Most of the towns of the Asturias are close to the coast. Castro-Urdiales, Laredo, and Santoña, immediately to the west of the Basque provinces, have frequently served as naval stations. The roadstead of Santoña is one of the most commodious and best sheltered of the peninsula, and when Napoleon gave Spain to his brother Joseph he retained possession of that place, and began fortifications which would have converted it into a French Gibraltar.

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Fig. 183.—RIAS OF LA CORUÑA AND FERROL.

Scale 1 : 210,400.

The great commercial port of the country is Santander, with its excellent harbour, quays, docks, and warehouses, built upon land won from the sea. Santander is the natural outlet of the Castiles, and exports the flour of Valladolid and Palencia, as well as the woollen stuffs known as sorianas and leonesas from the places where they are manufactured. It supplies the interior with the colonial produce of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and its merchants keep up regular intercourse with France, England, Hamburg, and Scandinavia.[165] The ship-building yards at the head of the bay have lost their former importance, and the manufacture of cigars is now the great industry of the country. Sardinero, a bathing-place to the north of the town, and the hot springs of Alcedo, Ontaneda, Las Caldas de Besaya, in the hills to the south, are favourite places of resort.

Along the coast to the west of Santander, as far as Gijon, we only meet with {459} villages, such as San Martin de la Arena (the port of the decayed town of Santillana), San Vicente de la Barquera, Llanes, Rivadesella, and Lástres. Nor is Gijon, with its huge tobacco factory, a place of importance, though formerly it was the capital of all Asturias. It exports, however, the coal brought by rail from Sarna (Langres), and with Aviles, on the other side of the elevated Cabo de Peñas, enjoys the advantage of being the port of Oviedo, situated in a tributary valley of the Nalon, fifteen miles in the interior. Oviedo has flourishing iron-works, a university, and a fine Gothic cathedral, said to be richer in relics than any other church in the world. The mountain of Naronca shelters the town against northerly winds, and its climate is delicious. The environs abound in delightful spots. At Cangas de Onis, which was the first capital of the kingdom, founded by St. Pelagius, but now merely a village in a charming valley, are the caverns of Covadonga, in which the ashes of the saint have found a last resting-place, and which are consequently objects of the highest veneration to patriotic Spaniards. Trubia, the Government gun and small-arms factory, lies seven miles to the west of Oviedo.

Cudillero, Luarca, Navia (a place said to have been founded by Ham, the son of Noah), Castropol, and Galician Rivadeo are mere fishing villages, and only when we reach the magnificent rias opening out into the Atlantic do we again meet with real towns. The first of these is Ferrol, which was only a village up to the middle of last century, but has since been converted into a great naval station and fortress, bristling with guns, and containing dockyards and arsenals.

La Coruña, the Groyne of English sailors, depends rather upon commerce, manufactures, and fishing than upon its military establishments and fortifications. It is one of the most picturesque towns of Spain, and its favourable geographical position will enable it, on the completion of the railway now building, considerably to extend its commerce, which at present is almost confined to England.[166] On a small island near it stands the Tower of Hercules, the foundations of which date back to the Romans, if not Phœnicians. It was from the ria of Coruña that the “Invincible Armada” set out upon its disastrous expedition.

Each of the rias of Southern Galicia has its port or ports. That of Corcubion is sheltered by the Cape of Finisterre; on the ria of Noya are the small towns of Noya and Muros; that of Arosa is frequented by vessels which convey emigrants from the ports of Padron and Carril to La Plata; the ria of Pontevedra extends to the town after which it is named; and farther south still, the towns of Vigo and Bayona rise on the shore of a magnificent bay, protected by a group of islands known to the ancients as “Isles of the Gods.” Vigo, with its excellent harbour, has become the great commercial port of the country,[167] but is, perhaps, better known on account of the galleons sunk by Dutch and English privateers.