P.S. Before I quit Barcelona, it will be but just to say, that it is a good city, has a fine mole, and a noble citadel, beside Monjuique, a strong fort, which stands on a high hill, and which commands the town as well as the harbour. The town is very large and strongly fortified, stands in a large plain, and is encompassed with a semi-circular range of high hills, rather than mountains, which form un coup-d'oeil, that is very pleasing, as not only the sides of the hills are adorned with a great number of country houses, but the plain also affords a great many, beside several little villages. The roads too near the town are very good. As to the city itself, it is rather well built in general, than abounding with any particular fine buildings. The Inquisition has nothing to boast of now, either within or without, having (fortunately for the public) lost a great part of its former power: it, however, still keeps an awe upon all who live within its verge. I never saw a town in which trade is carried on with more spirit and industry; the indolent disposition of the Spaniards of Castile, and other provinces, has not extended ever into this part of Spain. They have here a very fine theatre; but those who perform upon the stage are the refuse of the people, and are too bad to be called by the name of actors. They have neither libraries nor pictures worthy of much notice, though they boast of one or two paintings in their churches by natives of the town, François Guirro, and John Arnau. In the custom-house hangs a full-length of the present King, so execrable, that one would wonder it was not put, with the painter, into the Inquisition, as a libel on royalty and the arts. I am told, at La Fete Dieu there are some processions of the most ridiculous nature. The fertility of the earth in and about the town is wonderful; the minute one crop is off the earth, another is put in; no part of the year puts a stop to vegetation. In the coldest weather, the market abounds with a great variety of the choicest flowers; yet their sweets cannot over-power the intolerable smell which salt fish, and stinking fish united, diffuse over all that part of the city; and rich as the inhabitants are, you will see the legs, wings, breasts, and entrails of fowls, in the market, cut up as joints of meat are in other countries, to be sold separately: nor could I find in this great city either oil, olives, or wine, that were tolerable. I paid a guinea a day at the Fontain d'Or for my table; yet every thing was so dirty, that I always made my dinner from the dessert; nor was there any other place but the stable of this dirty inn to put up my horse, where I paid twelve livres a week for straw only; and whoever lodges at this inn, must pay five shillings a day for their dinner, whether they dine there or not.
Catalonia is undoubtedly the best cultivated, the richest, and most industrious province, or principality, in Spain; and the King, who has the Sun For His Hat, (for it always shines in some part of his dominions) has nothing to boast of, equal to Catalonia.
As I have almost as much abhorrence to the Moors, as even the Spaniards themselves, (having visited that coast two or three times, many years ago) you may be sure I was grieved to meet, every time I went out, so many maimed and wounded officers and soldiers, who were not long returned from the unsuccessful expedition to Algiers. There are no troops in the world more steady than the Spaniards; it was not for want of bravery they miscarried, but there was some sad mismanagement; and had the Moors followed their blows, not a man of them would have returned. My servant, (a French deserter) who was upon that expedition, says, Gen. O'Reilly was the first who landed, and the last who embarked;—but it is the Head, not the arm of a commander in chief, which is most wanted. The Moors at le point du jour, advanced upon the Spaniards behind a formidable masked and moving battery of camels: the Spaniards, believing them, by a faint light, to be cavalry, expended a great part of their strength, spirits, and ammunition, upon those harmless animals; and it was not till this curtain was removed that the dreadful carnage began, in which they lost about nine thousand men. There seems to have been some strange mismanagement; it seems probable that there was no very good understanding between the marine and the land officers. The fleet were many days before the town, and then landed just where the Moors expected they would land. There is nothing so difficult, so dangerous, nor so liable to miscarriage, as the war of invading: our troops experienced it at St. Cas; and they either have, or will experience it in America. The wild negroes in Jamaica, to whom Gov. Trelawney wisely gave, what they contended for, (Liberty) were not above fifteen hundred fit to bear arms. I was in several skirmishes with them, and second in command under Mr. Adair's brother, a valiant young man who died afterwards in the field, who made peace with them; yet I will venture to affirm, that though five hundred disciplined troops would have subdued them in an open country, the united force of France and England could not have extirpated them from their fast holds in the mountains. Did not a Baker battle and defeat two Marshals of France in the Cevennes? And is it probable, that all the fleets and armies of Great-Britain can conquer America?—England may as well attempt moving that Continent on this side the Atlantic.
LETTER XX.
Montserrat.
I never left any place with more secret satisfaction than I did Barcelona; exclusive of the entertainment I was prepared to expect, by visiting this holy mountain; nor have I been disappointed; but on the contrary, found it, in every respect, infinitely superior to the various accounts I had heard of it;—to give a perfect description of it is impossible;—to do that it would require some of those attributes which the Divine Power by whose almighty handy it was raised, is endowed with. It is called Montserrat, or Mount-Scie,[C] by the Catalonians, words which signify a cut or sawed mountain; and so called from its singular and extraordinary form; for it is so broken, so divided, and so crowned with an infinite number of spiring cones, or Pine heads, that it has the appearance, at distant view, to be the work of man; but upon a nearer approach, to be evidently raised by Him alone, to whom nothing is impossible. It looks, indeed, like the first rude sketch of God's work; but the design is great, and the execution such, that it compels all men who approach it, to lift up their hands and eyes to heaven, and to say,—Oh God!—How wonderful are all Thy works!
It is no wonder then, that such a place should be fixed upon for the residence of holy and devout men; for there is not surely upon the habitable globe a spot so properly adapted for retirement and contemplation; it has therefore, for many ages, been inhabited only by monks and hermits, whose first vow is, never to forsake it;—a vow, without being either a hermit or a monk, I could make, I think, without repenting.
If it be true, and some great man has said so, that "whosoever delighteth in solitude, is either a wild beast, or a God;" the inhabitants of this spot are certainly more than men; for no wild beast dwells here. But it is the place, not the people, I mean at present to speak of. It stands in a vast plain, seven leagues they call it, but it is at least thirty miles from Barcelona, and nearly in the center of the principality of Catalonia. The height of it is so very considerable, that in one hour's slow travelling towards it, after we left Barcelona, it shewed its pointed steeples, high over the lesser mountains, and seemed so very near, that it would have been difficult to have persuaded a person, not accustomed to such deceptions, in so clear an atmosphere to believe, that we had much more than an hour's journey to arrive at it; instead of which, we were all that day in getting to Martorel, a small city, still three leagues distant from it, where we lay at the Three Kings, a pretty good inn, kept by an insolent imposing Italian. Martorel stands upon the steep banks of the river Lobregate, over which there is a modern bridge, of a prodigious height, the piers of which rest on the opposite shore, against a Roman triumphal arch of great solidity, and originally of great beauty. I think I tell you the truth when I say, that I could perceive the convent, and some of the hermitages, when I first saw the mountain, at above twenty miles distance. From Martorel, however, they were as visible as the mountain itself, to which the eye was directed, down the river, the banks of which were adorned with trees, villages, houses, &c. and the view terminated by this the most glorious monument in nature. When I first saw the mountain, it had the appearance of an infinite number of rocks cut into conical forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the tout ensemble compose an enormous mass of the Lundus Helmonti, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards call two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the base of it, on the south side, are two villages, the largest of which is Montrosol; but my eyes were attracted by two ancient towers, which flood upon a hill near Colbaton, the smallest, and we drove to that, where we found a little posada, and the people ready enough to furnish us with mules and asses, for we were now become quite impatient to visit the hallowed and celebrated convent, De Neustra Senora; a convent, to which pilgrims resort from the furthest parts of Europe, some bearing, by way of penance, heavy bars of iron on their backs, others cutting and slashing their naked bodies with wire cords, or crawling to it on all-fours, like the beasts of the field, to obtain forgiveness of their sins, by the intercession of our Lady of Montserrat.