The prettiest spot through which we passed on our railway journey from Pontevedra to Vigo was Redondela, whose picturesque houses scattered among the green hills and fringing the Ria de Vigo, with a tiny harbour all to themselves, were a delight to the eye as we looked down upon them from the train windows. Macaulay mentions Redondela, and alludes to the fact that it was sacked by the English in 1715. Southey was charmed with it when he passed through on his way from Coruña to Lisbon, and he took the trouble to translate into English verse a long legend about one of its ancient towers,[264] telling how a lover jumps into the sea in his despairing frenzy. It was Southey, too, who wrote-- “Spain! still my mind delights to picture forth Thy scenes that I shall see no more, for there Most pleasant were my wanderings. Memory’s eye Still loves to trace the gentle Miño’s course, And catch its winding waters gleaming bright Amid the broken distance. ... Galicia’s giant rocks And mountains clustered with the fruitful pines, Whose heads, dark foliaged when all else was dim, Rose o’er the distant eminence distinct, Cresting the evening sky.” Redondela, once an important town, is now little more than a collection of scattered villages, whose inhabitants are chiefly engaged in oyster fishing. At high tide the waters of the Ria de Vigo come right into the town by way of a little river that passes through it under a pretty bridge, which separates Redondela from its neighbour, Villavieja. Out in the blue waters of the Ria we could see the famous little Hospital of San Simon floating like a shell upon the surface. Our train hugged the shore of the Ria, winding and curving with the water’s edge till we came into the station of Vigo. Vigo is the most modern town in Galicia; it owes its rapid development to its geographical situation and to its bay and harbour, famed for being among the finest in the world. Some forty years ago Vigo was a tiny village, known as Vigo de Cangas. Cangas, situated on the opposite bank of the Ria, is still nothing but a village with a few scattered houses, and it seems incredible that Vigo was, so short a time ago, one of its dependent hamlets. Vigo is built upon the sloping side of a hill, from the top of which mountains may be seen on every side except where the Ria bounds it on the west. Between the various mountain peaks may be seen fertile valleys of all shapes and sizes, and separated from one another by mountain ridges covered with oaks and pines.