The Line Of The Coast Was
Here Divided By A Natural Cleft, Yet So Straight And Regular That
It Seemed Not The Work Of Chance But Design.
The water was dark
and sullen, and of immense depth.
This passage, which is about a
mile in length, is the entrance to a broad basin, at whose farther
extremity stands the town of Ferrol.
Sadness came upon me as soon as I entered this place. Grass was
growing in the streets, and misery and distress stared me in the
face on every side. Ferrol is the grand naval arsenal of Spain,
and has shared in the ruin of the once splendid Spanish navy: it
is no longer thronged with those thousand shipwrights who prepared
for sea the tremendous three-deckers and long frigates, the greater
part of which were destroyed at Trafalgar. Only a few ill-paid and
half-starved workmen still linger about, scarcely sufficient to
repair any guarda costa which may put in dismantled by the fire of
some English smuggling schooner from Gibraltar. Half the
inhabitants of Ferrol beg their bread; and amongst these, as it is
said, are not unfrequently found retired naval officers, many of
them maimed or otherwise wounded, who are left to pine in
indigence; their pensions or salaries having been allowed to run
three or four years in arrear, owing to the exigencies of the
times. A crowd of importunate beggars followed me to the posada,
and even attempted to penetrate to the apartment to which I was
conducted.
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