We regained the high road above Cudillero by a long winding ascent; and leaving far below us on our left the beautiful estuary of Muros, bore up into the mountains for the secluded vale of Právia at the confluence of the Narcea and the Nalon. “Právia is better than Switzerland,” our host at Bellotas had informed us, and we do not wish to deny it. But the comparison could only be made by one who had never seen Switzerland, for there is nothing in common between the two. Our own Lake District would supply a nearer parallel; but I know nothing quite like Právia except Právia itself; a meeting-place of many valleys with vistas of mountain scenery opening out on every side. Yet the heart of the range still holds remote and invisible. It is not till we have progressed some distance up the Nalon valley, and are drawing near to Oviedo, that we get acquainted with the higher peaks. Then, indeed, the scale becomes truly Alpine, and the valleys which lie across our path would not discredit Piedmont or Savoy.
Oviedo is not a town for which I have ever been able to acquire much enthusiasm. A traveller{122} newly landed from France might find it delightfully Spanish, but to one who is fresh from the interior it has a flavour of underdone French. It lies amid beautiful scenery, but just out of sight of the best of it; and perhaps, as it is bent upon a career of commercial enterprise, this retirement is creditable to its taste. Yet its situation is by no means commonplace, its atmosphere not generally smoky, and its fine old palaces and narrow cobbled calles must be allowed to weigh something in the balance against its boulevards and tram-lines and plate-glass.
The cathedral is a fine building, though it hardly can rank with the finest; and it seems to be somewhat infected by the prevailing Frenchified air. Yet in sanctity it is pre-eminent; for it boasts the holiest relics in the Peninsula—all the miracle-working treasures which the kings of the Visigoths had hoarded in their temple at Toledo, and which the faithful bore away with them into the mountains when they fled from the invading Moors. Some splendid specimens of early jewellery may be seen among the caskets and monstrances; and the reredos behind the High Altar is quite in the best Spanish style.
The children seem afflicted with an uncontrollable mania for getting their pictures taken. Perhaps{123} there is thought to be luck in it, for even their elders are not entirely exempt. This fact accounts for the presence of the venerable Sereno in the foreground of my drawing of the cathedral. He insisted on shaking hands with me for my kindness in putting him there, although I had conceived the obligation to be all on my side.
These quaint old watchmen are a sort of hall-mark of municipal respectability. No Spanish city “of any degree of ton” would think of dispensing with its Serenos. Indeed, in some instances the Sereno has survived where the city is now little more than a name. Fine picturesque old figures clad in cloaks and slouch hats, and armed with javelins and lanterns,—(the towns are all lighted by electricity, but that is a detail),—they give a deliciously old-world flavour to the deserted streets at night. It is questionable whether they would be much use in a row; for like our own late lamented “Charlies,” they are often aged and infirm. But their pictorial effect is incomparable: and they are real good Samaritans to the belated reveller, for they carry the keys of all the street doors on their beat, so that the errant householder can always steal quietly to cover, after he has awakened half the parish in summoning “Ser-êno-o!{124}”