Page 23 - The Studio First Edition - April 1893
P. 23

Sketching Grounds. No. 1.—Stain


                night. I can assure you the feeling of solitude  saloon roof kept us busily occupied—how, need not
                was something tremendous, as we lay on the deck   be told. This monotony was broken one day by
                in the starlight, thinking and dreaming of work to  Rincon bringing in a warrior, not dead, but drunk ;
                be done.                                    a visitor who, with the light-hearted gaiety peculiar
                  Rincon interrupted our reverie, however, coming  to the inebriate, commenced a playful criticism of
                forward with a wine-skin, and entering into conver-  the many sketches hung
                sation with M., told him among other things that   round the saloon. We
                he was a Catalan, which means much. There was  gently remonstrated, but
                nothing now but to turn in ; it seemed only a moment  as Rincon's condition
                before waking-up to find we were again under-weigh   was very much the same,
                to the music of mule bells and the song of the mule-  he feebly smiled and sat
                teer. The landscape is quaint and decorated with  down. Our stolid in-
                rich yet subdued colouring ; to some people it might   difference, or the eleva-
                seem monotonous, but there is a subtle pathetic  ting influence of art,
                charm in its monotony. On the banks passed lightly-  however, soon pre-
                clad girls carrying great bundles of washing : all  vailed, and they un-
                this made glad the heart of a painter. Presently  gracefully swayed out.
                we came to a more hilly country : the canal winds   Next day we pushed
                by hills, treeless, scorched by the sun. Under the  on to Galar. This pro-
                long shadows of the few poplars on the banks we  mised so well that we
                could see a goatherd surrounded by flocks of black   made fast to the bank.
                goats, looking like spots of ink on the sun-swept  The canal here runs
                                     hills : above the swell of  along the side of the
                                     the hill a great white cloud   hill, the town being
                                     hung. At midday a halt  below you in the valley.
                                                                                        A MULETEER.
                                     was made, in the hope  M., by some occult
                                      of doing some work, but  means, managed to get a goatherd with his flock
                                      a terrific wind was blow-  down in the morning ; so, after partaking of break-
                                      ing the Bochomo, which  fast—otherwise a pint of coffee with a flavour of
                                     rendered it almost impos-  oil about it—we "got to." It was charming at
                                     sible, and it made our  first, till the frequent peregrinations of the goats
                                     hearts ache to watch the  over the hill caused me to think the goat was not
                                     grand and gloomy effect of  the amiable animal one imagines him. We
                                     swaying poplars and dis-  sweated in agony—not silent on my part. M.
                                     turbed water, and not be  made a good morning of it, but the wily goat proved
                                    able to paint it. Towards
                              li  	 too much for me.
                                     night we stopped at a    We worked here for many days. One afternoon,
                                     puebla called Catanillo, a  on our way home through a steep picturesque
                      ANTONIO.
                                     place sombre and mystic  street, we found a café. Going out of the blinding
                like a dead city, peopled with strange earth-  sunlight into the gloom, one could hardly distin-
                coloured phantoms ; and to the day succeeded  guish anything, but as our eyes grew accustomed
                a night if possible more weird, masses of grey  to the semi-darkness, we could see the room full of
                cloud sweeping over the sleeping town — here  swarthy Aragonese, smoking and gambling, and at
                and there rifts of opalescent green. We worked  the far end the proprietor playing the mandoline in
                here some days in the aforesaid infernal wind,  a way that made us sit up. After a while, seeing
                which, gathering violence as it rushed over the hill  we were strangers, he came over to us, and proved
                slopes, covered us and our canvas with dust, and  to be the alcade of the town ; later on, in the
                our consciences with curses. Close here is the  afternoon, at his invitation, we went to look at his
                 Ebro, and on it a strange ferry-boat worked over  place. The country was lovely, passing through
                 with a wire, of which I made a sketch, to the  fields of maize and orchards of peach and cherry—
                 great delight of the man who propelled it across  the blue river winding through like a blue snake
                 the stream. We now had for a few days an expe-  set in gold. At length we came to a spring, where
                 rience of the delights of our new home : it rained  we sat down, and found that our host with kind-
                 incessantly, and the sieve-like properties of the   ness and forethought had provided us with a bottle
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