“How happens it that this place is not colder? It is in about the same latitude as New York City; and now, in the month of December, it is comfortably warm,” said Sheridan.
“These valleys have a mild climate; and the vine and olive are their principal productions. It is not so on the high table-land in the centre of Spain. At Madrid, for instance, the weather will be found to be quite cold at this time. The weather is so bitter there sometimes that the sentinels on guard have to be changed every quarter of an hour, as they are in danger of being frozen to death.”
The party walked first to the great square, in the centre of which is a public fountain. They paused to look at the people. Most of the men wore some kind of a mantle or cloak. This garment was sometimes the Spanish circular cloak, worn with a style and grace that the Spaniard alone can attain. That of the poorer class was often nothing but a striped blanket, which, however, they slung about them with no little of the air of those who wore better garments. They were generally tall, muscular, but rather bony fellows, with an expression as solemn as though they were doing duty at a funeral. Some of them wore the broad-brimmed sombrero; some had handkerchiefs wound around their heads, like turbans; and others sported the ordinary hat or cap.
The party could not help laughing when they saw, for the first time, a priest wearing a hat which extended fore and aft at least three feet, with the sides rolled up close to the body. Everybody was dignified, and moved about at a funeral pace.
At the fountain women and girls were filling the jars of odd shape with water, and bearing them away poised on one of their hips or on the head. Several donkeys were standing near, upon which their owners were loading the sacks of water they had filled.
“Bags of water!” exclaimed Murray.
“They do not call them bags, but skins,” said the doctor. “You can see the legs and neck of the animal, which are very convenient in handling them. These skins are more easily transported on the backs of the donkeys than barrels, kegs, or jars could be. Many kinds of wine are transported in these skins, which could hardly be carried on the back of an animal in any other way. Except a few great highways, Spain is not provided with roads. In some places, when you ride in a carriage, you will take to the open fields; and very rough indeed they are sometimes.”
The party proceeded on their walk, and soon reached the Cathedral of San Salvador, generally called El Seo; a term as applicable to any other cathedral in Aragon as to this one. It is a sombre old structure: a part of it is said to have been built in the year 290; and pious people have been building it till within three hundred and fifty years of the present time. There are some grand monuments in it; among them that of Arbues, who was assassinated for carrying out the decrees of the Inquisition. The people of Aragon did not take kindly to this institution; but the murder was terribly avenged, and the Inquisition established its authority in the midst of the tumult it had excited. Murillo, the great Spanish painter, made the assassination of Arbues the subject of one of his principal pictures.
Saragossa has two cathedrals, the second of which is called El Pilar, because it contains the very pillar on which the Virgin landed when she came down from heaven in one of her visits to Spain. It appears that St. James—Santiago in Spanish—came to Spain after the crucifixion of the Saviour, in the year 40, to preach the gospel to the natives. When he had got as far as Saragossa, he was naturally tired, and went to sleep. In this state the Virgin came to him with a message from the Saviour, requiring him to build a chapel in honor of herself. She stood on a jasper pillar, and was attended by a multitude of angels. St. James obeyed the command of the heavenly visitor, and erected a small chapel, only sixteen feet long and half as wide, where the Virgin often attended public worship in subsequent years. On this spot, and over the original chapel, was built the present church. On the pillar stands a dingy image of the Virgin, which is said to be from the studio of St. Luke, who appears to have been both a painter and a sculptor. It is clothed in the richest velvet, brocade, and satin, and is spangled with gold and diamonds. It cures all diseases to which flesh is heir; for which the grateful persons thus healed have bestowed the most costly presents. It is little less than sacrilege to express any disbelief in this story of the Virgin, or in the miracles achieved by the image.