I left the train in a heavy shower at the wretched little station of San Juan del Puerto, a poverty-stricken village lying on the mud-flats of the Rio Tinto near its junction with the Odiel. This is the nearest station to Moguer, and people who want to see the district, which is very pretty as well as full of historical interest, should not be misled by the guide-books into taking any other route to La Rabida, for reasons which I will presently explain.
Moguer is only about a mile and a half from the station, and a diligence meets every train. It is true that it is not a luxurious conveyance, and sometimes if one does not rush to secure a seat one may find oneself left behind. So unless the trip is a sudden thought, as mine was, it is well to write to the landlady of the Fonda Almirante Pinzón at Moguer, and she will not only send a carriage to the station, but reserve one of her few bedrooms for you, and add an extra dish to her simple dinner in view of your arrival. It is always advisable, when possible, to give notice of your coming to modest little hostelries like this.
The diligence was not crowded the day I first went to Moguer. In fact it contained, besides myself, only an old doctor and his young wife, and the village idiot from San Juan, who rode on the step outside until he realised that nothing was to be got out of the doctor or me by his whines, and then he dropped off and strolled back in the rain to his own place.
Not far out of San Juan there is a long low wooden bridge on trestles across the Rio Tinto, which here is very wide. It creaked and groaned a good deal as we crossed it, and the doctor remarked that it had been condemned long ago as unsafe by the Inspector of Roads, and every time he crossed it he wondered whether it would hold up till he got to the other side.
“Oh, Cayetano! How can you say so, when we have to return by the same road to-morrow!” shrieked his wife.
I looked at the turbid yellow water, already swollen with the rain. A bath in it would be highly unpleasant, even if it were nothing worse than a bath. But we got safely across, and rattled up a gentle rise into the pretty little town, where at every turn one meets reminders of the wealth and splendour that it enjoyed in the sixteenth century, when the gold that poured in from America enriched every one connected with those who adventured in the New World.