[366a] An onza (see Glossary).
[366b] The real word, of which this is a modification, is Carajo—a word which, used as an adjective, represents the English “bloody,” and used as a substantive, something yet more gross. In decent society the first syllable is considered quite strong enough as an expletive, and, modified as Caramba, may even fall from fair lips.
[366c] At Seville Borrow seems to have been known as El brujo (v. p. 178).
[368] On the north shore of this bay is built the town of El Ferrol (el farol = the lighthouse), daily growing in importance as the great naval arsenal of Spain.
[369a] More commonly written puchero = a glazed earthenware pot. But it is the contents rather than the pot that is usually signified, just as in the case of the olla, the round pot, whose savoury contents are spoken of throughout southern Spain as an olla, and in England as olla podrida.
[369b] Santiago de Compostella (see note on p. 193). As usual I preserve the author’s original spelling, though St. James is a purely fanciful name. The Holy Place is known in common Spanish parlance as Santiago, in classical English more usually as Compostella.
[370a] Probably Norwich.
[370b] See Wild Wales, chap. xxiv.
[375] For the etymology of Guadalete, and many references to the river and to the battle that is said to have been fought on its banks between the invading Arabs and Roderic, “the last of the Goths,” see Burke’s History of Spain, vol. i. pp. 110, 111, and notes.
Borrow, in fact, followed almost exactly the line of the celebrated retreat of Sir John Moore, as may be seen by referring to the map. Moore, leaving the plain country, and provoked by the ignorant taunts of Frere to abandon his own plan of marching in safety south-west into Portugal, found himself on the 28th of December, 1808, at Benavente; on the 29th, at Astorga; on the 31st, at Villafranca del Vierzo; and thence, closely pressed day by day by the superior forces of Soult, he passed through Bembibre, Cacabelos, Herrerias, Nogales, to Lugo, whence, by way of Betanzos, he arrived on the 11th of January at Corunna. The horrors of that winter march over the frozen mountains will never fully be known; they are forgotten in the glorious, if bootless, victory on the sea-coast, and the heroic death of Moore. The most authoritative account of Sir John Moore’s retreat, and of the battle of Corunna, is to be found in the first volume of Napier’s Peninsular War; but the raciest is certainly that in the first edition of Murray’s Handbook of Spain, by Richard Ford.