Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

"Our special correspondent" had dismally failed to cast over his account the glamour of romance, but in compensation had taken a reporter's care to give the precise point in the right temple where the ball had entered, with the exact dimensions of the orifice, as well as the life story of the hero who had bored it. Nay, with almost American haste and resourcefulness the paper printed a full-length portrait of the successful hunter--or one at least of a man who could not have been vastly different in appearance, in a uniform that was certainly very similar. Alas! The good old days of the bandit and the contrabandista are forever gone in Spain; the humdrum era of the civil guard is come. Pernales' is but another story of a man born a century too late.

The land of the boina. Alfonso XII at a picnic

All day long as we toiled and twisted over the Cantabrian range and descended southward, this only was the topic of conversation of all grades and sexes of travelers. An hour's halt at Miranda and we creaked on along the bank of Spain's greatest river, the Ebro, talking still of bandoleros and the regret of their passing. Slowly the green tinge in the landscape faded away and in its place came reddish cliffs and a sun-seared and all but desert country spreading away from either bank of the red-dyed river, sterile rolling plains relieved only by small oases of fertility and isolated and in all probability bigoted villages standing colorless on colorless hillsides. As central Spain may be likened to rocky Judea, so this resembles in some degree Egypt, with the Ebro as the Nile.

It was late in the evening when I arrived in Saragossa and, crossing the broad river by the Puente de Piedra, found myself in one of the most labyrinthian cities of Spain. But so practiced had I grown in such quest that in less than an hour I had engaged accommodation at my own price, which by this time had descended to two and a half pesetas.

The "sight" par excellence of Saragossa is of course her "Virgen del Pilar." The story runs that Santiago, who is none other than Saint James, while wandering about Spain, as he was wont to ramble in various corners of the earth, was favored one evening by a call from the Mother of Christ, who, during all their little chat, stood on the top of a stone pillar. That the tale is true there seems little chance for doubt, for they have the pillar yet; and it is over this that has been erected the vast cathedral to which flock thousands of pilgrims during every month of the year.

I repaired to it early, but was soon turned melancholy with the recollection of Puck's profound saying anent the folly of mankind. The interior of the edifice is as impressive as that of an empty warehouse. Under the main dome is a large chapel screaming with riches, in the back of which, on her pillar, stands the Virgin--turned to black, half-decayed wood--dressed in more thousands of dollars' worth of gold and silver, of resplendent robes and vociferous gaudiness than god Juggernaut of India ever possessed at the height of his influence. Before it worshipers are always kneeling. In the back wall of the chapel is an opening through which one can touch the pillar--and find a cup-shaped hole worn in it by such action during the centuries. I sat down on a bench near the far-famed orifice, and for close upon an hour watched the unbroken procession file past. Beggar women, rag-pickers, ladies of wealth, cankerous old men, merchants, city sports, lawyers--Saragossa is the one city of Spain where even men go to church--every grade and variety of Aragonese pressed close upon the heels one of another, each bowing down as he passed to kiss the hole deeper into the pillar. At bottom the difference is slight indeed between the religion of the Spaniard and that of the Hindu.

In the city swarms a hungry, ragged people, more often than not without shoes, yet one and all with the proverbial haughty pride and somber mood of Aragon in face and bearing, stiff-shouldered, bristling with a touch-me-not-with-a-pole expression. Here, too, may still be found, especially among the peasants from the further districts, the old provincial costume,--knee breeches, a jacket reaching barely to the waist, and a red cloth wound about the head.

Tiring of such things, there is a pleasant promenade along the banks of the Ebro, whence one will drift naturally through the Portillo gate where the "flying Gaul was foil'd by a woman's hand." It is startling to find the settings of two such world-famed dramas so close together, but from the gate one has only to saunter a few yards along the Madrid highway to come upon the weather-battered Aljafería of "Trovatore" fame. To-day it is a barracks. Within its towers, through now unbarred windows, may be seen soldiers polishing their spurs and muskets, humming now and then a snatch of popular song; but one may wait in vain to hear some tuneful prisoner strike up the expected "miserere."

There is one stroll in Saragossa that I would commend to the wanderer who finds pleasure in gaining elevations whence he may look down, as it were, on the world. It is out along the Canal Imperial, past the swollen-paunched statue of its sponsor Pignatelli, and across the Huerva; then winding lazily southwest and upward the stroller comes suddenly out on the crown of a bald hillock. There, below him in its flat valley, spreads all Saragossa, far enough away to lose the crassness of detail, yet distinct, the two finished towers of the Pilar rising above it like minarets, the whole girded by the green huerta, and beyond and all around the desert in gashed and gnarled hills like the Libyan range of another continent. Here I lounged until the setting sun, peering over my shoulder, cast the radiant flush of evening on the city below, which gradually fading away was at length effaced in the night, its sounds mingling together in a sort of music that drifted up to me long after the scene itself had wholly disappeared.