Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
How the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But nothing he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on,
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done,
When the clock toll’d the hour for retiring,
And we heard by the outpost signal gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame, fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him—alone with his glory.”[185]
The town of Coruña is built, as we have seen, on a peninsula, upon whose rocky sea-washed point there stands the famous Tower of Hercules, a monument of remote antiquity with modern restorations. After bidding adieu to the tomb of Sir John Moore, we told our coachman to drive us to this lighthouse, whose majestic proportions had aroused our admiration as our steamer entered the Coruña harbour. On the way thither we visited the Campo Santo, a large cemetery, with many handsome marble monuments. There was a high white wall round the cemetery, and inside it were some tall and leafy eucalyptus trees; on the outer side of the wall there were geranium hedges, six and seven feet high, and in full flower. A priest was standing at the entrance to the cemetery, and seeing that we were foreigners, he kindly volunteered a few explanatory remarks. “Those niches in the catacombs which you see lining the cemetery wall,” he observed, “are the graves of rich people, whose friends can afford to pay a considerable sum for the privilege; the graves you see in the centre, under the grass, are those of poor people, who could not pay for more than the plain ground.” The cemetery was a very large one; it covered the whole hillside and stretched right down to the sea, which formed an azure background to the gleaming white marble. The descending path had handsome monuments on either side of it, all bearing the letters R.I.P.; they were separated from one another by handsome palm trees.
“These monuments were all sculptured in Italy,” explained the priest, “where Carrara marble and sculpture are comparatively cheap: it is easy to bring them here by sea from Genoa.” One of the pantheons was like a chapel. We looked through its glass doors, protected by a strong iron gateway, and saw an altar with four high candles, flowers, and crucifix at the farther end; each candle had a big black ribbon bow with long ends hanging down; in front of the altar were two prie-dieu chairs, which had the appearance of being in constant use. To our left as we had entered we had noticed a round edifice lighted with high oval windows. The priest told us this was the mortuary, that all unclaimed corpses were brought here and laid on the marble slab in the centre, and that this was the spot where inquests were held. A little below, there was a sort of inner cemetery where—so said the priest—all the children who died under seven years of age were buried. We read the inscriptions over several of these little graves, and noticed that nearly all had the words “ascended into heaven on——” and then followed the date.[186] And we were reminded of the fact that “early death is held in Spain to be rather a matter of congratulation than of grief.”[187]
We now returned to our carriage, and drove to the Tower of Hercules. Between the rocks that ran into the sea and were at every moment being covered by its white foam and the great square tower, were stretches of green cornfields, which, to our surprise, were covered with waving oats ready for cutting, and actually being cut before our very eyes by peasant women with small prehistoric crescent-shaped hand sickles—another sight strange to English eyes in the middle of January! But a cold wind was blowing from the sea, and we were glad that the hot sunshine had not tempted us to leave our warm wraps at home: we now drew them well round us, and proceeded on foot to examine the tower. To walk round its square base, I had to take eighty good steps. The original construction of this tower is attributed to the Phœnicians, who have been called the first civilisers of Spain, and who also erected a Tower of Hercules in the neighbourhood of Cadiz. The material of which this tower is built consists of small stones about a foot square, cemented together with pebbles in the gaps. It has three storeys, and the roof is of the same material as the vaults. The storeys, connected with one another by a wooden stair, are said to date from the time of Captain-General Uceda. On the stones is the following inscription:[188]—
LVPVS CONSTRVXIT EMV
LASVS MIRACVLA MEMPHIS
GRADIBVS STRAVIT YLAM
LVSTRANS CACVMENE NAVES
. . . . . S XDDVO