Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SAM SIMON'S ISLAM). VIGO BAT CHAP. II VIGO BAY AND HILLS CHAPTER II VIGO BAY AND HILLS Iron cliffs confront you when you first behold Galicia, for the earliest glimpse of North-West Spain, when the Biscay has been crossed, is Cape Villano, rising, stern and rugged, north of Finisterre. The coast looks grim and cheerless, yet it is the gate to one of Europe's warm and most romantic regions. Every mile of it is linked with history, and, hidden in what look like gloomy fastnesses of the Atlantic, are sun-bathed, land-locked bays, of which the best known are Vigo and Arosa, forming two of the finest natural harbours in the Ivor Id. The Ambrose slipped past the Cies Islands, at the seaward side of Vigo Bay, in the darkness of an early autumn morning, and steamed up the placid inland sea as day was breaking. In Galicia the dawn and twilight are briefer and more splendid than in England. The Cies Islands are some fifteen miles from Vigo, and the Ambrose, steaming steadily, will do the distance in an hour. Her masthead and side lights were burning brightly as she passed the lonely lumps of land which jut up like raggedteeth on Galicia's seaboard; yet when her cable rattled and her anchor dropped within a stone's- throw of the jetty the sun was shining and the day had fully broken. Through my porthole I had seen the flashing light on the islands, and I had hurried up on deck to watch the sun rise in the east, beyond the church-topped hill which forms one of the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters are hills in the neighbourhood of Vigo, each being crowned with a church and bearing a special name, such as Nuestra Senora de Alba. Vigo is Galicia's chief portal, and offers ready means6T access to the other parts of the province. The town affords wonderful contrasts between th...