Of course you seldom get a bill. “This is no time o’night to use our bills! With one word of{219} my mouth I can tell them what is to betall.”[38] The Señora confined herself literally to one word when I asked her, and responded “thirty-two,” but I suppose my face must have betrayed some uncertainty, for “reals[39] not pesetas!” added the Señora hastily, knocking seventy-five per cent. off my mental calculation, and bringing her charges for full board and lodging down to about three shillings a day. I wonder who was responsible for the libel that Spanish innkeepers cheat; any attempt at overcharging is an almost unprecedented event.
The borderland character of Plaséncia is reflected in its surroundings. The Castilian sierras wall it in upon the east; but away to the west stretches the wilderness of Estremadura—vast rugged moors interlaced with wide belts of olive and ilex, or small rare patches of cultivated ground. The lonely road holds steadily upon its way till it reaches the lip of the Tagus ravine, and then plunges abruptly down to the level of the river.
There is a marked contrast in the scenery along the two great rivers of northern Spain. The{220} Duero valley is wide and tame, a great unfenced expanse of vineyard and cornfield, edged by low hills of petrified earth; but the Tagus rift is narrow and savage, walled in by bare black rock, and showing few traces of the hand of man. The road swings down the hill in admirable style, but startles the traveller by coming to an abrupt and untimely end about half a mile short of the river; and I had to plough my way down through the shingle to the water’s edge to prospect for a continuation. Far away up stream a few shattered piers and arches testify to the neglected munificence of some old Pontifex Maximus of Toledo; and overhead the great lattice girders of the railway spring from pier to pier across the gulf; but where is there a passage for a wayfaring man? “It strictly prohibits itself” to use the railway line; moreover, the sleepers are laid directly upon the naked girders, so that the passenger gets a fine bird’s-eye view of the landscape between his toes; but there is neither ferry nor ford,—at least none where a stranger can see them; and why strain at the strict prohibition if you can swallow the bird’s-eye view?
Some little way up the further shore I stumble across the road again. It is getting along capitally, thank you, and tackles the steep ascent in a most{221} business-like system of curves and gradients without bestowing a thought upon the lamentable hiatus in the rear. Elsewhere one might reprobate such conduct, but here one accepts it as natural. “Cosas de España,”—It’s the way with Spain.
At the top is a wilderness of rocky pasture powdered with flocks of merino sheep, the great nomad hordes that migrate every winter into these southern latitudes, and are now working their way north again towards the mountains of Leon. Among them stand the cloaked figures of their shepherds, tall and motionless,—a hermit race; and the pale peaks of Almanzor and his brother giants far away in the background, survey with complacent approval a picture as antiquated as themselves. Presently this desert gives way to olive woods, and the olive woods to more cultivated ground. Thick cactus hedges, fringed round with an edging of blossom, begin to hint at a southern climate; and the peasantry are already reaping the barley harvest, though it is yet but the middle of May. At last a cluster of towers planted in the saddle of a low serrated ridge marks the goal of my day’s journey, and with a wide sweep to the right, to outflank an intervening valley, I enter the town of Cáceres.{222}
The tourist who wishes to explore Estremadura will find that the inexorable laws of geography have fixed his headquarters at Cáceres. But he need have no grudge against the inexorable laws aforesaid; they might have chosen a much worse place. To begin with, Cáceres is a town of resources; there is a man in it who owns a bicycle, and who did own till recently a tube of rubber solution, but this rare and costly curio has since been acquired by a foreign collector. Moreover, it is the capital of its province, and it rejoices in a picturesque and busy little market; but the gem of the whole, to an artist’s eyes, is the “old town” which crowns the rising ground in the centre, a delightful relic of antiquity all untainted by the contact of to-day.
Nobody seems to go into the old town of Cáceres except the girls with their water pitchers en route for the Fountain of Council on the further side. The streets are so steep that they are all stepped, and so narrow that it is impossible for two loaded mules to pass. No sound is heard in them but the clattering of the storks, and the grim old palaces which wall them in have an indescribable air of mystery and romance. I am convinced that any bold spirit who dared to penetrate into their flowery patios would find them still inhabited by{223} the old comrades of Cortes and Pizarro and Diego Garcia de Paredes, the great Estremenian warriors of yore. No mere modern mortals can dwell behind those changeless walls. The grey old ramparts which enclose them must have checked the march of time.