I Satisfied Our Host By Presenting
Him With A Couple Of Pesetas, And He Requested As A Favour, That If
On Our Return We Passed That Way, And Were Overtaken By The Night,
We Would Again Take Up Our Abode Beneath His Roof.
This I
promised, at the same time determining to do my best to guard
against the contingency; as sleeping in the loft of a Gallegan hut,
though preferable to passing the night on a moor or mountain, is
anything but desirable.
So we again started at a rapid pace along rough bridle-ways and
footpaths, amidst furze and brushwood. In about an hour we
obtained a view of the sea, and directed by a lad, whom we found on
the moor employed in tending a few miserable sheep, we bent our
course to the north-west, and at length reached the brow of an
eminence, where we stopped for some time to survey the prospect
which opened before us.
It was not without reason that the Latins gave the name of
Finnisterrae to this district. We had arrived exactly at such a
place as in my boyhood I had pictured to myself as the termination
of the world, beyond which there was a wild sea, or abyss, or
chaos. I now saw far before me an immense ocean, and below me a
long and irregular line of lofty and precipitous coast. Certainly
in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan
shore, from the debouchement of the Minho to Cape Finisterra. It
consists of a granite wall of savage mountains, for the most part
serrated at the top, and occasionally broken, where bays and firths
like those of Vigo and Pontevedra intervene, running deep into the
land. These bays and firths are invariably of an immense depth,
and sufficiently capacious to shelter the navies of the proudest
maritime nations.
There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around,
which strongly captivates the imagination. This savage coast is
the first glimpse of Spain which the voyager from the north
catches, or he who has ploughed his way across the wide Atlantic:
and well does it seem to realize all his visions of this strange
land. "Yes," he exclaims, "this is indeed Spain - stern flinty
Spain - land emblematic of those spirits to which she has given
birth. From what land but that before me could have proceeded
those portentous beings, who astounded the Old World and filled the
New with horror and blood: Alba and Philip, Cortez and Pizarro:
stern colossal spectres looming through the gloom of bygone years,
like yonder granite mountains through the haze, upon the eye of the
mariner. Yes, yonder is indeed Spain; flinty, indomitable Spain;
land emblematic of its sons!"
As for myself, when I viewed that wide ocean and its savage shore,
I cried, "Such is the grave, and such are its terrific sides; those
moors and wilds, over which I have passed, are the rough and dreary
journey of life.
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