Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1883 — The Spanish Postal System. [ARTICLE]

The Spanish Postal System.

There is a postoffice here, and, since the advent of a railway, a telegraph station. Both of these, in one office, are in the town, while the inn is at the station, half a mile distant. The post and the telegraph agent goes to his office at 1 p. m., and leaves at 3p. m. At other hours the “administration” is closed. As a matter of especial favor, because I was about to start on a journey to the mines, I got a letter at 10 a. m. It was necessary to go to the office, then to the “administrator’s” house, then back to the office, then to wait two hours, and to express a deep sense of the obligation and the honor conferred. The office is not an office. There is no room, no desk; there are no writing implements, no officials. There is a small stone-and-plaster house, having a ten-foot courtyard paved with cobbles. On one side of this is a closet —a sort of dust-bin. The administrator goes into this closet, and digs out a lot of letters, newspapers and old trash. If Jour letter happens to be among the ot, if the address is entirely in Spanish, and if the administrator happens to see it, all of which are remote contingencies, you will get it: otherwise not. There is no banking-house at Astorga, consequently no address to which the letters of strangers can be sent with any degree of certainty that they will be delivered. Not that I regard the officials as dishonest, but simply that they know no more of foreigners or foreign names or foreign modes of addressing letters than an American postoffice official knows of Chinamen or Chinese mail matter, and they appear to hold foreigners, if not in equal contempt, at least in equal disregard, as the Americans do the Chinse. What is not Spanish i s barbarous. Before letters reach the postoffices of any town off the railway they must go by horse or coach. If by the latter, they are placed in one of three leathern pouches, which are nailed up in the “berliner. ” These pouches have no locks; the flaps are always open, and the passengers in the “berliner” amuse themselves by examining them. Suppose they contained money, or what seemed to be money, or suppose they were addressed to anybody in whose affairs the travelers were interested. I say, suppose ? The driver’s back is always turned toward the letter-bags. Who would know if a letter or two were taken? And who would care?—Astorga Cor. San Francisco Chronicle.