There Are Many Who Perish
Every Year In The Eddies Of The Duero; It Is A Bad River; Vaya
Usted Con La Virgen, Caballero." So I Rode On Through The Pinares,
Or Thin Scanty Pine Forests, Which Skirt The Way To Valladolid In
This Direction.
Valladolid is seated in the midst of an immense valley, or rather
hollow which seems to have been scooped by some mighty convulsion
out of the plain ground of Castile.
The eminences which appear in
the neighbourhood are not properly high grounds, but are rather the
sides of this hollow. They are jagged and precipitous, and exhibit
a strange and uncouth appearance. Volcanic force seems at some
distant period to have been busy in these districts. Valladolid
abounds with convents, at present deserted, which afford some of
the finest specimens of architecture in Spain. The principal
church, though rather ancient, is unfinished: it was intended to
be a building of vast size, but the means of the founders were
insufficient to carry out their plan: it is built of rough
granite. Valladolid is a manufacturing town, but the commerce is
chiefly in the hands of the Catalans, of whom there is a colony of
nearly three hundred established here. It possesses a beautiful
alameda, or public walk, through which flows the river Escurva.
The population is said to amount to sixty thousand souls.
We put up at the Posada de las Diligencias, a very magnificent
edifice: this posada, however, we were glad to quit on the second
day after our arrival, the accommodation being of the most wretched
description, and the incivility of the people great; the master of
the house, an immense tall fellow, with huge moustaches and an
assumed military air, being far too high a cavalier to attend to
the wants of his guests, with whom, it is true, he did not appear
to be overburdened, as I saw no one but Antonio and myself.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 302 of 809
Words from 84127 to 84449
of 222596
