After crossing the plains of La Mancha we reach the Sierra Morena range of mountains, and are to work our way through and over them. The daring of the engineers who would push a road into such recesses is prodigious. The precipices are frightful. Peaks of mountains start up suddenly, and seem to pierce the clouds. Rocks of gigantic grandeur rise abruptly, and sometimes stand apart in solitary dignity. Deep gorges are to be spanned by the iron road. Long and frequent galleries lead, in gloomy state, through the bowels of the mountains. The road is sublime, if safe, and it appears to be well made. We come to a bridge under repairs. All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. They err generally on the safe side, provoking us by their delays, but very rarely breaking our necks. And, on the whole, their way of doing things is the best.
At Manjibar we stopped for lunch, or breakfast, or dinner, whichsoever any one might call it. It was hard to say where or when our last meal was, and what was the name of this. Still more difficult was it to ascertain the names of the dishes set before us. One dish had been chicken, but in some advanced stage of its post-mortem existence it had been consigned to a bath of pickle, and was now offered for our consumption. A single taste sufficed. It probably returned to its brine, to wait a bolder customer, with a better appetite. Then they gave us a stew. I suggested that it was hare. My companion thought it a cat. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, and turned away. The price of this meal that we tried in vain to eat, was the same as the table-d’hôte dinner at many hotels in Paris,—four francs.
Sick, I went into the air. I sat down on a trunk outside, sighing for other lands, and something to eat. A servant came out and drove me off the trunk, saying, “It is forbidden to sit here.” Into the waiting-room I directed my steps. It was full of dirty, disgusting people, some of them beggars, some gypsies, some in queer costumes, some in rags. The fragrance was too much for me, and I walked out again. Over the way was a table with candies and liquors to be sold. It was in front of a door that opened into the side of a hill. There was no other sign of a house. I went across the railway, and entered the open door. It let me into a small room, nicely cemented above and on all sides; a fire in a neat arrangement for it, and a chimney reaching out of the ground above. A man was sitting by the fire; a babe was in a cradle; the wife was bustling about. It was a very comfortable affair. Another room was the bed-chamber; and a third was a storeroom; and the three completed the underground cottage. In other climates it might be damp. Here it was dry enough; cool in summer and warm in winter. I spent a few minutes very cheerfully with these people, and they seemed to be pleased with a visit from a stranger. It was a far better house than the rude huts we had seen on the way.
We are now in Andalusia, and in one of the worst parts of Spain. True, it is Andalusia, and the very sound of the name is musical, suggesting beauty and pastoral delights. But in the province of Jaen, and we are near the city of that name, out of a population of 360,000, more than 300,000 are unable to read; and as ignorance and crime go hand in hand, the number of murders is between 350 and 400 every year, and nearly as many robberies. Such is a picture of much of Spain. This is, perhaps, as dark a picture as could be honestly drawn, but there are hundreds of towns, of which the mayor or chief officer does not know how to read or write.
Ten years ago, when the last census was made, in a population of 15,613,536, there were actually 12,543,169 who could not read and write, leaving only 3,070,367 people in Spain possessed of these accomplishments. In 1860 there were 1,101,529 children in the public schools of Spain, and they must learn something.
It is encouraging to learn that the government is paying increased attention to the subject of education. There are 25,000 primary schools in the kingdom, which ought to be exerting a powerful effect upon the people. Spain has ten universities, and the number of students in them is far greater than one would expect under the low state of popular education. They are thus distributed:—
| Madrid | 4,194 |
| Barcelona | 1,365 |
| Seville | 887 |
| Valladolid | 828 |
| Granada | 617 |
| Valencia | 624 |
| Santiago | 403 |
| Saragossa | 389 |
| Salamanca | 242 |
| Oviedo | 155 |
The course of study pursued in these institutions is substantially the same as that in other countries: 2,040 of the students are in the Philosophical and Literary course, 1,617 in the Exact Sciences, Physics, and so forth; while Law, Theology, and Medicine include the rest. Some of these universities once had a reputation as wide as the civilized part of the world, and students from all nations flocked to them as to the purest and sweetest fountains of knowledge in the earth. At Salamanca, where now there are less than 250 students, there were 10,000 in the fourteenth century, and its reputation has been higher than Oxford’s. It was at this university that the Copernican system of astronomy was held and taught, when the Romish Church denounced it as heretical and contrary to the Holy Scriptures. Yet even here Columbus could make no impression in favor of his theory of another continent, but all his arguments were treated with the greatest contempt by the learned men of the university of Salamanca. The professors of the modern school, which still retains the name and distinctions of the days of its glory, get $600 a year for their services, and that is probably an index of the estimation in which learning is held in these decayed and benighted regions.
The present population of Spain, making due allowance for increase since the last estimate, is about 16,400,000. It is therefore the eighth of the European powers in numbers, Italy and Turkey being both ahead of it. The increase of population in Spain is only at the rate of less than the half of one per hundred annually. At this rate the number would double only once in 181 years, placing Spain behind every country in Europe, in this respect, except poor Austria. She doubles once in 198 years; then Spain; then France, once in 122 years; Holland, once in 80 years; Scotland, once in 46 years; Prussia, once in 41 years; England and Wales, once in 29 years.
One of the most curious questions in morals, politics, and physiology, is started by these facts. They furnish food for thought. One class of speculators will find moral causes to explain the circumstances, and they may easily gather a pile of facts to sustain their positions. Climate, too, has its influence. The civil government, with the physical condition of the people, is to be considered. But when the physical, the moral, the civil, and the social state of Austria, Spain, France, Holland, Prussia, Italy, and England is duly examined, it still remains to be ascertained why it is that the number of inhabitants increased more rapidly among the colored people of the Southern States of North America while they were slaves, and now increases more rapidly among the Irish portion of the American population, than it does among these highly favored countries of Europe. The statistics of births in New England and other parts of the United States unhappily show that, with the increase of the cost of living, and of luxury and effeminacy, the number of children born is less and less from year to year. There is no truth in social economy better established by the comparison of an adequate number of facts than this, that the diminution in the number of births is attended by, if not consequent upon, the deterioration of the health and the morals of any people. Oppression which makes a wise man mad may depress the spirits, exhaust the energies, and retard the increase of a population, not supernaturally sustained as were the Hebrews in Egypt, who, the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew. But favored as the middle and southern countries of Europe are by climate and soil, affording the people an easy and comfortable subsistence, they might and would increase in numbers as rapidly at least as the northern, if they were so disposed.