We visited an important ice factory, and watched the ice being made with the help of liquid ammonia. By expansion of the liquid the necessary cold is produced, the ammonia is pumped into the congealer and then compressed and cooled by water, after which it again becomes liquid; and so the process is repeated. Sea water is pumped into the factory at the rate of fourteen tons an hour, by means of electricity. We saw the pipe running along the beach; it was two hundred yards long. The water enters the pipe at a depth of seven yards below the surface. As I have said, we watched the ice being made. Fresh water filled great tin moulds; these were then let down into a tank containing salt water rendered very cold by means of pipes beneath, filled with the ammonia which had been expanded from its liquid state into gas. The degree of cold which is sufficient to freeze fresh water does not freeze salt water, so only the water in the moulds was turned to ice. When the water in the moulds had become ice, they were raised out of the salt water and tipped up so that the ice blocks could slide out; each block weighed twenty kilos. That the blocks might slip out easily, the moulds were dipped for an instant into hot water. If the heat is too great, the ice sticks; but if it is exactly the right temperature, the ice blocks slip out easily, like puddings out of a pudding mould. The blocks of ice are kept in an ice-house with pipes of ammonia running over the ceiling to keep the temperature at freezing-point. The windows of the ice-house were made of prisms, like bottles filled with air; they let the light of the sun enter, but not its heat. The sardines are caught in draughts.[190] They shun very cold water, and are most plentiful on the Galician coast at periods when the Gulf Stream flows nearest to the shore. Fishermen can tell when the sardines are coming. As many as four hundred deal boxes (as large as petroleum cases) are sent to Madrid every day from one factory during the sardine season. The packing is almost all done by women. The women work with far more energy than the men. This fact was pointed out to me by the manager of the principal factory, and I saw for myself that it was correct. Strange to say, it is only among the poorer classes that the women of Galicia are remarkable for their energy. “Our ladies are too fat, because life is too easy; they have not enough work either for mind or body,” said a Spanish gentleman. “Even our men are lazy,” he added. “In Spain a man waits to inherit his father’s worldly goods, and as long as his father lives he remains the son, and nothing else; he only gets responsibility and independence at his father’s death. In England, on the contrary, a father gives his son responsibility, educates him, and then expects him to make a position for himself.”