With the World's Great Travellers Volume Iii Part 14

It is a significant fact that in the fairly well-to-do educated district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, where well-being is the rule, poverty the exception, the church is empty on Sunday, and the priest's authority is _nil_. The priests may preach against abstinence from church in the pulpits, and may lecture their congregation in private; no effect is thereby produced. Church-going has become out of date among the manufacturers of Brie cheese. They amuse themselves on Sundays by taking walks with their children, the _pater-familias_ bathes in the river, the ladies put on their gala dresses and pay visits, but they omit their devotions.

Some of these tenant-farmers--many of the farms being hired on lease, possessors of small farms hiring more land--are very rich, and one of our neighbors whose wealth has been made by the manufacture of Brie cheese lately gave his daughter one hundred thousand francs as a dowry.

The wedding-breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters still attend to the dairies, and when they cease to do so doubtless farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we find it. It is delightful to witness the wide-spread well-being of this highly-farmed region.

"There is no poverty here," my host tells me, "and this is why life is so pleasant."

True enough, wherever you go you find well-dressed, contented-looking people; no rags, no squalor, no pinched want. Poverty is an accident of rare occurrence, and not a normal condition, every one being able to get plenty of work and good pay. The habitual look of content written upon every face is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen life were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only, if not of thankfulness.

Cla.s.s distinction can hardly be said to exist; there are employers and employed, masters and servants, of course, but the line of demarcation is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity wholly free from impoliteness, much less vulgarity, existing between them.

The automatic demureness characterizing English servants in the presence of their employers is wholly unknown here. There are households with us where the servants might all be mutes for any signs of animation they give, but here they take part in what is going on, and exchange a word and smile with every member of the household, never dreaming that it should be otherwise. One is struck, too, here by the good looks, intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is plain, are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the walls, flowers in the windows, and altogether a look of comfort and ease found nowhere in Western France. The Breton villages are composed of mere hovels, where pigs, cows, and poultry live in close proximity to their owners, a dung-hill stands before every front door, and, to get in-doors and out, you have always to cross a pool of liquid manure. Here order and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of well-being hardly, I should say, to be matched out of America.

Travellers who visit France again and again, as much out of sympathy with its people's inst.i.tutions as from a desire to see its monuments and outward features, will find ample to reward them in Seine et Marne. On every side we have evidence of the tremendous natural resources and indefatigable laboriousness of the people. There is one point here, as elsewhere in France, which strikes an agriculturist with astonishment, and that is the abundance of trees standing amid cornfields and miscellaneous crops, also the interminable plantation of poplars that can be seen on every side, apparently without any object. But the truth is, the planting of apple- and pear-trees in fields is no extravagance, rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside ca.n.a.ls and rivers is the work of the government, every spare bit of ground belonging to the state being planted with them for the sake of the timber. The crops are splendid, partly owing to the soil, and partly to the advanced system of agriculture. You may see exposed for sale, in little towns, the newest American agricultural implements, while the great diversity of products speaks volumes for the enterprise of the farmers.

As you stroll along, now climbing, now descending this pleasantly undulated country, you may see growing in less than an acre, a patch of potatoes here, a vineyard there, on one side a bit of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, with fruit-trees casting abundant shadow over all; on the other Indian-corn, clover, and mangel-wurzel in the green state, recently planted for autumn fodder; farther on a poppy-field, three weeks ago in full flower, now having full pods ready for gathering,--the opium poppy being cultivated for commerce here. All those and many more are found close together, and near them many a lovely little glen, copse, and ravine, recalling Scotland and Wales, while the open hill-sides show broad belts of pasture, corn, and vineyard. You may walk for miles through what seems one vast orchard, only, instead of turf, rich crops are growing under the trees. This is indeed the orchard of France, on which we English folk largely depend for our summer fruits. A few days ago the black-currant-trees were being stripped for the benefit of Parisian lovers of _ca.s.sis_, a liqueur in high repute.

We encounter on our walks carts laden with plums packed in baskets and barrels on their way to Covent Garden. Later on, it will be the peach and apricot crops that are gathered for exportation. Later still, apples, walnuts, and pears; the village not far from our own sends fruit to the Paris markets valued at one million francs annually, and the entire valley of the Marne is unequalled throughout France for fruitfulness and abundance.

But the traveller must settle down in some delicious retreat in the valley of the Marne to realize the interest and charm of such a country as this. And he must above all things be a fairly good pedestrian, for, though a land of Goshen flowing with milk and honey, it is not a land of luxuries, and carriages, good, bad, or indifferent, are difficult to be got. A countless succession of delightful prospects is offered to the persevering explorer who, each day, strikes out in an entirely different direction. I have always been of the opinion that the best way to see a country is to make a halt in some good central point for weeks at a time, and from thence "excursionize." By these means much fatigue is avoided, and the two chief drawbacks to the pleasure of travel, namely, hotels and perpetual railway travel, are avoided as much as possible.

Seine et Marne, if not one of the most picturesque regions in France, abounds in those quiet charms which grow upon the sympathetic traveller.

It is not a land of marvels and pictorial attractions like Brittany.

There is no costume, no legendary romance, no stone array of Carnac to entice the stranger, but, on the other hand, the lover of nature in her more subdued aspects, and the archaeologist also, will find ample to repay them....

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LUMINOUS PALACE CHAMP DE MARS, PARIS, 1900]

My rallying-point was a pleasant country house at Couilly, offering easy opportunity of studying agriculture and rural life, as well as of making excursions by road and rail. Couilly itself is charming. The ca.n.a.l, winding its way between thick lines of poplar-trees towards Meaux, you may follow in the hottest day of summer without fatigue. The river, narrow and sleepy, yet so picturesquely curling amid green slopes and tangled woods, is another delightful stroll; then there are broad, richly-wooded hills rising above these, and shady side-paths leading from hill to valley, with alternating vineyards, orchards, pastures, and cornfields on either side. Couilly lies in the heart of the cheese-making country, part of the ancient province of Brie, from which this famous cheese is named.

[The French _departement_ of Seine et Marne possesses but two important historical monuments, the Chateau of Fontainebleau and the Cathedral of Meaux, though it contains archaeological remains from the Mediaeval to the Celtic Age. Fontainebleau is too well known to need description here, so we shall conclude by following our traveller to Meaux.]

The diligence pa.s.ses our garden gate early in the morning, and in an hour and a half takes us to Meaux, former capital of the province of La Brie, bishopric of the famous Bossuet, and one of the early strongholds of the Reformation. The neighboring country, _pays Meldois_ as it is called, is one vast fruit and vegetable garden, bringing in enormous returns. From our vantage-ground--for, of course, we get outside the vehicle--we survey the s.h.i.+fting landscape, wood and valley and plain, soon seeing the city with its imposing Cathedral, flas.h.i.+ng like marble, high above the winding river and fields of green and gold on either side. I know nothing that gives the mind an idea of fertility and wealth more than this scene, and it is no wonder that the Prussians, in 1871, here levied a heavy toll; their sojourn at Meaux having cost the inhabitants not less than a million and a half of francs. All now is peace and prosperity, and here, as in the neighboring towns, rags, want, and beggary are not found. The evident well-being of all cla.s.ses is delightful to behold.

Meaux, with its shady boulevards and pleasant public gardens, must be an agreeable place to live in, nor would intellectual resources be wanting.

We strolled into the s.p.a.cious town library, open, of course, to all strangers, and could wish for no better occupation than to con the curious old books and the ma.n.u.scripts that it contains. One incident amused me greatly. The employe, having shown me the busts adorning the walls of the princ.i.p.al rooms, took me into a side closet, where, ignominiously put out of sight, were the busts of Charles the Tenth and Louis Philippe.

"But," said our informant, "we have more busts in the garret,--the Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress, and the Prince Imperial."

Naturally enough, on the proclamation of the republic, these busts were considered at least supererogatory, and it is to be hoped they will stay where they are.

CORDOVA AND ITS MOSQUE.

S. P. SCOTT.

[The following selection we owe to Scott's "Through Spain: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the Peninsula," a work of unusual interest, and which reproduces in picturesque language most of the attractions of that favored peninsula. The Moorish inhabitants of Spain have left in that country numerous monuments of their graceful architecture, notably the Alhambra of Granada and the Mosque of Cordova. The latter, to the description of which this selection is mainly devoted, is one of the most magnificent examples of Saracenic architecture extant, and despite the efforts of ecclesiastics to ruin it, still remains a worthy object of pilgrimage for the lovers of art.]

Once more we turn our faces southward over the bleak and lifeless plains. Estremadura and La Mancha are soon left behind, as the flying train darts through the pa.s.ses of the Sierra Morena, and descends into the beautiful province of Andalusia. It is almost like another world.

The country is thickly settled, green fields take the place of the barren steppes, hedges of aloe and cactus enclose the extensive olive plantations, and, here and there, overtopping the orange groves, are seen the feathery branches of the palm. The costumes grow bright and odd, and the people become more swarthy in complexion.

The water-carrier, with her Arab alcarazza lightly poised upon her head, approaches the car window, and deals out the crystal fluid to the thirsty traveller at the moderate price of one-fifth of a cent a drink.

A few miles farther, and, entering a long and irregular city, with tortuous streets reeking with villanous smells--each of which seems considerably worse than the one you have just escaped--and squares overrun with indefatigable beggars, all startling specimens of horrible and loathsome deformity, we are informed that this is at last the renowned capital of the Khalifs.

If Cordova at first sight is so unprepossessing, a better acquaintance is hardly calculated to produce a more favorable impression upon the stranger. It is a sleepy old town, substantially paved with stone blocks laid down by the Moors, whose notions of comfort and taste are further manifested in the shady courts, surrounded by latticed galleries resting upon graceful horseshoe arches,--peculiarities of the Arab style of architecture. The innumerable ca.n.a.ls, aqueducts, and fountains that embellish the various squares reveal the predilection of its ancient citizens for an abundant supply of water, an advantage not recognized by the present inhabitants. The streets are so crooked, and pay such a disregard to the points of the compa.s.s, that three minutes after you have left the hotel you are helplessly lost, and wonder whether you will be able to find any one of whom to ask the way. You approach one of the houses that, barred like so many castles, line the streets, and knock. After some delay the gate opens, and discloses the leather-clad _portero_ rubbing his eyes, and half asleep. You explain your misfortune; he laughs, and with a volubility that is perfectly amazing delivers himself of a string of directions intended to be explicit, but which soon involve you more deeply in the labyrinth than before.

Then you commit yourself to the tender mercies of a boy who has providentially appeared, and who knows nothing of what you wish to see, but will gladly repel the attacks of the beggars, a service which no one who has had the benefit of it will be disposed to underrate.

The bigoted character of the people of Cordova is betrayed by the number of shrines, and the swarms of well-fed priests that congregate in the neighborhood of the Cathedral and the parish churches. In the Jewish quarter--where the Hebrews, persecuted by other nations, enjoyed complete liberty of wors.h.i.+p, as well as the confidence of their Saracen rulers--stands the mosque. It is on the sh.o.r.e of the Guadalquivir, and opposite the Alcazar of the Khalifs, which is now a military prison, and dest.i.tute of even a suspicion of its ancient grandeur. It is impossible to realize that this spot, now steaming with noxious vapors, smeared with filth of every description, and haunted by ghastly representatives of vice and misery, was once the abode of science and art, the seat of the wealthiest court of mediaeval Europe, the refuge of the oppressed of every creed in Christendom, and the home of the most polished society of the age.

The city contains but little to attest its former greatness, whose story reads like an exaggerated romance of the Orient. The mosque remains, indeed, sadly defaced by the hand of religious fanaticism; a few of the baths are intact, though long disused and abandoned; the wheels of the primitive stone mills are still turned by the rapid current of the Guadalquivir; and the venerable bridge erected by Augustus has survived the uninterrupted traffic and strange vicissitudes of nearly twenty centuries. There are a few handsome palaces, once curious on account of their minute and grotesque ornamentation, but now weather-beaten and decayed. The orphan asylum, built in the sixteenth century, offers the best example of the Gothic, but the churches are abominable, with the exception of San Nicolas, which possesses the only minaret left out of the seven hundred that once adorned the Saracen metropolis. The sight of the crumbling relics of an empire which once overshadowed all Europe with its power naturally recalls the circ.u.mstances under which that power was obtained, and suggests a brief notice of the wonderful civilization that, emanating from a people but a few removes from the Bedouins, communicated new life to the nations brought within the sphere of its authority, contributing so much of value to the common stock of human knowledge, and imparting an extraordinary impulse to scientific thought.

[This historical notice we omit, and proceed with a description of the celebrated mosque of Cordova.]

There has probably never been an edifice erected by the piety of any sect whose materials were gathered in as many different countries, or which could boast such a variety of superb decorations, as the _Djalma_ of Cordova. The stones for its foundations were transported upon the shoulders of Christian captives from Narbonne in France. Pagan altars and Romish churches were alike despoiled of their precious marbles.

Barbary gave her odoriferous woods, Egypt her ivory, Syria her stuccoes, Persia her tapestry, Constantinople her elegant mosaics.

The expenses of construction were defrayed by the appropriation of one-fifth of the spoils of battle, which amount, important in itself, was from time to time largely increased by contributions from the wealthy, tribute of conquered nations and munificent gifts from the royal treasury. The building measured six hundred and forty-two feet from north to south by four hundred and sixty-two feet from east to west; the walls were generally thirty-five feet high, except on the side towards the river, where they reached an alt.i.tude of seventy feet and a thickness of nearly twenty. They were strengthened by b.u.t.tresses and crowned by battlements painted in brilliant colors. Over all towered the shapely minaret of Abderrahman III., inlaid with sculptured stone-work and enamelled tiles, and bearing upon its summit three huge gilded apples of bronze rising from the petals of silver lilies, the whole surrounded by a pomegranate of ma.s.sy gold.

There were twenty-one entrances, encircled by legends from the Koran, interspersed with scarlet and gilded arabesques; the doors were very heavy, and covered with plates of polished bra.s.s. A subdued light came through the interstices of marble lattices, carved in fantastic patterns, imparting a mystic solemnity to the vast interior.

A s.p.a.cious garden or court, called then, as now, the Court of the Oranges, planted with choice exotics and tropical trees, contained the fountains where the Moor performed the ablutions prescribed by his religion. One of these basins, still perfect, is a monolith hewn in the quarries of the distant sierra, and requiring the combined efforts of seventy oxen and hundreds of men to convey it to its present position.

The nineteen naves of the mosque opened upon the court,--none of them had doors,--and through the fretted arcades were wafted odors of rose and jasmine, which, mingling with incense and the smoke of perfumed tapers, gave to the fanatic believer a reminiscence of Araby the Blest.

Some of these tapers weighed sixty pounds, and the largest chandelier, used only during the feast of Ramadan, held fourteen hundred and fifty-four lights. Lamps of gold and silver were suspended from the richly-ornamented ceiling, and among them, memorable trophies of the conquest of Galicia, swung the bells of the church of Santiago.

Stretching around on every side was an endless forest of columns, the horseshoe arches arranged in tiers increasing the resemblance to a grove of palms,--that most primitive of temples,--which evidently served as a model for the interior of the mosque. Not far from the centre was the tribune, where, on Fridays, the Imam called the wors.h.i.+ppers to prayer.

Elevated a few feet above the floor, it was surrounded by engrailed, interlacing arches, and stood opposite the Kiblah, or point facing Mecca. The latter was indicated by three chapels, the Mihrab being placed in the central one.

The Byzantine mosaics, with which both walls and domes are incrusted, give to this part of the mosque an indescribably gorgeous appearance.

They contain no piece larger than the top of a lead-pencil, and, being coated with gla.s.s like those of the church of St. Mark at Venice, which are of about the same date, have been preserved in all their original beauty. A n.o.ble horseshoe arch, opening in the mosaic, forms the entrance to the Mihrab, a little grotto faced with marble slabs, towards which the Moslem always turned to pray, and then made its circuit seven times upon his knees; the evidences of this act of devotion remaining, deeply furrowed in the pavement, after the lapse of six centuries. The Mihrab is hexagonal in shape, and twelve feet in diameter. Exquisitely carved, as became its sacred character, and the reverence with which it was universally regarded, the skill of its architects was exhausted upon its panels and its vaulted ceiling, cut from a single block of snowy marble in the exact representation of a sh.e.l.l. Here was kept the most precious relic of Mohammedan Spain, the Koran written by the Khalif Othman, which he was reading when a.s.sa.s.sinated. It was studded with jewels of immense value, and was so heavy that it required four men to lift it.

Great and important are the changes that have taken place in the arrangements of the mosque since the Spanish domination.

It was first purged of its heretical pollutions by the a.s.sembled clergy, and then lined with chapels presided over by ugly idols glittering with tinsel.

The marble pavement was next removed and replaced by coa.r.s.e red tiles.

The minaret, damaged by a storm in the sixteenth century, has been metamorphosed into an ordinary spire; thirteen of the exterior entrances, and sixteen of those in the Court of the Oranges, have been walled up; and many of the mosaics and stuccoes have been so daubed with whitewash that both colors and designs have disappeared. The carved ceiling was long since removed, and sold to guitar-makers and carpenters; the bal.u.s.trades, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise-sh.e.l.l, were utilized as fuel. The outside has suffered less, and there still remain numerous tokens of its Oriental origin,--the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, typical of the adoration of fire; the Syrian ornamentation of the door-ways, where can also be traced familiar symbols of ancient Egypt; and the suastika, or Indian cross, a mysterious emblem of the highest antiquity, which Layard found upon the palaces of Nineveh, Cesnola in the tombs of Cyprus, and Schliemann on the walls of Troy.

But even these "purifications" were not sufficient to satisfy the demands of an orthodox and iconoclastic priesthood. In 1523 a zealous bishop of Cordova, named Manriquez, wis.h.i.+ng to distinguish himself, determined to build a cathedral in the very centre of the mosque. The people in vain protested against this outrage; the bishop appealed to the emperor, who sustained him; and though Charles afterwards, when visiting Cordova for the first time, sharply criticised the action of the prelate, the remonstrance came with a bad grace from one who had wrought such irreparable mischief in the Alhambra. The church was built, and, though in itself elegant, has destroyed the proportions of the unique structure, once the model of Saracen architecture and the pride of all Islam....

The Moorish city of Cordova was divided into five wards, each isolated by a fortified wall. Beyond these were the twenty-one suburbs, which--as well as the central part of the capital, where were located the palace and the Djalma--were paved and lighted, and furnished with mosques and markets. To accommodate a population that exceeded a million there were nine hundred public baths, more than are now to be found in all Europe.

Of the suburbs, that of Medina-Azzahra was the most celebrated. It enclosed a palace built by An-Na.s.sir for a favorite of his harem, and we are told that its decorations surpa.s.sed those of the mosque at the period of its greatest magnificence. The most expensive marbles and jaspers were used in its construction; Byzantine mosaics covered its walls; the ceilings of its pavilions were composed of alternate plates of gold and silver. In the princ.i.p.al hall stood a porphyry basin full of quicksilver, so contrived that it could be agitated by hidden mechanism, reflecting the rays of the sun with dazzling brilliancy, and striking with terror the mystified beholders. Over this curious toy was a miniature temple, with a dome of ebony and ivory, incrusted with pearls and rubies, and sustained by columns of polished crystal. Attached to the palace were delightful flower-gardens, orchards, labyrinths, lakes, and fountains. There were six thousand three hundred women of all ranks in An-Na.s.sir's harem, who were guarded by an army of twelve thousand eunuchs clothed in silk, and wearing girdles of gold. In the neighborhood of the Khalif's residence stood the villas of the n.o.bility, which, with the houses of their slaves and retainers, const.i.tuted of themselves a town of no inconsiderable dimensions.

Having read much of Medina-Azzahra, I was naturally desirous to visit the site of this luxurious retreat of the Khalifs, which is known as "Cordoba la Vieja," or Old Cordova; and taking a carriage, the driver of which a.s.sured me he was perfectly familiar with the locality, I rode out to the mountains, a distance of about three miles. The carriage stopped; I got out, and, seeing a few steps away a low wall of masonry, evidently the enclosure of a pasture, I asked the driver what place this was.

Touching his hat, he replied, "This, senor, is Cordoba la Vieja."

"But the ruins you promised to show me,--where are they?"