Gatherings From Spain. Ford Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ perhaps, reflect that Spain is a land which never yet has been able to construct or support even a sufficient number of common roads or canals for her poor and passive commerce and circulation. The distances are far too great, and the traffic far too small, to call yet for the rail; while the geological formation of the country offers difficulties which, if met with even in England, would baffle the colossal science and extravagance of our first-rate engineers. Spain is a land of mountains, which rise everywhere in Alpine barriers, walling off province from province, and district from district. These mighty cloud-capped sierras are solid masses of hard stone, and any tunnels which ever perforate their ranges will reduce that at Box to the delving of the poor mole. You might as well cover Switzerland and the Tyrol with a net-work of level lines, as those caught in the aforesaid net will soon discover to their cost. The outlay of this up-hill work may be in an inverse ratio to the remuneration, for the one will be enormous, and the other paltry. The parturient mountains may produce a most musipular interest, and even that may be “deferred.”

DIFFICULTIES OF RAILROADS

      Spain, again, is a land of dehesas y despoblados: in these wild unpeopled wastes, next to travellers, commerce and cash are what is scarce, while even Madrid, the capital, is without industry or resources, and poorer than many of our provincial cities. The Spaniard, a creature of routine and foe to innovations, is not a moveable or locomotive; local, and a parochial fixture by nature, he hates moving like a Turk, and has a particular horror of being hurried; long, therefore, here has an ambling mule answered all the purposes of transporting man and his goods. Who again is to do the work even if England will pay the wages? The native, next to disliking regular sustained labour himself, abhors seeing the foreigner toiling even in his service, and wasting his gold and sinews in the thankless task. The villagers, as they always have done, will rise against the stranger and heretic who comes to “suck the wealth of Spain.” Supposing, however, by the aid of Santiago and Brunel, that the work were possible and were completed, how is it to be secured against the fierce action of the sun, and the fiercer violence of popular ignorance? The first cholera that visits Spain will be set down as a passenger per rail by the dispossessed muleteer, who now performs the functions of steam and rail. He constitutes one of the most numerous and finest classes in Spain, and is the legitimate channel of the semi-Oriental caravan system. He will never permit the bread to be taken out of his mouth by this Lutheran locomotive: deprived of means of earning his livelihood, he, like the smuggler, will take to the road in another line, and both will become either robbers or patriots. Many, long, and lonely are the leagues which separate town from town in the wide deserts of thinly-peopled Spain, nor will any preventive service be sufficient to guard the rail against the guerrilla warfare that may then be waged. A handful of opponents in any cistus-overgrown waste, may at any time, in five minutes, break up the road, stop the train, stick the stoker, and burn the engines in their own fire, particularly smashing the luggage-train. What, again, has ever been the recompense which the foreigner has met with from Spain but breach of promise and ingratitude? He will be used, as in the East, until the native thinks that he has mastered his arts, and then he will be abused, cast out, and trodden under foot; and who then will keep up and repair the costly artificial undertaking? – certainly not the Spaniard, on whose pericranium the bumps of operative skill and mechanical construction have yet to be developed.

BENEFITS OF RAILROADS

      The lines which are the least sure of failure will be those which are the shortest, and pass through a level country of some natural productions, such as oil, wine, and coal. Certainly, if the rail can be laid down in Spain by the gold and science of England, the gift, like that of steam, will be worthy of the Ocean’s Queen, and of the world’s real leader of civilization; and what a change will then come over the spirit of the Peninsula! how the siestas of torpid man-vegetation, will be disturbed by the shrill whistle and panting snort of the monster engine! how the seals of this long hermetically shut-up land will be broken! how the cloistered obscure, and dreams of treasures in heaven, will be enlightened by the flashing fire-demon of the wide-awake money-worshipper! what owls will be vexed, what bats dispossessed, what drones, mules, and asses will be scared, run over, and annihilated! Those who love Spain, and pray, like the author, daily for her prosperity, must indeed hope to see this “net-work of rails” concluded, but will take especial care at the same time not to invest one farthing in the imposing speculation.

      Recent results have fully justified during this year what was prophesied last year in the Hand-Book: our English agents and engineers were received with almost divine honours by the Spaniards, so incensed were they with flattery and cigars. Their shares were instantaneously subscribed for, and directors nominated, with names and titles longer even than the lines, and the smallest contributions in cash were thankfully accepted: —

      “L’argent dans une bourse entre agréablement;

      Mais le terme venu, quand il faut le rendre,

      C’est alors que les douleurs commencent à nous prendre.”

ANGLO-HISPANO RAILROADS

      When the period for booking up, for making the first instalments, arrived, the Spanish shareholders were found somewhat wanting: they repudiated; for in the Peninsula it has long been easier to promise than to pay. Again, on the only line which seems likely to be carried out at present, that of Madrid to Aranjuez, the first step taken by them was to dismiss all English engineers and navvies, on the plea of encouraging native talent and industry rather than the foreigner. Many of the English home proceedings would border on the ridiculous, were not the laugh of some speculators rather on the wrong side. The City capitalists certainly have our pity, and if their plethora of wealth required the relief of bleeding, it could not be better performed than by a Spanish Sangrado. How different some of the windings-up, the final reports, to the magnificent beginnings and grandiloquent prospectuses put forth as baits for John Bull, who hoped to be tossed at once, or elevated, from haberdashery to a throne, by being offered a “potentiality of getting rich beyond the dreams of avarice!” Thus, to clench assertion by example, the London directors of the Royal Valencia Company made known by an advertisement only last July, that they merely required 240,000,000 reals to connect the seaport of Valencia – where there is none – to the capital Madrid, with 800,000 inhabitants, – there not being 200,000. One brief passage alone seemed ominous in the lucid array of prospective profit – “The line has not yet been minutely surveyed;” this might have suggested to the noble Marquis whose attractive name heads the provisional committee list, the difficulty of Sterne’s traveller, of whom, when observing how much better things were managed on the Continent than in England, the question was asked, “Have you, sir, ever been there?”

LONDON RAILROAD MEETINGS

      A still wilder scheme was broached, to connect Aviles on the Atlantic with Madrid, the Asturian Alps and the Guadarrama mountains to the contrary notwithstanding. The originator of this ingenious idea was to receive 40,000l. for the cession of his plan to the company, and actually did receive 25,000l., which, considering the difficulties, natural and otherwise, must be considered an inadequate remuneration. Although the original and captivating prospectus stated “that the line had been surveyed, and presented no engineering difficulties,” it was subsequently thought prudent to obtain some notion of the actual localities, and Sir Joshua Walmsley was sent forth with competent assistance to spy out the land, which the Jewish practice of old was rather to do before than after serious undertakings. A sad change soon came over the spirit of the London dream by the discovery that a country which looked level as Arrowsmith’s map in the prospectus, presented such trifling obstacles to the rail as sundry leagues of mountain ridges, which range from 6000 to 9000 feet high, and are covered with snow for many months of the year. This was a damper. The report of the special meeting (see ‘Morning Chronicle,’ Dec. 18, 1845) should be printed in letters of gold, from the quantity of that article which it will preserve to our credulous countrymen. Then and there the chairman observed, with equal naïveté and pathos, “that had he known as much before as he did now, he would have been the last man to carry out a railway in Spain.” This experience cost him, he observed, 5000l., which is paying dear for a Spanish rail whistle. He might for five pounds have bought the works of Townshend and Captain Cook: our modesty prevents the naming another red book, in which these precise СКАЧАТЬ