At our first view the country seemed hardly in holiday humour, for the sky was dark and lowering; and though the cloud effects were magnificent, the landscape beneath them looked eerie and morose. But, like all southern landscapes, it woke up wonderfully under the witchery of the sunshine, and donned its brightest colours next morning in honour of its patroness, Our Lady of the Oak-tree, whose festival was to be celebrated that day.
Ponferrada, the centre and capital of the district, is a picturesque little township, situated on a steep bank over the river Sil. Its most prominent feature is an imposing castle once a preceptory of the Knights Templar; but this was the evening{74} of the Vigil, and the townfolk were all thronging into the portals of the church. The vast, gloomy interior was lit only by two or three tapers, which scarcely served to make darkness visible; and at first we could discern nothing but the white snoods of the women, who were kneeling in companies about the great aisleless nave. But presently the spring blind over the Altar went up with a sudden snap, and disclosed Nuestra Señora de la Encina herself, the little black wooden image which is the Palladium of the whole Vierzo, clad in white satin and tinsel, and set in a halo of incandescent lamps! This startling modern finale gave a queer jar to the old-world solemnity of the preliminaries; and the chant which burst out at the signal scarcely helped to restore the effect. The men’s voices in Spain are frequently powerful and impressive; but here they were relying entirely on their trebles, who are always terribly shrill and grating, even to the least musical ear.
The great road which passes through Ponferrada on its way across the Vierzo has been the track followed by numberless armies from the days of Rome to our own; and to Englishmen it has a special interest as being the path of the ill-fated Moore. The second and more arduous stage of{75} the famous retreat began at Astorga, where Napoleon abandoned the command of the French armies to Soult. Moore might very possibly have checked his pursuers on the great natural glacis of Manzanal; but it was the aim of his strategy to entangle them as deeply as possible in the Galician mountains, and he did not wish to make a stand too soon. Accordingly the English army, with Soult hot upon their track, swept swiftly through the Vierzo. They got abominably drunk in the wine-cellars at Bembibre and Ponferrada. They had a sharp brush with the enemy’s cavalry at the hamlet of Cacabellos. Then at Villafranca they were swallowed again by the mountains, and headed for Lugo by the long and labyrinthine pass.
The road across the Pass of Piedrafita is a very different thing nowadays to what it was in the time of Moore; yet even now it would be no pleasant journey in January, with the snow-drifts blocking the narrow “prison vale.” Gradually ascending the left bank of the river Valcarce, we passed through several picturesque but grimy villages romantically placed amid the rocky and wooded hills. The ascent became steeper and more tortuous as the road climbed up towards the saddle; and at last, on the very summit, we{76} reached the “fixed stone” which is the boundary of Leon and Galicia, and entered the head of the Návia valley, which guided us down the long descent.
The western portal of the Pass a little above Nogales is guarded by a solitary watch-tower, perched upon the point of an isolated boulder in the centre of the V-shaped vale. This outlet, however, does not get us clear of the mountains; for another lofty ridge rises immediately beyond it, and it was at this point that some of the most terrible scenes occurred in the course of Moore’s retreat. Hundreds lay dying of cold, hunger, and exhaustion; and the army treasure-chests, containing 150,000 dollars, were rolled down the hillside into the river gully, to save them from falling into the hands of the French. The closeness of the pursuit, however, was checked by Paget in a sharp action at the old Roman bridge of Constantino, which spans a rocky gorge half-way up the hill; and Moore was enabled to reach Lugo without much further loss.
We spent the night at the mountain village of Becerrea, high up near the summit of the ridge—a night of the most brilliant moonlight, which showed up the distant mountains almost as clearly{77} as the day. Next morning, however, found the village buried in clouds; and through these we laboriously groped our way, with the trained fog-craft of Londoners, till at last we succeeded in rising above them, and emerging on the summit of the ridge. The scene was such as seldom falls to the lot of a cyclist, for the vapour choked all the valleys beneath us, and the mountain peaks that reared themselves out of it showed like so many islands in a sea of cotton-wool. The gorse and bracken around us were silver with the webs of the gossamer spiders, and the moisture that still hung to the tree-twigs sparkled like jewels in the rising sun. Before us a great pale mist-bow was outlined upon a paler curtain; and it cost us some regret to desert so striking a spectacle and plunge again into the cold cloud-bath that awaited us on the other side.
The series of parallel ridges which the road crosses upon its journey westward sink gradually lower and lower, till the environs of Lugo appear comparatively level. The valleys are green and well wooded with tall timber trees; and as the sun got the better of the clouds some hours before mid-day, we had good cause to remember them in a favourable light. Many of the wayside{78} cottages were extremely pretty—irregular old stone shanties with shadowy eaves and balconies, and rude verandahs heavily draped with vines; and the distant prospect of plain and mountain forms a delightful background to the views.
Lugo stands upon one of the minor ridges which help to compose what Galicia calls a plain; and the river Miño, broad and placid like the Thames at Richmond, flows far beneath it in a deep, well-wooded vale. Like many of the Galician mountain townships, Lugo is roofed with rough, grey slating, and this fact at the first glance gives it a curiously un-Spanish air; yet there is no town in all the Peninsula more thoroughly national in tone.