Scale 1 : 100,000.

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The coast of the Asturias abounds in small bays, or rias, bounded by steep cliffs. In Galicia these rias assume vast proportions, and are of great depth. They may fitly be likened to the fiords of Northern Europe, and their origin appears to be the same. The marine fauna of these Galician rias is Britannic rather than Lusitanian, for amongst two hundred species of testacea collected by Mr. MacAndrew there are only twenty-five which were not also found on the coasts of Britain. Moreover, the flora of the Asturian Mountains is very much like that of Ireland; and these facts go far in support of the hypothesis, started by Forbes, that the Azores, Ireland, and Galicia, anterior to the glacial epoch, were connected by land.

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Fig. 181.—PASS OF REINOSA.

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The climate, too, resembles that of Great Britain. The rainfall on the exterior slopes of the mountains is abundant, whilst to the south of them, in the arid plains of Leon and Castile, it hardly rains at all. There are localities in the Asturias where the rainfall amounts to more than six feet annually, a quantity only again met with on the western mountain slopes of Scotland and Norway, and on the southern declivities of the Swiss Alps. There is no season without rain, and {455} droughts are exceedingly rare. Equinoctial storms are frequent in autumn, and render the Bay of Biscay dangerous to mariners. The temperature is equable, and fogs, locally known as bretimas, are as frequent as in the British Islands. These fogs exercise a strong influence upon the superstitious minds of the Galicians, who fancy they see magicians, or nuveiros, ride upon the clouds, expand into mists, and shrink back into cloudlets. They also believe that the bodies of the dead are conveyed by the mists from cemetery to cemetery, these fearful nocturnal processions being known to them as estadeas, or estadhinas.[163]

In spite of an abundance of running water, the Cantabrian provinces cannot boast of a single navigable river. In the Asturias the littoral zone is too narrow, and the slope too considerable, to admit of torrents becoming tranquil rivers. Nor are the Tambre and Ulla, in Galicia, of any importance; and the only true river of the country is the Miño, called Minho by the Portuguese on its lower course, where it forms the boundary between the two states of Iberia. The Miño is fed from both slopes of the Cantabrian Mountains, the Miño proper rising on the western slope, whilst the Sil comes from the interior of the country. The latter is the main branch. “The Miño has the reputation,” say the Spaniards, “but the Sil has the water.” The Sil, before leaving the province of Leon, passes through the ancient lake basin of the Vierzo, now shrunk to a small sheet of water known as the Lago de Carrocedo. It then passes in succession through a wild gorge, a second lake basin, the tunnel of Monte Furado (“pierced mountains”), excavated by the Romans to facilitate their mining operations, and finally rushes through a gorge intersecting the Cantabrian Mountains, and one of the wildest in all Spain, with precipitous walls more than 1,000 feet in height. Immediately below the confluence with the Miño a second gorge has to be passed, but then the waters of the river expand, and flow into the sea through a wide estuary. Below Tuy, for a distance of about twenty miles, the river is navigable. But though of small service to navigation, the Miño is nevertheless one of the eight great rivers of the Iberian peninsula, and proportionately to the extent of its basin it is the most copious.[164]