So We Left Oviedo And Directed Our Course Towards Santander.
The
man who accompanied us as guide, and from whom I hired the pony on
which I rode, had been recommended to me by my friend the merchant
of Oviedo.
He proved, however, a lazy indolent fellow; he was
generally loitering two or three hundred yards in our rear, and
instead of enlivening the way with song and tale, like our late
guide, Martin of Rivadeo, he scarcely ever opened his lips, save to
tell us not to go so fast, or that I should burst his pony if I
spurred him so. He was thievish withal, and though he had engaged
to make the journey seco, that is, to defray the charges of himself
and beast, he contrived throughout to keep both at our expense.
When journeying in Spain, it is invariably the cheapest plan to
agree to maintain the guide and his horse or mule, for by so doing
the hire is diminished at least one third, and the bills upon the
road are seldom increased: whereas, in the other case, he pockets
the difference, and yet goes shot free, and at the expense of the
traveller, through the connivance of the innkeepers, who have a
kind of fellow feeling with the guides.
Late in the afternoon we reached Villa Viciosa, a small dirty town,
at the distance of eight leagues from Oviedo: it stands beside a
creek which communicates with the Bay of Biscay. It is sometimes
called La Capital de las Avellanas, or the capital of the Filberts,
from the immense quantity of this fruit which is grown in the
neighbourhood; and the greatest part of which is exported to
England.
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