A GALICIAN.
THE great bulk of the Spanish people know as little of Galicia and the neighbouring Principality of the Asturias as the average Englishman knows of the Hebrides. Nor can they judge of the inhabitants of these provinces from the few individual Galicians who emigrate to Madrid any more than we in England can form an idea of Italians from the specimens who perambulate the London streets with a piano organ and a monkey. The Madrileño comes across a few Galicians in the capital engaged in menial services, and speaking a harsh, strange patois, which he finds some difficulty in understanding; but the Gallegan in exile is a very different person from the man you meet in his own land of rain and mist, where the scenery is exquisite, the hotels are famously bad, and devotion is the chief recreation of the community. At home these people are poor, but hardy; possessing little intelligence, but great capacity for work; knowing little comfort, but nursing a passionate attachment for the country of their birth. Many of the young women are remarkably handsome, but drudgery and hardship early tell their tale, and very few of them retain their good looks beyond the age of twenty. The country, for the most part, is poor to barrenness; the peasantry work day and night for mere subsistance; the cottages, which do duty for bedroom and nursery, stable, kitchen, rabbit hutch, pigsty and parlour, are damp and dirty, and destitute of beds or chimneys. The climate is rainy, the surface is mountainous, and the roads are generally bad. Small wonder is it that muleteers and commercial travellers constitute the principal visitors to Galicia—for those who have a soul above scenery, and an ambition beyond fishing, the country is practically without attraction.
A GALICIAN.
A GALICIAN.
The single province of Oviedo, which constitutes the principality of the Asturias, harbours a people who have remained unconquered alike by Roman and Moor. There is protection, if not complete safety, in a country of mountain and valley, of damp and cold; and the Asturians have ever been able to spread themselves over the land and farm their straggling holdings in comparative security. They have cultivated maize for their staple food, poached the hills and rivers for game and fish, cultivated the art of dancing, and lived in terror of the evil eye from the most ancient times; and despite damp, hard fare, and harder toil, they have learnt
REDONDELA (PROVINCE OF PONTEVEDRA)—GENERAL VIEW.