Who has not heard of Coruña, and the “Burial of Sir John Moore”? The province of Coruña--or La Coruña, as it is usually called--covers 7902 square kilometres, and its population in the year 1905 amounted to 683,915 souls. Coruña is the dampest province in the whole of Spain, and it has more misty days in the year than any other part; but, on the other hand, it is never troubled with those dry hot winds that cross to Spain from Africa: it is decidedly healthy, and its women and children have very beautiful complexions. The town of Coruña, with its 50,000 inhabitants, is situated on a diminutive peninsula at the point of the angle which forms the north-west corner of Spain, and the distance between it and Madrid is 830 kilometres. Coruña is one of the oldest towns in Spain. Orosius wrote about it in the fifth century, calling it _Brigantia_. He related that it had a very high tower built for looking out over the sea as far as Britain.[179] It was to Coruña that Julius Cæsar brought his fleet from Cadiz, and it was the natives of Coruña who were so terribly frightened at the sight of that fleet, having never seen anything like it before. The name of _Brigantia_ is derived from the Celtic word _Briga_, which we have already discussed in these pages. Both English and German passenger steamers constantly touch at the ports of Coruña and Vigo on their way to Lisbon and South America, and the sea route to Galicia is by far the shortest and quickest for English travellers. We left Southampton just before midnight on January 10, boarding the Hamburg-American liner of 11,000 tons, the _König Fredrick August_, with the aid of a steam tender. The night was pitchy dark, and the only lights visible after we had left the shore were those that shone from the deck and port-holes of the _König Fredrick August_. Many of the best boats running between Europe and South America are German, and there is no doubt that Germany has begun to take, during recent years, a very lively interest in the development of Argentina and her sister Republics. Germans are wresting from the hands of enervated and self-satisfied Englishmen the trade of which we once thought we had the monopoly by divine right, and it is chiefly by German vessels that Spaniards are emigrating in shoals from their native land to Buenos Ayres, to Uruguay, and to Chili. I do not think I entered a single town in Galicia upon the walls of which I did not see placards denoting the speedy departure of some German liner from Europe to South America.