CHAPTER XIII
The Columbus country—The way to Moguer—A rickety bridge—An historical family—Blue eyes and honourable hearts—Fifteenth-century iron work—Martin Alonso Pinzón, the friend of Columbus—His history as told by his descendant—Palos de la Frontera—The castle of the Pinzóns—The church of St. George—The Virgin of Columbus—The bridegroom’s door—La Rabida: what it is and what it might be.
February in southern Spain is already spring as a rule, but I visited the Columbus country in 1912, and in that unusual year the winter ran on well into the middle of February, a month which generally carpets the fields with blue iris, golden buttercups, and scarlet poppies. So my trip to Moguer, Palos de la Frontera, and La Rabida may come under the heading of Winter Sketches, and perhaps my readers will like to know that it is possible to explore these remote villages even in showery weather.
I started with the intention of doing a few days’ digging in a buried town on the banks of the Rio Tinto, on my way to the Tharsis copper mines, away up in the Sierra de Huelva, where I was going to see a little museum of objects found by the Company in their various shafts. But the weather, perfect when I left Seville, changed in the night, and I woke next morning to see a downpour of rain which put excavations out of the question—the more so because to reach my site I had to cross the Rio Tinto by a ford which is impassable after rain. So I left my jamugas and tools in the charge of the amiable landlady of the uncomfortable rooms I had been compelled to engage because there was no other within many miles of the ruins, and went on to Moguer, furnished with an introduction to the family of Pinzón, lineal descendants of Martin Alonso Pinzón, who with his two brothers accompanied Columbus on his epoch-making voyage from Palos de la Frontera to the Bahamas.
I left the train in a heavy shower at the wretched little station of San Juan del Puerto, a poverty-stricken village lying on the mud-flats of the Rio Tinto near its junction with the Odiel. This is the nearest station to Moguer, and people who want to see the district, which is very pretty as well as full of historical interest, should not be misled by the guide-books into taking any other route to La Rabida, for reasons which I will presently explain.
Moguer is only about a mile and a half from the station, and a diligence meets every train. It is true that it is not a luxurious conveyance, and sometimes if one does not rush to secure a seat one may find oneself left behind. So unless the trip is a sudden thought, as mine was, it is well to write to the landlady of the Fonda Almirante Pinzón at Moguer, and she will not only send a carriage to the station, but reserve one of her few bedrooms for you, and add an extra dish to her simple dinner in view of your arrival. It is always advisable, when possible, to give notice of your coming to modest little hostelries like this.
The diligence was not crowded the day I first went to Moguer. In fact it contained, besides myself, only an old doctor and his young wife, and the village idiot from San Juan, who rode on the step outside until he realised that nothing was to be got out of the doctor or me by his whines, and then he dropped off and strolled back in the rain to his own place.
Not far out of San Juan there is a long low wooden bridge on trestles across the Rio Tinto, which here is very wide. It creaked and groaned a good deal as we crossed it, and the doctor remarked that it had been condemned long ago as unsafe by the Inspector of Roads, and every time he crossed it he wondered whether it would hold up till he got to the other side.
“Oh, Cayetano! How can you say so, when we have to return by the same road to-morrow!” shrieked his wife.