Incidentally it may be added that a visit to one of these out-of-the-world cities—asleep most of them for the last few centuries—is a pleasing and restful change amidst the racket of exploration. One breathes a mediæval atmosphere and marvels at the revelation, enjoying prehistoric peeps in lost cities replete for the antiquary with historic memorial and long-forgotten lore. No one cares.
Yet in those bygone days of Spain’s world-power these somnolent spots produced the right stuff,—a minority, no doubt, belonged to the type satirised by Cervantes,—but many more strong in mind as in muscle, who went forth, knights-errant, Paladins and Crusaders, to conquer and to shape the course of history. Is the old spirit extinct? Our own impression is that the material is there all right ready to spring to life like the stones of Deucalion, so soon as Spain shall have shaken off her incubus of lethargy and the tyranny that clogs the wheels of progress. Nor need the interval be long.
That sound human material continues to exist in rural Spain we have had recent evidence during the calling-out of levies of young troops ordered abroad to serve their country in Morocco. None could witness the entrainment at some remote station of a detachment of these fine lads without being struck by their bearing, their set purpose, and above all their patriotism. With such material, with a well cared-for, contented, and loyal army and a broadening of view, wisely graduated but equally resolute, Spain moves forward. Alfonso XIII. is a soldier first—No! Above that he is a king by nature, but his care for his army and its well-being has already borne fruits that are making and will make for the honour, safety, and advancement of his country.
To resume our interrupted note on travel: whether you are riding across bush-clad hills, over far-spread prairie, or through the defiles of the sierra, as shadows lengthen the problem of a night’s lodging obtrudes. There is a variety of solutions. At a pinch—as when belated or benighted—one may, in desperate resort, seek shelter in a choza. Now a choza is the reed-thatched hut which forms the rural peasant’s lonely home. Assuredly you will be made welcome, and that with a grace and a courtesy—aye, a courtliness—that characterises even the humblest in Spain. The best there is will be at your disposal; yet—if permissible to say so in face of such splendid hospitality (and in the hope that these good leather-clad friends of ours may not read this book)—the open air is preferable. There exists in a choza absolutely no accommodation—not a separate room; a low settee running round the interior, or a withy frame, forms the bed; those kindly folk live all together, along with their domestic animals—and pigs are reckoned such in Spain. Let us gratefully pay this due tribute to our peasant friends—but let us sleep outside.
At each village will usually be found a posada. These differ in degree, mostly from bad downwards. The lowlier sort—little better than the choza—is but a long, low, one-storeyed barn which you share with fellow-wayfarers, and your own and their beasts, or any others that may come in, barely separated by a thatched partition that is neither noise-proof nor scent-proof. We can call instances to mind when even that small luxury was lacking, and all, human and other, shared alike. There are no windows—merely wooden hatches. If shut, both light and air are excluded; if open, hens, dogs, and cats will enter with the dawn—the former to finish what remains of supper. The cats will at least disperse the regiment of rats which, during the night, have scurried across your sleeping form.
Here we relate, as a specific example, a night we spent this last spring in northern Estremadura:—
Owing to a miscalculation of distance, it was an hour after sundown ere we reached our destination, a lonely hamlet among the hills. Our good little Galician ponies were dead-beat, for we had been in the saddle since 5 A.M., and it was past eight ere we toiled up that last steep, rock-terraced slope. We were a party of three, with a local guide and our own Sancho Panza—faithful companion, friend, and servant of many years’ standing. At a dilapidated hovel, the last in the village and perched on a crag, we drew rein, and after repeated knocks the door was opened by a girl—she had set down a five-year-old child among the donkeys while she drew the bolt, the ground-floor being (as usual) a stable. To our inquiry as to food—and the hunger of the lost was upon us—our hostess merely shrugged her shoulders, and with an expressive gesture of open hands, answered “Nada”—nothing! Sancho, however, was equal to the occasion. Within two minutes, while we yet stood disconsolate, he returned with a cackling cockerel in his arms. “Stew him quick before he crows,” he adjured the girl, and turned to unload the ponies.
What an age a cockerel takes to cook! It was midnight ere he smoked on the board and, hunger satisfied, we could turn in. In an upper den were two alcoves with beds, or rather stone ledges, ordinarily used by the family, and which were assigned to us, the luckless No. 3 by lot having to make shift (in preference to sleeping on a filthy floor) with three cranky tables of varying heights, and whose united lengths proved a foot too short at either end!