who had given of their goods to support the cause.

'ml

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 297

With them I talked on this very subject. They
were respectable and respected men; they prayed
for success to Don Carlos with sincere heart ; but
they had left Spain, and they complained that this
condition of disturbance was lasting too long.

" You ask me why I did not remain," said one to
me ; " wait, and you shall see."

He opened a door and pointed to three lovely
little girls at play, and continued, " These are my
reasons ; I have made more sacrifices than I was
able for the Royal cause, and they asked me at last
for another contribution, which would have ruined
me. I love my King ; but for no King, senor, could
I afford to make those darlings paupers."

Had these Carlists any glimmer of the sunshine
of a victorious issue to their uprising ? (egad, that
was a strong blast, and the waves do swish as if
they were enraged at last !). Thieblin thinks not
And yet they are active, and, like the storm outside,
they are gaining strength. Those of them under
arms are four times as numerous as the Bepubli-
cans in the northern provinces. Leader swears to
me that evoryono who can shoulder a musket is a

298 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

CarKst. There are no more Chicos to be had, unless
the volunteers of liberty come over, rifles, accoutre-
ments and all, to Prince Charlie — a liberty they are
volunteering to take somewhat freely.

I was rash in saying there were no more Chicos.
Did not a company of " bhoys " trudge over to
Lesaca to ofier their services recently ? But they
were very ancient boys. The youngest of them
was sixty-five. They were veterans of the Seven
Years' War, and mostly colonels. Their fidelity
was thankfully acknowledged, but their services
were not gratefully accepted. The aged and fero-
cious fire-eaters were sent back to their arrowroot
and easy-chairs. At all events, they had more of
the timber of heroism in them than those diplo-
matic Carlists of the gandin order, who are Carlists
because it makes them interesting in the sight of
the ladies, but whose campaigning is confined to
an occasional three days* incursion on Spanish
territory, with a cook and a valet, saddle-bags full
of potted lobster and pdU de foie gras, and a dress-
ing-case newly packed witeh au Botot and essence
of Jockey Club. There are personages of this class

BO MAN T 10 SPAIN. 299

not unknown to society at Biarritz and Bayonne,
who have been going to the front for the last three
months, and have not got there yet. One would
think their game of chivalry ought to be pretty
well " played out ;" but to the folly of the vain man,
as to the appetite of the lean pig, there is no
limit.

By Jove! There is a clatter; the casement is
blown open, and the light is blown out, and through
the gap whistles the cool, briny breath of the
Atlantic, and I can almost feel the wash of the
white spray in my hair. Better a stable cell in the
Castle of the Mota to-night than a tumbling berth
in the Sa,n Margarita. This was the close of my
interview with myself, and I turned over on my
pillow and fell precipitately into a profound dream-
less sleep.

CHAPTER XIII.

Nearing the End — Firing on the Red Cross-— Perpetuity of
War— Artistic Hypocrites— The Jubilee Year— The
Conflicts of a Peaceful Reign — Migor Russell — Quick
Promotion — The Foreign Legion— An Aspiring Ad-
venturer — Leader's Career — A Piratical Proposal —
The ** Ojaladeros " of Biarritz— A Friend in Need-
Buying a Horse — Gilpin Outdone — " Fred Burnaby.'*

And now I take up the last chapter of this book,
and I have not half finished with the subject I had
set before myself at starting. By the figures at the
head of the last page I perceive that I have almost
reached the orthodox length of a volume, and per-
force must stop. For some weeks past I have
been looking and longing for the end, for I have
been ill, weary and worried, and my labour has
become a task. Slowly toiling day by day, I knew
I must be nearing the goal ; yet, like the strenuous
Webb on his swim from Dover to Calais, the horizon
seemed to come no closer. The land in sight

KOMANTIG iiPAlN. 301

grew no plainer, although each breast-stroke— the
pleasure of a while agone, but oh ! such a tax now
— must have lessened the distance. Even to that
excursion there came an hour of accomplishment
and repose ; but to this, of pen over paper, I cannot
flatter myself that the hour is yet. I have to
abandon the work incomplete. As it has happened
to me before, the theme has expanded under my
hands, and I shall have to rise from my desk before
I penetrate to the Carlist headquarters, of which I
had to say much, or have experiences of that
strangest of Communes in Murcia, with its sea and
land skirmishes and its motley rabble of mutineer,
convicts, and nondescripts, of which I had to say
much likewise.

Whether I shall have the privilege of recounting
my adventures at the court and camp of Don
Carlos, and by the side of the General directing the
siege of Cartagena, who admitted me as a sort of
supernumerary on his staff, will depend on the
reception of this, the first instalment of my experi-
ences in Spain.

An act of unjustifiable barbarism or stupidity, or

302 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

■ ^ ■- ■ I ■ ■ -- I ■ .1 ■■-..- ■ —■■■■■ " ■ - - - - I — -^ — - — . — ^

both — for barbarism is but another form of stu-
pidity — was perpetrated by some Carlists outside
Inm while I was negotiating for that indispensable
horse. An ambulance-waggon, displaying the Red
Cross of Geneva, had sallied from the town, and was
fired upon. The Paris delegate I had met at Hen-
daye was in charge of it, and averred that it was
wantonly and wilfully attacked. I thought it,
singular that nobody was hurt, and reasoned that
the man was excitable, and got into range uncon-
sciously. The duty of the Geneva Society properly
begins after, and not during a combat ; and when
gentlemen are busy at the game of professional
manslaughter, no philanthropic outsider has any
right to distract them from their occupation by
indiscreet obstruction. The Parisian did not view
it in that light, and downfaced me that these
rustics, to whose aid he was actually going, tried to
murder him of malice prepense. It was useless to
represent to him that these rustics may have never
heard of the modem benevolent institution for the
softening of strife, and may have regarded the huge
Red Cross as a defiant symbol of Red Republicanism,

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 303

and perhaps a parody of what is sacred. So in the
estimation of that citizen of the most enlightened
capital in the universe, these Basques were ruth-
less boobies with an insatiable passion for lapping
blood. But mistakes and exaggerations will occur
in every war. The only way to obviate them is to
put an end to war altogether — which wUl never he
done! When Christ came into the world, peace
was proclaimed; when He left it, peace was be-
queathed. War has been the usual condition of
mankind since, as it had been before ; and Chris-
tians cut each other's throats with as much alacrity
and expertness as Pagans, often in the name of the
religion of peace.

I heard two eminent war-correspondents lecture
recently, and I noticed that those passages where
fights were described were applauded to the echo.
The more ferocious the combat the more vigorous
the cheers. The faces of small boys flushed, and
their hands clinched at the vivid recital The
nature of the savage, which has not been extirpated
by School Boards, was betraying itself in them.
Yet these two war-correspondents thought it an

304 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

acquittal of conscience after their kindling periods
to dwell on the immorality of war. The one spoke
of the beauty of Bible precepts, the other dis-
burdened himself on the cruelty and wickedness of
a battle. What artistic hypocrisy ! It was as if
one were to strike up the " Faerie Voices " waltz,
and tell a girl to keep her feet still ; as if one were
to lend " Robinson Crusoe " to a boy, and warn him
not to think of running away to sea. Still, I must
even add my voice to the orthodox chorus, and
affirm that warfare is bad, brutal, fraudful, a thing
of meretricious gauds, a clay idol, fetish of humbug
and havoc, whose feet are soaking in muddy gore
and salt tears ; yet in the privacy of my own study
I might sadly admit that the Millennium is remote,
that the Parliament of Nations exists but in the
dreams of the poet, and that Longfellow's forecast
of the days down through the dark future when
the holy melodies of love shall oust the clangours
of conflict is a pretty conceit — and no more.

War is inexcusable, and is foolish and ugly ; but,
like the poor and the ailing, we shall have it always
with us. It is criminal, except as protest against

MOMANTIG SPAIN. 305

intolerable persecution, or in maintenance of national
honour or defence of national territory ; and even in
these cases it should be undertaken only when all
devices of conciliation have been tried in vain. Next
to the vanquished, it does most harm to the victor.
Yet about it, as about high play, there is a fascina-
tion, and I have to plead guilty to the weak feeling
that I would not look with overwhelming aversion
on an order, should it come to me to-morrow, to
prepare to chronicle a new campaign and face the
chronicler's risks ; and they are real. But I should
not go into it with a light heart, like M. Emile
Ollivier. I might be, in a quiet way, happy as
Queen Victoria was (according to Count Vitzthum)
for she danced much the night before the declara-
tion of hostilities against Russia, but spoke of what
was coming with amiable candour and great
regret.

We are on the eve of a Jubilee Year, when the

halcyon shall plume his wing, and we shall hear

much oratorical trash and hebetude about the

peacefulness of this happy reign.

Does the reader reflect how many wars we have

VOL. II. 40

306 EOMANTIC SFAm.

had in the padfic half-ceatniy wbich is lapsing?
The tale will astomsh him, and should ralenoe the
thoughtlesB word-spumeFB of the platfarms. The
door of the temple of Janus ha£ been seldom closed
for long. Our campaigns, great and smaTI., and
military enterprises of the lesser sort, could not be
counted on the fingers of both hands. We have had
fighting with Afghans and Burmese (twice) ; Scinde,
Gwalior, and Sikh wars; hostilities with Kaffirs,
Russians, Persians, Chinese, and Maoris (twice),
AbyBsinians, Ashantis, Zulus, Boers, and Soudanese,
not to mention the repression of the most stupen-
dous of mutinies, a martial promenade in Egypt,
and expeditions against Jowakis, Bhootanese,
Looshais, Bed Biver rebels, and such pitiful minor

In St. Jean de Luz, the nearest point to the
disputed ground and the best place from which to
transmit information, there was a small and select
British colony, mostly consi sting of retired naval
and military officers. A dear friend of ttitra
amongst them was Major Bussell, who had spent a
lengthened span of years in the East — ^an admirable

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 307

type of tihe cahn, firm, courteous Anglo-Indiaii —
who had never soured his temper and spoiled his
Kver with excessive "pegs," who understood and
respected the natives, who had shown administra-
tive ability, and who, like many another honest,
dutiful office, had not shaken much fruit off the
pagoda-tree, or even secured the C.R which is so
often ^ven to tarry-at-home nonentities. Russell
used to pay me a regular visit to the Fonda de la
Playa. One morning as we wotQ chatting, Leader
strode into the coffee-room, a vision of splendour.
He had got on his uniform as Commandant of the
Foreign Legion— a uniform which did much credit
to his fancy, for he had designed it himself He
wore a white boina with gold tassel, a blue tunic
with black braid, red trousers, and brown gaiters.
He bad donned the gala-costume with the object of
getting himself photographed. Commandant is
the equivalent of Major in the British service, so
we agreed to dub the young Lishman henceforth
and for ever, until he became colonel or captain-
general, Major Leader.

"Promotion is quick in this army," murmured

308 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

RusselL "I served all my active life under the
suns of India, and here I am only a major at the
close. Leader joined the Carlists less than three
months ago, and he is ab*eady my equal in rank."

" The fortune of war, Russell," said I ; " don't be
jealous. I was offered command of a brigade under
the Commune, but I declined the tribute to my
merit, or I would not be here to-day. I met a man
in Bayonne yesterday, and he was ready to assume
control of the entire insurrectionary forces."

" Who ? Cabrera ?"

" No," I answered ; " catch Cabrera coming hera
He is too much afraid of a ruler who is no pre-
tender. The renowned Commander-in-Chief of
Aragon and Valencia, Don Ramon the Rough and
Ready, is Conde Something-or-other now, a willing
slave to petticoat government He is to be seen
any day pottering about Windsor."

" And who is this speculator in bloodshed ?'

" A foreign adventurer," I explained, " who does
not know a word of Spanish, much less Basque, is
unacquainted with the topography of the country,
and has not the faintest inkling of the idiosyn-

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 309

_ __ — ^^^^^^

crasies of the lieutenants who would serve under
him, or of the mode of humouring the prejudices
of the people of the diflferent provinces in revolt."

" What answer did they give to his application
for employment ?"

" A polite negative. They told him they could
not appoint him a leader without oflfending the
susceptibilities of adherents with claims upon them
men of local influence, and so forth Behmd his
back, they laughed at his entertaining temerity."

That Foreign Legion never came to maturity.
Leader showed me a commission authorizing him
to organize it. Lesaca was to be the dep6t, French
the language of command, and Smith Sheehan the
adjutant. It might have developed into a very
fine Foreign Legion, but no volunteers presented
themselves to join it but two young Englishmen,
one of whom was sick when he was not drunk, and
the other of whom felt it to be a grievance on a
campaign that a cup of tea could not be got at
regular hours. How Sheehan did chaff this
amiable amateur !

"You will have nothing to do but draw your

310 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

pay, my lad," he said "The cookery is hardly
A 1, but 'twill pass. Think of the beds, pillows of
hops under your head ; and every regiment has its
own set of billiard-markers and a select string-band,
«very perfonner an artist"

After an arduous service of one day and a half
that gentleman returned to the maternal apron-
strings, laden to the ground with the most harrow-
ing legends of the horrors of war. Leader was not
a warrior of this stamp— far from it ; he had vindi-
cated his manliness at Ladon outside Orleans, where
Ogilvie, of the British Koyal Artillery, had met his
fate by his side, and there was something soldierly
in the way he bore himself in his vanity of dress.
Not that I think the dandies are the best soldiers —
that is merest popular paradox. To me it is as
ridiculous for a man to array himself in fine clothes
when he is going to kill or be killed, as it would be
for him to put on gewgaws when he was going to
be hanged. As Leader disappears from my account
of Carlist doings after this — we were associated with
different columns — it may be of interest to tell of
his subsequent career. He served in a cavalry

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 311

squadron on the staff of the King, and when the
cause collapsed came to London. His uncle tried
to induce him to settle down to some steady em-
ployment in the City. Leader expressed himself
satisfied to make an experiment at desk-work.

" It was useless," said Leader with a hearty crow
as he related the story to me. " The friend who had
promised to create a vacancy for me in his oflSce
ordered his chief clerk to lock the safe and send for
the police when he heard of my antecedents. He
invited me to dinner, but candidly told me that a
rifle was more m my line than a quiU."

And yet it was in the service of the quiU the
young soldier ended his days. He got an appoint-
ment as an auxiliary correspondent to a great
London daily paper during the Kusso-Turkish war.
He was elate ; the road to fame and fortune now lay
open before him. The next I heard of him was that
he had succumbed to typhoid fever at Philippopolis.

A Scotch spudasain arrived in our midst about
this period. He was most anxious to draw a blade
for Don Carlos, but he had a decided objection to
serve in any capacity but that of command. He

312 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

did not appreciate the fun of losing the number of
his mess as an obscure hero of the rank and file,
though he would not mind sacrificing an arm, I do
think, at the head of a charging column, provided
that he had a showy imiform on, and that the fact
of his valour was properly advertised in the
despatches. He had an idea that would commend
itself to Belcha's bushwhackers, but it was not
entertained. It was to take passage with a few
trusty men on the tug for San Sebastian when she
was reported to be conveying specie for the pay-
ment of the Spanish Republican troops, to drive
the voyagers down the hold, throttle the skipper,
intimidate the crew, take the wheel and turn her
head to the coast, seize and land the money imder
Carlist protection, and then scuttle her. The least
recompense, he calculated, which could be awarded
to him for that exploit by his Majesty Charles VII.
was the Order of the Golden Fleece; and a very
appropriate order too.

There was a set of Carlist sympathizers known to
the fighting-men as " ojaladeros," or warriors with
much decoration in the shape of polished buttons.

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 313

Their dep6t was at Biarritz, an aristocratic watering-
place bom under the second French Empire, and
not ignorant of some of the vices of the Byzantine
Empire. There are healthful breezes there, but
they do not quite sweep away the scent of fran-
gipani. Warlike, with a proviso, the Scot might
have been designated, but he was not to be com-
pared with these ojaladeros ; he would fight if he
had a Ume-Ut stage to posture upon ; they would not
fight at all, but they moved about mysteriously, as
if their bosoms were big with the fate of dynasties,
held hugger-mugger caucus, and were the oracles
of boudoirs.

At Bayonne there was a better class of Carlist
sympathizers ; such of them as were of the fighting
age were there in the intervals of duty. To a job-
master's in the city by the Adour I was recom-
mended as the most likely place to procure a steed.
At the H6tel St. Etienne, where I stopped, I was
gratified by an unexpected encounter with the
genial captain* (Ronald Campbell), who had

* Now Colonel the Baron Craignish, Equerry to his
Boyal Highness the Grand Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha.

314 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

brought a juicy leg of mutton at his saddle-skirts
to the relief of my household after the siege of
Paris. He went with me to the job-master's — it is
as well to have a friend with you yrhen you do a
horse-deal. I had no choice but Hobson's. The
job-master was desolated, but he had sold three
animals the day before to an English milord, a very
big gentleman, and his party. He had just one
horse, but it was a beauty. The horse was trotted
out. It was well groomed — they always are, and
arsenic does impart a nice gloss to the hide — and
looked imposing, a tall three-quarter-bred bay
gelding.

" You'll have to take it," said the captain, " though
I fear it will not be a great catch for mountain-
work. Seems to me that it stumbles — that lie-
back of the ears is vicious — ^ha ! rears too — and by
Jove ! it has been fired. No matter. Where needs
must, you know, there's no alternative. Buy it by
all means."

I closed with the bargain, got a loan of a saddle,
bought a pair of jack-boots, and ordered my
purchase to be brought round to the door of the

ROMANTIC SPAIN. 31 5

hotel within half-an-hour. I am no rough-rider,
and I had not counted on the high mettle of this,
which was literally a "fiery, untamed steed." It
had been fed for the market, and had had no
exercise for two days previous. I meant to try its
paces to St. Jean de Luz, and show off before the
damsels of Biarritz ; but, lack-a-day ! what a de-
clension was in store for me. It had best be given
in the words of a letter to my kindly compatriot,
written while defeat was fresh in my mind. Thus
the epistle runs :

"Dear Campbell,

" My first essay on my eight hundred francs'
worth of horse-power was a sight to see.

" ImpHmiSy the stirrup-leathers were long enough
for yoiL

"En suite, I gave the dear gelding his head
because he took it, and he incontinently faced a
post of the French army at the Porte d'Espagne.
The sentry came to the charge and cried, On ne
passe pas id. The blood-horse went at him, the
sentry funked, and then, as if satisfied with his

316 ROMANTIC SPAIN.

demonstration, the blood-horse — the bit always in
his mouth — ^made a deTfii-tov/r, and faced a post of
douaniers. This also was sacred ground, it appears,
but the douaniers let the blood-horse pass, not
even making the feint to prod his inside for con-
traband. The scene now changes to the Place de
la Comfedie (there's something in a name), where
by virtue of vigorous tugging at curb and snaffle I
just succeeded in keeping my gallant gelding off
the cobble-stones. He went a burster over the
bridge by a short turn down a street and to the
door of his stable, and there he positively stopped,
and I swe^ I felt his sides shaking with laughter.
I called the groom ; said I thought it would rain ;
besides, I did not know the road. On the whole,
I had reconsidered the matter, and would go to
St. Jean de Luz by train. The groom was awfully
polite, pretended to believe me, and provided a
man to take forward my eight — oh, hang it! we
shan't think of the price.

" Humiliation 1 you will say. Yes, sir, and I feel
it ; but that horse will feel it too. When I get him
somewhere that none can see, and where sentries,

EOMANTIG SPAIN. 317

douaniers, and stables of refuge don't abound, I
shall ask him to try how long he can keep up a
gallop ; but, by the body of the Claimant, I shall
have sixteen stone on his back

"Yours with knees unwearied and soul un-
subdued."

At St. Jean de Luz I learned at the principal
hotel that the English milord was Captain Frederick
Bumaby of " the Queen of England's Blue Guards."
He was supposed to have some secret official mis-
sion to Don Carlos, to whose headquarters he had
directed his steps, and I at once took measures to
follow in his tracks.

THE END.

■ILLlNa A SONS. raiNTIRS, QUILDFORO.

I

il

H

BY THE AUTHOR OF ''ROMANTIC SPAIN."

J

AN IRON-BOUND OITY ; or, Five Months

of Peril and Privation. 2 vols. 21s.

"A story of peril, adventure, privation,
Is told, in t^o vols., to your great delectation.
With shrewd common sense and uncommon sensation !
Here's the painful accoimt of Parisians defeated :
And Paris besieged is most ' specially ' treated :
Like a trusty Tapleyan, bright, hopeful, and witty,
O'Shea tells the tale of ' Am Iron-bound City.' "— PuticA.

«-

'We~can listen with un jaded interest to the oft- told tale of the fall of
Paris when it is told by so genial and simny-mindedan historian."— <Sa<Kr<to3^

LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SPECIAL
CORRESPONDENT. 2 vols. 21a

" The great charm of his pages is the entire absence of dulness, and the
evidence they afford of a delicate sense of humour, considerable powers of
observation, a store of apposite and racy anecdote, and a keen enjoyment of
life."— -Standard.

"Redolent of stories throughout, told with such a cheery spirit, in so
genial a manner, that even those they sometimes hit hard cmnot, when they
read, refrain from laughing, for Mr. O'Shea is a modem Democritus ; and yet
there runs a vein of sadness, as if, like Figaro, he made haste to laugh lest he
should have to weep." — Society,

"Delightful reading. ... A most enjoyable book. ... It is kinder to
readers to leave them to find out the good things for themselves. They will
find material for amusement and instruction on every page ; and if the lesson
is sometimes in its way as melandioly as the moral of Firmin Maillard's
' Les Demiers Bohftmes,' it is conveyed after a fashion that recaUs the light-
hearted gaiety of Paul de Kock's ' Damoiselle du Cinqui^me ' and the varied
pathos and humour of Henri Murger." — Whitehall Rtview.

WARD AND DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.

THE NEW NOVELS.

B. I. Faijeon's "TRAGEDY OF FEATHEBSTOM"

3 vols.

W. 0. Tristram's " A STBAHGE AFFAIR." 3 vols.
James Grant's " PLAYING WITH FIRE." 3 vols.
Frank Barrett's "FOUKD GUILTY." 3 vols.
Mrs. Macqnold's " SIR JAMES APPLEBY." 3 vols,
Blanche Rooseyelt's " THE COPPER QUEEN." 3 vols.
" Basil's " " A SHADOWED LIFE." 3 vols.
G. MaJiTrille Fenn's "MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES."

3 vols.

F. C. Philips' " JACK AND THREE JILLS." 2 vols.

Richard Doiling's " FATAL BONDS."

William WestaU's "TWO PINCHES OF SNUFF."

3 vols.

E. Downey's "IN ONE TOWN." 2 vols.

WARD AND DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.