Spanish Vistas Part 9

The north was the Carlist stronghold; the south furnished in every city a little Republican volcano. Nor is the simple, patriarchal state of society which Castelar indicates quite universal. Here, as in other provinces, we found luxurious wealth flouris.h.i.+ng in the heart of pitiable poverty. The Governor of Malaga was on our train, and a delightfully honest and amiable old gentleman in our compartment, seeing him on the platform surrounded by a ring of dapper sycophants, who laughed unreasonably at his mild jokes, began to exclaim, in great wrath, "So many cabals! so many cabals! Unfortunate nation! there is nothing but cabal and intrigue all the time. Those men have got some sugar they want to dispose of to advantage, and so they fawn on the Governor. It is dirty; it is foul," etc.

At Malaga there was a coast-guard steamer lying in the harbor, and, as we were looking at it, I asked our companion, a resident, whether they caught many smugglers.

"Oh, sometimes," was the answer. "Just enough to cover it."

"Cover what?"

"Oh, the fraud. Out of twenty smuggling vessels they will take perhaps one, to keep up appearances." And he made the usual significant movement of the fingers denoting the acceptance of bribes.

The heat at Malaga surpa.s.sed anything we had encountered before. The horses of the cabs had gay-colored awnings stretched over them on little poles fixed to the shafts, so that when they moved along the street they looked like holiday boats on four legs. The river that runs through the city was completely dry, and, as if to complete the boat similitude, the cabs drove wantonly across its bed instead of using the bridges. These equipages, however, are commonplace compared with the wagons used for the transportation of oil and water jars (_tinajas_) in the adjoining province of Murcia. A delightful coolness was diffused from the sea at evening, when the fas.h.i.+onable drive--the half-moon mole stretching out to the light-house--was crowded with stylish vehicles, and the sea-wall all along the street was lined with citizens, soldiers, priests, and pretty women, who dangled their feet from the low parapet in blissful indolence. Then, too, the lamps were lighted in the floating bath-houses moored in the harbor, and one of them close to the mouth of a city drain seemed to be particularly well patronized. The streets, almost forsaken by day, were crowded after nightfall. The shops were open late. By eight or nine o'clock life began.

The Cafe de la Loba (the Wolf)--an immense building, where there is a court entirely roofed over by a single grape-vine, spreading from a stem fifteen inches in diameter, and rivalling the famous vines of Hampton Court and Windsor--was well filled, and in many small _tiendas de vino_ heavy drinking seemed to be going on. But the Malaguenese do not imbibe the rich sweet wines manufactured in their vicinity. These are too heating to be taken in such a climate, as we were able to convince ourselves on tasting some fine vintages at one of the _bodegas_ the next day. Nevertheless, the lower cla.s.s of the inhabitants find no difficulty in attaining to a maximum of drunkenness on milder beverages. Even the respectable idlers in the cafe under our hotel drank a great deal too much beer, if I may judge from their prolonging their obstreperous discussion of politics into the small hours, while we lay feverish in a room above listening to their voices, blended with the whistle of a boatswain on some s.h.i.+p at the neighboring quay; ourselves meanwhile enduring with Anglo-Saxon reserve the too effusive attentions offered by mosquitoes of the Latin race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRANSPORTATION OF POTTERY.]

In justice to the Spaniards it should be said that excessive drinking is a rare fault among them. As a nation they surpa.s.s all other civilized peoples in setting an example of temperance as to potations (excepting water), and of remarkable frugality in eating. The Mediterranean ports, through their commerce with the outside world, are tinged by foreign elements; license creeps in with notions of liberty; the sailors, and that whilom powerful fraternity the smugglers, have likewise a.s.sisted in fostering turbulent characteristics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARLIC VENDER.]

To me the best part of Malaga was the view of it from the deck of a Segovia steamer, on the eve of a cruise along the coast. Behind the plain sandy-colored houses rose a background of mountains fantastic in outline as flames; the cathedral, in no way striking, towered up above the roofs, and was in turn overshadowed by an ancient fortress on the eastern height, which was one of the last to fall before the returning tide of Spanish arms, and still claws the precipitous ridge with innumerable towers and bastions, as if to keep from slipping off its honorable eminence in the drowsy lapses of old age. Below this, close to the water, stood the inevitable Plaza de Toros--an immense cheese-shaped structure of stone, where a friend of mine, Spanish by birth, tells me he was once watching the game of bulls, when part of the crowd were struck by the happy thought of starting a revolution. They acted at once on this bright idea; they "p.r.o.nounced" in favor of something, and attacked the military guard. In an instant a battle had begun; the place resounded with musketry, and the populace tore away pieces of the masonry to hurl at the troops below. But that was in the good old days, and such things do not happen now, though there is always a strong detachment of soldiers on hand at the arena, ready for any sudden revival of these freaks. The water around us shone with a l.u.s.tre like satin; and, fluttering over the bright green surface, played incredibly vivid reflections of blue and red from the steamers; while the pure white light, striking back from the edges of the undulations, quivered and s.h.i.+mmered along the black hulk of a vessel, and looked like steam or mist in constant motion.

Highly effective, too, was the carbineer (all custom-house officers in Spain, whether armed or not, are called _carabineros_) who stood on deck with a musket at rest, a living monument to the majesty of the revenue laws. We had been solemnly warned beforehand of the risk we ran in carrying a basket of ale on board in the face of this functionary, and the importance of giving him a _peseta_ (twenty cents) had been urged upon us; but we at first looked for him in vain, and when we found him he appeared so harmless that we kept the _peseta_. I noticed that he laid his gun aside as much as possible. Part of the time he smoked a short pipe under cover of his huge mustache, and eyed people sternly, as if suspecting that they might take advantage of this temporary relaxing of vigilance; but he studiously avoided seeing any merchandise of any description.

The steamer was to start at four in the afternoon, and we made great haste to get on board in time; but there had evidently never been the smallest intention of despatching her until an hour and a half later.

This was in accord with the national trait of distrust. No one was expected to believe the announcement as to the time, and if the real hour had been named, no one _would_ have believed it. Aware of this, the more experienced natives did not even begin to come aboard until toward five o'clock. Spanish clocks are the most accommodating kind of mechanism I have ever had the fortune to encounter. They appear to exist rather as an ornamental feature than as articles of use. You order a carriage, and it is promised at a certain time; you are told that something is to be accomplished at a fixed hour; but this is only done out of deference to your outlandish prejudices. The hour strikes, and the thing is not done. You begin to doubt whether the hour itself has arrived. Is it not a vulgar illusion to suppose so? Your Spaniard certainly thinks it is. He knows that time is an arbitrary distinction, and prefers to adopt the scale of eternity. The one exception is the bull-fight. That is recognized as a purely mundane and temporal inst.i.tution; it must not be delayed a moment; and to make sure of punctuality, it is begun almost before the time announced. But anything like a sea-voyage, though it be only along the sh.o.r.e, comes under a different heading, and must be undertaken with as much mystery and caution as if it were a conspiracy to erect a new government.

To tell the truth, we were glad to get away from the tyranny of the minute-hand, and were not displeased at the lazy freedom of the steamer.

The stewards came up and shut the skylights, spread a table-cloth over them, laid plates, and formed a hollow square of fruits and olives in the centre. Those of the pa.s.sengers that listed took their places at this improvised banqueting board, and by the time the _puchero_ was served--a savory stew composed of chopped meat, beans, carrots, spices, and any little thing the cook's fancy may suggest--we were moving out of the basin, past the curved mole and the light-house, and toy battery at its end. The sunset had thrown its glow over sky and mountains, as if it were an after-thought, to make the surroundings perfect. We glided smoothly over a floor of blue--deep, solid-looking, and veined with white--a pale golden dome above us, and a delicious wind playing round us, like the exhalation of some balmy sub-tropical dream. On these coast steamers one buys a ticket for the transport, and then pays for what he eats. This rule reduced the company at our deck table to a choice and pleasant circle, the head of which was Senor Segovia, one of the owners of the line, a benignant, comfortable Spaniard--"an Andalusian to the core," as he proudly said. We had, as usual, early chocolate at six or seven; breakfast not so near eleven as to admit any suspicion of subserviency to the base time-keeping clock; and dinner--a second but ampler breakfast--between five and six. Some of the first-cabin pa.s.sengers brought their own provision, or purchased it at the towns where we touched every day, and fed secretly in out-of-the-way places.

As for the second-cla.s.s, consisting mainly of peasants swathed in strange garments edged and spotted with fantastic color, they were never seen to eat; but I think that privately they gnawed the pride of ancient race in their hearts, and found it sufficient provender. We would come upon them, when we went forward in our night patrol, lying on the deck in magnificent unconcern, enveloped by stately rags wound round and round their bodies, and lifting toward us a stern, reproachful gaze at our interruption of their tranquillity.

The Mediterranean was calm as a pond, and we roused ourselves to a serene morning, under which the hills gleamed pale and clear along the margin of the waves, the huge sides seamed with dry water-courses, like the creases in a human palm. Beyond the first line of peaks we could descry for a while the soft ghostly whiteness of an inland snow range glimmering above the faded green, the violet shadows, the hard streaks of white and powderings of red earth in the lower series. No sign of life was seen upon the puckered, savage coast. It was the bulwark of that Tars.h.i.+sh to which Solomon sent his s.h.i.+ps for gold; new to us as it was new to him, yet now unutterably old; silent, yet speaking; uncommunicative, yet vaguely predicting a future vast and unknown as the vanished ages. It would be hard to tell how awful in its unchanged grandeur was the face of those mighty hills, so unexpectedly eloquent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIVING FOR COPPERS.]

It was a relief to find that we were approaching Almeria. A road cut in the rock; a stout arched bridge carrying it over an indentation of the sea; a small square edifice on a rock to guard the road; then the distant jumble of low houses along a sheltered bay, and an empty fortress on the sharp hillcrest over it--these were the tokens of our progress toward another inhabited spot. We had on board a two-legged enigma in a white helmet-hat, who wrote with ostentatious industry in a note-book, played fluently on the cabin piano, and now emerged upon the quarterdeck in a pair of bulging canary leather slippers which gave his feet the appearance of overgrown lemons. He afterward proved to be an English colporteur. We also had a handsome, gay, talkative, and witty Frenchman, who, with a morbid conscientiousness as to what was fitting, insisted on being sea-sick, although the sea was hardly ruffled; and him we succeeded in resuscitating, after the boat had come quietly to anchor in the harbor, so far that he began to long audibly for Paris and the cafe on the boulevard, "_et mon absinthe_." We watched with these companions the naked boys who surrounded the vessel in a flotilla of row-boats, offering to dive for coppers thrown into the water, precisely as I have seen young Mexican Indians do at Acapulco. Near by lay another steamer just in from Africa, disembarking a ma.s.s of returned Spanish settlers, fugitives from the atrocities of the Arabs at Oran: a pathetic sight as they dropped silently into the barges that bore them to sh.o.r.e--some utterly dest.i.tute, with only the clothes in which they had fled before the fanatic murderers, and others accompanied by a few meagre household goods. Did they feel that "irremediable nostalgia," I wonder, of which Senor Castelar speaks? The sun was as hot as that which had shone upon them just across the strait, on the edge of the Dark Continent; and the low-roofed glaring houses huddled at the feet of the Moorish stronghold, the Alcasaba, were so Oriental that I should think they must have found it hard to believe they had left Africa at all.

Almeria, like other towns of this southern sh.o.r.e-line, is more Eastern than Spanish in appearance--only the long winding or zigzag covered ways, traced on the steep hills like swollen veins, indicated the presence of the lead-mines which give it an existence in commerce. These conduct the poisonous smoke to a point above the air inhaled by the townsfolk, and it is seen puffing from tall chimneys at the crest of the steep, as if the mountain were alive and gasping for breath. The town, faintly relieved against its pale, dusty background as we first saw it, almost disappeared in the blinding blaze of light that swept it when we got closer. We landed, and attempted to walk, but the dry, burning heat made us shrink for shelter into any narrow thread of shadow that the houses presented. Even the shadows looked whitish. It was impossible to get as far as the weed-grown cathedral, which, as we could see from the water, had been provided in former times with fortified turrets for defence against piratical incursions. So we sunk gratefully into a restaurant kiosk at the head of the _alameda_, where we could look down the hot, yellow street to a square of cerulean sea; and there we sipped lemonade while tattered, crimson-sashed peasants moved about us, some of them occasionally das.h.i.+ng the road with water dipped from a gutter-rivulet at the side. We had barely become reconciled to the Granadan women in trousers, when we were obliged to notice that the men in this vicinity wore short white skirts in place of the usual nether garment. How is Spain ever to be unified on such a basis as this? The local patriots had seemingly wrestled with the problem and been defeated, for a dreary memorial column in front of the kiosk recorded how they had fallen in some futile revolutionary struggle.

On a promontory, pa.s.sed as we sailed away, the drought and dust of the town yielded suddenly to luxurious greenness of sugar-cane and other growths. Almeria was once surrounded by similar fertility, but the land has been so wastefully denuded of forest that all through this region--the old kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia--only certain favorable spots retain their earlier plenty by means of constant care and a.s.siduous watering. Cartagena, one of the chief naval stations of the country, cannot exhibit even such an oasis. It is unmitigated desert.

Not a tree or shrub shows itself amid the baked and calcined stone-work and blistering pavements of the city; and the landscape without looks almost as arid. The place is considered impregnable to a foreign foe, and I can't imagine that foe wanting it to be otherwise, if conquest involves residence. Entered by a narrow gap commanded by batteries, the harbor is a round and s.p.a.cious one, scooped out of frowning highlands that bear on the apex of their cones unattainable forts, thrown up like the rim around volcanic craters. There is but one level access to the city on the land side, and that is blockaded by a stout wall with a single gate. Such was our next goal, reached after a quiet night, which Velveteen and I spent in the open air, having carried our rugs and pillows up from the state-room on its invasion by new pa.s.sengers. At two o'clock in the morning our vessel stole into the port. There was one pale amber streak in the east, over the gloomy, indistinct heights studded with embrasured walls and mine chimneys. By-and-by a brightness grew out of it. Then the amber was reflected in the gla.s.sy harbor. An arch of rose cloud sprung up after this, and was also reflected, the hills lightening to a faded gray and brown. All this time the stars continued sparkling, and one of them threw rings of dancing diamond on the broken wave. Suddenly the diamond flash and the rose tint vanished, and it was broad golden-white day, with calorific beams beating strongly upon us, instead of the crepuscular chill of dawn that had just been searching our veins.

Cartagena has its war history, of course. A Commune was established there by Roque Barcia in 1873, which declined allegiance to the republican government at Madrid, and the city was accordingly besieged.

Barcia had been living on forced loans from the inhabitants, and was loath to go; but the army of the republic made a few dents in the stone wall with twenty-pounders, and that decided him. He got on board the Spanish navy in the harbor, and ran away with it to Africa. Perhaps that accounts for the slimness of the naval contingent now. There is an academy for cadets in the place, but only two small s.h.i.+ps-of-war were anch.o.r.ed in the n.o.ble bay. The town of Cartagena is remarkable for big men and very minute donkeys. The men ride on the donkeys with incredible hardihood. You see a burly Sancho Panza flying along the main street at a rapid pace, with his sandalled feet some three inches from the ground, and wonder what new kind of motor he has discovered, until you perceive beneath his ponderous body a nervous, vaguely ecstatic quivering of four black legs, attached to a small spot of head from which two mulish ears project.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MODERN SANCHO PANZA.]

There is not much to see in Cartagena. Blind people seem to be numerous there--a fact which may be owing to the excessive dazzle of the sunlight and absence of verdure. But I couldn't help thinking some of them must have gone blind from sheer _ennui_, because there was nothing around them worth looking at. Our visit, however, was in one respect a success: we found a broad strip of shade there. It was caused by the high city wall intercepting the forenoon light. Out of the shadow some enterprising men had constructed, with the aid of two or three chairs and several pairs of shears, a barber's shop _al fresco_; and a.s.ses and peasants, as they travelled in and out through the city gate, stopped at this establishment to be shaved. For it is an important item in the care of Spanish donkeys that they should be sheared as to the back, in order to make a smoother resting-place for man or pannier. So while the master held his animal one of the barbers plied some enormous clacking shears, and littered the ground with mouse-colored hair, leaving the beast's belly fur-covered below a fixed line, and for a small additional price executing a raised pattern of starpoints around the neck. The tonsorial profession is an indispensable one in a country where shaving the whole face is so generally practised among all the humbler orders, not to mention _toreros_ and ecclesiastics; but the discomfort to which the barber's customers submit is astonis.h.i.+ng. Instead of being pampered, soothed, labored at with confidential respectfulness, and lulled into luxurious harmony with himself, as happens in America, a man who courts the razor in Spain has to sit upright in a stiff chair, and meekly hold under his chin a bra.s.s basin full of suds, and fitting his throat by means of a curved nick at one side. One individual we saw seated by the dusty road at the gate, with a towel around his shoulders and another in his hands to catch his own falling locks. He looked submissive and miserable, as if a.s.sisting at his own degradation, while the barber was magnified into a tyrant exercising sovereign pleasure, and might have been expected, should the whim cross him, to strike off his victim's head instead of his hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STREET BARBER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIBLES _VERSUS_ MELONS.]

The voyage continued as charmingly as it began. Quiet transitions from the deep blue outside to the p.r.o.nounced green within the harbors were its most startling incidents. The colporteur gave tracts to the sailors, or traded Bibles for melons with the fruit boys; the Frenchman, who was making a commercial tour through the provinces, bestowed a liberal and cheerful disparagement on the nation which afforded him a business. We continued to eat meals in holiday fas.h.i.+on on the skylight hatches, and slept there through the balmy night, occasionally seeing the sailors clambering on the taffrail or in the rigging, always with cigarettes, the glowing points of which shone in the darkness like fire-flies. The gravity with which they stuck to these _papelitos_ while knotting ropes or lowering a boat was fascinating in its inappropriateness. The headlands grew less bold before we tied to the dock at Alicante in the hush of a sultry night. We could see nothing of the town except a bright twinkle of lamps along the quay, contrasting gayly with the blood-red light on a felucca in the harbor, its long vivid stain trickling away through the water like the current from a wound; and the rules of the customs would not admit of our landing till morning.

II.

Our trunks had been on the dock two or three hours when we debarked in a small boat, and some fifteen men had gathered around them, waiting for the owners, like sharks attracted by floating fragments from a s.h.i.+p and wondering what manner of prey is coming to them. They all touched their caps to us as we b.u.mped the sh.o.r.e. These cap-touches are worth in the abstract about one real--five cents. The grand total of speculative politeness laid out upon us was therefore more than half a dollar; but, on our selecting two porters, values rapidly declined, and the market "closed in a depressed condition." The customs officers wore a wild, freebooters' sort of uniform--blue trousers with a red stripe, blue jeans blouses with a belt and long sword, and straw hats. They were also very lazy; and while we were awaiting their attentions we had time to observe the manner of unloading merchandise in these lat.i.tudes. Every box, barrel, or bale hoisted out of a lighter was swung by a rope to which twenty men lent their strength; there were three more men in the lighter, and three others arranged the hoisting tackle; in all, twenty-six persons were occupied with a task for which two or three ought to suffice. Each time, the crowd of haulers fastened on the cable, ran off frantically with it, and then, in a simultaneous fit of paralysis, dropped it as the burden was landed.

These laborers wore huge straw hats, on the crown of which was fitted a _birreta_, the small ordinary blue cap of the country. They had a queer air of carrying this superfluous cap around on top of the head as a sort of solemn ceremony. The wharf was alive, too, with small wagons, roofed over by a cover of heavy matting made of _esparto_ gra.s.s, and furnished with a long, rough-barked pole at the side, to be used as a brake. Above this busy scene towered a luminous sienna-tinted cliff, sustaining the castle of Santa Barbara poised in the white air like a dream-edifice; though a rift high up in the hill marks the spot where the French exploded a mine during the Peninsular war. All these Mediterranean towns are guarded by some such eagle's eyry overlooking the sea, and the old monarchs showed a fine poetic sense in granting them for munic.i.p.al arms their local castle resting on a wave. Close to the lapping waters lay the serried houses, bordered by an esplanade planted with rows of short palms. When the carbineers had looked vaguely into our trunks, and shut them again, the porters tossed them into a little cart, and plunged into the town at a pace with which we could compete only so far as to keep them in sight while they twisted first around one corner and then another, and then up a long chalky street to the Fonda Bossio, which has the name of being the best hotel in Spain. It has excellent cookery, and some furlongs of tile-floored corridor, which the servants apparently believe to be streets, for they water them every day, just as the thoroughfares are watered, out of tin basins. We were overwhelmed with courtesy. For instance, I would call the waiter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUSTOMS OFFICERS.]

"Command me, your grace," was his reply.

"Can you bring me some fresh water?" ("Fresh" always means cold.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: POST INN, ALICANTE.]

"With all the will in the world."

When he came with it I tried to rise to his standard by saying, "Thanks--a thousand thanks."

"They do not merit themselves, senor," said he, not to be outdone.

I asked if I could have a _gars.p.a.cho_ for breakfast. The _gars.p.a.cho_ is an Andalusian soup-salad, very cooling, made of stewed and strained tomato, water, vinegar, sliced cuc.u.mber, boiled green peppers, a dash of garlic, and some bits of bread; the whole served frost-cold.

"I don't know--it is not in the list. I feel it, senor. It weighs upon my soul. But I will see, and will return in an Ave Maria to let you know."

He never left me without asking, "Is there anything wanting still?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALICANTE FRUIT-SELLER.]

The waiters and chamber-maids ate their meals at little tables in the hall, and whenever I pa.s.sed them, if they were eating, they made a gracious gesture toward their _pillau_ of rice. "Would your grace like to eat?"

This offer to share their food with any one who goes by is a simple and kindly inheritance from the East; but it becomes a little embarra.s.sing, and I longed for a pair of back stairs to slink away by, without having to decline their hospitality every time I went out.

To go out in the middle of the day was like looking into the sun itself.

Everybody stayed in-doors behind thick curtains of matting, and dozed or dripped away the time in idle perspiration; but hearing unaccountable blasts of orchestral music during this forced retirement, I inquired, and found them to proceed from the rehearsal of a Madrid opera company then in Alicante. Our attendant at table proved to be a duplex character--a serving-man by day and a fourteenth lord in the chorus by night, with black and yellow stockings, and a number of gestures indicating astonishment, indignation, or, in fact, anything that the emergency required. We had the pleasure of seeing him on the stage that very evening, and of listening to an extravagant performance of "La Favorita," between two acts of which an usher came in and collected the tickets of the whole audience. The theatre was remarkably s.p.a.cious for a town of thirty thousand inhabitants; but Alicante is a favorite winter resort, and even maintains a "Gallistic Circus;" that is, a place for c.o.c.k-fights.

The Garden of Alicante is a luscious spot, hidden away some two or three miles from the town, and owned by the Marques de Venalua, a young man of large wealth, who spends all his time at Alicante, and is a public benefactor, having introduced water in pipes at his own expense. The carriage and consumption of water, indeed, seemed to be the chief business of the population. They have a system of fountains for distributing sea-water from which the salt has been extracted, and women and children are kept going to these with huge jars, to satisfy the local thirst. To be born thirsty, live thirsty, and die so, is a privilege enjoyable only in countries like Southern Spain. One can form there, too, a vivid idea of the desert, from the delight with which he hails the green _Huerta_, or garden. The road and fields on the way thither were like a waste of cinders and ashes. The almond and fig trees, the pomegranates and algarrobas beside the way, were coated with dust that lay upon them like thin snow; and the almond-nuts, where they hung in sight, resembled plaster casts, so pervasive was the white deposit. But all at once we mounted a low rise, and the wide stretch of verdant plantations lay before us, thick-foliaged, cool, sweet, and refres.h.i.+ng, with villas embowered among the oranges and palms, a screen of dim mountains beyond, and the silent blue sea br.i.m.m.i.n.g the horizon on the right. It was a spectacle delicious as sleep to tired eyes; it brought a cry of pleasure to my lips and grateful life to the heart.

But this spot, lovely as it is, becomes insignificant beside the glorious Huerta of Valencia, stretching for more than thirty miles from the olive-clad hills around Jativa to that city, which is the pleasantest in Mediterranean Spain, and the most characteristic of all, after Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. There one travels through an unbroken tract of superb cultivation--a garden in exact literalness, yet a territory in size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: METHOD OF IRRIGATION NEAR VALENCIA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF SANTA CATALINA, VALENCIA.]