Chapter XXIII: Toledo and El Greco 244 (3)

The French soldiers, looking at the trifling Manzanares and its mighty bridges, may have exclaimed, “So even the Spanish rivers ran away.” But those who, at sight of tiny threads of water in immense river-beds, are inclined to ask, with Don Pedro in _Much Ado about Nothing_, “What need the bridge much broader than the flood?” find their answer after a few days of heavy rain. Marks six feet and more high on houses many hundreds of yards from the banks of the Ebro record the rising of the waters. Thus, in many districts, crops which have survived the summer drought are swept away by the autumn deluge, and those who have cried for rain are mocked with ruin when the waters “prevail exceedingly upon the earth.” Spain’s agriculture perishes for lack of water, yet water abounds, whether subterranean, as in parts of Castille, or in the copious snows of the high-lying regions, where the snow is sometimes preserved in snow-pits, _pozos de nieve_, or in these periodical floods; and it would seem that the philologist had Spain in his mind who connected the Basque adjective _idorra_, meaning “dry,” with ὓδωρ, the Greek for water. To utilize, extend, and regulate the water supply is a problem of vital importance to Spain--a problem which has long occupied the thoughts of Spanish statesmen. Alfonso the Learned, in his “Crónica General,” says, “This Spain, then, of which we speak is as the paradise of God.... For the most part, it is watered with streams and fountains, and wells are never lacking in all places that have need of them;” but Strabo, more impartial, had remarked of Spain that, “For the most part, it yields but a poor sustenance. For large districts are composed of mountains and woodland and plains, with thin and, moreover, not uniformly well-watered soil--οὐδἐ ταὐτην ὁμαλῶς εὔυδρον.” And since Strabo’s time many have been the alterations for the worse. Turdetania, for instance, the country between Seville and Huelva, is no longer marvellously prosperous--θαυμα-στῶς εὐτυχεῖ; in fact South Estremadura, of old one of Rome’s granaries, is now one of the most desolate regions in Spain. But the worst decay is that of the forests. The woods have fallen and fallen, and still the axe rings avidly in those woods that remain. The very words for a wood, _bosque_ or _selva_, have become rare and poetical. Thus the soil is further parched and impoverished, while towns and villages stand unsheltered from wind and sun. The Escorial, which grew up among woods, may now be seen from afar in its almost sinister magnificence across grey hills and plains without a tree; and Madrid, though a tree figures prominently in the city arms, looks out upon plains from which all traces of former oak and chestnut forests have long since vanished. The absence of trees in Spain increases both the dryness and the floods, and afforestation is therefore quite as important as irrigation. The canalization of rivers may diminish the floods, but while there is no soil on the hill-sides--or soil so light that it is swept away by heavy rainfalls--the rain must continue to be a blessing strangely disguised. It is calculated that in six or eight years the trees would knit the soil together, and give it sufficient staying power to resist and absorb the rains, though, of course, there would as yet be no actual profit of timber. Outlay of toil and money for so distant a remuneration is not congenial to the Spanish temperament. The great land-owners do nothing. The State spends a few thousand pesetas every year; but at the present rate afforestation will need hundreds of years, bearing a resemblance to that long-desired map of Spain, which is to be issued in some eleven hundred sections, and of which from two to three sections appear annually.[86] The advantages of irrigation have been amply proved in Spain, justifying the juxtaposition of water and gold in Pindar’s ode; but only about a fiftieth of Spain’s total area--and especially the plain of Granada and the strip of coast of Málaga and Valencia--can at present show the immense productiveness due to irrigation, combined with the swift-maturing sun of Spain. There are, of course, immense difficulties, and not the least are the ignorance and the poverty of the peasants. Water added to a poor soil will be of little value if the peasants are not taught artificial means of enriching the soil, and modern methods of cultivating it. The extreme poverty of the peasants would, however, prevent them at present from employing any but the simplest methods; in many districts they mortgage their land in order to be able to sow their crops, and Spanish farmers are often in the hands of the usurers. The usurer has been their only resource in moments of distress, and finally they are driven to emigrate, leaving their land to the usurer. A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands out in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus the Ebro flows through Aragon, among woods of silver birch and poplars, and plantations of olives and vines and maize; but on either side appears the barren country of perfectly bare reddish or brown hills of crumbling earth, like great sand-dunes, without a plant, curiously folded and scored by rushing water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs. The villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great distance are scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-side. Or desert plains are thinly covered with grey thyme, and in the more fertile parts produce dwarfed vines and corn, so that in autumn one looks across immense, undivided plains of stubble and yellowing vineyards to the distant horizon of dim blue hills. The cruel winds[87] of Spain blow straight from the iced mountain ridges, unstemmed by any barrier of woods. The first snows fall early round Avila and on the uplands, but in the towns snow at Christmas is rare. The foreigner sometimes has a capricious wish to see these wide, tawny plains covered with snow--_après la plaine blanche une autre plaine blanche_, like the Queen Romayquia, wife of Abenabet, Moorish King of Seville, who could find no solace in her longing for the sight of snow. The King ordered almond-trees to be planted all about the city of Córdoba, that in early spring at least, if not at Christmas, the Queen might beguile her fancy with the snow-white almond blossoms.[88] But even in Andalucía, towards the end of December, one may see several comparatively low mountain ranges thickly coated with snow. Stores of firing are then brought down to the villages from the treeless hills. Further north the vines have been pruned, and the vine-twigs brought in for burning; but here the vines have not yet lost their leaves, and the firing consists of thyme and whin and rosemary, mint and lavender and other scented hill-plants. Troops of donkeys arrive at sunset, with immense, sweet-smelling loads, that entirely hide the red or purple tassels and fringes of their harness. The oranges now gleam in myriads along the eastern coast; sometimes the icy winds from inland freeze them, and fires of smouldering straw are burnt round and in the orange groves, after the wind has ceased, that a dense smoke may hang about the trees and warm them. Weeks before Christmas the _turroneros_ from Jijona, noticeable for their small peaked hats of black velvet, appear in nearly every city and town of Spain. In porches or in large bare shops they set out their layers of white wooden boxes, and samples of the _turrón_, or almond-paste, which is an essential part of Spanish Christmas fare. For the time, Jijona, the grey town in the hills, is deserted, though but a few weeks ago every house was a busy scene of _turrón_ making, and nailing thin white planks into boxes. The snow will soon lie deep on the Carrasqueta hill-range above the town. The almond-trees, whose pink flowers in February form a solitary belt of colour between Jijona and the rocky mountains, are now as bare and grey as the surrounding country. Some of the inhabitants have gone to the warmer south, taking the _diligencia_ to Alicante; others have scaled the steep, winding road past the Barranco de la Batalla, where once the Cid wrought havoc of the Moors, and now herds of goats feed apparently on nothing, and have taken train at Alcoy for the cold, high-lying cities of the north. But not in the northern uplands only are Spanish winters cruel; the _dehesas_ of Andalucía are equally unprotected, the silent, icy winds blow subtle and fierce and penetrating over the undulating hill country round Córdoba, and one may see shepherd boys, closely muffled in their plaids, standing frozen and motionless, the sheep pressing around them and against one another for shelter.

IX

THE COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN

A first view of Catalonia from the sea shows at any rate the stones from which, according to the proverb, the Catalans make bread. For great spines of rust-coloured rock, covered here and there by pines of a crude green, run to the sea and break off in abrupt cliffs. In the valleys of these ridges towns and villages skirt the shore, Rosas, Palamos, San Feliú de Guixols with its cork industry, and lace-making Arenys de Mar. Towards Barcelona both soil and villages become greyer, but Barcelona itself has colour in plenty. The Spanish and foreign ships in the harbour, the palm-trees near the quay, above them the tall white and yellow houses with shutters of green and brown, and above these again a view of the great Cathedral--all this, bounded by the purple mountains, makes the sight of Barcelona from the sea very picturesque and attractive.

The coast to the south of Barcelona is very fertile. There are hedges of reeds twenty feet high, of cactus and of aloe, aloes of that exquisite blue-green which is so often the colour of the Mediterranean in September. Through yellowing orchards of magnificent peaches, of figs and apples in great abundance, come glimpses of the intense leaden-blue hill-ranges to the west. The grapes have already for the most part been gathered for wine, but there are still many vines that, earlier in the year, are cut back to the ground, and have the look of blighted potato-plants, and that now, grown to the size of currant-bushes and unstaked, are laden with large yellow grapes. Occasionally, too, one sees tall date-palms and orange-trees.

After Casteldefels the hills are covered with pines, and the nights, which are warm but have heavy dew, bring out their scent so strongly that it is at times almost oppressive. The nights are silent but for the continual chirping of crickets and the sound of the unquiet sea. The stars are strangely bright, Sirius burns large and intense, and Orion nightly stalks the sky in all his glory till the sun catches him in mid-heaven. The sea is alive with phosphorus, and far out are seen the lights of fishing-boats, while on land the glow-worms are almost as many as the stars. The orange and purple sunrises and sunsets of pink and amethyst are very lovely, and the sails of the fishing-boats continue white, and the sea retains its blue for some time after the light of the after-glow is gone. A little further south the cliffs are covered with dwarf palms, rosemary in flower, and other shrubs. The road here is good, but one meets no pedestrians, for a path along the railway is the accepted thoroughfare between village and village in spite of the notices that forbid its use. The men for the most part wear a black peaked cap, a long blouse, and trousers of brown or blue. The sash is nearly always black and is worn wide, the sandals have a tip and heel covering only, with fastenings of leather or black cloth from the tip. The women wear handkerchiefs that entirely cover the head. The predominant colours are blue and black. A kilomètre or more before wine-making Sitges the road is bounded by rough terraces of stone with vines and dark green carob-trees. A succession of terraces on the one side runs far up the hills, and on the other the rude-walled vineyards stretch to the edge of the sea. Sitges, a village of less than four thousand inhabitants, is prettily placed, its octagonal-towered church rising from a rock in the sea. A few kilomètres further Villanueva y Geltrú is but a fairly large and rather ordinary provincial town, though it has its picturesque corners, with its houses washed in various shades of blue, pink, green, or yellow, and views of vineyard country appearing at the end of many of its long, straight streets. After Villanueva the hills recede further inland, and there is a little more flat country, but it is occupied largely by great marshes, loud with the croaking of frogs.

It is not till one reaches Roda and Creixell that any villages have a really Spanish, or rather Castilian, look. Creixell, especially, with its massive church and great square building of stone standing haughtily on a hill of wall-terraces sprinkled with carob-trees, and with its houses the colour of the soil, has all the air of a little Toledo. Early on an autumn morning it may be seen reflected, with every house and window, in a blue lagoon hundreds of yards from the village and separated by sandbanks from the sea. The olives and vineyards now extend to the shore, and above San Vicente great white country-houses stand among orchards and olives. After Creixell there are but two villages, Torredenbarra and Altafulla, before Tarragona, the second coast-town of Catalonia. Here, indeed, the sun beats with a fiery strength; here, indeed, the Mediterranean is “crystalline,” and “the lightning of the noon-tide ocean flashes.” Here is excellent firm sand for bathing and, swimming far out, the sun is still seen shining through the transparent water on the waved sand below. At the end of September the season is over, yet the days are still almost too hot, and the deep blue of the bay and the long purple line of hills to the north-west are indescribably beautiful. Tarragona, the favoured city of the Romans, is the possessor of many noble Roman ruins, and wonderful Cyclopean walls, and its outline, seen against the sky from the road leading to Tortosa, is one of the most magnificent in Spain. The town and its neighbourhood, as well as the whole coast of Catalonia is, perhaps, not as well known as it deserves. In autumn, if the days and even the nights are hot, there is always a refreshing coolness in the early mornings; the people are, as a rule, pleasant and courteous; in some villages many speak Catalan only, and at times, catching a word here and there, one may think oneself to be in Italy.

X

AN EASTERN VILLAGE

There is no cloud in the clear March sky, filled with radiant light. Beyond the dark green of orange-trees and grey olives lies the sea, a faint line of blue. And, to the west, the mountains of bare rock are faintly purple, looking frail and brittle in their clear but distant outlines. A herd of goats passes slowly down a wide river-bed of smooth white stones, with no shred or vestige of water. Lines of aloes and tall reeds grow along its banks, and on either side peasants dressed in black are at work in the fields, ploughing with single mules between the brown stems of vines recently pruned, or pruning the orange-trees and olives. Bundles of vine and olive twigs lie ready to be carted to the village for fuel. Women in dresses of white and pink and scarlet are hoeing the green corn. The pear- and peach-trees are in flower, and the almond-trees fully arrayed in freshest green. At intervals, wells or _norias_ explain the green fresh look of the country, so different from the burnt desolation of the waterless regions further north. For Oropesa, the neighbouring village, is but some sixty miles north of Valencia, and is bordered on the one side by the full fertility of the Valencian plain, though on the other it is surrounded by barren hills. In each _noria_ a long crooked branch forms the handle to the iron wheel and to this a mule is tied, and as the mule turns, the wheel revolves with a slow clinking sound, and the long earthenware jars (_arcaduces_) attached to the wheel gush water into a trough and so by small channels of dry earth into the fields of brown and reddish soil. A path leads through green fields and clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields further south the last oranges have been gathered, and thousands of pearl-shaped buds tell that the trees before long will be covered with a glistening snow of scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with more vivid distinctness than when the sun blurs them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly visible only in the level light of its rising or its setting. The trees are bowed with fruit, and the laden branches are propped up from the ground. The thronging oranges glow in myriad spheres of gold, here and there lie golden mounds of gathered oranges, and below the trees the ground is a strewn pavement of gold. On every side beneath the trees may be seen a magic land of myriad golden lamps; single or in trefoils and clusters of seven and ten and twenty, the oranges hang within a few inches of the ground. Hundreds of yards away through intervals of trees appears the same foison of gleaming fruit, and the air is all scented with oranges. From time to time a light wind blows beneath the trees, and the twigs with their burdens of crowding oranges sway heavily to and fro, like slowly swung censers of burning gold. But near Oropesa the oranges are comparatively few. The village is built on a steep precipitous hill of grey rock, crowned by the ruinous walls of a great castle. The houses clamber roof over roof, in ragged disarray up the rock. They are of yellowish-brown stone with rough cement, and mostly innocent of glass, but have a touch of whitewash in front, so that they wear shining morning faces to the rising sun. In the mistless radiant mornings the village stands out clearly, its sharp rock rising sheer from the plain. The sea beyond is silver, and on the other side every wrinkle in the rocks of the grey mountains is distinctly visible. There is no sound but the occasional voices of children, the clink and clang of a forge-hammer, the crowing of a cock, or a faint crystal crash of waves breaking; but from time to time there is a dry rumour of wheels, and the cry of a man to his mule as he passes down the road in his cart. Wrapped in their plaids against the keen morning air, the peasants pass leisurely in carts and on mules to work in the fields until the evening. At dusk the slow procession returns, with many a greeting and _bona nit_ and smiles of sunburnt wrinkled faces. Thin lines of blue smoke go up from swiftly flaring fires of vine twigs and rosemary and dry plants gathered from the hills, and an hour or two hours later Oropesa is given over to sleep and the silence of the stars, broken only by the deep rhythmic cry of the _sereno_ calling the hours. To the south a road goes up through grey rocky hills with thyme and dwarf-palms and cistus. The bare smooth rocks have a metallic ring, and there is no sign of life save for a herd of goats far above, the goat-herd with his plaid and wide felt hat clearly outlined on the sky, and the sound of his flute distinct in the solitude of the hills, utterly silent save for the silver tinkling of goat-bells. No water can remain on these rocky hills, it pours immediately away to the plains beyond, where, by a stream bed barely a yard wide, a pillar tells of those who perished there in 1850, in “the _diligencia_ carried away by the waters of the torrent.” Though Oropesa now has a railway station, the _diligencias_ still ply between it and Castellón and Torreblanca, and it might be fifty miles from any railway, so primitive and self-centred is its life. Occasionally comes a sunless morning with a quiet grey sky, rare on the east coast of Spain except in the days of early spring. The sea lies motionless and grey, with pale reflections of light in coils and patches of gold. So still is the air that the quiet piping of birds among the olives falls like a stone in hushed waters. As the day advances the mountains, which earlier were mingled and lost in the grey of the sky, grow more distinct, till towards sunset every line and crevice in their sharp ranges becomes marked, and the overhanging mist of cloud melts away into the grey of evening, sprinkled with the gold-dust of the stars.

XI

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN

The Mediterranean off the coast of Spain is not always calm. Sometimes the east wind, the _Llevant_, lashes the waves to fury, and the shores along the villages and towns are black with lines of fishing-boats that dare not put out to sea. But for weeks together it is “lulled in the coil of its crystalline streams,” and the sun rises and sets across a silken plain of blue. In such weather a journey along the coast has a wonderful freshness and a fascinating charm. Again and again the traveller recalls the magic of those lines of the old romance:

“Quién hubiese tal ventura,
Sobre las aguas del mar,
Como hubo el conde Arnaldos,
La mañana de San Juan!”

“Oh for a chance as happy,
Where the deep sea waters swell,
As on the morn of St. John’s Day,
Count Arnaldos befel,” etc.

By St. John’s Day, however, the sun flashes its rays too fiercely, and it is in late spring or early autumn that the voyage is most enjoyable. A land journey can give no idea of the loveliness of these coasts, and towns such as Alicante and Almería lose much of their beauty if deprived of their background of mountains, which can only be seen fully out at sea. The sea and sky are unfailingly beautiful, and the life of the ports, full of colour and movement, never loses its interest. Almería, fallen from its ancient greatness, is yet active in its “purple-shadowed bay,”[89] and exports every year two million barrels, a hundred million pounds, of grapes, chiefly to America and England. Torrevieja, further north, is a small town or village of some seven thousand inhabitants, at which steamers touch to take in a cargo of salt, but which the tourist, on his way from Elche to Murcia, rarely turns aside to visit. It has a thoroughly African look, with its flat-roofed, grey-white houses on a bare, level strip of sandy coast, with no trees except palms, that stand conspicuous like trees of the desert; the sand in places is thinly covered with grass, of lightest, almost yellow, green. To the left, seen from the sea, is a long line of gleaming salt, drawn from the sea-water by evaporation under the summer sun, and now ready to be exported. Beyond the line of salt is a distant range of bare mountains, faintly purple. The town has one or two small towers, four factory chimneys, and half a dozen round mills, with arms as slender as the cranes on the loading steamers in the harbour. A continual rosary of barges, yellow, white, green, or black, carries the salt across the bay. The heavy load weighs the barge to the water’s edge, and the glistening white salt seems to float on the blue surface. In the barge, at either end, go as many as twenty or even thirty men, some sitting rowing, others facing them and standing to row, and others punting with their poles of immense length that taper away at the top to the slight girth of a fishing rod. The shirts of the men, mauve, pink, white, red, or purple, their light blue or black coats, red sashes, trousers of velvet or velvet corduroy of many shades, from bright yellow to dark brown, the long shining yellow punt poles, and the white pyramids of salt on the sea of sapphire, combine to form a strange and beautiful sight. The empty barges return high in the water, with little mounds of salt left along their ledges. At midday the houses seem to faint and grow indistinct, the mountains fade to a hardly perceptible outline, only the salt reflects the sun in every facet of its countless grains, and glitters whiter than snow. In the sunset the lines resume their sharpness, and the mountains are grey or blue-grey or intense leaden blue or purple, according to their distances. The Murcian sky is famous for its clear serenity, and the sunsets and sunrises are of surpassing fairness. Alicante, too, which is nearer to Murcia than to Valencia, has a wonderful sky and a wonderful sea, and here, too, the “sunrise is a glorious birth.” “Alicante aux clochers mêle les minarets,” says Victor Hugo in one of the poems of “Les Orientales,” and from the sea Alicante has an Oriental look, with its lines of palms, stories of flat roofs, and bare background of hills and mountains. But it is at evening that Alicante is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The lights shine softly through the four lines of palm-trees along the Paseo de los Mártires, and are reflected across the water; in the harbour the last radiance of evening sets the tracery of masts and cranes and rigging in clear relief. To the west the sea is already dark, almost wine-coloured, the οἲνψ of the Greeks, but in the east it is a most exquisite blue, a blue that seems to be a transparent surface of turquoise covering a layer of white chalk. The eastern horizon is faintly purple, and against it the sails of a fleet of fishing-boats are whiter than at any other time, and gleam long after the sun has set. Later the sea catches for an instant the faint purple of the sky, the sky loses its colour, and finally a mistiness of softest grey merges them together, so that one may no longer distinguish where the sky ceases or the sea begins. On the rocks of the coast the waves at night break, filled with phosphorus, in a luminous spray, “like light dissolved in star showers thrown.” The low line of pale lights along El Grao, Valencia’s harbour, if approached at night, has a look, from some distance at sea, of such a phosphorus wave. By day the harbour is seen to be a forest of masts, and far away the towers of Valencia, round the tall Miguelete, appear as numerous, and in the distance almost as slender as the masts of the harbour: “les clochers de ses trois cents églises.” Along the coast of the Huerta, especially to the south of Valencia, glisten a number of snow-white pyramids, that seem at first to be more salt, having the exact look of the mounds that lie along the bay of Cadiz. They are the whitewashed, triangular fronts of the peasants’ thatched cottages or _barracas_, standing in the fertile plain, “Spain’s Orchard.”

One of the most lovely and original sights along the whole coast is that of the high range of bare, treeless mountains south of Cartagena, falling sheer into the sea, a delicate purple above the light blue water. There is not the merest rim of coast, in fact the sea flows round the mountains’ flanks, and they continue far out from the land, their tops occasionally appearing as small islands.

But especially will the traveller who has the happy chance to find himself at dawn of a cloudless day in a boat an hour west of Almería--especially then will he be ready to repeat the lines:

“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar.”

A slight gleam in the east warns the moon that its reign of quiet light is to finish, and begins the long prelude of day. Above a dark line of sea a faint orange creeps into the sky, deepening to orange-purple, and soon fringing off in pale yellow, saffron, and daffodil. Then, later, above this, widens a space of clearest green, and at last the body of the sky changes from grey to a light blue. In the west all is still grey, as with a soft woof of hanging mists. The sails of a boat going out to sea are white in the first glow of dawn, and the gently swelling sea eastwards reflects the light in level gleams of gold, like smooth, burnished meadows of buttercups. Then the sun rises, red-orange, on a cloudless sea line, the sea becomes light blue, and along the rest of the horizon lie spaces of pearl and opal, while in the east a dim, silver moon fades slowly. The scene is of such enchanting loveliness, like the birth of a new world, that if the Sierra Nevada chances to be for the most part hidden in a long cloud of mist, the traveller scarcely notices one or two peaks that seem to be floating snow-white clouds. Then the mist of cloud melts away, and, one by one, the snow summits appear, till the whole immense range stands bare, looking incredibly high in a heaven of clear, faint green. It is a sight to make men hold their breath. The ship, night’s shadows scarce driven from her deck, passes slowly, almost noiselessly through the water as if she, too, understood that here is some enchanted country. The view of the Sierra Nevada from Granada, lovely as it is, gives no hint of a sight so incomparable as this. The range is of such vast length, the snow is so deep and soft. Long, almost level lines, huge, abrupt crags, gently sloping gullies, smooth, pyramid-shaped peaks, shelves and pinnacles, crevices and ledges, are all entirely wrapped in deep, much-sunned snow, without a break. Each look, after turning for a moment to the grey western horizon or the waving, crystalline surface of blue sea, brings a new wonder and a fresh surprise; so marvellous is the radiance of white appearing in the full glow from the east, and such is the infinite clearness and subtlety of the outlines on a sky varying from blue-grey to transparent green. The long massive range, seen from some distance out at sea, gives the impression of a height of twenty thousand feet, whereas from Granada it is difficult to realize that the highest peak is over eleven thousand. Below the snow-line, a high range of bare grey-purple mountains seems to sink into the sea, though there is, in fact, a line of level coast. Far or near no tree is to be seen; a white lighthouse stands on the coast, and on the silken blue sea gleams an occasional white sail or the flash of a seagull’s wing. As the sun rises higher the softly folding mountains beneath the Sierra Nevada grow more purple above the sea, and the shadows of their dimpling hollows blacken. Above, the wide, smooth spaces and the deep ravines present their broad surplice of glistening white to the sun without a shadow. It is all unimaginably lovely, with a breathless purity of things primeval--

“Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”

This and other hours of delight during a coasting voyage in the Spanish Mediterranean are not soon forgotten, and, though they cannot be translated into words--

“They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.”

The voyage may be prolonged on the south coast, and, from the time when, on his left, Tarifa lies along the sea, like a line of melting snow under smoothly moulded hills of green, and, on the right, Tangiers shows its white houses indistinctly beneath the bare, grey mountains of Africa, to the time when at Port Bou he bids farewell to the Catalan coast and to Spain, the traveller will not have a dull or unenjoyable moment; if only the gods send him propitious, cloudless days--

“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar!”

XII

THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS

It was a cloudless day of November. The Cathedral of Valencia stood grey against a sky of soft blue. In the _Plaza de la Constitución_ the sun shone on the central fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of the houses and the Cathedral. From the great “Door of the Apostles” came a smell of incense as people went out and in. Surmounted by its large rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient air, and the plants growing here and there in the wall add to its look of venerable splendour. Some of the apostles stand there headless, some without arms, some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall _Miguelete_ tower rises conspicuous here, as it is conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian plain. A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long strings of mules, a newspaper-seller cried the _Heraldo de Madrid_, and some peasants in black or blue-grey groups talked together, leaning on their sticks. Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up on the pavement immediately in front of the Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it was enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing, carried across the street in sections, bore the inscription _Tribunal de las Aguas_. For it was Thursday, the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges disputes arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.

To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of water for his land means starvation, and the hours at which each is allowed to draw off water from the narrow channels that cross his land are carefully regulated. If one takes water out of his turn the fields of another must suffer, and the case must be brought before the judges sitting in weekly council. Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal; it is absolutely final, and though there must be cases of injustice, the peasants are very proud of their tribunal. There is no writing--the cases are not even recorded--the matter is decided on the spot and in the open air between man and man; there are no clerks or advocates; no table, ink, or papers to confuse the simple;[90] no fees or anxious delays, and the judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants themselves, thoroughly understand the questions brought before them. It is a strange sight, the sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old, in the _Plaza de la Constitución_, in the twentieth century. There is a dignified simplicity about it, a lack of display which is imposing. The peasants have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their own affairs without interference of the men of learning, just as they are ready to settle their more private quarrels without recourse to the law. The man who has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name of his assailant from the police, always reserving for himself the pleasure of taking vengeance later on. The character of the peasants of the Huerta is indeed a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity and shrewdness, and the word that best describes them is the Spanish _socarronería_--a certain malicious humour.[91] Living isolated in the vast open plain, they form a community apart, and resent external interference. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic; in all its years of city life it has adopted none of the city’s ways, and has not even the shelter of a roof.

In the present instance there was but a single question to be settled, and the proceedings lasted less than five minutes, passing all but unnoticed. At about a quarter to twelve the judges, five in number, and dressed in black as ordinary peasants, walked slowly into the enclosure and occupied their places on the official sofa, taking off their black felt hats. The full body of the judges is seven, chosen from different districts to represent the principal canals of irrigation. Another peasant, officer of the tribunal (on his cap is written _A. de T. Aguas_, the _alguacil_, that is, of the Tribunal of Waters), standing at the small gate in the railing, formally declared the tribunal open: _S’obri el tribunal_ are the consecrated words. He then introduced the plaintiff and defendant, who stood bareheaded and without their sticks at half a yard’s distance from the judges. After each had stated his case--and any interruption is rigorously fined--one of the judges at once passed sentence. The verdict was against the old man, and he turned without a word to leave the enclosure. His wife, however, without the railing, though he put his finger to his lips to silence her, was not to be overawed, and in a shrill torrent of words reproached the judges as they filed solemnly into the Plaza. The _Tribunal de las Aguas_ was closed; the judges dispersed to their silent fields, to meet again in the rattle and clamour of the crowded city on the following Thursday. Every Thursday throughout the year the plain green sofa and circular railing are brought out in sections, and the judges make their appearance in the Plaza. They do not always enter the enclosure, for sometimes there is no dispute pending, or the disputants have come to an agreement in the Plaza without recourse to the tribunal, and when the clock strikes twelve, railing and sofa are carried back. The judges help to bring about a settlement, and this perhaps explains that their official verdicts are given instantaneously, with no pause for thought or consultation; they have no doubt heard every detail of the case and come to a decision beforehand.

Readers of Don Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’ gloomy but delightful novel, “La Barraca,” will remember the scene at the “Door of the Apostles” when Batiste, unable to check his indignation at the unjust charge brought against him, is fined for his excited interruptions and fined too for the misdeed which he had not committed. But as a rule the scene is a quiet and almost a solemn one. The tribunal has the sanctity of years; the peasant respects an institution which was the same in his father’s time and in his grandfather’s, and in that of his ancestors five centuries ago. The judges who before and after are simple peasants, are, for the moment invested with the power of settling matters of vital importance; for disregarding the sentence of the tribunal they may deprive a man entirely of his right of water, and so render him and his family penniless. They represent the whole Huerta, embodying alike its independent spirit and its conservative traditions. A few minutes after the judges have risen, and sometimes before the Cathedral clock has struck twelve, sofa and railing have disappeared, and it is hard to realize that the time-honoured Judging of the Waters, so primitive and impressive, has actually been held in this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and in this paved square where now there are but few wayfarers, and the central fountain flows and trickles in silence.

XIII

SEVILLE IN WINTER

It is in spring, from March to May, that Seville is chiefly visited; the warm air and hot sun, the orange-trees in flower, the great religious festivals, the famous bull-fights, attract a host of foreigners, and the city has an animation unwonted even in the gay and lively capital of Andalucía. In winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less potent charm. Winter often brings with it a succession of cool clear days, when the sky is of a serene, almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets. The white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue of the evening sky have the soft light and colouring of opals, while the distant hills of the horizon are faintly purple. On these still days the motionless river reflects the lines of leafless silver birch and yellow tamarisks in all the tracery of their slender branches. A few yards further from the bank on either side thousands of dark orange-trees are hung with gleaming fruit, circling the city with a fringe of lamps. Above and through the trees, now bare and grey, of the _Paseo de las Delicias_ show the various greens of the tall eucalyptus-trees and palms, the orange-trees and cypresses of the Santelmo gardens. On the quay lie immense mounds of oranges ready to be packed: the hot sun fills the air with their scent, children make flying attacks and retire precipitately with an orange apiece, while an occasional beggar also receives his dole from the apparently inexhaustible store. In the ever-crowded _Calle de las Sierpes_ small open stalls display fresh violets and magnificent carnations and roses, and in some gardens one may see roses and geraniums in flower. In the lovely gardens of the Alcázar the sun draws a deliciously mingled scent from the box-hedges, myrtles and oranges.

Occasionally--still in unclouded weather--the wind is cold and piercing and all go muffled to the eyes, the men in their _capas_, the women with long shawls. In the _Patio de los Naranjos_, beneath the trees laden with oranges, the wind sweeps across the pavement of rough bricks, intergrown with grass and the duller green of mosses, and rattles the fallen leaves in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda tower stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter sky. By the Gate of Pardon, in a corner of hot sun and sheltered from the wind, a few beggars sit warming themselves and watching with Oriental patience and immobility. The streets are mostly too narrow to let in the sun, but in the _plazas_ and any open space men are seen basking in sunshine, _tomando el sol_. Along the bridge that leads to the suburb of Triana the seats on both sides are crowded. Triana, better than Seville, corresponds to Cervantes’ description of a city where adventures are to be met at every street corner, and Triana supplies an army of loiterers whose life’s mission in winter is to “take the sun.”

On the eve of high festivals in winter, such as the Epiphany, it is already growing dark when services are held, and the vast Cathedral is faintly lit with hundreds of candles and dim hanging lamps, though the last daylight still lingers awhile in the deep reds and purples, green, orange, and every colour of the windows overhead. There is no procession of the Three Kings through the city; at Alcoy, in the province of Valencia, the Three Kings come riding, laden with presents, into the town from beyond the grey mountains that surround it, and half the population goes out to meet them, but Seville is too “civilized” for this.

Even in Seville not all the winter days are cloudless and serene. On some of them the sky is a uniform grey, and the rain falls unceasingly till the centre of the narrower, unevenly cobbled streets, raised at either side and without a pavement, becomes a running stream. But when the Andalusian sun reappears, the houses have an added freshness in their glowing white, or in their coats of faint green or red, yellow or purple (though even these usually have a line of white along the roof), and in the air is a feeling of spring. There is an ancient Andalusian song that makes March say to January--

“Con tres días que me quedan
Y tres que me preste mi compadre Abríl
He de poner tus ovejas
Que te acordarás de mí.”

(With the three days that are left me and three lent me by my friend April, I will put your sheep in such a plight that you will remember me.) This is the Cumbrian:--

“March said to Aperill
‘I see three haggs [sheep] upon a hill.
And if you will lend me dayes three
I’ll find a way to make them dee.’”

But the rigour of the days that follow in Cumberland has no place or parallel in the low-lying districts of Andalucía:--

“The first of them was wind and weet,
The second of them was snaw and sleet,
The third of them was sic a freeze
It froze the birds’ nebs to the trees;
When the three days were past and gane
The three silly haggs came hirpling hame.”

At Seville a few weeks after the Day of the Kings winter is really over: in February the sky has an intenser blue, and with the longer sunshine the warmth increases. The spring days follow in their matchless splendour, till finally the sun’s fiery heat drives all who can leave the city to the cooler refuge of the sea or the hills.

XIV

FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP

In winter Seville’s sky is sometimes for weeks entirely cloudless. Day after day opens and dies peacefully away like a perfect flower; or, if a strong cold wind drives across the day, it still blows in a heaven of limitless clear blue. But in early spring the sky is often veiled in a floating canopy of grey, or one may watch the white masses of clouds thin and melt on the blue. And the blue is no longer fixed, distant, and serene; even when apparently clear it has a vague movement of dissolving mists, an intangible white softness interlacing it. It is this quality of the sky, harmonizing so well with the soft lines and delicate colours of the city, that gives to Seville in spring its unfailing charm. Especially is that charm felt in the hour when men’s cigarettes begin to glow and dot the streets with tiny fire-flies, distinct as the white flowers worn by the women in their hair. The deep-red carnations and dark violets of the open flower-stalls fade into shadow; the light greens, lilacs, yellows, browns, and blues of the houses take a greyer tinge. The last sunshine throws its thinner radiance along the white lines of flat roofs that stand out in many levels and angles on the blue or blue-and-white sky, and the effect is of pearls and opals, not the flash of polished opals, but, as it were, blue veins of opal in white chalk. The west is filled with a level radiance of pure gold, and presently the eastern sky also changes from blue to a faint golden grey. One by one the hanging street lamps begin to shed their soft glow of white light, and overhead the first stars shine faintly and vanish and reappear. The bells of goats and the mellower note of cowbells are heard as they go their evening round to be milked, driven by a boy astride his donkey, or by an old man with faded-pink umbrella; or a donkey passes laden with oranges, the fruit’s gold gleaming through the twilight afterglow from between the netting of the panniers. A breath of country air invades the city; the day’s work is ended, and perhaps from some church or convent you may hear “a distant bell that seems to mourn the dying of the day”:

“Squilla di lontano
Che paia ’l giorno pianger che si muore.”

The swift Southern twilight soon dies, but this short hour more than any other embodies the magic of a Seville spring. For Seville at other times is “a city full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city.” It wakes to a discordant music of many street cries. All kinds of wares are hawked shrilly, with loud shouts, or slow, dirge-like chants. Later in the day come the more melodious cries of “Oranges! Water! Violets! Carnations!--_¡Qué buenas naranjas! Agua, quien quiere agua! Violetas! Claveles!_” But to the flat brick-paved housetops, surrounded with walls of different height, from three to twenty feet, all whitewashed to their level tops, these sounds of the street come faintly. The rattle of wheels over the cobbles is deadened, the bells of slowly driven cows and goats chime distantly; sometimes one hears the intricate whistle of the knife-grinder, or a barrel-organ plays an interminable dance to the clacking of castañets, that fascinates by its ceaseless repetition. But the sounds are vague and muffled, without harshness or stridency, and here reigns more uninterrupted quiet than in the cool marble _patios_ below, with the frequent goings out and in through the door’s iron _reja_. On the walls or in the line of shade beneath them stand rows of plants--roses, geraniums, heliotrope, and especially carnations. From here the street sellers fill their open stalls and baskets with the huge carnations of spring, the smaller early carnations coming chiefly from Málaga. And the carnations never look more beautiful than seen, dark red or pink or yellow, against these walls of glistening white; one is fain to call them by their German or “soft Spanish name”--_Nelken, claveles_. The sun rising lights up the housetops so that they gleam like snow between the dark spaces of bronze or green or blue glazed tiles, slender-springing towers, and infrequent roofs, covered thickly in spring with grass, like small fields. Or on a night of moon the city has a phantom look of whited sepulchres, and if no moon looks round her with delight when the heavens are bare, there is an uninterrupted view of stars in the whole sky, as from a ship’s deck. At midday, when the sun is all fire and narrows the lines of shadow to mere rims of black, one may not look for more than an instant across the glaring radiance of white. In the morning there is an exquisite freshness. Little smoke rises from the houses--only an occasional tiny wraith of grey--but, beyond, a dense line goes up from the Cartuja factory of _azulejos_, and hangs black-purple on the blue sky--the morning sky streaked with waving outdrawn wisps of white mist-like cloud. There is a flapping of pigeons’ wings as they flutter from wall to wall, and the twittering of innumerable sparrows. The hours are marked by the crystal striking of many clocks that are heard only dim and intermittently from below in the street traffic. But it is at evening that the housetop has an almost magical charm, when the sun has set in a sky of delicate gold, and in the east long thin lines of white and faint purple cloud lie across a sky of lightest blue. Then the flowers along the wall give out all their scent. Swallows whirl and swerve far overhead or lightly skim the hundred levels of whitewashed turret and wall. The _claveles_ fade slowly in the growing dusk; the wide, uneven plain of glowing walls gradually becomes indistinct and blurred; finally the sky, too, is moulded to a perfect symmetry of grey, and perhaps an immense orange-coloured moon climbs slowly above the city. Seville is lovely in winter, when the sky is a cold, serene blue, and night by night the stars glint and glitter; lovely in spring, when everywhere, in roof and _patio_ and garden, is a triumph of green, when the oranges still hang on the orange-trees in flower--like yellow crocuses peering from the snow--and the corn is already high in the olives beyond the river; lovely in summer, when the greens are parched and shrivelled, and a hot wind blows heavily across the fainting housetops, or in nights of sultry stillness the intense glow from many a lighted _patio_ falls across the velvet darkness of the narrow streets. Lovely at all times, but never more lovely than in the temperate days of spring, when a hundred bells are ringing for the Feast of Resurrection, and the flowers from countless roofs are gathered for the _fête_; when, in scenes of fairy magic, the slow _pasos_ move with their myriad candles burning through the twilight, along the crowded streets and _plazas_ to the Cathedral, while still peacefully above its Court of Oranges the tall Giralda looks across the city that hems it in, to the wide _dehesas_ of Andalucía, to the green fields and olive-covered hills beyond the gently flowing Guadalquivir, and to the distant line of the Sierra Morena.

XV

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCÍA