Book Description

Excerpt from Among the Spanish People, Vol. 2 of 2 You pass Vallecas, a little village of twelve hundred inhabitants, almost before you can realize that you have escaped from the whirl, selfishness, and giddy bustle of the Puerta del Sol; and there, scarcely three miles from Madrid, stands, upon an isolated hill, amid barren plains, now clad with scanty, stunted corn and barley, the "centro," or "el punto," de Madrid - a tiny stone chapel, brown as the rocky cone on which it is built, which is said to be the central point of Spain. It is now deserted, and, save a few goatherds, no one climbs its steep. The quarries of Vicalvaro - a steppe of stones; the crumbling and ruined palace of San Fernando, which from a royal palace became a china factory, and from a china factory a desolate heap; the wild country property of the Duke of Osuna, with the baths of Loeches, close to Torrejon Station, are first passed: the country grows wilder and wilder; here, wide-speading cornfields, without tree or hedge; there, some crumbling village, with its one-storied stone houses, each village containing a fine, nay, a noble church within its confines; mountain-streams, now half dry; a few isolated ranges of hills; and Alcala is reached. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.