CHAPTER IV

THINGS SEEN

GALICIA is a land of sharp contrasts, and the things seen include sights which cannot be witnessed in any other country within such easy reach of London. The bullock-cart creaks by the side of the railway, the peasant with a Roman plough_turns up the soil within sound of the electrical machinery of a cornmill, the swift motor-car rushes past the old-world diligence on the highway, and the incandescent burner_or_electric lamp keeps company with the ancient candle. Orange-groves abound and vineyards carpet the landscape, while the stately liner sends her bow-wave swishing at the bare feet of fishwives who are handling catches as they were handled in the days of Jesus. A peasant may prod and drag his team of oxen past a modern school in which his brother may be learning chemistry and his sister millinery, and the old man who has never learned to read and write listens to the machines which print the newspaper whose symbols are to him a mystery; the nun, a life-long prisoner in her gaollike convent, hears the booming of guns in ships of

war whose purpose is to keep and further liberty, and the friar, tonsured, girdled, sandalled, kneels on the cathedral floor beside a woman dressed in Parisian gown and hat. These are amongst things seen by the leisurely traveller, but even the hasty tourist may make a passing acquaintance with many quaint and fascinating customs and peoples. The pleasureseeker may have constant recreation and enjoyment, the student of ancient cities and remains finds material wherever he goes, and the lover of archæological and ecclesiological memorials and structures may carry out a long tour and find at the end that he has only touched the fringe of the subject.

The easy-going visitor may constantly step aside from the beaten path and encounter new aspects of Gallegan life, and learn something interesting that is not mentioned in even the best of guide-books. I think the very impossibility, as it seems to be, of getting at the real truth of some Galician matters is one of the charms of going about the country. Baedeker, omnipotent in travel, has missed many things in North-West Spain, or omitted them as being superfluous or unattractive, while details which are published in his masterpieces are at variance with other sources of information. For example, Baedeker states that the population of Pontevedra is 8500, but Murray gives the number as 21,000, a startling and bewildering difference. The discrepancy, however, is understandable, because it is one of the hardest of all things in Galicia to get reliable statistics. The Gallegan treats any demand for