Part 10

Immediately around Seville are green gardens and vineyards, and olive and orange orchards, and beyond them the level, marshy country with grass in plenty, in which are bred flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and horses, and mosquitoes of singular malignity. No trees arrest the eye, nothing but green, flat plains, traversed by roads bordered by hedgerows of prickly pear surmounted with their yellow flowers--substantial, business-like hedges that do not require the artificial embellishment of barbed wire or spikes to make them deadly to would-be trespassers. Such hedges would keep out an army--unless of course it be an army composed of beggars, whom no fortification, natural or created,

A SEVILLIAN.]

would keep out. There are beggars everywhere; sick beggars, and sorry beggars, sad beggars, smiling beggars, blind beggars, beastly beggars, old beggars, and baby beggars. There is no escaping them. They follow you along the roads, crawl out in front of you from the hedges, cluster around you if you stop to take a momentary observation. _Toujours_ beggars! You drive up to your hotel--there is a small crowd of them awaiting you. If you hesitate a moment in handing the fare to the driver, they hem you in on every side, whining for “Señor, una limosnita por el amor de Diós” (“A little alms, sir, for the love of God”). A tiny boy of some seven summers explains with dignity that he is not begging for himself--he would scorn to beg for himself--but it is for the little señorita, and he points to a tiny girl of four who looks pleading up at you out of great eyes. A blind man at your elbow commences to scrape out the ghost of a tune on a wretched fiddle, and a filthy segment of humanity thrusts the stump of an amputated arm before your face. It is horrible to the visitor; it is equally repulsive to the Spaniard. The Englishman feels sick and angry: the Spaniard feels sick and sorry. The former bolts into the shelter of his hotel with a malediction between his teeth, the latter thrusts his hand into his pocket instinctively and gives.

A large number of the beggars are children, who are brought up to mendicity as a profession, and they never desert it. They beg, as do their similars in Naples, in Constantinople, or in Colombo, for their fathers and mothers and for the love of God. They are so importunate, so bright, and, in many cases, so pretty that they reap a living wage even from the British visitors. One gets to love these Spanish children--it is impossible to resist them. Their childish dignity and politeness, and their eagerness to be of assistance if the opportunity presents itself, is delightful. I remember well a little chap we encountered at the railway station at Chinchilla, where, for reasons best known to the railway officials, we had to change trains in the middle of the night. He fastened on to us directly we dismounted from the train, and desired to be made of some service. He followed us into the waiting room, and suggested that we should commission him to notify us when our train was due. We charged him with this mission, and so great was his zeal in the discharge of it that he had us out again upon the platform, where we stood, exposed to the rain and the cold night air, for a quarter of an hour before the train arrived. He was very pleased with himself; and when, after bundling our traps into a compartment, he was rewarded with a whole peseta, his gratification was unbounded. He bit the piece between his teeth, and then, approaching a porter who stood near with a lamp in one hand and an open umbrella in the other, he got him to cast the light of his lantern upon it. Then he took another bite at the coin--bad money is not so rare in Spain as it is in this country--and came back to us, and his face was one expansive smile. He climbed up to the carriage window, as we supposed, with Feste’s importunation in his mind: “But that it would be double dealing, sir, I would you could make it another.” But he had only come to place himself at our entire disposal. Were we wanting anything, he would fetch it; did we wish to send letters, or telegrams, or messages, he would carry them. I sent him to get me another pillow, and on his return gave him half a peseta. His delight was humorous. He desired that God would treat me according to my great deservings, that my journey would be a safe and comfortable one, and that my days might be many. The bow he gave me as the train steamed out of the station was quite worth one and a-half pesetas.

Spanish trains are invariably slow, and, as often as not, they are overcrowded. For some reason or other, which I have failed to plomb, the so-called fast trains travel at night, and the times are so arranged that one generally has to leave a place and arrive at one’s destination at about two o’clock in the morning. The Spaniard is a lover of the night, not from poetical or sentimental motives, but because it is only before sun-up and after sun-down that one gets a sufficiency of the much-longed-for shade. Shade is to the Spaniard what gold is to the Jew, or English origin is to the American. Hence the Spaniard rises early and gets through as much work as he can before the heat of the day sets in; hence, also, he makes his siesta as long as he can; and, consequently, he is able and ready to pursue his business or his pleasure far into the night. It is in the cool of the evening in Seville that one sees the promenades full, the highways alive with splendid Andalusian horses--when one sees in one week of evenings more feminine beauty than can be seen anywhere else in a month.

But to return to the railways, and the subject brings to mind the reflections and the prophecy indulged in by Ford when the undertaking was in contemplation:--“Certainly if the rail can be laid down in Spain by the gold and science of England, the gift like that of steam will be worthy of the Ocean’s Queen, and one of the world’s real leaders of civilisation: and what a change will then come over the spirit of the Peninsula! how the siestas of torpid man vegetation will be disturbed by the shrill whistle and panting snort of the monster engine! how the seals of this long, hermetically-shut-up land will be broken! how the cloistered obscure and dreams of treasures in Heaven will be enlightened by the flashing fire-demon of the wide-awake money worshipper! what owls will be vexed, what bats disost, what drones, mules, and asses will be scared, run over and annihilated! Those who love Spain, and pray, like the author, daily for her prosperity, must indeed hope to see this ‘network of rails’ concluded, but will take special care

at the same time not to invest one farthing in the imposing speculation.”

Richard Ford, who wrote the foregoing in 1846, was not far out in his calculations. Although the network of rails is not yet complete, the railroad now connects most of the principal cities of Spain, and its introduction has been a blessing to the country. But its cost has been enormous. French capital has been, for the most part, sunk in the venture; and those who followed Ford’s advice, with respect to investing their money in it, have little to complain of. The speed, which seldom exceeds twenty miles an hour, and averages not more than ten miles, is regulated by law, and the management of the entire system might with advantage be reorganised. But the delays at junction stations, the slowness of the pace, and the other inconveniences, which the traveller accustomed to British or American railroads finds so great a trial on his patience, are not necessarily the result of bad management. They are rather the effects of a combination of natural causes and temperamental prejudices. The danger incurred by the starting of rails exposed to the full heat of the sun on sandy plains and the menace of mountain torrents govern, to an extent, the regulation as to speed. Moreover, this is always to be borne in mind, that the railways are primarily for the convenience of the Spanish people, and the Spaniards are never in a hurry. But that there is not a little red-tape about the whole thing cannot be denied.

A short time ago I was travelling from Valencia to Barcelona by the East Coast Railway. Rain had been falling for a week, and some doubt was expressed as to the train being able to complete the journey. Time was precious just then, and the only alternative route was _via_ Madrid, which would be very much the same as going from London to Hull _via_ Cardiff. “We may be delayed,” my companion admitted, “I was twenty-four hours late on the same journey once before, but we shall get through. We will start, in any case--at the worst it is only an excursion.” So we started, and the rain continued. We were within sight of Murviedro, or Saguntum as it was known by the Romans, when the train stopped, and we were informed that something had happened to the line just ahead of us. Further information told of a rushing torrent which had carried away a seven-arch bridge, and that further progress was impossible. Then a German commercial traveller, who was in our carriage, published his opinion aloud upon the railway system, the officials, and everything connected with “this damned country.” He compared Spain with Germany, and his eloquence was up to the high water mark of his indignation. He damned everything in English, and the bridge in particular. He said that in Germany they would have ferried the passengers over the stream, placed them in another train which would have been awaiting on the other side, and not lost more than an hour by the accident.

As our wait was likely to be somewhat lengthy, we decided to walk along the rails and inspect the scene of the breakdown for ourselves, and our German critic was surprised to find that the “stream” he had wished to be ferried over was a mad, boiling torrent in which no boat--not even a boat “made in Germany”--could have lived for thirty seconds. We wandered back and interviewed the engine-driver, the guard, and the other train officials. We were all agreed that the only thing to be done was for the train to return to Valencia. But the engine-driver would not act without instructions--on that point he was adamant. He wired to Barcelona, and he wired also to Madrid, explaining the situation, and requesting permission to return the way he had come. After four hours’ delay the necessary orders arrived, and we looked for an immediate start on the backward

journey. But this the officials could not think of. We could not return in that slapdash fashion--we were the 8.30 from Valencia to Barcelona, and if we went bundling back into Valencia like an old tramp steamer that had sprung a leak, the entire railway system of the country would be thrown into confusion. The point was debated warmly, but without haste; and, eventually, the engine-driver, who had been consulting his time-table, discovered that if we waited a further couple of hours we should be able to re-enter Valencia with our dignity unimpaired as the 4.47 from Barcelona. Which we did, and nobody but the German appeared to see anything foolish or unmethodical in this solution of the difficulty. “You do not find the arrangement incongruous?” asked my companion, for the German was still swearing. I smiled. “For three months I was a season ticket holder on a certain South of England railway,” I explained.

But if the railway system of Spain has its drawbacks, it is the embodiment of luxury and speed compared with the old-fashioned posting facilities for those who are in a hurry. If time is no object, and the weather is fine, there is no pleasanter way of seeing the country. The engine is of course driving the mule team further and further from the large cities, but the delights of posting are not yet banished from the Peninsula. In the northern provinces posting is still very general, and in many parts it is excellent. The oaths of the drivers would, doubtless, shock the unaccustomed ear that was sufficiently versed in the jargon of the road to understand it, but the pace leaves nothing to be desired. The Spaniard is a born muleteer; and, as I have invariably found him, a good fellow. His vocabulary of objurations is varied and peculiar, and he keeps it in first-class working order by continual practice. The customs of the road are like the laws of the Medes and Persians in their unalterableness. You may improve the diligence off the road, but while it remains on it, it cannot be improved. A French minister described the stage as a “clumsy, inconvenient carriage drawn by mules which have no other spur or rein than the voice of their guides. On seeing them harnessed together and to the shafts merely by cords, and observing them traversing as it were at random the winding and sometimes unfrequented roads of the Peninsula, the traveller at first conceives himself as deriving all his dependence for safety from the care and kindness of Providence: but on the slightest appearance of danger, a simple and short exclamation from the _mayoral_ restrains and directs these tractable animals.”

The foregoing, which might have been written yesterday, was, as a matter of fact, indicted a hundred years ago. It is evident that the worthy French minister did not understand the purport of those “simple and short” exclamations, and I am inclined to think, from his remarks upon the tractability of the animals, that he must have been asleep when the start was made. For the mules appear to entertain a rooted and conscientious objection to starting, and the scene is diverting. All the skill and patience and language of the _mayoral_, and the united efforts of ostlers, helpers, and all the hangers-on of a posthouse are required to persuade them to take the first step. For several minutes one’s ears are assailed with a perfect tornado of shouts, and orders, imprecations, and deprecations; which, beginning with “Anda!” (Go) “Anda!” “Anda!” invariably end, when breath and patience are exhausted, in an abbreviated form of “Da! Da! Da!” and then, after a good deal of kicking, the team starts suddenly across the road or over a heap of stones, with an occasional leg over the traces, at a pace that threatens to bring the carriage and its cargo to inevitable grief. Only a Spanish muleteer could bring this riotous team into order, and pilot

them with such patience until they drop into a more moderate pace. Ford has described those exciting starts, and the motion of the “dilly,” as away it goes, “pitching over ruts deep as routing prejudices, with its pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.”

It goes without saying that the observant Ford did not fail to note the vituperative supremacy of the Spanish muleteer. “Their language,” he tells us, “is limited only by the extent of their anatomical, geographical, astronomical, and religious knowledge: it is so plentifully bestowed on their animals--‘un muletier a ce jeu vaut trois rois’--that oaths and imprecations seem to be considered as the only language a mute creation can comprehend: and as actions are generally suited to the words, the combination is remarkably effective.... The Spanish oath is used as a verb, as a substantive, as an adjective, just as it suits the grammar or the wrath of the utterer.” But why, the reader may ask, does the _mayoral_ swear to this degree, or with this fluency? Unless it is a part of his habit, I cannot answer. It is told that a traveller once asked the same question, and received a similar reply. The _mayoral_ had uttered an oath of such peculiar force and aptness that a fellow traveller remarked upon it with good humoured appreciation: “That’s one on the devil!” “But why?” queried the seeker for information, “why does he swear so?” The Spaniard stared in astonishment. “Because he is the _mayoral_!” was all he said.

In Southern Andalusía.

Idle as a “painted ship upon a painted ocean,” fair Cadiz sleeps beneath her white mantle and dreams of the succeeding storms that she has endured since Hercules brought her into being eleven hundred years before the advent of the Messiah. For century after century Cadiz played her important part in the world--the world that ended at her glistening shores. Yet it might, from external evidence, have been built yesterday, and whitewashed this morning. But beneath that white covering lies the rust of three thousand years. The natives compare their spotless city to a silver dish; Fernan Caballero describes it as an ivory model set in emeralds. It is an architectural symbol of purity. Extreme neatness and scrupulous cleanliness are its leading characteristics--white is its prevailing and only colour. The Venice of Spain, so far as my opportunities of making a comparison extends, is decidedly the best-kept city in the Peninsula. The impression is heightened by the ever-ready brush of the whitewasher, which keeps the houses and walls in the most immaculate condition.

Although Cadiz is slowly recovering from the decadence into which it was sunk for so long, there is small activity either of commerce, trade, or manufacture to support its seventy thousand inhabitants; and suitable docks have yet to be constructed to enable it to take the commercial rank to which its situation entitles it. Its resemblance to Venice is remarkable. Lying as it does seven miles at sea, the inhabitants could, if they wished it, have had canals instead of streets, for most of the thoroughfares begin and end at the ocean. Coming straight from the

ultra-Moorish Seville with its narrow winding streets, the traveller wonders why in neighbouring Cadiz, which also belonged to the Moors for over five hundred years, the streets should be so much wider and straighter, and why they possess so few patios and other Arabian characteristics. The explanation lies in the fact that almost the entire town was newly laid out and rebuilt after the bombardment in 1596. Cadiz being practically on an island is much cooler than Seville, so that Moorish patios are not essential to comfort, and their places are taken by the turrets on the top of the houses, from whence sea-breezes and a magnificent view can be obtained at the same time.

The history of Cadiz is an epitome of the progress of civilisation up to the time when Spain was the chiefest nation of the world. It capitulated to Hamilcar Barca in B.C. 237, it was fortified by Cæsar, rebuilt in marble by Balbus, and destroyed by the Goths. Its greatness was its misfortune. So rich it was that England in 1596 fitted out an expedition to sack the city. Lord Essex did his work so thoroughly that Cadiz was brought to the verge of bankruptcy, and Spain received the first blow to her supremacy. Two other English expeditions against this place proved unsuccessful; but it was bombarded at the end of the eighteenth century, it was devastated by the plague, and was the theatre of the horrible massacres in the revolution of 1820. Cadiz supplied the ancient Roman epicures with salt fish and anything but proper dancing girls; and was resorted to by philosophers, who came here to study the curious phenomena of the tides. A city with such a history might be expected to be full of antiquarian records; yet, from a mere archæological point of view, it is by no means a place of great attractiveness. In the convent of San Francisco is to be seen the last Murillo, the picture upon which the artist was engaged when he fell from the scaffold and sustained his fatal injuries; but beyond this and the cathedral, which is not remarkable, the city is destitute of works of art.

Moreover, Cadiz is one of the noisiest cities in Spain; but it is, none the less, a delightful city to live in. Here the beggar nuisance is unknown, its society is, with the exception of that of Madrid and Barcelona, the most cultivated in the Peninsula, and its women are the most graceful in Andalusia. The Alameda, where everybody promenades in the evening, commands lovely views of the ocean, the blue of which is varied, according to the light, with rich dark green and royal purple. And in a walk along the sea walls surrounding the city one passes large mercantile storehouses, and mixes with sailors from all parts of the world--negroes and Moors (betokening the nearness of Africa), troops of soldiers who are always at the quick step, and crowds of hardy, picturesque, and sun-browned fishermen.

One does not find in Cadiz the virile gaiety that prevails in Seville. The tone is quieter, more subdued and less fitful. If the Sevillians are not intensely joyous, they are in tears--the people of Cadiz take their happiness as it comes, rather than make it a sacrifice to their subsequent peace of mind. They are as tidy and attractive as their own orderly, sunny streets, and invariably courteous both between themselves and towards strangers. The women are taller than their sisters of Seville, a trifle darker, and a shade less languishing, but--they are Andalusian, and in that admittance the highest compliment to feminine fascination is paid.

Different, quite different from Cadiz, different in situation, tone, and complexion is Malaga. Seen from the shore, the houses stand out in violet and yellow against a background of green and reddish hills, and on either side of the town the mountains stretch out into the distance as far as the eye can reach. The site of the city is excellent; its harbour is one of the best in the kingdom; and in importance it ranks next to Barcelona among the commercial centres of Spain. Its merchants are men of substance, and their villas are objects of beauty in suburbs that are naturally beautiful. But Malaga does not appeal to the heart of the visitor as does Cadiz or Córdova. The certain grandeur that one notes from a distance dwindles almost to vanishing point as one comes nearer; and when one plunges into the narrow, ill-kept, malodorous streets of the lower town, the delusion is dispelled altogether. But one has only to leave the city behind one to regain the first impression of its picturesqueness. If one would see Malaga at its best, an expedition must be undertaken to the summit of the high hill which overlooks the city. The tramway takes one the first part of the journey--the only part that the average Spaniard ever attempts. I am not sure that I blame him for stopping short there. The walk up that brown-baked hill under the fierce rays of the morning sun is an achievement that makes some call upon one’s powers of endurance, but the view from the summit fully atones for the discomforts of the climb. At one’s feet lies picturesque Malaga, set in a huge garden of tropical and semi-tropical floral vegetation; beyond it the blue, clear, glinting Mediterranean stretches far out to where, in the distance, the shores of Africa are dimly visible.