Page:A Handbook for Travellers in Spain - Vol 1.djvu/27

Rh professional courier or soldier) must be treated with civility, and abusive speech avoided.

It is desirable for the traveller to carry with him some anti-cholera medicine, and a bottle of Henry’s magnesia. It is difficult to have English prescriptions made up in Spain. or dysentery the usual Spanish remedy is rice-water, which sometimes stops the diarrhœa. It is well also to have a supply of tea and French brandy, and small metal teapot, neither of these being procurable except in the larger towns. Spaniards always take a day’s provision with them. An india-rubber bath will be found a great comfort.

Post-offices and Letters, and the general correspondence of Spain, are tolerably well regulated. A single letter, una carta sencilla, must not exceed 15 gramos; the charge for postage increases with the weight. The English system has been introduced; a uniform charge for postage —by weight—now, irrespective of distance, prevails over Spain. The stamps are called sellos. Letters to any part of Spain pay 15 cent. of peseta. To France and England, 25 centimos for the same weight. Postage stamps cannot be bought at the post-office; they must be procured at the Government cigar, tobacco depôts (Estancos), which are distinguished by having the Government arms over the door. English newspapers are free to Spain. Pamphlets and papers fastened like ours, with an open band or faja for directing, are charged to any part of Spain or her colonies, 1 cent. of peseta; to England and France, 5 cent. for every 50 grammes. Post-cards for any part of Spain, 10 cent. Letters for inside a town, whatever their weight, 10 cent. Letters from or to England must be prepaid, or they will be charged double postage. A registered letter requires a stamp of 75 centimes.

Travellers may have their letters addressed to them at the post-office, to Lista de Correos (= Poste Restante), where the passport is usually asked for before the letter is delivered. Prudent tourists should urge home correspondents, especially their fair ones, to direct simply, and to write the surname in large and legible characters. The best mode, while travelling in Spain, is to beg them to adopt the Spanish form—“Señor Don Plantagenet Smytheville.”’ The traveiler should always put his own letters into the post-office, and himself affix the stamps on them. Travellers, when settled in a town, may, by paying a small fixed sum to the post-office clerks, have a separate division, “el apartado,” and an earlier delivery of their letters. Letters from the Peninsula directed to a private address or to an hotel, are left: by a postman, “el cartero,” who is entitled to charge 5 cent. for each letter, on delivery.

The telegraph-lines in Spain are all in the hands of the State. The offices are open day and night, and the staff of officials employed are usually intelligent and trustworthy. Parties must procure telegraph stamps from an Estanco, or at the telegraph-office in large towns, of the value of the message to be sent: these stamps must be handed to the clerk to be affixed by him to the dispatch. The telegram may be written in French, English, German, Italian, and Portuguese: dispatches