class="ist">Alone God sufficeth."

"All national criticism in bulk is misleading and foolish, and I look on the belief of Spaniards that Spain ought to be great and strong as the most promising agency of her future regeneration."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
As Minister to Spain, in a letter Oct. 20, 1877

INTRODUCTION

PRACTICAL HINTS

TRAVEL in Spain to-day is attended with little hardship and no danger whatever. Even if one barely knows a word of the language, it is not foolhardy to explore the distant provinces. Commit a few simple sentences to the memory and have courage in using them, for Spanish is pronounced just as it is spelled, with a few exceptions soon observed. The merest beginner is understood.

When a trip into Spain is planned it would be well to send for information about the kilometric ticket to the Chemins de Fer Espagnols, 20 Rue Chauchat, Paris. They will mail you, gratis, a pamphlet with a map of the country, where is marked the number of kilometers between the cities; from this it is easy to calculate how large a ticket to buy. The more kilometers taken at one time, the cheaper it is. Thus a ticket of 2,000 k. costs 165 pesetas; one of 5,000 k. costs 385 p., and so on. We got a 10,000 kilometric ticket for two people, first class, good for ten months, paying for it 682 pesetas. If the ticket is bought outside of Spain you pay for it in francs, whereas if bought in Spain, you pay in pesetas, which are about fifteen per cent less than francs. Provide yourself with your photograph, and at the first Spanish town—Irún, if you come from Paris, and Port-Bou if from Marseilles—as there is always a pause of some hours on the frontier for the customs, it is a simple matter to buy your carnet kilométrique in the station. It is only on one or two short local lines that these tickets are not accepted. Unfortunately the new rail from Gibraltar up to Bobadilla, by way of which many tourists enter Spain, is one of these disobliging minor lines. In fact many who start their trip from the south have found difficulty in procuring a kilometric ticket till they reached Seville or Granada; this confuses the traveler, and makes him decide the ticket is too complicated for practical use. If he comes to visit merely the southern province of Andalusia, which is what most people see of Spain, with a run up to Madrid for the pictures, then, unless several are traveling as one family, there is little gained by the carnet, since a few hundred unused miles are sometimes wasted. But for the complete tour of Spain the kilometric ticket is the most satisfactory arrangement. Besides the reduction it makes in the fare, it saves the confusion of changing money in the stations. You go to the ticket office before boarding a train, have the coupons to be used torn off, and are given a complementary ticket to hand to the conductor on the train. It is well to buy the official railway guide as it saves asking questions, for Spanish trains, though they crawl at a snail's pace, start at the hour announced, and arrive on the minute set down in the time-table.

Thirty kilos, about sixty-six pounds, are allowed free in the luggage van, but for an extensive tour it is better to send trunks ahead by some agency, and travel with only the valises taken with you in the carriage. These the mozo, or porter, carries directly from the train to the hotel omnibus, which—another good custom of the country—is always in waiting, no matter at what hour the arrival. First class travel in Spain is about the same as second class elsewhere; second class is like third class in France, except on the express route from Paris to Madrid, and in Catalonia, where second class is comfortable.

A hasty sketch of our tour may help later travelers. We entered from the north, by Biarritz, a far better way of seeing the country in its natural sequence than the usual landing at Gibraltar. One feels that the north of Spain, in the truest degree national, untouched by the Moor, has never had justice done it. If a transatlantic liner touched at one of the northern ports, such as Vigo, Santander, Bilbao, it would open up an untrodden Switzerland with fertile valleys and noble hills. No pleasanter summer tour, on bicycle or afoot, could be made than through the Basque provinces, Asturias, the national cradle of Spain, or in beautiful Galicia with its trout rivers. In summer the climate is cool and pleasant, and the most isolated valleys are so safe that any two women could travel alone with security.

Our first stop was at Loyola in the Basque country; then a week in Burgos; a short stay at Valladolid and Palencia; over the Asturian Mountains to Oviedo; back to León City, and from there across other hills to Galicia, seeing Lugo, Coruña, and Santiago in that province; from Coruña to Santiago by diligence, as no rail yet connects the two cities. We returned to León province from Galicia, skirting the Miño River which divides Spain and Portugal; stopped a night at Astorga, some days in Salamanca, and made a short pause in Zamora.

Time must not be a consideration in touring these unfrequented cities of middle Spain, for their local trains are few and far between. Only twice a week is there direct communication between Salamanca and Medina del Campo, the junction station on the express route. But if you accept once for all the slowness of the trains, the occasional odd hour of arrival or starting, the inconvenience of a distantly-set station, you cease to fret and scold as do most hurried travelers. We ended by finding the long railway journeys rather restful than otherwise. Usually we had the Reservado para Señoras carriage to ourselves, except on the express line from Paris to Madrid, and we soon learned how to make ourselves comfortable for a whole day's journey, seizing the chance of taking exercise during the long pauses in the stations, and enjoying the human-hearted scenes there witnessed; for a Spaniard greets and bids farewell with the same unconsciousness, the same absence of mauvaise honte as when he prays or makes love.

Also I found the topography of the country of endless interest during the long train trips; to climb up to the great truncated mountain which is central Spain, to see how the still higher ranges of mountains crossed it, how the famous rivers flowed, the setting of the historic cities,—I never tired of looking out on it all. Somehow I have got tucked away a distinct picture of Spain's physical geography, no doubt due to the leisurely railway journeys, which are not so slow that the proportion of the whole is lost, as foot or horse travel would be, nor yet so fast as to jumble the picture, as with the express trips in some countries.

Spain is not beautiful like Italy, nor of the orderly finished type of England or France; she has few of Germany's grand forests. There is no denying she is a gaunt, denuded, tragic land; the desolation of the vast high steppes of Castile is terrible. Only the fringing coasts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean are fertile. Nevertheless, unbeautiful as is the landscape, it possesses an unaccountable magnificence that grips the mind; we never took a night trip unless forced to it, so strangely interesting were the hours spent in looking from the car window.

After Salamanca we went to Segovia, then across the Guadarramas to the Escorial, and slightly back north by the same mountains to Avila. Segovia and Avila are true old mediæval cities of the inmost heart of the race, España la heróica incarnate. Again passing through the hills, whose cold blue atmosphere Velasquez has made