A rude welcome

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

At Per­pig­nan the trav­eller who is to jour­ney into Spain is again obliged to be­take him­self to the old-fash­ioned mode of trav­el­ling by dili­gence, the rail­way north of Barcelona being opened only to Hostal­rich and Mataro. […] We had a may­oral or guard, a dri­ver, and two foot­men. It was the duty of the lat­ter to run along­side, to thrash the horses or mules, or to pelt them with stones when the road was bad, and to jump up and cling to the dili­gence when the road was so good as to en­able them to strike into a trot. The ap­proved plan of cross­ing a river is to send the foot­men in ad­vance to move any large stones, or fill any holes ei­ther in the bed of the river or on the op­po­site bank; after which they re­turn to the dili­gence, and the team is made to charge it at full gal­lop, ac­com­pa­nied with yelling, hoot­ing, pelt­ing, jolt­ing, and splash­ing; and after a most ex­cit­ing rush, if for­tu­nate, you ar­rive safe, al­though breath­less, at the op­po­site side. The men soon after begin to smoke and sing as if noth­ing had hap­pened[...]The coun­try is var­ied with cork-trees, stone-pines, and long-stretch­ing plains where rice and es­parto are cul­ti­vated; the lat­ter is much used for mak­ing mat­ting and ropes. […] The dis­tance is short to Figueras, where we slept and had our first spec­i­men of a Cata­lan posada and its noisy in­mates. The ac­com­mo­da­tion was scant and bad. […]

We were on the fol­low­ing morn­ing trans­ferred by our trai­tor dili­gence agent to a smaller and dirt­ier dili­gence, and were told we must go on by this or re­turn to Per­pig­nan for re­dress. We got mood­ily into our small con­fined ve­hi­cle, and drove sev­eral hours through a cul­ti­vated plain to Gerona […] On leav­ing Gerona, our may­oral coolly told us we could not pos­si­bly reach the sta­tion in time for the train for Barcelona that night. The roads now be­came ex­e­crable, full of holes, heavy clay and mud, through which our mules strug­gled and plunged. Our dili­gence lurched like a ship at sea, and it be­came darker and darker. We felt very anx­ious as to our long lone road lead­ing through rivers, mire, and mud; at one time we came to a dead stop, caused by eight mules being all down at once. After much con­fu­sion and noise, they were got up, and con­strained by thrash­ing and abuse to renew the strug­gle; for some miles we con­tin­ued to go on in the same man­ner, mak­ing some tremen­dous lurches, from which we mirac­u­lously re­cov­ered our bal­ance; at last for­tune de­serted us, we lurched, quiv­ered in the air for a sec­ond or two, and went over. The dili­gence fell partly on a slop­ing bank, and we were not in a com­pletely hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion, those who were up­per­most were en­abled to avoid crush­ing their neigh­bours to death. By the help of the may­oral we were dragged out one by one, and put down in the mud with­out any se­ri­ous in­jury. There we were in the dark, but most thank­ful to be with­out bro­ken bones. Our Span­ish maid and the may­oral had been sit­ting in the front: they had made a fly­ing som­er­set over the mules, and had lighted on the op­po­site bank; the for­mer so con­fused with her fall, she could not at first an­swer to her name, and we were ap­pre­hen­sive that she had been killed on the spot, and were greatly re­lieved at last to hear, from be­yond the mules, a fee­ble voice telling us she was not much in­jured. […] A friendly lantern made its ap­pear­ance in the hands of a man who had seen our down­fall, and we all trudged through the mire, and after half a mile's walk ar­rived at a tem­po­rary wooden sta­tion at Palma, two miles from Hostal­rich, at 11 o'clock P.M. Here we were told there was no train till six o'clock the fol­low­ing morn­ing, and no other shel­ter than this in the neigh­bour­hood. The sta­tion was full of wild-look­ing Spaniards, con­gre­gated around small ta­bles, drink­ing Cata­lan wine and cof­fee, and singing and mak­ing merry over it. They at first stared at us as in­ter­lop­ers, but soon got tired of that. In the mean­time we in­gra­ti­ated our­selves with our host­ess, who mag­nan­i­mously of­fered to trans­fer a bed­ful of chil­dren to a darker and dirt­ier den, and put all the ladies of our party into their bed: this did not suit our ideas of com­fort; we pre­ferred wait­ing till the Spaniards re­tired, and then arranged to pass the night upon the ta­bles and chairs, and rough it as well as we could, some­what com­forted by know­ing that a strong guard of men had been placed around the sta­tion to pro­tect our­selves as well as our lug­gage.