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CHAPTER VII.

RAILROADS WEST FROM ZARAGOZA: WESTWARD, INTERSECTING THE NORTHERN ROAD TO FRANCE: SOUTHWESTWARD TO MADRID. TOBACCO-SMOKING. CALATAYUD. ALHAMA. ARIZA. HUERTA. MEDINACELI. SIGÜENZA-ITS CATHEDRAL. DANGERS OF TRAVELLING MISAPPREHENSIONS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS. GUADALAJARA. ALCALĀ DE HENARES. UNIVERSITY OF CARDINAL XIMENEZ HIS POLYGLOT BIBLE: OPPOSITION TO ITS FREE CIRCULATION. TABLE LANDS

OF OLD CASTILE-TO MADRID.

Or

BRIGHT skies and genial airs in a variable season, should be diligently availed of for sight-seeing and journeying. Apart from the heightening of our own pleasure, it is generous to a country to judge of it by its fairest face. And thus we leave Zaragoza. If the visit thither from Barcelona, shall have been made with the view of returning, and resuming the route thence coastwise southwardly, the tourist will do so. deviating from the road at Lerida, he may shorten his journey by striking the railway from Barcelona to Valencia, at Tarragona. It is convenient to tell here, what we have to say about the road to Madrid from Zaragoza. The station of the western railroad, is on the south side of the River Ebro, not so near the hotel as to make tardiness in starting for it altogether safe. The road, at the distance of eight miles-Las Casetas Station

divides into two main lines. One running northwestwardly, subdivides at Castejon Station, into two roads, both of which join the great northern railway from Madrid to San Sebastian; one at Miranda de Ebro; the other farther north at Alsasua, fifty miles from San Sebastian, near the French frontier. The second main line from Las Casetas Station, runs south-westwardly to Madrid-214 miles-two trains daily, in from ten to eleven hours. He who does not wish to travel blindfolded, and for the mere sense of motion, will of course take the morning train. Enough of unavoidable opportunities for night travel in Spain, will be had, without selecting them when one can do otherwise. There are many things better worth travelling for than sleeping and eating, frequently the chief occupations of railwaycarriage life; to which many men add smoking in a public conveyance, as if they were not sufficiently stupid without the narcotism of tobacco. The stench from this latter cause is sometimes revolting in the extreme, and takes from a journey a great delight, and often a necessary good, that of breathing unhindered the pure air of nature, the rightful inheritance of all God's creatures; and which, none, in social life should. pollute, any more than the water we drink. Foreigners complain of the incessant use of the cigarette by Spaniards. They certainly do seem to think tobacco a panacea for national ills-probably in faith of the homœopathic precept "similia similibus curanter." The New World curse for Spanish crime, poisoning their physical being, it must of course be a cure for the New World curse. At home, and abroad; when they lie down, and before they rise; with chocolate, and at

déjeûner, and dinner; on the street, and the Paseo; in the studio, bureau, counting-house, and café; on horseback, or in a carriage; whether idle or busy; it mightwithout being wide of the truth-be said, whether asleep or awake; tobacco smoke, duly mixed with the required proportion of phosphoretted and sulphuretted gases from matches, is the breath and being of Spanish life, of both sexes. For the women cannot escape the cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, which invades even their inner sanctuaries. Poor creatures! with but few exceptions, their complexions are besmoked beyond the remedy of pearl powder, or enamel. Even the highest class hotel salons, and dining rooms during courses, are not free from this Spanish besetting sin. And it is of the practice in these, that foreigners mostly complain, without reflecting, that what they call an "uncivilized habit" is in truth, but a farther indulgence in that offensiveness, which many of themselves are guilty of in places forbidden to it by the laws of good breeding; especially when representatives of that sex are present, whose greater sensitiveness and refinement should determine the law of propriety; and who regard the practice of smoking in public places as contrary to good manners-however they may submit to an objectionable habit at home, in the interest of domestic compromise.

The railway south-west from Zaragoza soon losing sight of the valley of the Ebro, winds among mountain. spurs, bare and bleak, with scattered openings of verdure and purling streams making pretty pictures along the way. But there are no hedges or palisades to tell of small landed proprietors-although under the operation

of new laws enforcing division of property, these latter are multiplying in many parts of Spain. Even a far west New World post and rail, or worm-fence, would give a pleasant thought of human equality, and strengthen still more the hopes of improved social and political life. Often the road creeps along narrow defiles overtopped by rocky fastnesses; nature's citadels of independence, accounting for the long maintenance cf a separate kingdom by the hardy Aragonese, who became merged in the Castilian crown only by the marriage of their monarch Ferdinand, with Isabella la Catolica. Escaping from this series of defiles, united by many tunnels piercing intermediate spurs, the road comes out upon a plain, through which winds the River Salo a branch of the Ebro, set in a crescentic ridge to the south; while a bald precipice borders it to the north, surmounted by castle and towers overlooking the town of Calatayud terraced on crumbling ledges far below, and looking, at the distance of a mile, like a cropping out of the huge dusky-grey rock wall itself. A foreground of churches and better buildings, relieves the somewhat barren picture. But so desolate and dreary does it still look, that one wonders, that the spicy Martial, after having written and revelled, thirty-five years in Imperial Rome, during her proudest period of power and luxury, should have been tempted to return to this his native place then a Roman possession called Bilbilisand contented himself with its outpost provincialism. Martial was a compatriot of Lucan and the two Senecas, being born a Spaniard, though of Celtic descent, and of Naturalized Roman parents. While in Rome he was a servile flatterer of Domitian-thus illustrating the com

mon frailty of poets laureate. His descriptions of the games of the Colosseum are full and curious. Pliny, writing of his death deplores it, and says "he was a man of genius, acute and keen, who showed the greatest wit, and sarcasm, yet fairness." Quoting some of his verses, he says further" what can be given to a man greater than glory, praise, and eternity?" He had many plagiarists, and many detractors envious of his writings, of both of whom he spoke with bitterness. He wrote also on the Saturnalia. A constant subject of complaint by Martial is the "loss of time, and the weariness, and unprofitableness of the city life of a togatus-or client;" adding, one "cannot write epigrams and attend levees." These may have been among the considerations which induced him to return to the cheerless and barren heights of his native Bilbilis; otherwise, a strange choice after partaking of the pomp and splendours of the Palatine, and the Pincio. Yet the Spaniard of to-day inherits an ancestral pride of place. Where, for him, can be found Spain's counterpart of material, or of moral grandeur?

Leaving Calatayud, the way again winds for nearly two hours through narrow defiles, and tunnels cut through spurs of schist and slate-hills, until reaching Alhama--not that of mournful Moorish memory, but -de Aragon; near which, mineral springs for the cure of gravel, gout, and rheumatism, are found. The road then crosses a wide, and sparsely cultivated expansetreeless, fenceless, and almost houseless;-highlands being seen dimly in the distance. And in three-quarters of an hour Ariza is reached; a mud-built town, at the foot of a huge dried-mud-mound, on which stands a