As we thread the long poplar avenues which radiate from the gates of Leon, and climb from its fertile valley on to the bald bleak moors, we might almost persuade ourselves that the days of pilgrimage are not over even yet. The road is thronged for miles with a steady procession of country-folk, trooping into the early market in the old Gothic capital—as picturesque a medley as ever delighted the student of costume. Market-women stride-legged between their donkey’s panniers, like Dulcinea del Toboso when she was enchanted; bronzed and tattered countrymen with the sun glinting on their shouldered scythes; long teams of mules jingling in gaudy trappings; and lumbering ox-carts with their prodigious loads of chaff. Here and there we met substantial yeomen well horsed and muffled, with their womenkind a-pillion; and sometimes a broad-breeched Maragato tramping along beside his loaded wain. The clear crisp light of the early morning revealed all the landscape in its brightest{66} colours. To the southward the dun plain sweeps away unbroken till it is lost in illimitable distance; and the view to the northward is bounded by the long blue line of the Cantabrian mountains, peak beyond peak in endless range, like a string of chevrons on the horizon. No wonder the Spaniards call their mountain chains Sierras, “saws.”
The wide bed of the Orbigo river is crossed by a long uneven bridge; the scene of the famous “Pass of Honour,” dear to the heart of Don Quixote and all the annalists of chivalry. In the year of the great Jubilee at Santiago in 1439 Don Suero Quinones, a valiant Leonese, made a vow to maintain that bridge for thirty days against all knights who refused to admit the pre-eminent beauty of his lady-love. In token whereof an iron collar was riveted round his neck, not to be removed till he had redeemed his vow. He was a knight of the military order of Santiago, hailing from what is now the convent of San Marcos.[10] But membership of the Spanish military orders was no impediment to love-making, or even to{67} marriage (except in the case of widowers); so that Don Suero (a Paladin of his day, who was wont to fight Moors with his right arm bare like King Pentapolin of the Garamantas), was quite in order in paying these courtesies to the fair.
Now there were many knights going to Santiago for the Jubilee, and Don Suero and his nine companions enjoyed an extremely busy time. Seven hundred and thirty combats did they accomplish during those thirty days—a daily working average of two and a half apiece. Don Suero, however, duly got rid of his collar, to his eternal honour and glory; and seeing that even Philip the Prudent had his story republished as a perpetual example, perhaps it is not surprising that poor Don Quixote should have taken the pamphlet au pied de la lettre.
The bridge itself is long and narrow, with a pronounced kink in the middle, and if the tilts were actually run upon it, it is easy to understand the challenger’s success. It needed but knowledge of the ground and a little judicious timing, and he could cut into his disordered opponent broadside as he rounded the bend. But doubtless this unworthy suggestion is a libel on the gallant Suero. His lists would have been fairly pitched in the open plain.
When we crossed the venerable arches they were{68} in the state described by Mr Chucks as “precarious and not at all permanent.” The ox-carts preferred fording the river. But perhaps this has been “mitigated” by now.
Another stage across the moorland brings us up under the massive ramparts of Astorga, standing “four square to all the winds that blow,” as it stood in the days of that Cæsar Augustus whose name it now so barbarously mis-spells.[11] “It is absurd to speak of Astorga as a fortress,” wrote the impatient Duke; “it is merely a walled town.” And a walled town it is, most emphatically; but the “merely” seems rather inadequate, for the walls of Astorga are a trifle of twenty-two feet thick. They are sadly battered indeed, and mercilessly plundered of their facing stones; yet their huge rugged nakedness, scowling truculently across the plain from the crest of their natural glacis, makes them a far more impressive spectacle than their house-encumbered rivals at Lugo and Leon. They have at all events stood two artillery sieges; for the citizens held them for two months against Junot in 1810, and the French for three against Castaños in 1812; yet the old Roman mason who built them might readily acknowledge them still.{69}
