MY GUIDE LEADING ME UP TO THE MONASTERY OF SAN ESTEBAN, ORENSE
PHOTOS, BY AUTHOR
turned that the ruins were perched, and to reach them I must cross both the Cabe and the Sil.
It was past midday when, leaving my companion in the cottage, I started out with the peasant and a young girl as my guides. We scrambled down between the boulders of a steep and jagged path till we reached the Cabe, and then crossed the rushing water by a rustic bridge formed of two rough pine stems with little planks of wood laid across them. On we scrambled again by another goat-path to the bank of the Sil, which was a much wider river and had to be crossed on a raft. The peasant had already whistled several times for the ferryman, and that useful person appeared at the end of a quarter of an hour’s time with a crazy raft, and ferried us across the stem of the Y from a floating wharf which served as a landing-place. The water was flowing fast, and we crossed in eddies, our raft twirling round continually. It would not have been safe to stand, so we crossed kneeling and steadying ourselves by clutching at the oar.
The ferry-boat landed us at the foot of a steep path, on the edge of another mountain. Here in olden days the monks kept a man on the watch to gather toll from every person who stepped ashore, but now the ferry is private property. Lampreys are caught in this part of the Sil, and many other fine fish; the old ferryman spends his odd moments fishing for eels, which he sells in Orense at a dollar apiece.
We begin the ascent of a winding woodland path, with trees, bushes, and grasses high on all sides, and here and there between them a cascade, which we cross by means of a granite slab and moss-covered rocks. Every now and then we stop to look at the path by which we have come, and follow with our eyes the blue waters of the Sil in the narrow ravine below. Up and up and up we climb, and never for a moment do we cease to hear the sound of rushing and gurgling water, for, besides the river below, there are mountain streams gushing forth from between the stones every few steps of the way. After an hour’s climb we reached a point where the path divides into two. We choose the narrow, steeper, and more direct one, of which each step seemed to be a granite boulder. A wayside cross now meets our view; it is time-worn, and was evidently placed there by the monks to cheer the heart of the pious climber.
On one of the ledges we stopped to look at the ruins, and at the sky showing through the many windows. All round the monastery the cultivable parts of the mountain are covered with vines, potato patches, and other signs of human life, and the last part of the ascent is through vineyards and beneath arches formed by vine branches. Once more we pause to look across the ravine, and see before us a rock whose jagged form bears a remarkable resemblance to two cathedral towers. Now comes another cross with a Virgin Mother and the wounded Christ on its one side, and a crucifix on the other; below are a skull and cross-bones, and beneath them again is a metal figure of a monk. We have reached the precincts of the monastery.