They reached the corner of St. James’s Square, and our paths separated. Mine took me to the London Library to change a book, and theirs led straight to Elysium, for five long days.
VII
HEREDITY
Right along the frontier between Uruguay and Rio Grande, the southern province of Brazil, the Spanish and the Portuguese sit face to face, as they have sat for ages, looking at, but never understanding, one another, both in the Old and the New World.
In Tuy and Valenza, Monzon and Salvatierra, at Poncho Verde and Don Pedrito, Rivera and Santa Ana do Libramento, and far away above Cruz Alta, where the two clumps of wood that mark old camps of the two people are called O Matto Castelhano and O Matto Portuguez, the rivalry of centuries is either actual or at least commemorated on the map.
The border-line that once made different peoples of the dwellers at Floriston and Gretna, still prevails in the little castellated towns, which snarl at one another across the Minho, just as they did of old.
“Those people in Valenza would steal the sacrament,” says the street urchin playing on the steps of the half fortalice, half church that is the cathedral of Tuy on the Spanish side.
His fellow in Valenza spits towards Tuy and remarks, “From Spain come neither good marriages nor the wholesome winds.”
So on to Salvatierra and Monzon, or any other of the villages or towns upon the river, and in the current of the native speech there still remains some saying of the kind, with its sharp edges still unworn after six centuries of use. Great is the power of artificial barriers to restrain mankind. No proverb ever penned is more profound than that which sets out, “Fear guards the vineyard, not the fence around it.”
So Portuguese and Spaniards in their peninsula have fought and hated and fought and ridiculed each other after the fashion of children that have quarrelled over a broken toy. Blood and an almost common speech, for both speak one Romance when all is said, have both been impotent against the custom-house, the flag, the foolish dynasty, for few countries in the world have had more foolish kings than Spain and Portugal.
That this should be so in the Old World is natural enough, for the dead hand still rules, and custom and tradition have more strength than race and creed; but that the hatred should have been transplanted to America, and still continue, is a proof that folly never dies.