A Corner of Spain

A CORNER OF SPAIN
BY WALTER WOOD WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN HUME
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR AND LINE FROM PICTURES BY FRANK H. MASON, R.B.A. AND WITH NUMEROUS REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK JAMES POTT & CO. LONDON: EVELEIGH NASH 1910
Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London
This book does not pretend to be a history or a complete record of Galicia. Its purpose is to show something of the life and character of a little-known part of Spain, and to deal with things seen and done by the visitor who travels under competent and comfortable guidance. I have written either of what I experienced or on the authority of prominent residents with whom I came in contact in my wanderings.



A LAND OF MOUNTAIN AND FLOOD

I stood upon the salient bastion of an ancient fortress towering high above a swift and placid river. Below and around me swept line upon line of crumbling walls and grass-grown moats, the scene of many a bloody struggle in the evil days of old. From a hundred grim embrasures peeped rusty cannon, harmless now, and dark-eyed children sported upon the battlements that once had belched defiance and destruction to the foe across the stream. For this old white town, cramped within its triple ramparts, is the last vantage ground of Portugal; and on the other side of the Miño straight before me is Galicia, the unconquered land of the Gael, a land of mountain and flood, of mist and sunlight, such as are all the western promontories in which the mysterious Celtic people have finally found a home after ages of unrecorded wanderings.