CHAPTER XVI.
DEPARTURE FROM VALENCIA.—A RAILWAY JOURNEY.—DIFFICULTIES TO WHICH TRAVELLERS ARE EXPOSED.—TARRAGONA.—SKETCHES OF ITS HISTORY.—ARRIVAL AT BARCELONA.
WE departed from Valencia, regretting to quit so soon a city where there was so much that was attractive. The train moved off, and after we had proceeded a short distance the night came on. Our appetites being sharpened by long fast and the sea air, we inquired of the guard at which station the passengers would descend to dine. Being told at Castellon, we leant back on the cushions, smiling at each other with that benevolent expression of countenance which the prospect of the refreshment of the inner man produces on the outer—a sort of artificial good-nature, in fact. So fickle, however, is the mental constitution of man, so evanescent everything appertaining to human nature, that in about an hour from the happy moment just recorded we were sitting in extreme and opposite corners of the carriage, addressing staccato remarks to each other, which, although intended to be general, and to carry with them all the suaviter in modo required by the conventionalisms of good society, were at the same time remarkable for the transparency of their tenor. And though in our conduct to each other we had been perfect models of outward politeness, the manner and tone of the conversation became somehow painfully civil, not to say rather nervous and unpleasant, like that of two persons who, having at length, as they think, found each other out, adopt a tone of studied high-polite reserve, not unmixed with a complacent consciousness of their own superiority. And why all this? Wherefore this sudden estrangement between two fond hearts? The answer is simply Stomach, and nothing more; for it is trying, very trying, after one has been assured that dinner waits at a certain station, to find upon arriving there, mad with hunger, that no adequate preparation has been made for you, and, on asking for the buffet, to be directed to a greasy board in the open air, behind some wooden palings, presided over by a dirty old man with two saucers before him full of snails, a plate of minnows, and a collection of little cakes made with rancid oil instead of butter, which condiments we have to clutch at through the railings like monkeys in a cage, the only light being the illumination afforded by a farthing candle. We say it is very difficult under such circumstances to avoid the display of a little ill-nature.
The railway from Valencia, going somewhere in the direction of Barcelona, is a miserable mockery of civilisation. The engine one would imagine was about five-horse power, by the pace at which it went; and it had to stop every five or six miles to renew its supply of water. To all appearance it was simply an old boiler, furnished in a hurry with a few mechanical intestines. Not the least of its evils was that it emitted a pestilential black fume. The motion of the train had an effect upon the passengers something analogous, we should think, to that of being tossed in a blanket.
At a dreary broken-down village called Amplora, at eleven at night, in pitch darkness and drizzling rain, the Barcelona railway came to an end. We were aroused from a feverish sort of sleep by the light of a strong lantern turned full upon our faces. Having undoubled, and stretched ourselves out from a sort of patent boot-jack position, we were hastily packed up tightly, like figs in a drum, with a snuff-coloured gentleman, and stowed away within the fragrant recesses of the coupé of what was confidently supposed by the misguided natives of those regions to be a diligence. With our heads touching the ceiling of the coupé, and knees protruding through the front windows, while our luggage, boxes, parcels, and cloaks were thrown on the top of us, as if they had been heaped there with a pitch-fork, we found ourselves, it need scarcely be remarked, in a very uncomfortable position. It was not long before a collision took place between us and the Moorish-looking gentleman, our companion, whose chief characteristics appeared to be a profuse abuse of snuff, unchanged clothes, an unwashed skin, and an eagle eye. He said he was unwell, and had been told to avoid fresh air. The Anglo-Saxons said they also were unwell, but as a renewal of the oxygen in the atmosphere was considered beneficial to health, they had been advised to avail themselves of the fresh air as much as possible. We were pressed so tightly into our seats, that we looked like owls in an ivy bush, except that those luckier birds rarely have several hundredweights of luggage piled upon their bodies, so as to leave only their heads visible inside a Spanish diligence. We do not suppose either that the owls, which are generally considered partial to the fresh night air, would much like travelling with a gentleman who preferred to be cooped up during his journeys in an exhausted receiver. We were actually packed like preserved sprats in a barrel, and the Moor, who had grumbled until he could grumble no more, was seized with a violent fit of shivering and sneezing, which on the whole was very creditably played by him, and might have established for him a second-rate notoriety in low comedy at a minor theatre. He caught hold of all the rugs and cloaks he could lay hands upon, and, utterly careless of the proprietorship of the same, built a wall thereof between himself and the deadly open windows on our side of the coupé, and so subsided into a sort of angry slumber, broken by constant snorts and groans.