An eye for detail

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

Tar­rag­ona stands high on its cliffs, and the lit­tle port, with a few brown fish­ing-boats, nes­tles below. No steamer touches here; there is no com­merce, no bus­tle. The sea is with­out sails; the land is an aro­matic wilder­ness; the air is per­haps the purest and most ex­hil­a­rat­ing in Spain. Our first im­pres­sion of the Ram­bla was that it was very for­lorn and un­in­ter­est­ing. It is a broad street, run­ning not along­side of, but in­land from the sea; the houses are nei­ther pic­turesque nor hand­some. But at one end is the glo­ri­ous sea-view; at the other, one turns aside into the bright mar­ket-place. [...]

Every­thing in Tar­rag­ona seems sev­eral cen­turies older than any­where else; and old­est of all are the Cy­clo­pean walls: those are pre-his­toric, and their his­tory was lost in the mists of an­tiq­uity, be­fore Au­gus­tus Cae­sar held his court in Tar­rag­ona. In many places they are quite per­fect, to the very top of their enor­mous height; in some, there is but one row of gi­gan­tic stones ap­par­ent, sur­mounted by more mod­ern work; the greater part of the cir­cuit has from three to six courses of the huge blocks still re­main­ing, below the ma­sonry of later times. In 1868, an old gate­way was found in this wall, be­hind some shabby houses that had been built against it. It is Cy­clo­pean; and the lin­tel is one stone, more than ten feet in length. The thick­ness of the walls here is more than six­teen feet. No ce­ment is used.

The drive to the Roman aque­duct is de­light­ful, and was per­haps not the less so, as the wor­thy Ital­ian land­lord would not allow us to go in a tar­tana; for, as he said, what was the use of break­ing our bones? The Tar­ragonese tar­tanas are spring­less, and al­to­gether very un­like the more civ­i­lized ve­hi­cles of Va­len­cia; and the ex­pe­ri­ence we had had, the day we ar­rived here, did not in­duce us to con­test the point: so we started in one of those great heavy car­riages, half dili­gence, half om­nibus, which are fre­quently the only kind to be had in Spain. The best thing to be done was to take pos­ses­sion of the coupé, and fancy our­selves in a light open car­riage, com­pletely ig­nor­ing the lum­ber­ing om­nibus be­hind; this set­tled, we got on very com­fort­ably[...] The aque­duct is su­perb, with its line of deep or­ange arches strid­ing across the ravine. It looks quite per­fect, but is no longer used. It is pos­si­ble to cross the ravine by means of it, but it is rather dizzy work, as the height is great. Of course there is no para­pet, but it is worth while to go for some dis­tance, in order to judge of its great size and of the depth below.

From thence we made the cir­cuit of great part of the walls, and drove to the Tomb of the Sci­p­ios, which is quite on the other side of Tar­rag­ona. Lonely it stands near the dark blue sea, with the pines over­head, and the heath and myr­tle around; while its two mourn­ful fig­ures seem to keep watch and ward. Noth­ing is known of its his­tory; there is no record, save the one re­main­ing word of the in­scrip­tion, “per­petuo”.

In the Mu­seum of An­tiq­ui­ties we saw many in­ter­est­ing things. There is a fac-sim­ile and trans­la­tion, by Gayan­gos, of a grant made (as far as I could make out) in 1216, by a Moor­ish Emir, to the monks of Poblet, giv­ing them per­mis­sion to pas­ture their flocks, and drink water at the wells in a cer­tain ter­ri­tory. It is couched in the most cour­te­ous and lib­eral terms; I am afraid the Span­ish chivalry would scarcely have acted in so Chris­t­ian a spirit as those their Moslem en­e­mies. Here, too, are the re­mains of the tomb of Don Jaime the Con­quis­ta­dor, brought from Poblet; it must have been splen­did. A medal­lion is on each side: one rep­re­sents Jonah being ejected from the whale's mouth; the other is the Res­ur­rec­tion. [...] There were many spec­i­mens of flint arrow-heads, and weapons of dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods. The sword of Don Jaime the Con­queror was there; and be­side it a long slip of paper con­tain­ing por­traits of the kings of Aragon [...]

We looked about a long time in vain for the Roman am­phithe­atre. In Tar­rag­ona there are no reg­u­lar guides; and our land­lord's young brother, who acted in that ca­pac­ity, knew noth­ing about it, though he was oth­er­wise an in­tel­li­gent youth. At last, not at all where we ex­pected to find it, I de­scried the un­mis­tak­able oval form, on the shore below, ap­par­ently within the precincts of the prison. We went down; and the sol­diers on guard civilly let us in to ex­am­ine it. Lit­tle now re­mains, ex­cept some rows of seats, which are not built, but cut in the slop­ing ground.