To those who live in Barcelona, Montserrat has become a common-place, the resort of Sunday excursions and picnics, one fourth devotional, and three fourths epicurean. Wild, mysterious, almost inaccessible as it stands in one's fancy, it sinks at this distance into the very material atmosphere of railroad and omnibus; but, for all that, we are not going to give it up, though another "Wonder of the World" should go by the board. Take the Tarragona train then with me, on a cloudless afternoon. In a few minutes the scattered suburban blocks are left behind, and we enter the belt of villas, with their fountained terraces and tropical gardens. More and more the dark red earth shows through the thin foliage of the olives, as the hills draw nearer, and it finally gives color to the landscapes. The vines covering the levels and lower slopes are wonderfully luxuriant; but we can see how carefully they are cultivated. Hedges of aloe and cactus divide them; here and there some underground cavern has tumbled in, letting down irregular tracts of soil, and the vines still flourish at the bottom of the pits thus made. As the plain shrinks to a valley, the hills on either side ascend into rounded summits, which begin to be dark with pine forests; villages with square, brown church-towers perch on the lower heights; cotton-mills draw into their service the scanty waters of the river, and the appearance of cheerful, thrifty labor increases as the country becomes rougher.
All this time the serrated mountain is drawing nearer, and breaking into a wilder confusion of pinnacles. It stands alone, planted across the base of a triangular tract of open country,--a strange, solitary, exiled peak, drifted away in the beginning of things from its brethren of the Pyrenees, and stranded in a different geological period. This circumstance must have long ago impressed the inhabitants of the region,--even in the ante-historic ages. When Christianity rendered a new set of traditions necessary, the story arose that the mountain was so split and shattered at the moment when Christ breathed his last on the cross of Calvary. This is still the popular belief; but the singular formation of Montserrat, independent of it, was sufficient to fix the anchoretic tastes of the early Christians. It is set apart by Nature, not only towering above all the surrounding heights, but drawing itself haughtily away from contact with them, as if conscious of its earlier origin.