The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-09-15
SALAMANCA.
THE SEIT or LEARNING OFSOUTH-
ERN EUROPE
And its Troubadouring "Spanish stu
dents"

Salamanca, Spain, July 90.-HoW dis
appointing, and yet how interesting, IS
this old city of song and story. For
centuries the world has been accus-
toned to think of Salamanca, with its
celebrated university and troupadour-
ing students, as the synonym OF erudl-
tion-the Oxford, Yale, Harvard, Hell
delberg of southern Europe; and most
of the world has gone on thinking so to
this day, though the melancholy fact Is
that the ancient seat of learning has Tor
many years been little more than
heap of ruins, abandoned to rats and
owls. From Avila to Salamanca is a
tedious night journey by railway over
an arid and treeless country which
even the hallowed benediction of the
moon" fails to beautffy. You leave
Avila at 1 a. M, guided by lanterns
down the narrow, crooked streets from
hotel to station, importuned every
step of the way by whining beggars
and lottery ticket sellers, who are as
numerous and persistent by night as
by day. when strangers are their prey
So slowly joys the train that day is
well advanced before you sight Sala-
manca-horse-shoe in shape, pale-yel-
low in color, with the wide blue river
Tonnes flowing close under its ancient
walls This mighty river, by the way,
than which a bluer or more beautiful
does not exist, proves a dangerous ac-
quaintance to the foreigner Its water
holds in solution some unexplained
mineral or organic matter, which not
only plays havoc with the inner man
of one unaccustomed to drinking 1T, but
covers the body of the bather with mi
mute sores, resembling an aggravated
case of "prickly heat" Salamancans
keep the water standing several days in
cisterns before drinking it in order to
allow the injurious substance to deposit.
The Tonnes, rising somewhere in the
northern mountains, flows more than a
hundred miles through Spanish terri
tory to its junction with the Duero, the
great river of Portugal. A lazy, shall
low trout-stream through the arid re-
gion where water is most needed. it
suddenly becomes very broad and i'm
posing near Salamanca, where it is
crossed by a magnificent stone bridge
of twenty-five arches. The rule of
twenty-five appears to prevail in this
ancient seat of earning-twenty-tive
colleges, twenty-five churches, twenty
five converts, twenty-five professor
ships and twenty-five arches to it's Ro-
man bridge; but the last alone remain
intact, the rest being mostly among the
things of long ago. In the fourteenth
century Salamanca boosted the most
splendid collegiate buildings in Europe,
and twelve thousand students in its
great university alone. Its pride was
first laid in the dust by the French in
the summer of 1872 who wantonly de-
stroyed twenty of the colleges and all
the richest converts, together with pri-
vate palaces worthy the Corso of Rome
or the Grand Canal of Venice, which
they first looted of valuables and then
burned for firewood. Later on, the law
of Queen Isabella II, that no corporate
body in Spain could hold any property
(made especially for royal plunder),
the devastation of Salaman-
ca. A few notable buildings remain to
show what the city must once have
been-the great cathedral, dozen col
legeS and converts, the monastery of
San Bartolome, now used as a residence
for the civil governor, and the archbish-
ops palace occupied by what remains
of the celebrated Coiegio de Noblesses
Irlandeses, college of Irish Noble
men," founded by Philip III, in 1890, to
spite his sister-in-law, Elizabeth of
and dedicated to st. Patrick.
The beautiful cream colored stone
which forms the walls of the larger
was quarried close by the city
on the banks of the Tonnes. Most of
them were erected early in the Fiji
teenth century, although of course
many are much older; and it is safe to
say that nothing whatever has been
built in Salamanca during the last hun
bred years. Furnishing up your an
cient history, you remember that Plu-
tarch relates how, 5S2 B. C. Hannibal
raised the seige of Salamanca, after the
Spaniards had promised to pay three
talents of silver and to hand
over three hundred hostages. 1t seems
that the race was not famous for keep
ing it's word even in that early day,
and having failed to comply with the
terms agreed upon, the Punic chief re-
turned and gave the place over to plum
der. He ordered the male population to
come out unarmed. and being afraid to
trust them, demanded that they leave |
their cloaks behind. But he did not |
reckon on the women The latter con-
cealed swords under their sayaS, and |
when the Massa esylian guard, placed |
over the presumably unarmed prison
ers, left their charge to join in the pill
lage the women gave the swords to the |
men, who rushed back and killed hun
dreds of the plunderers. So much for |
contribution to the history |
Of Salamanca, true or false. We know
that under the Romans, this city be- |
came the ninth military station on the |
Via Plata, "Silver Way'-the broad |
road that led from Santander on the |
north coast of the peninsula, to Cadiz |
On the south. At Salamanca the Cloths |
coined their golden money until the |
place was ravaged by the Moors; and |
Spaniards reconquered it in 1855. AL |
though fully three-fourths of the city is |
now ruins, it is still a wonderful mass |
IF colleges, converts and churches. In |
deed, nowhere else in the world, upon |
20 small an area, can be found such a |
wealth of sculpture such pomp of arch |
tectural display, as in this corpse of a ,
,ity, whose population has dwindled |
rom fifty thousand to hardly five thou |
land. You put up at La Burgalesa," |
he only hotel now onen in the place !
and are surprised to find it mot half |
1ad," as the English say, considering |
he extreme poverty of the region and |