ON FOOT IN SPAIN.*
08 the 14th of November, 1876, Mr. Campion entered Spain at Iran, and went on to San Sebastian, with the intention of walk- ing across Spain ; and on the 14th of March of the next year he recrossed the Pyrenees, by way of Perpignan, having, as a matter of fact, walked from San Sebastian to Barcelona. The greater part of his time was naturally spent, not on the road, but in the agreeable and civilised towns of San Sebastian and Pamplona, Lerida, Zaragoza, and Barcelona. Mr. Campion met with few or no " adventures." He tells a round, unvar- nished tale, and his words are evidently the words of truth. We know the ground he travelled over, although we do not pretend to have walked it, and we have rarely come across any record of Spanish travel which has struck us as being either so accurate or so strongly marked with common-sense. But, at the same time, although Mr. Campion has given us a very interesting account of his adventures in Spain, we cannot conscientiously recommend any of our readers to follow his example as a tourist; and in- deed, pleasant as are the author's experiences, we are inclined to think that the pleasantest of them are entirely unconnected with the more peculiarly pedestrian portion of his trip. Wet walks, heavy loads, want of food, and doubtful accommodation— to say nothing of the cam manor of the Spanish venta—can scarcely be agreeable even to an "old Arizona pioneer," who has gone through some Indian warfare and several " first rushes," whatever they may be ; whereas the old Arizona pioneer seems to have a very keen appreciation of the good fare and the pleasant company, both male and female, of the Casas de Huespedes of San Sebastian, of Lerida, or of Barcelona. But Mr. Campion is blessed not only with a wonderful physique, with a magnificent digestion (though he affects to " draw the line at experimenting on his stomach with sweets and pastry"), with patience and good-humour, and with the experience as well as the power of roughing it, but with a complete and idiomatic knowledge of the language, without which all Spanish travel is as vanity. After the longest day's march, encumbered with a gun and ammunition of various kinds, a knapsack of his own invention, a great-coat, and a dog, this Arizona veteran found himself perfectly at home in the company assembled round the posada fire, and was equally ready for a dance or a carouse ; and as long as there was a man to talk to or a pretty girl to join him in a Iota, or a flirtation—and he seems to have been peculiarly fortunate in this respect—he never seemed to want or to think of sleep.
As a specimen of his festive powers, we will merely refer to his dinner at Las Dos Hermanas, where he had the good-fortune to fall in with some amiable and aristocratic mine-owners, who insisted upon his accepting their hospitality. Dinner at half- past seven. " The wine was choice, and pushed sharply round.
After dinner all smoked, and drank neat brandy By-and-by, champagne was brought in, glasses filled, and songs sung Then the guest of the evening made a speech in English, to hear what it sounded like, and then the commissioner brewed punch and at half-past six in the morning I retired to bed ;" and having walked a trifle of five-and-twenty miles or so before enjoying this Navarrese hospitality, he was up the next morning by nine o'clock as fresh as a lark, and able to eat heartily of the defamer a la fourehette which was provided for him. However, he is quite as ready to fast as to feast, when it is necessary; as, for instance, on one occasion, when he had been travelling the whole day without having tasted any food before starting, he philosophically remarks that "an occasional short fast hurts no one who is hardy, and I had made many a longer one before now." Besides, "being fortunately a smoker, I have always at command a meal of two courses,—first, to take up my waistband a hole ; second, a pipe." We know many travellers, and smokers too, who would find considerable fault with such a menu.
One of the most striking things in the whole story is that so good and so practical a traveller should have encumbered himself with a fowling-piece and a sporting dog. The former, it is true, might have served the purpose of a
• On Foot in Spain. By 3. 8. Campion. London : Obapman and Hall.
weapon of defence, in his lonely wanderings ; but with the exception of one occasion, when nothing particular occurred, the author never seems to have even thought of it in that light ; and as far as we can understand—we do not wish to libel a sportsman—Mr. Campion did not kill one single head of game during the whole of his " sporting tour," from San Sebastian to Barcelona! Had it not been for the dog Juan, we believe he might once have killed a brace of partridges. But that in- teresting quadruped, whose activity wore out two Spanish dog- whips in the course of the tour, made himself conspicuous in the field only by putting-up and driving away all the birds within a hundred yards of the sportsman. But we suppose he was good company when there was no one more human at hand, and his presence reminds one at times of the faithful companion of Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, were Mr. Campion's volume a work of fiction, instead of being, as it so manifestly is, a most faithful record of fact, it would remind us at times, no doubt, owing to the Defoe-like minuteness of detail, of that most real of all works of adventure. In one respect, however, there is a vast difference between the two,—our traveller's style is as un- like Defoe's as it is possible to conceive. Indeed, we doubt whether Mr. Campion's mode of expressing himself can properly be called a style at all. It is a strange medley of what we presume to be American slang and the military language of the Far West, with occasional literal renderings of idiomatic Castilian and the semi-sporting, semi-" society " phraseology of the London Clubs. But the result is due to the author alone, and as it is certainly not English, it may, perhaps, be called Campionese. It is sufficiently expressive, easy, familiar, some- what picturesque, and strangest of all, by no means vulgar. Indeed, we feel throughout that we are in the company of a man who is, in his own language, essentially " good form," and we are by no means surprised that his travelling acquaintances discovered the gentleman under the rough exterior of this sturdy vagrant, who was a living and walking exemplification of the truth of the well-known proverb, " Debajo de ruin capa suele estar buen bebedor :" " You may often find a good drinker under a shabby cloak." But in spite of his obviously fluent and practical acquaintance with Castilian, Mr. Cam- pion's language can in nowise be called correct. He gives " arrete," instead of " arret ;" "cigarios," instead of " cigarros ;" " huespades," instead of " huespedes ;" " tertula," instead of " tertulia ;" " autre cosa," which is correct in no language; " via " for " vaya," which may possibly be provin-
cial ; and many other similar inaccuracies. As to the number of presumably English words he uses whose meaning is obscure to stay-at-home people like ourselves, we will say nothing more than that the meaning of most of them is sufficiently obvious from the context.
But there is one matter regarding which we are rather inclined to quarrel with the author, and that is, that being evidently capable of something better than what is called in India " Mt-chit," he refuses to give his readers the benefit of his intelligence and his reflections. He is just Englishman enought to be shy of appearing to " philosophise," or to take credit for deeper thoughts than lie upon the surface of his tour. He is not brave enough to do this, and whenever he finds himself making a reflective remark or a happy generalisation, he breaks off abruptly with some slang about not " doing Barlow," or not having contracted for a supply of sentiments. In the last chapter he has happily for- gotten himself, and we are able to give one or two extracts, which appear to us to be both interesting and valuable :—
" Nor has my trip been altogether devoid of instruction. It has dissipated many erroneous, previously-conceived opinions, informed me of many an unsuspected fact. I had considered Spain to be a worked-out country : the undeveloped wealth of her natural resources is great beyond all calculation. I had presupposed a people proud, intolerant, bigoted, indolent, shiftless, lawless. I have found an upper class, courteous and considerate to their equals, kind and familiar to their inferiors, fairly liberal and enlightened in opinion, and very wide awake to the faults and shortcomings of their country ; a peasantry full of self-respect, of manly independence, honest, hard- working, frugal, law-abiding, sober. With such a grand substratum for national tranquillity, prosperity, progress, how comes it Spain is the home of chronic disorder, revolution, strife ? Because a night- mare of fear, distrust, lethargy, paralysed the country. To prosper in business, to be enterprising, to amass a little money, was to become a prey. The goods and chattels of him who fell into the clutches of the black alguacils were the perquisites of a body of men craving for gold, and utterly irresponsible. Literature was made an engine of ignorance; government, one of plunder. The intelligence, talent, enterprise of the country was banished, destroyed, or silenced."
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