Two worlds meet

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

Be­yond the cas­tle there is lit­tle to see in the town, but the In­fanta was very anx­ious to take a run of some eigh­teen kilo­me­tres from here to the “Golfa [sic] de Rosas” (Gulf of Roses). Some French ad­mi­ral had found this a de­light­ful har­bor for his ships, and had ex­pa­ti­ated upon the beau­ties of the place to Her Royal High­ness, in talk­ing with her in one of the Paris sa­lons, shortly be­fore she left for Spain with me. Soon after we started the wind began to blow fu­ri­ously, and as the road was built on a high em­bank­ment above the fields, I feared that not only would Fusi be blown from his seat, but the whole lim­ou­sine would be blown off the bank.

When we at last reached this won­der­ful Gulf of Roses we were rather dis­il­lu­sioned, per­haps be­cause the old ad­mi­ral, in­spired by the In­fanta's charm­ing per­son­al­ity, de­scribed the har­bor too en­thu­si­as­ti­cally, or per­haps the bleak wind and very early spring pre­vented the ver­dure of the shore from prop­erly fram­ing what is re­ally a very pretty lit­tle har­bor. In­deed, it is by some con­sid­ered to be one of the best and safest ports of an­chor in the whole Mediter­ranean; and it was in this fa­mous lit­tle har­bor that King Philip II on his Royal progress to his coro­na­tion at Brus­sels was saluted by the great An­drea Doria, that fa­mous Ge­noese ad­mi­ral then in com­mand of the Papal, French and Im­pe­r­ial navies with a fleet of fifty-five gal­leys. [...] About the shores of the bay was built a quaint lit­tle Span­ish fish­ing vil­lage, but as the clouds grew con­sid­er­ably blacker, after a turn through the town, in which there was lit­tle to see, we started on the re­turn to Figueras, for we planned to go on to Barcelona tonight. “Man pro­poses,” and you know the rest.

Our jour­ney back was far slower than that going down, for on the way we met all the peas­ants re­turn­ing from mar­ket day. Most of the carts were drawn by teams har­nessed tan­dem, some­times two, three or four mules, one after the other, oft­times a lit­tle don­key lead­ing the line; and as nearly every mule and all the don­keys, on see­ing what they had never seen be­fore, a lim­ou­sine au­to­mo­bile, tried to go as rapidly as pos­si­ble in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions at the same time, the con­fu­sion of the road was made for the time com­plete.

It does not do here to be angry or im­pa­tient with the peas­ants, for the hum­blest peas­ant is in his heart, if not ac­tu­ally a Grandee, al­ways a Spaniard; even the beg­gars call you “lit­tle brother or sis­ter” when they ask for alms; so poor Fusi had to be very pa­tient, and re­peat­edly drew the car to the side of the road where we stopped until the jump­ing mules, ex­cited men and scream­ing chil­dren could pass us. F. B. thought the men seemed to be more scared than the an­i­mals, and we no­ticed that when the carts were dri­ven by the stal­wart peas­ant women, there seemed to be much less dif­fi­culty in get­ting the “tar­tanes” by the ma­chine.

At last we were back at Figueras, and after many in­quiries, which met with as many vary­ing replies as to di­rec­tion, we de­cided to take the road that the ma­jor­ity of the peas­ants seemed to think was the right one for Barcelona. We had gone about ten kilo­me­tres over a very fair road when we came to a river “which we couldn't get across” (the Nuga) [Muga].

The car has forded many rivers be­fore now, but on ex­am­in­ing this rush­ing stream with its very sandy bed, Fusi de­clared that if we val­ued the motor we should not try it. F. B. thought he was rather over cau­tious, and Fusi obe­di­ently started the car a lit­tle way down the bank into the river. Sev­eral old peas­ants, in the pic­turesque red caps, dri­ving their great two-wheeled “tar­tanas,” smiled de­ri­sively at the big ma­chine as they splashed their mules through the stream and went qui­etly on their way. They con­fi­dently as­sured us that this was ab­solutely the only high­road to Barcelona, but my own com­mon sense told me that this could not be true. How­ever, what with our ex­cur­sion to the Gulf of Roses, and the un­ex­pected dif­fi­culty of a ford­less river, we now found our­selves des­tined to turn back to Figueras for the night. Be­sides, it was nearly tea time. Five o'clock and tea are ab­solutely syn­ony­mous in the In­fanta's mind, as I have said, but we want to have as much fun and as many ex­pe­ri­ences as pos­si­ble, so we de­cided not to re­turn to the “fonda” of our lun­cheon, but to try the other one which, on fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion, we found to have a tour­ing club sign over the en­trance.