a God_;" the
inhabitants of this spot are certainly more than men; for no wild beast
dwells here. But it is the _place_, not the people, I mean at present to
speak of. It stands in a vast plain, seven leagues they call it, but it
is at least thirty miles from _Barcelona_, and nearly in the center of
the principality of _Catalonia_. The height of it is so very
considerable, that in one hour's slow travelling towards it, after we
left _Barcelona_, it shewed its pointed steeples, high over the lesser
mountains, and seemed so very near, that it would have been difficult to
have persuaded a person, not accustomed to such deceptions, in so clear
an atmosphere to believe, that we had much more than an hour's journey
to arrive at it; instead of which, we were all that day in getting to
_Martorel_, a small city, still three leagues distant from it, where we
lay at the Three Kings, a pretty good inn, kept by an insolent imposing
Italian. _Martorel_ stands upon the steep banks of the river
_Lobregate_, over which there is a modern bridge, of a prodigious
height, the piers of which rest on the opposite shore, against a Roman
triumphal arch of great solidity, and originally of great beauty. I
think I tell you the truth when I say, that I could perceive the
convent, and some of the hermitages, when I first saw the mountain, at
above twenty miles distance. From _Martorel_, however, they were as
visible as the mountain itself, to which the eye was directed, down the
river, the banks of which were adorned with trees, villages, houses, &c.
and the view terminated by this the most glorious monument in nature.
When I first saw the mountain, it had the appearance of an infinite
number of rocks cut into _conical_ forms, and built one upon another to
a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a
mountain; and the _tout ensemble_ compose an enormous mass of the
_Lundus Helmonti_, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in
circumference, and what the Spaniards _call_ two leagues in height. As
it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with
any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the base of
it, on the south side, are two villages, the largest of which is
_Montrosol_; but my eyes were attracted by two ancient towers, which
flood upon a hill near _Colbaton_, the smallest, and we drove to that,
where we found a little _posada_, and the people ready enough to furnish
us with mules