Part 6 (2/2)
CHAPTER IX.
The Rider's Costume--Alforjas: their contents--The Bota, and How to use it--Pig Skins and Borracha--Spanish Money--Onzas and smaller Coins.
The rider's costume and accoutrements require consideration; his great object should be to pa.s.s in a crowd, either unnoticed, or to be taken for ”one of us,” _Uno de Nosotros_, and a member of the Iberian family--_de la Familia_: this is best effected by adopting the dress, that is usually worn by the natives when they travel on horseback, or journey by any of their national conveyances, among which Anglo-Franco mails and diligences are not yet to be reckoned; all cla.s.ses of Spaniards, on getting outside the town-gate, a.s.sume country habits, and eschew the long-tailed coats and civilization of the city; they drop pea-jackets and foreign fas.h.i.+ons, which would only attract attention, and expose the wearers to the ridicule or coa.r.s.er marks of consideration from the peasantry, muleteers, and other gentry, who rule on the road, hate novelties, and hold fast to the ways and jackets of their forefathers; the best hat, therefore, is the common _sombrero calanes_, which resemble those worn at Astley's by banditti, being of a conical shape, is edged with black velvet, ornamented with silken tufts, and looks equally well on a c.o.c.kney from London, or on a squire from Devons.h.i.+re. The jacket should be the universal fur _Zamarra_, which is made of black sheepskin, in its ordinary form, and of lambskin for those who can pay; a sash round the waist should never be forgotten, being most useful both in reality and metaphor: it sustains the loins, and keeps off the dangerous colics of Spain, by maintaining an equable heat over the abdomen; hence, to be Homerically well girt is half the battle for the Peninsular traveller.
[Sidenote: THE ALFORJAS.]
The _capa_ the cloak, or the _manta_ a striped plaid, and saddle-bags, the _Alforjas_, are absolute essentials, and should be strapped on the pommel of the saddle, as being there less heating to the horse than when placed on his flanks, and being in front, they are more handy for sudden use, since in the mountains and valleys, the rider is constantly exposed to sudden variations of wind and weather; when aeolus and Sol contend for his cloak, as in aesop's Fables, and the buckets of heaven are emptied on him as soon as the G.o.d of fire thinks him sufficiently baked.
These saddle-bags are most cla.s.sical, Oriental, and convenient; they indeed const.i.tute the genus _bagsman_, and have given their name to our riding travellers; they are the _Sarcinae_ of Cato the Censor, the _Bulgae_ of Lucilius, who made an epigram thereon:--
”c.u.m _bulga_ cnat, dormit, lavat, omnis in una.
Spes hominis _bulga_ hac devincta est caetera vita:”
which, as these indispensables are quite as necessary to the modern Spaniard, may be thus translated:--
”A good roomy bag delighteth a Roman, He is never without this appendage a minute; In bed, at the bath, at his meals,--in short no man Should fail to stow life, hope, and self away in it.”
The countrymen of Sancho Panza, when on the road, make the same use of their wallets as the Romans did; they still (the was.h.i.+ng excepted) live and die with these bags, in which their hearts are deposited with their bread and cheese.
These Spanish _alforjas_, in name and appearance, are the Moorish _al h.o.r.eh_. (The F and H, like the B and V, X and J, are almost equivalent, and are used indiscriminately in Spanish cacography.) They are generally composed of cotton and worsted, and are embroidered in gaudy colours and patterns; the _correct_ thing is to have the owner's name worked in on the edge, which ought to be done by the delicate hand of his beloved mistress. Those made at Granada are very excellent; the Moorish, especially those from Morocco, are ornamented with an infinity of small ta.s.sels. Peasants, when dismounted, mendicant monks, when foraging for their convents, sling their _alforjas_ over their shoulders when they come into villages.
[Sidenote: WHAT TO STOW AWAY IN THE ALFORJAS.]
Among the contents which most people will find it convenient to carry in the _right-hand bag_, as the easiest to be got at, a pair of blue gauze wire spectacles or goggles will be found useful, as ophthalmia is very common in Spain, and particularly in the calcined central plains. The constant glare is unrelieved by any verdure, the air is dry, and the clouds of dust highly irritating from being impregnated with nitre. The best remedy is to bathe the eyes frequently with hot water, and _never to rub them when inflamed_, except with the elbows, _los ojos con los codos_. Spaniards never jest with their eyes or faith; of the two perhaps they are seriously fondest of the former, not merely when sparkling beneath the arched eyebrow of the dark s.e.x, but when set in their own heads. ”I love thee like my eyes,” is quite a hackneyed form of affection; nor, however wrathful and imprecatory, do they under any circ.u.mstance express the slightest uncharitable wishes in regard to the visual organs of their bitterest foe.
The whole art of the _alforjas_ is the putting into them what you want the most often, and in the most handy and accessible place. Keep here, therefore, a supply of small money for the halt and the blind, for the piteous cases of human suffering and poverty by which the traveller's eye will be pained in a land where soup-dispensing monks are done away with, and a.s.sistant new poor law commissioners not yet appointed; such charity from G.o.d's purse, _bolsa de Dios_, never impoverishes that of man, and a cheerful giver, however opposed to modern political economists, is commended in that old-fas.h.i.+oned book called the Bible.
The left half of the _alforjas_ may be apportioned to the writing and dressing cases, and the smaller each are the better.
Food for the mind must not be neglected. The travelling library, like companions, should be select and good; _libros y amigos pocos y buenos_.
The duodecimo editions are the best, as a large heavy book kills horse, rider, and reader. Books are a matter of taste; some men like Bacon, others prefer Pickwick; stow away at all events a pocket edition of the Bible, Shakspere, and Don Quixote: and if the advice of dear Dr. Johnson be worth following, one of those books that can be taken in _the hand_, and to the fire-side. Martial, a grand authority on Spanish hand-books, recommended ”such sized companions on a long journey.” Quartos and folios, said he, may be left at home in the book-case--
”Scrinia da magnis, _me ma.n.u.s una_ capit.”
[Sidenote: THE BOTA.]
Here also keep the pa.s.sport, that indescribable nuisance and curse of continental travel, to which a free-born Briton never can get reconciled, and is apt to neglect, whereby he puts himself in the power of the worst and most troublesome people on earth. Pa.s.sports in Spain now in some degree supply the Inquisition, and have been embittered by vexatious forms borrowed from bureaucratic France.
[Sidenote: THE BOTA.]
Having thus disposed of these matters on the front bow of his saddle, to which we always added a _bota_--the pocket-pistol of Hudibras--one word on this _Bota_, which is as necessary to the rider as a saddle to his horse. This article, so Asiatic and Spanish, is at once the bottle and the gla.s.s of the people of the Peninsula when on the road, and is perfectly unlike the vitreous crockery and pewter utensils of Great Britain. A Spanish woman would as soon think of going to church without her fan, or a Spanish man to a fair without his knife, as a traveller without his _bota_. Ours, the faithful, long-tried comforter of many a dry road, and honoured now like a relic, is hung up a votive offering to the Iberian Bacchus, as the mariners in Horace suspended their damp garments to the deity who had delivered them from the dangers of water.
Its skin, now shrivelled with age and with fruitless longings for wine, is still redolent of the ruby fluid, whether the generous _Valdepenas_ or the rich _vino de Toro_: and refres.h.i.+ng to our nostrils is even an occasional smell at its red-stained orifice. There the racy wine-perfume lingers, and brings water into the mouth, it may be into the eyelid.
What a dream of Spanish odours, good, bad, and indifferent, is awakened by its well-known _borracha!_--what recollections, breathing the aroma of the balmy south, crowd in; of aromatic wastes, of leagues of thyme, whence Flora sends forth advertis.e.m.e.nts to her tiny bee-customer; of churches, all incense; of the goats and monks, long-bearded and odoriferous; of cities whose steam of garlic, ollas, oil, and tobacco rises up to the heavens, mingled with the thousand and one other continental sweets which a.s.sail a man's nose, whether he lands at Calais or Cadiz! There hangs our smelling-bottle _bota_, now a pleasure of memory; it has had its day, and is never again to be filled in torrid, thirsty Spain, nor emptied, which is better.
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