John
Quincy Adams
Diary
Entry
January
3d 1780 Monday.
This morning we got up at 5 o clock and at 6 we set away from Benbibere.
We dined in a little hut amongst the mules and at about 6 o clock we arrived
at Astorga. We have had very Good roads all this day. The Guide told us
that we had 7 Leagues but we had 10 good English Leagues.
In the first volume of this journal I promised to give a description of
several things. I will now give one of the Roads, Houses, men, &c from
Corunna as far as this place. The roads in General are very bad. The Lodgings
I will not attempt to describe for it is impossible. However I will say
something about them. We did not once lodge with the mules but not much
better. They shew us chambers in which any body would think a half a dozen
hogs had lived there six months. I have in my first volume said something
about Castellano. We have not met with any place quite so bad as that but
we have come very near it. Sometimes we might see a chimney but it is very
seldom. They have a large flat stone in the middle of the room and they
punch two or three holes in the roof of the house out of which some of the
Smoke goes and the rest must be borne with. They never wash nor sweep their
floors from the time the houses are made to the time they are pull'd down.
The roofs of the houses are generally a parcel of boards cover'd with straw.
Adams,
John Quincy. Diary Entry, January 3, 1780. Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts
Historical Society. Published in Diary of John Quincy Adams, Volume 1: November
1779 - March 1786 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1981). Pages 23-25.
