V r ' PAPERS FROM OVER THE WATER; A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM EUROPE, BY SINCLAIR TOUSEY. >v — o— FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, HOLLAND, BELGIUM, SPAIN, ITALY, BAVARIA, ENGLAND, IRELAND. SCOTLAND, NEW-YORK: THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 1869. Entered, according -to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New- York. S. W. GREEN, PRINTER, 16 and 18 Jacob Street, New- York. SALEM H. WALES, WHOSE AGREEABLE COMPANIONSHIP, DURING MORE THAN A HALF-YEAR, AS A FELLOW- TRAVELLER, CONTRIBUTED GREATLY TO THE PLEASURE OF THE TOUR PARTIALLY DESCRIBED HEREIN, THIS BOOK IS akespectfullg HeWcatcTi BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE When about leaving home to visit the Old World, friends asked me to write descriptions of what I might see. A compliance with their requests would have required more time than I could devote thereto ; but, instead of writing to each person, I sent my letters to the newspapers for publication, and thus gave friends what they asked for. On their appearance in print, they were copied to some extent, and seemed to meet some little public appreciation. This, coupled with requests for their publication in book form, induced me to submit them in this shape. They are not offered as possessing any literary merit whatever, a life of toil in business pursuits having effectually prevented my acquiring any such qualifications ; neither are they given as containing any thing new concerning the countries visited ; no pretensions are made to having seen more than all travelers can see who will look as they travel. I have simply endeavored to describe what I saw, as in- telligently as I could. If I have ministered to the reader's amusement, or increased his stock of information even in a slight degree, I shall be satisfied. S. T. CONTENTS. PAGB Brest — Lost Luggage — French Railway — Saturday Weddings — Illuminated Foun- tain at Versailles^Great Dinner — Sunday Shops, etc 7 II. A Lieutenant-Governor in a fix— Women at Work— Calvin's Church— How Pigs go to Market— Rothschild's House— Geneva — A Dutch Traveler— Clothes- Washing— Swiss Steamers— Intelligent Englishman— Swiss Peasants — Mont Blanc, etc 15 III. A Bear Story — Hoisting Stone — A Saving People — Bluebeard's Castle — Over the Mountains — Beautiful Sight — Sunday — Swiss Cottages — Baden-Baden and its Gamblers 23 IV. A Big Wine-Cask— Frankfort and the Jews— Wiesbaden— Wine — Great Church — Down the Rhine — Crowning a Yankee — Aix-la-Chapelle — Among the Dutch— A Yearly Visitor— Women towing Canal -Boats, etc 29 V. Rotterdam— Breakfast Smokers— Hauling Brick — Antwerp— Blanketed Cattle in the Field — Cow-Milking — Brussels — Indignant Peddler — Paris — Queer Sign near a Cemetery — Public Respect to Passing Funerals — Lafayette's Grave — Elevated Hencoop — Brick-Raising, etc. ... 36 VI. A Prison— Wine City— Stilts— A Shell Cradle— Bayonne — Biarritz— Rude Farm- ing— Ragged Soldiers— Vittoria and its Odors— Bnrgos and its Cathedral— A viii Contents. PAGE Cure for the Headache — Beautiful Monuments — An old Monastery — Aristo- cratic Convent — A Kingly Chair — Columbus — Cervantes — Sundry Images — Valladolid— Church Fronts, etc 4" VII. A Poor Country— A Jew's Vow and what came of it— Great Pictures— Bull Pens- Old Armor — Devotees 1 Offerings — Costly Robes — A Granite Building — Baby- House, etc 52 VIII. Sunday Sport— A Bull-Fight 61 IX. Toledo, its Narrow Streets and Great Church— A Stone made Hollow by Kissing — Costly Robes — Cordova and its Mosque — Church of a Thousand Columns — Bull's Head — Bridles without Bits — How Spaniards warm their Rooms — Olive Orchards — Seville, its Beggars — Moorish Gardens — Narrow Streets — Wonderful Cathedral— Pig Dressing— Cure for Sore Eyes, etc 69 Seville to Granada via Malaga — Orange, Fig, and Palm Trees — Beggars — A Cemetery — Impudent People — Raisin Girls — A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers — Armed Guards — Peculiar Scenery — Wine-Shop Sign— Archbishop, etc So XI. Granada — Moorish Buildings — Convicts in the Alhambra Grounds — Gypsies — Poor Old Monk— A Painted Cross— Sectarian Pictures— A Child's Funeral — Valencia Bull-Ring and Bankers— Barcelona— A Moor's Head in a Church — Farewell to Spain, etc 89 XII. Turkeys— A Kingly Sentinel— Salt— Wine— Brandy— Yoked Horses— Old Temple and Amphitheatre at Nimes— Large Pigs — Cheerful Workers— An Old Aque- duct—Avignon, France— Stony Plain— Long Railway Tunnel— Marseilles — Costly Cafe— Scene at Railway Station— Nice and its Contrasts, etc 101 XIII. Along the Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa— Sea-shore Towns— Great Moun- tains—Terraced Vineyards— Pigskin Wine-Casks— A Sailor's Skill and its Reward— Birthplace of Columbus— A Little Cart and Little Team— Genoa : Its Porters, Veiled Women, Fine Palaces, Crooked Streets— Paganhu's Fiddle — Paper Currency— Matrimonial Notices, etc., etc., etc 108 Contents, ix PAGE XIV. Genoa to Spezzia— Beautiful Scenery — Sun and Storms on the Sea — Basket- shaped Tree-Tops for Grape- Vines — Frescoed Houses — A Spring in the Sea — Tower of Pisa — A Cemetery with Frescoed Corridors — Angel and Devil in a Fight— Horse and Cart Gearings— Baptistery, etc., etc., etc 117 XV. Pictures — Sculpture — Warming- Pans — Parliamentary Bells— Cats — Churches — Mosaics— Bridges— Trotting-Buggy— Mule's Shoes— A Good Society— Street Cleaning, etc 128 XVI. Florence to Naples— Things in Naples— Sibyl's Cave— Vesuvius— Hot Lava- Queer Teams — Droll Vehicles — Pompeii — Horse-shoeing — Letter-Writers — Poor Priests — Money-Changers — Crust of Extinct Volcano — Underground Road — Orange Groves and Singing Birds — Lamplight Burials — Night Scenes, etc 138 XVII. Rome and its Wonders — The Colosseum — Churches — Students — Priests — Bish- ops — Bones — Worshiping — Church of St. Peter — Statue of St. Peter — Ruins— Springs of Water 150 XVIII. A Good Rule — Sunday Labor — Leghorn — Lucca — Pistoia — Bologna — Its Campo Santo — Old Schools and Female Professors — Venice — Its Canals — Bridges — Gondolas — Churches — Pigeons — Carnival — Square of St. Mark — Lotteries — Water-Carriers, etc. — A Dangerous Key — Plains of Lombardy — Railway Station — Milan — Its Great Cathedral — Da Vinci's Last Supper, etc., etc 159 XIX. From Milan via the Brenner Pass, Munich, Strasburg, etc., to Paris — Powdered Heads and Faces — Stately Policemen — Verona — Juliet's House and Tomb — Old Amphitheatre — Botzen — Innsbruck — Railway Scenery — Munich — Beer — Dead-House — Finger-Rings, Wires, Alarm Bells for the Dead — Railway Tickets— Storks' Nests, etc., etc., etc 173 XX. Sewers of Paris — Babies and Nurses — Bologne — Bank Bills for Waste Paper — A Small Bill for a Large Sum — Ballet-Dancers — Heads — Royal Consumers — Asses' Milk — Beef Raw and Roasted — Fish, etc., etc 180 XXI. England— Scotland— Ireland— Leamington — Stratford— Chatsworth— Sheffield- Edinburgh — Glasgow — Liverpool — Dublin — Killarney — Colorless-faced poor people, etc., etc 187 XXII. Scraps— Comparisons 193 Papers from over the Water. Brest — Lost Luggage — French Railway — Saturday Weddings — Illuminated Fountain at Versailles — Great Dinner — Sunday Shops, etc. Paris, September, 1867. I left our busy city on Saturday, the 10th of August, to make my first visit to the Old World. As the good steamer St. Laurent moved gracefully down our magnificent bay, and passed out on to the broad Atlan- tic, I began to realize for the first time that I was leaving home. ARRIVAL AT BREST. In due time we dropped anchor at Brest, about midnight, and after an hour's display of fireworks and discharging of cannon, we succeeded in waking up a little steam-tug, and bringing her off to the steamer for mails, passengers, and lug- gage. Having passed the custom-house, we drove up a winding road to the railway. After unloading and sorting the luggage, finding part of mine missing, I commenced a chase after it, but in vain. Daylight finally came, and nearly all our passengers left 8 Papers from over the Water. the depot in stages to go up to the town — a walled one — for breakfast, leaving me in pursuit of my loss. However, I did not waste much time after their departure, but followed on foot. After traveling about a quarter of a mile, I entered a public square surrounded by queer old buildings, among and past which there ran a paved street; down it were passing hundreds and hundreds of men and boys, in wooden shoes, on their way into the walled city to their work. LOOKING FOR A HOTEL. I inquired of at least a dozen of them as to the location of a certain hotel ; but they did not understand a word I said, and I was so stupid as not to know what they said ; and there I was, in a great crowd of wooden-shod people, not knowing which way to go, hungry as a grizzly in winter, the time drawing near for the departure of the train, every man and boy and woman, of course, staring at me with wonder. Finally, two little, light-haired, blue-eyed boys, with wooden shoes, came stamping along over the pavement, who eyed me so closely that I ventured to ask them for my hotel, when lo and behold ! they marched me directly to it. There I found my companions eating their breakfast as quietly as though I were with them. I did not find my baggage before the train left for Paris, seventeen hours away ; but on I went to the great city, per- fectly confident that I should eventually get, it, notwithstand- ing I had no check for it, nor any thing by which I could hold any person responsible. On arriving in Paris, I went to the depot, and called on Monsieur of the baggage bureau, (all bureaus in France, no offices.) He referred me to Mr. B., and he to Mr. C, and he to Mr. D. ; each Mr., in every instance, going with me to the person referred to, and each one bowing and tipping Things in Paris. 9 his hat, as if they had not met for weeks j and, finally, we all went to Mr. E., who said that I should have my baggage in three days, and in three days I found it in my room. FRENCH RAIL WA Y. The railway from Brest to Paris, though only a branch road for a part of the distance, is a model for durability of track, solidity of road-bed, ease of the cars, and freedom from jolting and vibration. At every highway crossing gates are placed to protect travelers from the passing train. No one is allowed on the track or road-bed anywhere. The signal guards are women in uniform. The passengers' depots at way-stations are all fenced in, and none but pas- sengers are allowed inside. Spectators are kept outside. All the way-stations have beautiful little flower-gardens around them, and look as neat as labor and taste can make them. The locomotives are not such big fellows as ours, and many of them have no roof over the driver, or as we say, engineer, who stands perfectly exposed to the weather, without even a window to protect his eyes from the wind caused by the rushing train. Every person employed on a railway or about a depot, and, in fact, in any public capacity, wears some sort of uniform, or badge, to designate his business — a plan that we might adopt with advantage ; but the blood of the American eagle would not submit to the degradation of being badger- ed, and so we can not tell who is who about a depot or any- where else. We shall be wiser when we are older. THINGS IN PARIS. I have seen but little of Paris as yet ; but what I have seen induces me to believe that it is "a right smart-sized io Papers from over the Water. place," quite a village. The shop- windows are marvelous in number, in the beauty of their goods, in the taste displayed in the arrangement thereof, and in the immensity of the value shown ; but the interior arrangements of the shops are not equal to ours in New- York. The female shop-keepers are models of politeness and neatness of dress, and the crowds of people gazing at the windows are wonderful in number and propriety of conduct. I have not seen a street row or brawl of any kind, or a drunken person ; even the hackmen are quite civil and well behaved. The streets are well paved, free from dust, and as none (that I have seen) are paved with that curse of horse and rider, cobble-stone, they are easy to ride over — in fact, quite as pleasant, a great share of them, as the roads in our Central Park. WEDDING-DA Y. On my way on a Saturday to deliver a copy of Greeley's American Conflict to the tutor of a young gentleman of New- York, now at school here, whose father had sent it by me, I dropped into one of the churches, and within ten mi- nutes saw four wedding parties enter. Saturday, I am told, is a popular wedding-day with the middle classes, many couples of whom, after leaving church, spend the day at the Bois de Boulogne, (a great park,) which, judging from the number of wedding groups I saw there on the same afternoon, must be a favorite resort on such occa- sions ; indeed, it is said the people consider it indicative of good luck to spend the wedding-day under the green trees, as much so, I suppose, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe does to throw old shoes after a departing newly married niece. It must be a curious knowledge, that of the world's super- stitions. Who knows them ? Search for Dinner. 1 1 On a Sunday, I joined a party of New-Yorkers on a trip to Versailles, the magnificent memento of the reckless ex- travagance of the Fourteenth Louis ; an extravagance that some say was the germ of the great Revolution ; but of this historians know much more than I do. We selected that day because the last display of fireworks and illumination of the fountains was to take place in the evening. We arrived there about one o'clock p.m., by rail, and fell into the throng of people, among them hundreds of priests, whom these dis- plays always attract to Versailles, and were swept along like so many mere atoms, through the picture galleries of the old palace, through the dead monarch's grand apartments and saloons, where in the old time the noblest and gayest of France displayed their charms, and plotted and counter- plotted each other's ruin. SEARCH FOR DINNER. After some hours of this " moving on," (for no stopping was allowed, the crowd being so great,) we sallied out of the palace, out of the garden, and began a grand chase after a dinner; but the chasing was much easier than the finding, as every restaurant was full, and more than full, of hungry people. We could find plenty to drink — the French people seem to live on drink — but little to eat ; however, by great industry and much perspiration, we found two small tables and sev- eral smaller stools in a dark room, all of which we seized on vi et armis, and one of our party — a live New-Yorker, for many years a Nassau Streeter — marched into the kitchen, and brought forth a minute speck of roasted calf, a small bit of sausage, (containing a very large amount of garlic,) a shade of Normandy cheese, a yard or two of French bread, and the everlasting " Vin Ordinaire," or common wine, 1 2 Papers from over the Water. which all Frenchmen, and women too, drink as freely as our German cousins do of lager. With these " courses " we made, seasoned with any quan- tity of laughter, (excellent sauce for any meal anywhere,) a most excellent dinner, our talk and movements affording great amusement to the different groups of the " natives " who were dining and laughing in the same room. After this most magnificent entertainment, the enjoyment of which by our party was never exceeded by the Grand Mogul at any of his state feasts, we drove for an hour about the outskirts of the garden, which, I suppose, is the most beautiful place of the kind in the world. So many descriptions of it have been printed, that I shall not now attempt another. FIREWORKS. By the time evening set in, the illumination had com- menced ; I can describe it only in brief, and poorly. Place in front of your mind's eye a beautiful oblong basin of wa- ter, of some acres in extent, ornamented with appropriate groups of statues. On one side of this basin, at its centre, place a flower-garden of colored lights, (on the ground,) cov- ering a bed of some two hundred and fifty feet in length by some fifty feet in width ; on either side of this bed of flow- ers, place columns, arches, and festoons of gold-colored and green and crimson lights, for some six hundred feet each way from the centre. Then, when these thousands of colored lights are all burn- ing as bright as art and science can make them, up on an instant, as if by magic, spring hundreds of water-jets, throw- ing their liquid columns from ten to twenty feet high, rival- ing in beauty the sparkling colored lights; then, in and around and before and behind these jets, see clouds of crimson smoke, or air, giving the same color to the leaping Sunday. 13 jets; then, as the green dies away, up comes a shade of crimson, making the playing fountains look as if they, too, were of the same hue ; and so on, with different shades of colors. Presently up rose, in and among the water-jets, just as many jets of fire, of the same size and shape — making a continuous circular row of jets of fire and water, the most beautiful sight imaginable. While these were doing their work, the air was filled with rockets and other explosive fire- works, thousands of which seemed to come out of the water in the great basin. By and by, a grand explosion of fire- works took place in the basin, in size and appearance like the crater of some volcano. So, with fire and water, and water and fire, on the earth, and in the air, and from the water, the evening sped on till al- most midnight; then the acres and acres of people, numbering scores and scores of thousands, began to move, with as much order as such great masses could move ; no quarrel- ing, no fighting, no swearing ; and back to Paris we all came safe and sound, having seen what only a few Americans can see. Beggars are not seen in the streets of Paris. SUNDAY. An American is taken all aback on his first Sunday here, at seeing the greater part of the stores open, and mechanics at work. He will also be surprised at the absence of chil- dren in the streets on week-days. I spent a few hours at the Great Exposition, and great it is ; great in extent, in variety of articles, in beauty of ar- rangement, and in the immensity of its whole, a complete World's Congress of artistic and mechanical Niagaras. I miss one thing here exceedingly, to wit : our Croton 14 Papers from over the Water. water, in its softness and extravagance of quantity. Good drinking and washing water I have not yet found in this city, and though ice is as cold here as at home, it is not seen in such profusion as with us, nor is it so clear and pure. HORSES AND HARNESS. We New-Yorkers can beat Paris in horses ; not in number, but in beauty of appearance and grace of action. The poor animals are loaded down with harness and other useless in- cumbrances, and are made to move loads greater in weight than any thing ever dreamed of in America. The loads that one horse will move here are enough to frighten the souls out of all the horses in New- York. American horses, like their owners, are favored above the rest of the world. Let them be thankful. French vehicles of all sorts are much heavier than ours, in fact, heavier than required for their work. A light, grace- ful American wagon attracts much notice when seen in the streets. The principal employment of the men of Paris seems to be sitting in front of a cafe, drinking, smoking, and chatting. The women tend the shops, and seem to do near- ly all the work, even sweeping the streets. II. A Lieutenant-Governor in a fix — Women at Work — Calvin's Church — How Pigs go to Market — Rothschild's House — Geneva — A Dutch Traveler — Clothes- Washing — Swiss Steamers — Intelligent Englishman — Swiss Peasants — Mont Blanc, etc. Berne, Switzerland, September, 1867. On. my way from Paris to Geneva, I remained over night at an old French town called Macon, (after which our Geor- gia town of that name was christened.) On entering the breakfast-room of the hotel, just at daybreak, for a cup of coffee, who should come in, carpet-bag in hand,- but our Lieutenant-Governor Woodford, who, not seeing me in the dimly lighted room, was electrified by hearing his name in a familiar voice. A man is not often more pleased to see another than was the eloquent young President of our State Senate on seeing me. He had left Paris for Geneva and got off the train at Macon to change cars, and not being as familiar with Napoleon's French as he is with our American English, he failed to find the right car, and the train moved off and left him standing in a crowd where not a soul could understand him, so he had to stay over night and take a train the next morning ; and as I happened to be the first person he met that could speak his own lan- guage, and being also an old friend unexpectedly met with in 1 6 Papers from over the Water. a strange place, one can readily see why he was pleased at meeting me. VINES— S UGA R-BEE TS. From Paris to Geneva, (sixteen hours by rail,) the road gen- erally traverses a beautiful country, highly cultivated. Be- tween Dijon and Macon we travel through miles and miles of vineyards, the hillsides being covered with vines to their very tops, while on either side of the streams that wind their way through the valleys, acres on acres are covered with the sugar-beet, and along the highways and by the river-banks, more poplar-trees are standing than Mr. Greeley saw of buffaloes on his overland trip to the Pacific, though he says that he saw several millions. CL O THES- WA SHING. One of the most common sights seen along the route was women washing clothes in the rivers, and working in the fields and vineyards. In fact, the women in this part of the world seem to do all the work, or most of it. I saw six women and two men raking hay on the lawn in front of a Rothschild mansion, near Geneva, and that is less than the average pro- portion of women to be seen at out-door work. CALVIN S CHURCH. I attended service on Sunday in the old church in Geneva that Calvin once thundered in, and saw his pulpit occupied by a fine-looking, good-natured young man, with a face the very antipode of the vinegar- visage of that sturdy old preach- er, whose bones may rattle in his coffin, for aught I know, at the desecration (?) of his old dwelling-house by the Cath- olic Sisters of Mercy who now occupy it. Thus goes our race. To-day, Papist ; to-morrow, Protestant ; the next, Papist, and so on — change after change, and revolution on revolution, Grounds of a Rothschild. 1 7 and reformation following revolution ; but over and above Papacy, and Protestantism, and revolution, and reformation, towers Christianity, and onward moves the leveling up of our common humanity, as irresistible as the steps of time, and as universal as the death that follows. Pope can not stop it ; reformer can not change it. PIGS TO MARKET. We of New- York think that the good Mr. Bergh (may his long shadow never be less !) has done much for " dumb " crea- tures ; but he never thought, in all the kindness of his bene- volent, nature of carrying pigs to market on a good thick bed of straw in a wagon, as is done at Geneva. Bless the Genevan pig-merchants ! May their pigs never have the measles ! Standing in one of the streets in Geneva, I saw an elegant pair of horses before a handsome barouche ; horses had on fine harness, with the owner's monogram in beautiful metal; bells, with fur padding, on their necks; the driver in fine livery, and the traces of the harness made of rope ! In the reading-room of my hotel at Geneva, I saw a like- ness of Lincoln, printed on satin, with the words, " Deposed 1865." It was printed at Lyons. Price, three francs. On visiting the house once occupied by Byron, the porter in charge gave us some plums of a very superior sort, the seeds of which will find their way to America. GROUNDS OF A ROTHSCHILD. The Genevan hotel-keepers make much ado about the house and grounds of one of the Rothschilds; so, after pro- viding myself with a card of admission about the size of a pane of glass, (not a small one either,) on which was printed the coat-of-arms of the unwillingly retired money-king, accompanied by a note stating that no money was to 1 8 Papers from over the Water. be given to the gatekeeper — unnecessary in my case, for I don't do any more of that work than the law allows ; and that no smoking was permitted on the premises — : a great drawback to my pleasure, for I like a cigar as well as the reticent U. S. G.; and a further notice that dogs were not admitted, (even by card ;) a notice not required in my case, for I have as much as I can attend to without a dog — I rode up to, and entered the sacred place, (six women and two men raking hay on the lawn,) and walked over it — riding not allowed. Fine house, good outlook, pretty flower-beds, but the place as a whole doesn't compare with that of Morris Ketchum, at Westport, Ct. We honored the place by leav- ing our names in a register kept for that purpose. On our way back to Geneva, the coachman pointed out to us the place once occupied by Voltaire, and a house where Josephine lived after the divorce. By the way, is it accidental, or is it retributive, that the grandson of her whom the old Napoleon discarded for lack of children, should to-day fill the place of him who did that great wrong ? GARIBALDI. One week ago, Geneva was alive with the excitement of a visit from Garibaldi. Great processions, bands of music, singing-bands about the streets all night, illuminated steam- ers in the harbor, fireworks, etc. Within three days there- after, according to the papers, he left Geneva, like the descent of the rocket-sticks fired on his arrival. Thus it is with all who dare to have opinions of their own and cour- age enough to express them. What with the Garibaldi excitement and the visit of a Japanese embassy, the Genevese, last week, had about as much as they could get along with ; but as that old town has seen many changes and great commotions, it will probably Swiss People. 19 survive the visit of the Orientals and the speeches of the red-shirted hero. -■ QUEER STEAMERS AND DROLL STEERING. I made a trip up and down Lake Geneva, on one of their queer-looking steamers, the steersman standing at the stem, and generally guided by the signals of another man nearer the bow. Elevated places for the steersman, such as our boats have, are not known hereabout, two or more persons generally doing what one would do with us, though in one instance — which I will soon refer to — this was not the case. Other persons have so often written about Lake Geneva that I shall not say much about it. Its water is not so clear as that of some of our own lakes. INTELLIGENT ENGLISHMAN. During the trip, I fell in with a young Englishman, with whom I talked on American matters, and soon found myself surrounded by a group of gentlemen of that ilk ; among others; a London barrister, at least sixty years of age, a member of the conservative club of that city, and a man of importance enough in his own town (near London) to have once had his house sacked by a mob on account of his politics, who asked me if "the English language tvas gen- erally spoke?i in America? Do our British cousins need a schoolmaster ? After nearly a week's sojourn at Geneva, I took the stage for Chamounix, up the valley of the roaring, splashing, milky- looking Arve, whose waters hesitate to mingle with the Rhone for a long way below Geneva. SWISS PEOPLE. This part of Savoy, and indeed the greater part of the route to Chamounix, and thence to Martigny, over the Tete 20 Papers from over the Water. Noir, is inhabited by poor peasants, cultivating small patches of ground as well as they know how, with tools as old in style as the mountains they are hemmed in by. They are of small stature, many are deformed, and a large portion of them, especially the women, have those odious excrescences on the neck that have defied the physicians of all countries. The houses, and barns, and stables are all under one roof, the dwelling-parts poorly lighted and not at all ventilated ; indeed, one may believe that these people are afraid of air and light, and, judging from the common practice of placing iron grates to every window, (but few of them, and small ones at that,) they must be either great cowards or great thieves. If, however, they shun light and air in their dwellings, they do not shun work, especially the women, for they work all day long, even knitting as they walk along the roads (which, by the way, are as good as experience, money, and labor can make them) with heavy loads on their heads. The people are saving, too — even scraping up manure on the highways, the women, of course, doing even that work. CHAMOUNIX AND MONT BLANC. Before reaching Chamounix we encountered a heavy rain- storm, but on reaching the village the storm ceased. The setting sun came out gloriously, and shone with his brightest rays on Mont Blanc, which in turn reflected back from his clear, white face the brilliancy of the departing day-god; and as he sank to rest, up came the queen of night, throw- ing her silvery radiance coquettishly on the crown of the snow-clad monarch of the mountains. And thus we had an Alpine storm, a sunset and moonlight view of the great mount; and to add to our pleasure, the next morning was as bright and beautiful a one as ever came over the moun- tain-tops to wake sleepers in the valleys. Mont Blanc by Easy Way to ascend a Mountain. 21 sunset, by moonlight, by sunrise, paid us for the long ride in the diligence. EASY WAY TO ASCEND A MOUNTAIN. Chamounix was thrown into a fever of excitement, the morning after our arrival, by a novel sight. A very fat Ger- man, too heavy for mule-riding, who wanted to " do" the mountains, provided himself with a broad belt, which he placed around his back and under his arms. To the end of this belt a mule was attached by rope traces some eight or ten feet long; and back of the fat German some six feet, was another man, with another broad belt under his arms and around his back, and with traces fast to the fat chap ; and as the mule started off, hauling behind him fat and lean Ger- mans, the guides and the chambermaids and the waiters, and all the visitors of the place, turned out to see the trio, mule and Germans, guide not counted, depart amid shouts of laughter. I presume that mode of ascending a mountain is not at all new, but it is of so rare occurrence at Chamounix as to attract a crowd and cause great merriment. I think the trip must have ended well, as I saw the fat old chap the next day puffing and sweating, on his way to the Tete Noir (Black-Head Mountain.) One of the most noticeable things hereabout is the fine appearance and good address of the hotel waiters. They are the smartest-looking and best-dressed young men we meet, and generally very attentive. At Martigny, there were twenty-eight persons at the dinner-table, and o?ily two waiters, (either of whom was, in appearance, fit to fill a pulpit or plead a cause in court,) and the whole party were promptly and well waited on, course by course, French style. Hotels are generally good ; the only exception we have 22 Papers from over the Water. thus far found, being that of the Hotel Beau Rivage, at a place called Ouchy, on Lake Geneva. This hotel is like a whited sepulchre — fair without, but within it is — let all Ame- ricans pass it! — the manager don't want them; he prefers English patronage. Our American women do not all dress with as much taste and propriety as do the French ; but for tact, vim, self-reliance, general intelligence, go-aheaditiveness, good looks, whole- someness of appearance, smartness, they beat all creation — that is, so much of female creation as one meets in travel- ing this way. III. A Bear Stoty — Hoisting Stone — A Saving People — Blue- beard's Castle — Over the Mountains — Beautiful Sight — Sunday — Swiss Cottages — Baden-Bade?i and its Gam- blers. Heidelberg, Germany, September, 1867. Before leaving Berne, (from which place I last wrote,) I visited the Bears' Den, as all good travelers are bound to do, or lose caste with the Bernese, who are all bear worship- ers — in fact, Berne is bear, and bear is Berne. BEARS" BANK. According to history, as related to me, there was, many years ago, a sum set apart for the maintenance of a certain number of these pretty little creatures, which in time in- creased faster than did the beasts, and so a law was passed creating a fund out of the accumulated profits of the bears' money, and this institution is now known as the Bears' Bank. Whether the officers of the bank are bears or bulls, I don't know, but this I do know — that the bears I saw were a comfortable-looking set of fellows, and were taking things much easier than owners of banks do in America. I do not vouch for the truth of this " Bear story." HOISTING STONE. To hoist stone on to a high building in course of erection, at Berne, a huge wheel, like an old-fashioned overshot water- 24 Papers from over the Water. wheel, was placed in a great framework of timber, a rope wound round it, to one end of which the stone to be lifted was attached, and the wheel then made to revolve by some dozen men walking inside of it, tread-mill style. This was a labor-saving machine with a vengeance. Three men, with one of our derricks, wouH have raised a stone twice as large and in half the time. In countries where labor is as cheap as in Switzerland, inventions substituting machines for ma- nual labor are not overcommon. On my way to Interlaken I passed Lake Thun, a much prettier lake than Geneva, reminding one of our own Lake George, its hillsides being, of course, much more highly cul- tivated. ECONOMY. The Swiss are a saving people, turning every thing to ac- count — gathering up the falling leaves, cutting off and car- rying home from long distances, little twigs from the ever- green trees, (such as spruce, hemlock, etc.,) to be used in the winter as bedding for their cows, sheep, and goats, and to be converted into manure for their little patches of land. In saving manure, they pile up alternate layers of straw and manure as carefully and systematically as an American far- mer lays up a cheese of ground apples for the press of the cider-mill ; some of their manure-heaps made in this manner being fifty feet long and six to eight feet high, and from fif- teen to twenty feet in width. BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE. While at Interlaken I visited an old castle where, according to the local guide-books, Bluebeard lived and killed. From the top of its ruined walls I looked over the plain to see if there were any galloping horsemen coming to the rescue of the old sinner's victims ; but instead of hearing the clattering Beautiful Scene. 25 horses' feet bent on a work of mercy, I heard the clattering of a dozen old-fashioned flax-breaking machines, lively and smartly worked — for twenty cents per day — by as many sun- browned women, right under the castle's walls, and not one of the dozen bore the least resemblance to the pretty crea- tures my picture-book used to contain. I don't believe old Bluebeard or his dear little victims were ever*in that old castle. Of course I had, like hosts of other victims at Interlaken, to " do" the Wengem Alp via Lauterbrunnen. After waiting some days for the Jung Frau to show her face, which was vailed with a thick cloud, we started off for the Wengern Alp and Little Scheideck, (6400 feet above the water,) where we arrived just at dark, and remained over night. GREA T MOUNTAINS. On our way up the valley of the Lauterbrunnen, we passed those mighty mountains of solid stone, towering up layer by layer for thousands of feet, as regular in their hori- zontal strata as if laid by line and rule, telling one plainly that they were God's battlements, laughing to scorn all human attempts to scale their giddy heights or to sap their eternal foundations — huge piles of granite, made for the weary clouds to rest their tired feet on as they go wandering up and down through space. BEAUTIFUL SCENE. When we arose in the morning, the sun was just reaching the tops of the mountains all about us, and the Jung Frau was so glad to see him that she raised her cloud-vail to bid him good-morning, and her greeting was joined in by the Eiger, the White Monk, and that prettiest of all mountain- peaks, the Silver Horn ; and all around us the ragged and 26 Papers from over the Water. snow-clad mountain-tops bid the glorious sun good-morrow, while to make the scene a little lively and somewhat noisy, a miniature avalanche came dancing down a ravine between the White Monk and the Jung Frau. Two thousand feet below us lay a clear white cloud, look- ing for all the world like a monster fleece of wool, just taken from some mammoth sheep, so white, so soft, so compact, so smooth did it seem as it hung on the mountain-sides, border- ed by the evergreen trees that crawled up the hills around it; while down, down, thousands of feet under this wool-cloud, lay the little hamlet of Grindenwald, as effectually hid from our view as if it had never had a place on God's great foot- stool. As the sun rose higher and higher over the mountains and touched the edges of this cloud of wool-vapor, it began to ascend and find its way up the valleys, and hours before we reached Grindenwald, that village was as plain to us as if cloud and fog and vapor had never hid it. At this time of the year, the Swiss people drive their sheep from the mountains down into the valleys, and shear them. American wool-growers would think September rather a late month for shearing their sheep. I have seen but little of the land of Tell. Can't say I like it. Its mountains are grand, awfully grand, its valleys pretty, its streams rapid, its people — not so tall as their mountains, not so smiling as their valleys, not so swift-moving as their streams. SWISS COTTAGES. Looking at their dwellings — I speak of those of the pea- santry — from a distance they appear picturesque, perched as they often are on some crag or on a green hillside, but a near approach to them dispels all romance. They are dark, dirty, and foul, and thousands of them much more uncomfortable Gambling. 2 7 than many American pig-pens, poisoning the air around them with stench from all sorts of noisome things. Swiss cottages look well in picture-books ; but Swiss cot- tages, in nature, have terrible odors, and look best at a distance. A DOUBLE CHURCH. In this town, Heidelberg, there is a large church divided in two parts by a wall from floor to ceiling. On one side of this partition the Catholics hold service, and on the other side the Protestants; while outside the church, against its walls, and under its windows, protected by the eaves of its roof, right under the droppings of the sanctuary, Catholic and Protestant — and, for aught I know, Jew and Gentile, Greek and Turk — carry on their different callings in little shops and stores all day long on Sunday ! That may be said to be serving God and mammon at the same time and in the same place. I have not seen a quiet, still Sunday since I left New- York. Such a thing as a total suspension of trade on a Sunday, according to our American ideas, seems to be unknown this way. At least, this is my experience thus far. GAMBLING. On my way here I called at Baden-Baden. That place is wrongly named : it should be Bad-an'- Worse. Our readers know its fame, or rather its infamy, for gambling; but one that has not seen it scarcely realizes its terrible character. Think of old gray-haired men ; young beardless boys ; sweet girls of sixteen — yes, younger than that; men of middle age, women of no particular age, all sitting around a great table in a public-hall as large as any church in our city, gam- bling, gambling, gambling; and, to crown the picture, see an 28 Papers from over the Water. old woman, trembling with age, shaking with the palsy, too feeble to walk to the table — see such a one carried in a chair, and a place made for her at the devil's board, around which knaves and fools, lunatics and men-wolves, money-seekers and money-spenders, gather like the ravens about a carcass; see the haggard look of the losers, the snake-like look of the winners, the anxious stare of the desperate ones, the grievous anger of the one, the joyous pleasure of the other, the fear, the hope, the suspense, and the infatuation of all. It must be seen to be realized. The name must be changed from Baden-Baden to Bad-an'-Worse, for no worse place is there this side of that worst of places against which we have been warned since time began. IV. A Big Wine- Cask — Frankfort and the Jews — Wiesbaden — Wine — Great Church — Dow?i the Rhine — Crowning a Yankee — Aix-la- Chapelle — -Among the Dutch — A Yearly Visitor — Women towing Canal-Boats, etc. Amsterdam, Holland, October, 1867. Since my last letter I have visited the old castle fortress of Heidelberg, at that place, one of the grandest old ruins in Europe. Its huge towers, battlements, grand old corridors, stately halls, grim vaults, monstrous wine-cellars, broken col- umns, shattered window-places, ivy-covered walls, and grass- grown turrets make it a wonderfully interesting place, es- pecially to us of the New World. In its wine-cellar is a cask large enough to contain eight hundred English hogsheads. It was never filled but once, and that a great many years ago. Its staves are ten inches thick. It is as large as a small house, and big enough for a good-sized " tea-party " to dance in. FRANKFORT. On leaving Heidelberg, we went to Frankfort, which, con- trary to my expectations, I found to be quite a modern-look- ing city — that is, a greater part of it — with well-paved, clean streets, light, comfortable-looking houses, beautiful flower- gardens, etc. Of course, there are some parts of it which 30 Papers from over the Water. are old, dirty, and very gloomy, such as the Jews' street, where those money-monarchs — the Rothschilds — were born, their old house still standing on its tottering foundation, and surrounded by others that need the aid of great props to keep them from tumbling down. At one time the Jews were compelled to remain in their own street during certain hours and certain days — a pro- scribed, degraded class. Now, nearly every Christian nation in Europe is in debt to these same outcasts, for money to uphold their shaky thrones, many of which are nearer the tumble-down precipice of decay than even the old houses in the once degraded Jews' street of Frankfort ; and to-day one of the proudest monarchies in the world dare not offend the money-king, who, it is said, would rather be the " Jew of the kings than the king of the Jews ;" for, when the Bismarckian William of Prussia called on the city of Frank- fort to pay tribute-money for its municipal action in regard to the war between Prussia and Austria, the money-king told the political king that he could, if he chose, make Frankfort pay it, but if he did, he, the king, could borrow no money for his future wants. The tribute-money has not been collected. (So runs the story.) Thus the persecuted of yesterday, are to-day the masters of the persecutors, and some of their descendants live in pal- aces more luxurious than any ever occupied by the ancestors of their former persecutors. The wheels of Time's old car roll over and over continuously, and in their rolling the spokes catch up and throw down kings and peoples like the dust on the highway. Yesterday, kings led the people with halters — to-day the people make blocks and halters for the kings. The people of Frankfort are fine-looking, bright, active, intelligent. Their public squares, monuments, (of Goethe, Down the Rhine. 31 Schiller, and others,) galleries of art, etc., give evidence of good taste and liberality. A fine people and a fine city. From Frankfort to Wiesbaden is a pleasant trip, through a well-cultivated and beautiful country. Wiesbaden is a duplicate of Baden-Baden in the way of public gambling, only more so. The drives and promenades are perfectly charming. The Greek chapel there, erected by one of the dukes as a mausoleum for his wife, is one of the richest and most tasteful structures of its size in Europe, and cost more than a million of dollars. WINE. While at Wiesbaden, we drove out to the famous vineyard of Johannisberg, where that high-priced and kingly wine is made, and, like many other traveling fools, bought, at the chateau of Prince Metternich, (who owns the vineyard,) a bottle of the precious (in price) stuff, and a more sour, dis- agreeable liquor I never tasted. I suppose my early educa- tion in wine-drinking was so imperfect as to make me an unfit judge of the article. DOWN THE RHINE. From Wiesbaden down the Rhine, that river of old cas- tles, old legends, vine-clad hills, mountain-bound shores, ancient towns, decayed villages, queer-looking steamers ; here turning around a bold, castle-crowned promontory, there steaming under a protecting crag, from whose summit we were frowned upon by the battlements of a robber knight's retreat; here passing an ascending river-craft, towed by horses, with the towing-line at the top of the tall mast-head, there past old fortresses and new castles ; and thus, down this old highway, whose every cliff and hill and mountain has a record of strife, of injustice, of heroism, of endurance, of suffering; whose every mountain-top has witnessed 3 2 Papers from over the Water. deeds that thrill the soul with emotions of awe or chill the blood with horror; whose every slope has been bathed in human blood — down its current we steamed to the old Roman town of Bonn. From Bonn to Cologne the country is rich in fertility, and beautiful to look at. GREAT CATHEDRAL The Christian world knows of the Cathedral of Cologne, second in size only to the great St. Peter's of Rome. It is great, gloomily magnificent, huge, and impressively wonderful in its effect upon the beholder, especially one from America, where our churches and meeting-houses are mere toy-houses in appearance, and where little appeal is made to artistic taste. It is no wonder that the religion of Rome has had and still has such a hold on the people. Its great churches, magnificent cathedrals, splendid pic- tures, exquisite carvings of stone and wood, grand altar- pieces, its gorgeous vesments, its wonderful ceremonials, and all the pomp and pageantry that genius can devise or that art can paint or chisel cut, all that the eye can admire or the ear take in — all, all this is in that great old faith which, in spite of the objections urged against it, was one of the greatest civilizers that humanity had in the olden time. To me it has always been a wonder that Protestantism, with its bare- walled churches, its plain-clad austerity and ascetic nothing- ness of ceremony, should ever have found a proselyte. The old cathedral at Cologne has a large stock of relics, which are shown to all who will pay to look at them. Between Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle is more splendid farming-land, highly cultivated. Aix, or, as the Germans call it, " Achen," is a fine town, with clean streets, but few vehicles and fewer horses, and is more of a modern than an ancient city, though much remains that is ancient. Its old cathedral contains a greater variety of relics than that of A New Monarch. 33 Cologne ; a list of them is printed in pamphlet form. It was on a Sunday afternoon that I visited it; the service was scarcely over before the sacristan espied me and beckoned me to come within the altar railing, and being joined by an- other of the church officials in black and white robes, I was shown into the inner chamber where the valuable things are kept, such as precious stones of all sorts, diamonds, em- eralds, rubies, and the like, too numerous to mention ; also crowns, sceptres, swords, etc. CROWNED. Unlocking a strong, iron-bound case, the sacristan placed before my wondering eyes a crowned bust (in silver) of the great Charlemagne, and taking the crown (once worn by the great emperor) off the head of the metal bust, placed it on mine, remarking, in a laughing way, as it slipped over my head down on my shoulders, that the old emperor had a larger head than mine ; which I did not dispute, for, accord- ing to veritable history, the old fellow was nearly seven feet high, while I lack at least a foot and a half of that measure. His sceptre is also shown, but as the day of royal sceptres has passed never to return, that old bauble of former kingly power is now a mere toy-relic, to be looked at by those who live in a better time than its old master ever saw. To-day the pen is the great sceptre, and printer's ink the battering- ram that levels city walls and batters down granite fortifica- tions stronger than any ever taken by old Charlemagne. A NEW MONARCH. The old church and city are full of relics of Charlemagne, who spent much of his time here when not engaged in his great wars ; but to-day a greater and more mighty monarch than ever he was, lives and reigns in Aix-la-Chapelle — a 34 Papers from over the Water. monarch whose realms are greater than his ever were, whose empire is based on deeper and stronger foundations than those of any old king or kaiser that lived or ruled in the past; a monarch whose empire girdles the earth, and to whom tribute is paid by all the world ; whose subjects com- prise nearly all that is human; a monarch before whose throne kings bow down and princes vail their faces — King Steam ; for now Aix-la-Chapelle is a thriving, busy, prosper- ous manufacturing city, from every point of which tall chimneys rise proudly skyward, the brows of which are crowned with more victorious wreaths than were ever worn by old-time warriors ; wreaths of power to supply human wants and add to human comforts — not wreaths of kingly wrongs done to vanquished peoples. Steam is more kingly than old Charlemagne, and now steam rules in " Achen." Let it reign evermore. The old Town-Hall in Aix is a fine relic of the olden time. In its saloon, or hall of ceremony, there have been thirty-six German emperors crowned ; their portraits now hang on its walls, looking for all the world as if they held the men and things of to-day in supreme contempt, and were sighing for the good old times when they were on earth and lording it over the people. They have gone, and with them much of the barbarism and inhumanity that so long kept the race under their thrones. AMSTERDAM AND ITS CANALS. Amsterdam is a quaint old city, whose streets (many of them) are canals, and whose canals are streets. Canals here, there, and everywhere — straight canals and crooked ones — large canals and small ones. Its carts are mostly canal-boats, and its canal-boats are mostly carts, though a few wheeled carts are tolerated in its few paved streets, but The Hague. 35 the drivers are not allowed to ride on their carts — they must walk with their horses. The people are remarkably red-cheeked and healthy-look- ing; the business men, as smart-appearing gentlemen as I ever saw ; its women clean and tidy in their dress, and the houses perfect models of cleanliness. There are a great many old buildings in Amsterdam, the one I lodged in having been used as a hotel for more than two hundred and fifty years, and judging from their looks, some of the present attachees must have been at the laying of the corner-stone, or rather at the driving of the first pile, for the old house, as well as much of the city, is built on those per- pendicular wooden foundations. THE HAGUE. From Amsterdam to the Hague is but a short trip, through a flat, canal, and ditch covered country. The Hague is one of the most beautiful small cities in Europe — broad, shady streets, some canals, few carriages, fine dwellings, and many wealthy people. The palace of the Queen is in a fine forest, some half an hour's distance from the city. The King visits her once a year. Her palace is a plain-looking building without, but within is very fine, containing one of the most magnificent rooms to be seen anywhere. It is of octagon form, very high, with a great dome ornamented with splendid frescoes. The sides of the room are covered with magnificent paintings by Rubens and his pupils. Hague contains an excellent gallery of paintings, embracing several by the great masters. Many of its streets are paved with thin brick, set up edge- wise, making a very easy, comfortable carriage-way. The country about Hague is, like the rest of Holland, flat. 36 Papers fro??i over the Water. WOMEN AS HORSES. While there I saw two women towing a large boat on a canal, just as horses tow boats on our canals at home — a strange sight for an American. We don't make our women do that sort of work, but in Holland it is quite different. Many of the Hollanders live entirely on the canals. Their boats are their castles, and the women do more of the work of managing them than the men. Scarcely a cart or wagon at the Hague has either shafts or poles or any thing by which to guide it, except the rope-traces with which the horses draw it. As the streets are perfectly level, I suppose these things can be dispensed with; but if shafts and poles were absent there was an abundance of harness, that on each horse containing leather enough for at least four. V. Rotterdam — Breakfast Smokers — Hauling Brick — Antwerp — Blanketed Cattle in the Field — Cow -Mil king — Brussels — Indignant Peddler — Paris — Queer Sign near a Ceme- tery — Public Respect to Passing Funerals — Lafayette's Grave — Elevated Hencoop — B?-ick- Raising, etc. Paris, October, 1867. From the Hague to Rotterdam the traveler sees the usual variety of Hollandish landscape, including the regular num- ber of canals and windmills. Rotterdam is a busy place, and like Amsterdam, its streets are canals, and its canals are streets. At the principal hotel, the men sit at breakfast with their hats on, and smoke pipes and cigars, and display .samples of tobacco for sale, regard- less of the ladies. Three men hauled more brick in a cart over a level street than is carried in four of the one-horse brick-carts used in New- York, and the women would remove brick from a ca- nal-boat much faster than men unload them at the wharves of Gotham. The city has a very pretty little park, and its wharves give evidence of commercial thrift. ANTWERP. Antwerp, the home of Rubens, the portrayer of fat women and skillful user of bright colors on canvas, is a comfort- able city and can show some of the finest pictures in Europe. 38 Papers from over the Water. FARM SCENES. In the fall of the year, the handsome cows that feed on the flat, wet fields of Holland, are covered with blankets, and are nearly all spotted black and white, scarcely any other color being seen, and the sheep are large, with coarse wool that denotes cold weather. The farmers huddle together in villages, but few farm-houses being seen on the farms. In- stead of driving the cows home at milking-time, like Ameri- can farmers, the milkers put their clean wooden cans with polished brass hoops into little boats, and paddle away up the small canals to where the blanketed cows are fishing bits of grass out of the water that covers many of the pasture-fields, and after the milking is done, home they go again, and the milk is converted into excellent cheese and butter that can not be excelled out of Holland. Fences and hedges are not often seen in Holland; little canals and ditches supersede them. BR USSEL S— WA TERL 00. Brussels is one of the prettiest cities of the Old World, with beautiful ladies, and military officers as handsome as need be. On approaching the entrance to the field of Waterloo, we were hailed by a lad of some fifteen summers, selling canes, buttons, and other articles from the battle-ground. He dis- coursed eloquently about Napoleon, Wellington, the great battle, all the while urging us to buy of his wares. After fol- lowing the carriage for some distance, and seeing that we would not buy any thing, he turned from us, and as he strode across the road, he waved his hand toward us with a grace and dignity that would have made the fortunes of a dozen Forrests, exclaiming, as he marched off, " Go home, and for- get Waterloo." Belgium is a charming country, if one may judge by what is seen of it between Holland and France, and the trip from Brussels to Paris is perfectly charming. Lafayette's Tomb. 39 DROLL SIGNS. Near the main entrance to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, in Paris, are numerous places for the sale of im- mortelles, tombstones, and other articles suitable for such dis- play of affection for the dead as the tastes and means of the living will permit the purchase of; not forgetting what we Americans would call " side shows," places of amusement, in one of which, so the huge signboard over the door pro- claimed, the spectator could see a pictorial representation of the marriage of the Virgin and of the birth of J. C. — these letters standing for the name of him who died in the flesh, that others might live in the spirit ; next to this, Punch and Judy, properly " Frenchified," were holding forth to the de- light of the lookers-on. FUNERALS. These peculiar sights, near a great cemetery, must not be taken as evidence of lack of respect to the dead, on the part of the Parisians, as that would be unjust. When a funeral takes place in church, the main door is covered with heavy black cloth, on which may be seen the initials of the deceased in large white letters; and when a funeral procession passes slowly along the street, no matter whether large or small, no matter whether the dead traveler was rich or poor, high or low, every man raises his hat out of respect to the passing corpse, and every woman crosses herself, an affecting custom, the spirit of which we might imitate, instead of driving our dead friends to the grave on a " good, stiff trot," unnoticed by the passers-by, as we generally do. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB. In one of the eastern suburbs of the French capital, in an out-of-the-way corner of a small semi-private, semi-public 40 Papers from over the Water. cemetery, attached to an old Augustine convent, is a little inclosure containing a very plain and somewhat dilapidated monument or tombstone, telling the visitor that beneath it rests all that is mortal of him who, in the dark hour of our national birth-time, was our truest and noblest friend, one whose services we of to-day fail to appreciate as we ought, one whose grave is seldom visited by the children of those whom he so faithfully served in their time of need — for but few Americans visit the grave of Lafayette. Emperors in plain dress look much like other people,- at least so appeared those of France and Austria when riding about Paris. ELEVATED FOWLS. On the front of a house, seven stories from the sidewalk, (the house being nine stories high,) the occupants had placed a tasty little hen-coop, in which several well-fed fowls were enjoying themselves as quietly as if in a farmer's barn-yard. To get brick up toward the top of a high building in pro- cess of erection, tall ladders were placed against the wall, on the rounds of which several men were seated. A man on the ground brought the bricks and passed them to the man on the ladder-round nearest the ground; he raised them over his head and passed them to the man next above him on the ladder, and he to the next one above him, and so on to the top of the ladder, and thus the bricks reached the mechanic who was to use them. VI. A Prison— Wine City— Stilts— A Shell Cradle— Bay onne— Biarritz — Rude Farming— Ragged Soldiers — Vittoria and its Odors — Burgos and its Cathedral— A Cure for the Headache — Beautiful Monuments — An old Monastery — Aristocratic Convent — A Kingly Chair — Columbus — Cervantes — Sundry Images — Valladolid — Church Bonis' etc. Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. A trip through Spain, that stand-still land of the past, hav- ing been resolved upon, we left Paris on the morning after our November election. Our first day's journey took us to the old town of Tours, a lively place, with a Gothic cathedral built by the Fifth Hen- ry of England. In the suburbs of the place is a small chateau or castle, built by that persecuting bigot the Eleventh French Louis, now being renovated and restored for a private resi- dence. On the premises and near the chateau is an under- ground vault, like a vault under a New-York sidewalk, where this hateful king imprisoned one of his subjects for more than seventeen years. Miserable wretches were some of those ancient kings. The country between Paris and Tours is really charming, and between Tours and Bordeaux there is some fine land, though much of it is quite poor and uneven. 42 Papers from over the Water. A WINE CITY. Bordeaux is, as most people know, a great wine mart — casks of wine here, boxes of wine there j here casks to put wine in, there staves and hoops of which to make wine-casks ; wine here, wine there, wine everywhere. We paid a visit to a huge wine vault, covering I dare not say how much ground. We went up long avenues of wine- casks, down between tiers of wine-bottles, corks this way, bottles that; white wine and red wine; old wine and new wine; cheap wine and dear wine; wine for women and wine for men. The very air of the vault was flavored with wine. Bordeaux contains a beautiful public garden or park, and in it there is a little pond full of the sauciest, fattest, j oiliest gold and silver fish ever seen. The remains of an old Roman building, looking as if it had once been a circus or amphitheatre, still stand, the walls of which now look as if they could laugh at the modern buildings standing in sight of them, so durable do they seem. POOR COUNTRY. Half of the distance between Bordeaux and Paris is through a low, level barren waste, covered in some places with a little miserable grass, in others by a few scraggy pines, from which the natives try to coax a little turpentine material. Occasionally a small half-starved flock of sheep are seen, watched by a shepherd on stilts, looking for all the world like a tall North-Carolinian on wooden legs. PAU. Pau is a finely situated town, popular with invalids, and Bayonne and the Bayonet. 43 historically famous as the birthplace of the good Henry Fourth, the brave Harry of Navarre, and also of Bernadotte, late King of Sweden, who left Pau as a drummer-boy. The old castle in which the good King Harry was born is still in fair preservation; and the bed in which he " came into this breathing world," and the tortoise-shell cradle in which he was rocked, (one huge shell,) are still shown to visitors. During the great French Revolution, when all kingly things were under the ban, this cradle was secreted and a bogus one put in its place, which met the destruction in- tended for the true one. Between Pau and Bayonne, there is some good and some very poor country. All the cattle are of a light yellowish or dirty cream color, with dark briskets and darker legs, and rather small in size. The horses in this part of France are small, and at this season have the hair on their sides and back clipped short, while on the . belly and legs it is left full length, giving them a very singular appearance. BA YONNE AND THE BA YONET. Bayonne is a strongly fortified old French city, with but little to interest the traveler. It claims to be the birthplace of the bayonet, from the story that some of its defenders, becoming short of ammuni- tion for their guns, fastened long knives to the muzzles, and thus repulsed their assailants. A half-hour's ride took us to Biarritz, the favorite sea- side resort of the imperial family. On the way there, we passed scores of donkeys, on which the women rode astride, man fashion. 44 Papers from over the Water. SPAIN. Now for Spain ; at the frontiers we changed cars, and had our luggage inspected. The Spanish railways are not of the same gauge as the French, and instead of running the cars alongside of each other on a special switch, as Americans would do, in trans- ferring the baggage from train to train, each trunk was car- ried by itself over a long platform, consuming an hour and a half in a job that a Yankee railroad man would have done in fifteen minutes. Old Spain does not move so fast as Young America. The moment the line between the two nations is crossed, every thing is changed. The railway officials wear different uniforms, speak a different language, have different money ; even the country itself is different. In France, people are lively, cheerful, pleasant. In Spain, morose, dark, scowling, gloomy, they act and move as though afraid of each other and of themselves. RUDE FARMING. In that part of Spain passed through on the way to Ma- drid from France, every thing is of the most ancient sort ; poor cultivation of the land, old buildings, decayed towns, primitive tools. In fact, the people in the Basque provinces claim Noah as their especial ancestor — a claim that seems too well founded, for they seem to have made no improve- ment since his day. » They have rather a poor country, and their mode of cul- ture does not improve it. They raise a little corn, which, after being planted, is left to take care of itself. If it can outgrow the grass, well and good ; if the grass gets the best of it, all the same. What little corn we saw had succeeded in getting up a few inches Tunnels — Vittoria. 45 nearer to the sun than the grass; but it had to work so hard to do it, that the stalks were no bigger than a man's ringer. In breaking up land for a crop, four or five men stand in a row, and in concert thrust a long, wide-pronged, fork- like spade into the ground ; they are followed by women with hoes, to break up the lumps of earth. Their cart-wheels are of solid wood, of some two feet in diameter. They harrow with a little wooden-toothed harrow drawn by oxen. Probably this mode was practiced by their ancestor Noah. TUNNELS— VITTORIA Between Bayonne and Vittoria, the first Spanish city we reached, we passed through, in a five-hours ride, no less than thirty-seven tunnels, many of them several hundred feet in length. Vittoria is an old, decayed city, full of sewers, with grated openings, out of which rise the foulest smells that ever met human nostrils. In walking about its streets on a bright, moonlight eve- ning, we found scarcely a shop open, hardly a person to be seen, and, when one was seen, he was gliding along behind some projecting building, moving more like an assassin than a decent 'citizen. In front of an old, gloomy cathedral, there was a large fig- ure of the Virgin, surrounded by lighted lamps, giving it a strange and weird appearance. In the morning, there was quite a military display — horse, foot, and artillery — the greater part of the soldiers being mere boys. They wore no leather shoes, had no stockings, but in lieu thereof had on hemp sandals, with soles made of cord. 46 Papers from over the Water. A lot of new recruits, or conscripts, just brought in, were the sorriest, most miserable-looking set of ragged wretches I ever saw. From the old cathedral steps" the priests walked down, with cigarettes in their mouths, puffing away as only the true Spaniard can puff. There were more lazy-looking men, fat and lean dogs, and bad smells in Vittoria than in any place of its size I ever visited. Glad to leave it. BURGOS— C A THEDRAL. Burgos, which claims the apostle James for its founder, was the next place we stopped at. This city has more mi- serable beggars and fat priests than Vittoria, and nearly as many foul sewers. These Spanish towns have very imper- fect drainage, hence the horrid smells from their sewers. Burgos has one of the grandest and most interesting cathedrals in Spain, if not all Europe — large, massive, elabo- rate in ornament, beautiful in design, impressive in style, and every way worth a long journey to see. Its chapels are numerous, and some of them large and gorgeous. Its wood- carvings perfectly exquisite. Its spires the most beautiful I ever saw, lifting up their light, airy outlines in the most graceful and picturesque manner imaginable. It dates from the thirteenth century. Cathedral lovers should see it. CURE FOR HEADACHE. In one of its fifteen chapels, by the side of a female saint, may be seen numerous locks of hair placed there by persons troubled with the headache, this disposition of their head covering being sure to cure that miserable complaint. In another part of the church there is a figure of a saint that sweats every Friday ; as we were there on Thursday we did not see the sweating. In another place may be seen a life- Old Monastery — Old Monk. 47 sized figure of Christ wearing a woman's petticoat embroid- ered with gold; but these, to us, strange sights do not detract from the grand magnificence of the proud old Cathedral, which for so many centuries has stood unchanged amid all the great commotions that have shaken the world since its foundations were laid by the pious Ferdinand the Sainted. OLD MONASTERY— OLD MONK. Half an hour's ride from this wonderful structure is the monastery of the now defunct order of Carthusian monks, three or four of whom still breathe. This monastery con- tains a beautiful church, in which is one of the most elabo- rately ornamented marble monuments in Europe, being the tomb of Juan Second and his Queen, Isabella of Portugal. The workmanship of the robes, the delicate tracings of the embroideries on the vestments, the numerous illustrations of Bible history, the exquisite chiseling of the figures of men and animals, make it indeed a master-piece of art, a thing of beauty to a be joy in memory evermore. We were shown through the old monastery by an ancient, infirm monk, bent over by age, his body covered by a black mantle, his head enveloped in a white cowl, a human relic of by-gone power; and as we followed him along the deserted corridors of this once rich and potent institution, it seemed as if the cold November wind which howled about our heads was chiding us for having sacrilegiously unearthed some dead member of his order, so cold, so dreary, so desolate was every thing around us ; even the few miserable beggars that stood knocking at the convent door seemed to look at us in anger for intruding on the scene. Before we had time to cross the hand of the old monk with silver, he had vanished out of sight, leaving us to find our way out of the gates as best we could. 48 Papers from over the Water. RICH CONVENT. Leaving the old monk in the solitude of his deserted home, we drove to the Convent of Los Huelgos, founded in the twelfth century by Alfonso the Eighth and his Queen, a daughter of England's Second Henry, and now one of the richest and most aristocratic convents allowed in Spain. Within its chapel some royal marriages have taken place, at which as many as thirty crowned heads were present. Here, too, may be seen another figure of the Saviour in em- broidered petticoats, a tawdry thing, fit only for a curiosity shop. The chapel of the nuns is separated from the church of the convent by heavy iron bars extending from floor to ceiling, two tiers of them, each bar as large as a man's wrist. Through this heavy double grating the officiating priest preaches to the nuns; at confessional, the nun sits on one side of a thick wall and the confessor on the other, a small grated and curtained loop-hole being between them. In this way also and through a similar loop-hole is the sacra- ment of communion administered to the nuns. A KINGLY CHAIR. In the old Town-Hall at Burgos may be seen the throne- chair occupied by the first kings of Castile, a strong wooden seat, looking very much like the seats made by the orange- dealers in Washington Market out of their empty orange- boxes — a little stronger, perhaps, but about the same thing in shape. The market-place was full of dealers in vegetables, the prevailing article being " red pepper." These Spanish towns have but few vehicles; the carrying is done on the backs of donkeys, hundreds of which meet the traveler everywhere. The best dressed and best fed and most cheerful-looking Valladolid. 49 men are the priests. The other males are divided into two classes, one looking tolerably decent, with dark cloaks over their projecting shoulders, the other poor, starved, ragged, and dirty, with faded brown cloaks over their lean bodies, both classes puffing away at the irrepressible and ever-frequent cigarette. Every man in these old towns, no matter how poor, w r ears a cloak, part of which is thrown over the left shoulder and drawn up over the chin and mouth, but in Madrid the custom of cloak-wearing is not so prevalent. The women go about the streets almost bareheaded, wearing no head-gear but a thin vail worn on the back of the head. A RASCALLY HERO. In the Town-Hall at Burgos is a box containing the bones of the renowned Cid, the great hero of old Spain, a dishon- est rascal who cheated his creditors by leaving with them, as security for money he borrowed, a strong iron-bound box, (to be seen in the Cathedral,) containing sand, which he made the money-lenders believe contained large quantities of precious stones and metals. VALLADOLID. Valladolid, the former capital of Spain, was our next stop- ping place, another city full of decayed buildings, gloomy old churches, dirty beggars, and cut-throat hangers-on at a railway depot; but out of and over and above all the past, there rose dozens of tall chimneys, giving evidence that here too, as in old Alx-ia-Chapelle, the great king of the nine- teenth century, Steam, has obtained a foothold, and is found- ing a dynasty more lasting than any ever founded by any king of the dim past. Already the genial ruling of this modern king is seen in the erection of new houses, the renovating of old ones; 50 Papers from over the Water. the laying out of public squares, the planting of shade trees about the barren and wind-blown streets, (all trees are set in ditches, in order to save what little rain falls,) and in an in- creasing traffic, a sure indication that the people are not past hope. To Americans, this old city is interesting as being the place where Ferdinand and Isabella, those patrons of our country's discoverer, were married, and where that same discoverer died. The hall in which the royal couple were married is a plainly furnished room some seventy or eighty feet in length by twenty or twenty-five in width, with a small altar at one end, having over it a figure of the Virgin. On the front of the house where the great navigator died is a small stone tablet, having on it a medallion head of the discoverer, a cornucopia, an anchor, a chart, and these words, " Aqici murio Colon" — " Here died Columbus." Valladolid also con- tains the house in which the famous Spanish writer Cervantes lived, and on the front of the house is a stone tablet with a medallion head of the novelist, bearing this inscription, "Aqui vivio Cervantes"—" Here lived Cervantes." The people of Valladolid do not see many strangers about their streets, and when a party is seen, staring is the order of the day. The cart-wheels of the peasantry have wooden tires, some five inches thick, made fast to the felloes of the wheel, with wooden pins. From the tops of houses, long tin water-conductors project over the sidewalk, giving the passer-by the benefit of a cheap shower-bath every time it rains. Some of the old church fronts in Valladolid are really grand, being covered with great and small figures, cut in stone ; and within, their altar-pieces are really wonderful, some of them being twenty to thirty feet in width and twice these figures in height, divided into panels, covered with life-sized figures in wood, painted in lifelike colors, repre* Valladolid. 5 1 senting the crucifixion, the nativity, and other scenes and incidents of Bible history. Some of them are wonderfully natural in their appearance. The museum at Valladolid contains but few good pictures, but it has a wonderful collection of wood-carvings and statues, taken from suppressed monasteries. VII. A Poor Country — A yew's Vow and what came of 'it — Great Pictures — Bull Pens — Old Armor — Devotees' Offerings — Costly Robes — A Granite Building — Baby-House, etc. Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. From Valladolid to Madrid is eleven hours by rail, through a poor, miserable, sandy, rocky, barren, boulder-covered region, with semi-occasionally a spot of arable land. The road winds its way among desert sand-hills, then along the side of the granite-ribbed Guadarama Mountains, then through a tunnel of rock harder than a miser's heart, then for miles among a few scraggy pines with tops like an open um- brella ; once or twice a flock of black, starving sheep is seen diligently searching for a blade of grass; sometimes a few stinted grape-vines show themselves, trying to live, with earth enough for a small hill hoed around their dried-up roots. Once in a long distance some old town may be seen, occa- sionally a walled city with old towers that have stood, senti- nel-like, for ages. Miles on miles are traveled without see- ing a tree ; then, a solitary withered one is seen, looking down-hearted at being " all alone in the world." Then other miles without cattle or sheep ; not a vehicle on the miserable roads ; occasionally a lot of loaded donkeys following each other, as only donkeys can. At the few stations passed on the way, the signal-women Madrid — Royal Palace. 53 stand statue-like, having on yellow skirts trimmed with scar- let, and holding in their hands a green signal-flag. A JEW'S VOW. From the railway may be seen the old walled city of Avila, in which there is a church built by a Jew, of whom it is said that, as he was passing by a certain rock, there came from it a monster snake, which fastened itself around his neck, and was near strangling him. In his great trouble he called on Moses and others of his faith to aid him, but the snake still held on. In his desperation, the choking Hebrew called on the Virgin for aid, vowing to build her a church if she would save him from the snake. The good Virgin took pity on the poor man, and the snake instantly let go, and dropped dead at his feet ; and he, like a good man, kept his word, and built a church on the very spot ; and there it stands to this day, a monument of the power of the Virgin, and of a Jew's fidelity to his vow. MADRID— ROYAL PALACE. Madrid is a fine, well-built city, some two or three thou- sand feet above the sea, surrounded with plains barren of trees, not far from the Guadarama Mountains, whose snow-clad summits are seen from the city, giving the air, at this season, a very chilly temperature. It has but few churches, none of any grandeur ; no cathedral, all attempts to build one having failed. Its public buildings are only so-so-ish, except the Royal Palace, which is said to be one of the finest in Europe. I saw only its exterior. Externally its appearance is quite grand and palace-like, being more impressive than the Palace of the Tuileries. When the Queen is in town, visitors are not admitted inside. She was " at home" (but not to our party) when we were in Madrid, and of course we 54 Papers from over the Water. could not see the inside of the palace. Spanish etiquette is not plastic. GREAT PICTURES. But if Madrid lacks in cathedrals and great buildings, she can claim some of the grandest pictures in the world. The works of her Murillo, Velasquez, and other masters are found here in all their original beauty. The picture gallery of Madrid contains more real gems, so say the authorities, than can be found anywhere else. Besides the works of the Spanish masters, there are many by Rubens, (with his usual supply of fat women,) Titian, Rapha- el, Teniers, (with his Dutch houses and merry-makings,) Van Dyck, (portraits all breathing,) Veronese, etc., a perfect galaxy of the world's wonder-pieces. Many of these gems are in rooms most miserably lighted, and in positions where they can hardly be seen, but when seen always rivet the spectator as if chain-bound. For the first time, I have seen pictures that bid me stand — pictures that, once seen, can never be forgotten, human fig- ures that breathe and sigh, and laugh and weep, and dance and grieve ; figures that think, that speak the mute language of the soul; that tell of hope, of joy accomplished, of sorrow meekly borne; of all that makes man different from the animal ; pictures that the nations might battle for with more of right in their warfare than these old nations often have in their strifes for conquest. In a dingy old room, in an out of the way gallery, is Murillo's first picture. It represents a fiddling angel appear- ing to St. Francis. In the same room is a large picture, by that master, of St. Isabel, Queen of Hungary, washing lep- ers — a picture that can never be forgotten. The face of the saint is one of those sweet, holy, spiritual ones that carry one's mind from earth to heaven; while the disgusting misery The Queen's Church. 55 of the filthy, sore-covered lepers takes one down to hell. But few people visit these gems. In one of the galleries there was not a person besides our party, and in the great gallery not a dozen. Such a collection in any other city of Europe would be attractive, but the modern Spaniards care but little for painted canvas. The old building in which these gems are kept, contains a very excellent collection of minerals ; also a skeleton of some ancient monster, as large as a small army of elephants. BULL PENS. When riding about the city, we called at the arena where the bull-fights take place. It is a large circular building, only partially roofed, capable of seating some ten thousand persons. We were taken into the pen where the bulls are placed before they are sent into the arena. These are rooms of some twenty feet square, with high stone walls. Over these pens are narrow bridges, on which the trainers stand to torment the bulls with barbed arrows, spears, and other instruments. Before the fighting-men enter the arena, they go into a little chapel sort of a place, kneel before a crucifix, and say their prayers. In a little room adjoining this is an infirmary, provided with litters, beds, etc., for the use of the wounded bull-fighters. THE QUEENS CHURCH. The church of Atocha contains a Virgin carved by St. Luke. This is a great "pet" of the Queen's, and to it her majesty presents her new-born children. She also attends mass in this church every Saturday evening. At the church-door, after passing lots of beggars, (plenty at all churches,) we passed an armed sentinel, the only instance of that kind I have seen. The figure of the Virgin, which is 56 Papers from over the Water. such a favorite with the Queen, is a small dark one, placed on the top of the high altar, covered with a richly-embroid- ered cloak, given by the Queen ; a mantle being given on the birth of each of her children, and on the anniversary of each child's birthday, a different one, corresponding with the birthday garment of that child, is placed on the Virgin. These robes are made of silk and velvet, heavily embroider- ed with gold roses, crowns, and other emblems of royalty; some of the skirts are made of gold and silver thread, beauti- fully worked by hand, are of different colors, and cost from ten to fifteen thousand dollars each. The robe worn by her majesty on presenting a child to the Virgin, and on birthday anniversaries, is always left for her use. The grandees of Madrid, who dislike her majesty, rail at her for giving her old clothes to the Virgin. The church contains the robe worn by the Queen at the time her assassination was attempted in 1852, with marks of blood still on it. DEVOTEES' OFFERINGS. Hanging on the walls of the church are seen hundreds of wax arms, feet, legs, eyes, fingers, toes, hearts, kidneys, and other parts of the human body, also, scores of old clothes, crutches, shoes, etc., offerings made by devotees who have been cured of the different maladies symbolized by them, through the intercession of the patron saint of the church. SCENES IN CHURCH. In a glass case may be seen a very large head (in painted wood) of Christ ; on the top of the case is a full-sized sil- ver shoe. In another part of the church is a life-size wax figure of Christ in a glass coffin, and near that, another glass coffin, containing a full-sized figure of the Virgin in a gold- Scenes in Madrid. 57 embroidered silk dress, a gilded crown on her head, and a golden sceptre in her hand. Mass was being celebrated during our visit, and it was strange to see a devotee kiss the stones of the church-floor. Many females sit on the church- floor, while others kneel. SCENES IN MADRID. In front of the royal palace is a pretty little square, around which the children's wagons are drawn by ponies, goats, and sheep, the only place in which I have seen mutton in har- ness. From the palace terrace a fine view may be had of the valley below the city, in which acres and acres of drying clothes may be seen, giving the valley the appearance of a snow-field. Only one Duke here has the right to put his coat-of-arms on the front of his house or palace. Others display theirs on the rear. In many of the passage-ways leading to the dwellings, tailors sit at work in little criblike boxes; and in many of the narrow streets, cobblers are at work, busy as bees. . The houses of Madrid have all the lower windows barred and grated with iron, as if afraid of somebody. In the streets, I saw a woman using the stumps of arms for sewing and knitting, having no hands. Throw a cigar-stump in the street, and some old woman will pick it up as soon as it leaves your fingers. Beggars are plenty. They are great patrons of cigarettes. The royal stable contains a hundred or more of rather in- different horses ; a few good ones. All have their names on their stalls ; among others may be seen Radical, Socialasta, and Puritan. Some of the carriages are very fine; among the old ones may be seen the covered one used by Crazy 58 Papers from over the Water. Jane, (grandmother of Philip the Second,) in which she car- ried the body of her dead husband — the faithless, beautiful Philip — from place to place. The armory contains a few specimens of very fine fire- arms, and an extensive display of armor, swords, etc. ; among others is the suit worn by Columbus. It weighs forty-one pounds, and reaches only to the knee. That worn by Charles the Fifth is quite large and massive ; while that of his son, Philip the Second, is very small, the parts covering the legs being barely large enough to protect a Yankee bean-pole. The naval museum contains some beautiful models of ships, some ancient and some modern ; among others, a pretty little monitor, looking as independent as the heaviest three-decker. A portrait of Columbus hangs on the wall, and under it the old chart he sailed by, when he set his ships' prows to- ward the setting sun. On a table stands a model of his old ship — a queer, Chi- nese-junk sort of high-stern craft, that looks as if the first breath of wind might have capsized it. The artillery museum contains a fine display of guns, old and new. In this museum is a fine old tent, used by Charles the Fifth, also by Ferdinand and Isabella, in their campaigns. Part of the robe worn by the renowned Cortez is also shown. These old museums of Spain contain many tilings of in- terest to us of the New World — more than I have ability to describe. A GRAXITE BUILDIXG. Of course, we visited the Escorial, that granite monument of the grim Philip. Think of a granite building, covering several acres of A Granite Building. 59 ground, having twenty-seven hundred windows, twelve thou- sand doors, fifteen cloisters, (for monks and priests,) sixteen court-yards, forty altars, eighty-six staircases, three thousand feet of fresco painting, eighty-nine fountains, and more miles of corridors, passage-ways, galleries, and halls than the best horse in America could travel over between " sun and sun," and all granite, nothing but granite, over head and under • foot, on the right and on the left; granite walls, stairs, arches, curves, angles, columns, balustrades ; a granite dome, three hundred feet high, granite to its cap-stone, granite tur- rets, towers, vaults; huge blocks of the hardest, grayest granite ever piled up, and all put together in the most per- fect manner. Imagine the highest part of the Palisades near New- York bored and tunneled, and drilled, and arched, and angled, and curved, and doored, and turreted ; filled with chapels, altars, staircases, galleries, pictures, statues, tombs, cloisters, palaces, fortresses, crucifixes, all and every thing that a powerful, bigot- ed, educated, despotic, earnest, and energetic sovereign could form into a great, gloomy, cold compound of castle, monas- tery, and palace, and you have a faint idea of what the Es- corial is. Some of the rooms in the palace part are wonders of taste and real elegance, fitted up with the most gorgeously colored tapestries, floors inlaid with fancy woods, in every room, curious old clocks, costly marbles, vases, etc. Adjoining the high altar of the church is a little marble room, in which Philip the Second used to sit, and, through a sliding window, witness the celebration of mass. As I looked through that window on the magnificent fittings of the grand old altar, the voice of a chanting monk came echoing along the massive arches and around the great granite columns, seeming to say, in soft, mellow tones, " Heretic, disturb not the rest of those who sleep beneath ;" 60 Papers from over the Water. for under this great altar is the marble-arched vault in which is placed all that remains of the old Spanish monarchs — a dark, gloomy sepulchre, down into which we entered, each person bearing a lighted candle. By the side of the little room in which Philip sat to wit- ness mass (and in which he died) is another small room which he used as a workshop and office. It contains his old leather-bottomed chair, a couple of stools that he used to rest his lame legs on, a little work-bench, and a table and chair for his secretary. Take it all in all, the Escorial is a marvel too great to be described in a letter like this. A BABY PALACE. A short distance from this massive pile of architectured granite is a small building, called the " Casa del Infant," a baby-house, built for Don Gabriel, a Spanish prince. Though small, it is one of the most beautiful little houses ever seen, full of pretty things, of gold, of silver, of glass, of ivory, of porcelain ; walls covered with embroidered silk ; floors of choice fancy woods, beautifully inlaid. In one room, there are three hundred and sixty-five framed specimens of white, raised or embossed porcelain, comprising figures of men, animals, trees, plants, flowers, etc. ; and in another room scores of ivory carvings of the same sort of subjects, the leaves of some of these plants in ivory being al- most as thin and transparent as a spider's web — perfect little marvels of patient industry and consummate skill. As we left this little child's palace, the setting sun burnished the adjacent snow-capped mountains with rays of crimson- tinted gold, giving the scene an appearance of beauty and grandeur seldom seen. VIII. Sunday Sport— A Bull-Fight. Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. Desiring to see a bull-fight, I provided myself with a ticket, of which the following is a copy : PLAZA DE TOROS. m O C H FUNGION DE NOVILLOS. PALCO NUM. 5. TABLONCILLO. PRECIO : CUATRO REALES. I passed between two rows of guards, having muskets with fixed bayonets, and found my seat. The arena or ring is over two hundred feet in diameter ; around it is a strong fence, about five and a half feet high. Some eighteen inches above the level of the arena, on the inside of the fence, and against it, is a step running the entire circuit of the ring, placed there to aid the men in jumping the fence when pursued by the bull. Some six feet beyond this fence is another one, a little higher ; and back of this are the stone seats, rising amphitheatre fashion, to the covered boxes occupied by the higher classes. 62 Papers from over the Water. At convenient distances, gates are placed in the first fence — that is, the one next the ring — which, on opening, turn out across the space formed by the first and second fences. These gates are thus arranged for the purpose of turning the bull back into the ring or arena when he jumps the first fence, as he sometimes does. This space between these two fences is a favorite spot for the young men to stand, and thrust sticks into the bull when- ever they can. The seats were full of people — perhaps ten thousand men, women, boys, girls, and babies in their mothers' arms. At a signal, two or three sickly looking fellows in uni- form ride into the ring, march slowly around it, and go out. Another signal, a blast on a bugle, and in come the gayly clad wretches that are to tease and torment the bull. An- other blast on the bugle, and then enter three or four poor, miserable old horses, (to instantly kill which would be kind- ness,) with one eye blinded, ridden by men having their legs cased in iron, to prevent their being hurt by the bull or by the horses falling on them. Each of these mounted horse- men with iron-clad legs has a long stick looking like a bean- pole, which he carries on the blind side of his horse, for the purpose of thrusting at the bull, but which is so seldom needed that it appears to be carried more for show than use. Ten gaudily dressed fellows, mounted and on foot, place themselves in front of the manager of the delightful sports that are to follow, make obeisance, scatter themselves about the ring — the bugle again sounds, a gate is opened, and in bounds a fine-looking dark-brown bull, with beautiful head and horns. (These Spanish bulls do not have the short, horizontal horns and thick, heavy, curly necks of American bulls, but the horns are longer, tapering, and stand up, A Bull-Fight 63 spreading apart as they grow, more like the horns of the working-oxen of New-England.) He is smarting with pain from the barb and spear wounds he has received in the pen ; his shoulders are bloody ; he is frightened, mad with anger; he passes a horse conveniently placed near the gate for him to attack, dives at one of the tormentors who bears a bright-colored cloth, or rather dives at the cloth, the cowardly fellow that holds it before the ani- mal taking good care to keep his worthless carcass out of the way of the bull's horns. These fellows have different high-sounding names, as Picador, Bandarillo, Matadore, etc. ; but I shall drop all these and simply call them tormentors, teasers, etc. I shall not even style them bull-fighters, for they don't fight the bull at all, not one of them. Another red rag is held before the bull at arm's length by another tormentor ; the bull dives at it, fastens his horns in it; tormentor drops it, runs for the fence; bull after him; tormentor jumps the fence; bull attacks other red rags; other tormentors jump the fence. The crowd don't like such tame sport. A blast of the bugle, and another tor- mentor enters with gayly trimmed barbed arrows, about three feet long; these he is to place in the shoulders of the bull, to increase his rage and make him attack the horses. He ap- proaches the animal from the side, don't face him like a man, and while the attention of the bull is drawn to the red rag of another tormentor, succeeds, after several attempts, in planting the barbs in the bull's shoulder, whereat the crowd shout their approval; bull rushes round the ring with the arrows in his shoulder, bleeding as he goes ; sees one of the old horses, (mounted by iron-clad legs;) poor old horse can't see bull, for the blinded side of these fiery steeds is always kept to the animal. Bull pitches at the old horse ; disembowels him ; tumbles him over on to iron-clad legs, (any 64 Papers from over the Water. boy could throw him down, so weak is he from poverty of flesh ;) the crowd shout ; tormentors draw near with red rags to attract bull's attention, for fear he may pitch into iron- clad legs ; legs are pulled from under horse, iron-clads and all ; horse is lifted up ; iron-clad legs go out of the ring, limping; another iron-clad takes his horse, and the sport goes on, but it is too tame to suit the crowd of men, wo- men, boys, girls, and babies in arms ; so the bugle is sounded, and another gayly dressed tormentor enters, and, after more attempts, and more aid by other tormentors with red rags, plants two more barbs in the bull's shoulders, to the great delight of the crowd. Bull gets more angry, chases other red rags; other tormentors leap the fence; two more barbs, are planted in the bull's shoulders ; he pitches into another old horse, rips open his belly, drags out his entrails, throws him on to iron-clad legs; red rags again come to the rescue of iron-clad legs; horse is killed; but this bull is too tame to suit the crowd, and the bull-killer is called in to dispatch. him, which, after several attempts, he does, by thrusting a long, keen lance into his neck near the shoulder. The first horse wounded by the bull has his entrails pushed back into his body, and is taken out of the ring, to be brought back again for another bull to finish. The first bull is removed ; the tormentors, with red rags, take their places ; the iron-clad legs straddle other fiery steeds with one eye blinded; the gate again opens, and in comes a fine, dark yellow bull, with a barb in his shoulder, the blood coloring his handsome coat, his eyes flashing anger. With a bound he knocks over old horse number one ; crowd shouts ; evi- dently there is fire in this fellow ; the tormentors with red rags attract his attention ; he scatters them in all directions, they leap the inner fence, so does the bull ; the ten thousand shout ; the crowd in the circle between the two fences run A Bull-Fight 65 and jump as only Spanish cowards can. The gates are open- ed across the inner circle ; the bull's flight is checked, and he is turned once more into the ring ; rushes madly at horse number two, (number one having died,) who stands with his blind side toward him and with his entrails protruding, (the one disemboweled by bull number one,) throws him on to iron- clad legs number two ; the crowd shout, the boys yell, the wo- men wave their handkerchiefs ; the tormentors with red rags draw near; the bull chases them; they drop their rags, leap the fences; so does the bull. More shouting; the crowd in that circular space run again ; the gates are thrown open across the track of the bull, and he enters the ring again, to leap the fence and drive out the brave young men five times more, to the great delight of the ten thousand. After leaping that high fence seven times, and killing three horses and wounding others, he begins to lag a little. The bugle sounds, the wretches with barbs enter, and the bull is pierced by four of the long arrows, to the great pleasure of the crowd. Then he rushes madly about the ring, tears red rags to pieces, and pitches into two dead horses ; tears off their saddles and throws them into the air; crowd shouts. He drives at horse number three ; horse is whipped and goaded into a limping attempt at galloping across the arena; the bull chases him; the crowd yell with delight; the horse is knocked over; is gored; handkerchiefs flutter with glee; the children scream with delight; tormentors with red rags remove iron-clad legs from the fury of the bull ; he gores the horse ; crowd clap hands ; bull chases the teasers ; they leap the fence ; he can't, he is too tired, has lost too much blood; he walks around the ring, holding his nose on top of the fence. Brave young men next the fence thrust sticks in his face; poke his sides; more barbs are thrust into his shoulders. Horse number three can't get up for iron-clad 66 Papers from over the Water. legs to mount again ; gayly dressed teasers thrash him with sticks as big as a man's thumb ; pound him over the head, on the body, on the legs, twist his tail almost off, kick him — all in vain, the. poor creature can't get up ; bull drives them out of the ring. Dying horse lifts up his poor old head, looks imploringly around for help as pitifully as only a suffering horse can look, but no pity in that crowd of human devils, no mercy in that ring, except with the bull, for he utterly re- fuses to approach him again. Two, four, six, eight barbs are in bull's shoulders; he arouses a little, shows a little anger at the red rags, drops on his knees, begs for mercy ; torment- ors get him on his feet again ; he tries to chase them ; he can't. The gayly dressed killer comes, and after making sev- eral efforts, aided by the tormentors with the red rags, who attract the bull's attention, succeeds in planting the merciful steel in his neck, and he dies; the gates open; mules come in ; the dead bull and the three dead horses are drawn out ; a rope is placed around the neck of the horse who is not yet dead, and the mules draw him out, kicking as he goes, to the great pleasure of the ten thousand, who clap their hands and shout with joy. Bull number three is introduced with the same bugle-calls, and tormentors, and teasers, and iron-clad legs; but, as he is a tame fellow, only knocking over two or three old horses, not goring any of them — not letting out their entrails — not jumping the fence — in fact, showing no pluck, he is soon dispatched by the killer, and bull number four enters. And as he, too, is rather tame, don't gore any old horses, don't jump the fence, the bugle sounds, and three two-legged devils lead in, or rather are pulled in by, three devils on four legs in the shape of monster bull-dogs and huge bloodhounds, who, in their haste to attack the poor bull, pull and try to break the thongs that hold them. A Bull-Fight. 67 In a moment they are loose. With a silent bound, they fasten on the poor beast — at his throat, at his nose, at his hams. The bull throws one dog in the air, tramples on another; the crowd shout; the two tossed and trampled dogs are up again ; again they fasten their deadly teeth in his flesh ; this time, for certain, the bull tries to run with them; the dogs are too heavy; he can't carry them; he struggles ; the crowd yell ; the bull tries to shake them off; he can't; the dogs' teeth are too deeply imbedded in his flesh ; they draw blood, they bite deeper; he grows weak, gets on to his knees, begs for mercy. Human-devils on two legs have no more mercy than dog-devils on four legs ; the dogs are not taken off; the bull dies. The crowd are pleased ; they clap their hands and shout ; tormentors, teasers, and iron-clad legs make their obeisance to the managing devil, and the sport is over. This is what the Spanish people call a " bull-fight." A more absurd misnomer could not be applied to any thing. Fight- ing implies a conflict between persons or creatures some- what equal ; but there is no fighting here, unless the poor bull's efforts to defend himself from the three great dogs can be called a fight ; but surely that was no fight. Three to one, where either of the three is more than a match for the one, is no fight at all. The tonnentors with red rags don't fight the bull ; they hold their rags before him at arm's length, keeping them- selves to one side of the animal as he dives at the rags ; and even when he hits a rag, these gayly dressed cowards drop it, run, and get over the fence. The red rags can't fight ; tor- mentors with iron-clad legs sit quietly on their poor old horses, holding their bean-poles harmlessly on the blind side ; they make no attempt at fighting the bull — not they. The killer who plants the lance in the bull's neck don't 68 Papers from over the Water. fight; he watches his opportunity to plant his steel while the bull is attracted by the red rags of the tormentors. There is nothing like a fight at any time. The bull would fight if he had a chance, but the tormentors, and iron-clads, and killers, and bull-dogs, and bloodhounds give him no oppor- tunity for a fight, nor any show for his life — none whatever. The whole affair is simply and purely a bloody, cruel, barbarous method of murdering poor old horses and worry- ing bulls to death — nothing more, nothing less, IX. Toledo, its Narrow Streets and Great Church — A Stone made Hollow by Kissing — Costly Robes — Cordova and its Mosque — Church of a Thousand Columns — Bull's Head — Bridles without Bits — How Spaniards zuarm their Rooms — Olive Orchards — Seville, its Beggars — Moorish Gardens — Narrow Streets — Wonderful Cathedral — Pig Dressing — Cure for Sore Eyes, etc. Seville, Spain, December, 1867. On our way south from Madrid we halted at the old wall- ed city of Toledo, standing sentry-like on a hill ; a very ancient place, with many of its streets so narrow that vehi- cles can not enter; some not more than four feet in width, and the broadest mere alleys, all crooked and hilly; so crooked and narrow are they that on leaving before daylight in the morning, we had to walk a long -distance to an open square for the omnibus, the streets being so dark and narrow that it could not be driven to the hotel. It is a dirty place, its alleys, streets, and cramped squares giving abundant evidence that the virtue of cleanliness is not cultivated by the people. It has but few sights worth seeing ; no museum : but what it lacks in this it more than makes up in its great cathedral, one of those grand old tem- ples that the past erected for the generations to worship in 70 Papers from over the Water. and wonder at ; one of those stupendous buildings that awe the spectator. It dates back to the sixth century; is full of ancient things, tombs, pictures, (all in bad light;) grotesque figures in stone and wood; queer old altar-pieces; mementoes of superstitious reverence, etc. Among other- things is a cha- pel, devoted to St. Lucia, the patron saint of oculists, the front and sides of which are covered with wax eyes, offer- ings of those whose eyes have been healed by the influence of that good saint. The Chapel of the Virgin is on the very spot where she alighted on her visit to St. Idelfonso, when, on passing her statue she embraced it, and invested her cham- pion (an early advocate of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception) with a robe. The stone on which the Virgin alighted is placed in a jas- per column, and has been kissed by believers till it is hol- lowed out like an oblong saucer. The bas-reliefs and bron- zes about the high altar are really wonderful ; in fact, the en- tire building, outside and in, is worth a long journey to see. RICH WARDROBE. The wardrobe of the Virgin is said to exceed in magnifi- cence and value that of' any queen now living ; one of her gold and silver mantles having on it over seventy thousand pearls, and her crown, made three hundred years ago, cost- ing five thousand pounds, (in those cheap days,) without the pints of costly jewels and precious stones with which it is covered. This is one robe on an inanimate figure — outside of the building in which it is shown, hundreds of animate beg- gars are seen w r ith scarcely any robes at all, poor, lean, dirty, ragged creatures, without mind, intelligence, or any thing to raise them above the level of the brute. Cordova and Scenes Therein. 71 On the front wall of the Church of the Kings, scores of iron chains are seen hanging, chains worn by captives taken in battle, and presented to the church in gratitude for their deliverance from captivity. Toledo also contains several buildings that were once Jew- ish synagogues and Moorish mosques, but which have been converted into churches. Among them is one of Moor- ish architecture, in front of which, so the story runs, as the Cid's horse was one day passing it, he stopped and reve- rently knelt down, upon which the church wall in front of him opened, and Christ's image was found in a niche, with the lighted lamps in front of it that had been placed there by the Goths hundreds of years previous, the oil put in the lamps by that highly cultivated people not then having burnt out. CORDOVA AND SCENES THEREIN. From Toledo we traveled to Cordova, the Cordova of old, a city more pleasant than dirty Toledo. Here we had our first view of oranges, lemons, dates, and palms, etc., growing in the open air. This city claims the first street that was paved in Europe. We were shown through it. It is very narrow, paved with cobble-stones in the centre, while a nar- row flagging borders the sides. The Cathedral of Cordova was once a Moorish mosque, and its thousand stone columns, (all with different capitals,) with horse-shoe arches resting on them, bewilder the spectator and excite his wonder. Cordo- va with its Moorish style of houses and their pretty court- yards looks cheerful, but does not contain much besides its cathedral and a few Moorish ruins to interest the traveler. In the Club House there may be seen, carefully preserved in a glass case, the head of a bull who in one day killed eigh- 72 Papers from over the Water. teen horses and one man. Pity the figures had not been reversed. In the market-place were great piles of the largest white onions I ever saw ; most of them would measure six inches in diameter. A nice little tidbit was for sale, in the shape of fowls' entrails, roasted and rolled up in sweet-looking pack- ages, resembling twisted sticks of greasy charcoal — good food for the tormentors that worry bulls to death and help to murder old horses in the bull-rings. Passing a little shop, a mere hole in the side of a house, w r e saw a man sitting at a turning-lathe, working in wood. The motive power of the lathe was a bow-string worked by the right hand, while with the left hand and right foot he guided his cutting tool. BRIDLES WITHOUT BITS. Many horses and mules in this part of Spain are driven without bits, the guiding gear being an iron band placed on the animal's nose, with projecting eyes or hooks on the sides, in which the reins are fastened. There is no timber or forest to be seen. Buildings all of stone or brick ; stone or tile roofs and floors. HOW TO KEEP WARM. No fire-places or stoves in the dwellings. When the weather is chilly, a few embers made of charred twigs are placed in a large brass dish, in shape like an American milk- pan, with a huge flange or rim. This is placed in the mid- dle of the room on the floor, and the people sit round it wrapped in shawls and cloaks. At some of the best hotels, even this poor substitute for a good fire can not be had, and travelers suffer with cold, as the nights are quite chilly, when at midday it is quite warm. No Vehicles. 73 Aside from lack of means to warm their rooms, the Span- ish hotels are quite comfortable. Their beds are clean and tidy ; often have the sheets trimmed with lace. Their em- ployees generally attentive, though all smoke, smoke, smoke their everlasting cigarettes. NO VEHICLES. The scarcity of vehicles in this country is very noticeable, scarcely any carts or wagons being used for work purposes ; every thing is carried on the backs of donkeys. They carry vegetables, dirt, stone, water, brick, fruit, fur- niture, men, women, and children : in fact, almost every thing that can be put in baskets or bags or boxes is thus transport- ed, and to a stranger it is quite amusing to see these patient creatures follow each other by the dozen, score, or hundred, each one with his great load ; and when loaded with bundles of straw or green bushes as they often are, nothing can be seen of them but their little feet, pattering along over the pavements as patiently as if they were never kicked and pounded as none but Spanish donkeys are. Between Cordova and Seville, the land is generally good and nearly all under cultivation. In one field I saw over thirty ox teams following each other with plows, or rather rooting tools ; for plowing as we understand it is not prac- ticed hereabout. The land is merely scratched, about as deep as a pig in an American forest roots for nuts. The rail- way is lined with hedges of cactus and a large plant re- sembling the century. The horses of Spain are not very handsome ; have large bellies ; carry their tails straight down, close to their legs, just as a motherless colt does when he turns tail to a cold rain. The olive orchards look very pretty. At a distance the olive-tree looks like an American apple-tree; but on nearing 74 Papers from over the Water. it, the resemblance ceases. The leaves are much smaller, darker in colcr, have a glossy surface, and the trunks are scraggy. SEVILLE AND ITS SIGHTS. We arrived at Seville on Thursday, our Thanksgiving, and in honor of that American institution had a roast turkey and other good things — a dozen or so of Americans, mostly New-Yorkers, surrounding the table. Seville is a very cozy city, with clean streets, white-washed houses, with pretty court-yards, paved with colored marble, and ornamented with plants, orange and lemon trees. The houses here, as in other Spanish cities, have their win- dows barred and grated with heavy irons even their semi- nary windows are barred to the top story. Some of our party wanted to see the house once occupied by the notorious Don Juan ; so we went to the place indicat- ed in the guide-book, but the house could not be found". In reply to inquiries as to which house the rascal lived in, we were told that there was no such person living in the neigh- borhood — in fact, had never been heard of; whereat the "house-hunters" became disgusted, and to console them- selves went to the convent or monastery where he died. That was some satisfaction. Before returning to the hotel, we passed the shop once oc- cupied by " The Barber of Seville;" but he was not in— had been absent some time; his return was uncertain; so we missed seeing him. Beggars abound in Seville ; here, there, everywhere; at the church-doors, in the churches, around the stairs, in front of the chapels, at the fountains, in the squares — indeed, we pass between rows of them in the court- yard entrance to our hotel; in fact, the numbers seem to in- crease as we travel south. Seville and its Sights. 75 Seville is a closely built city. Its street s are narrow, houses high to keep the sun out of them, " keeping cool" being the most important thing to do in this climate. From the tower of the cathedral the city presents nothing but whitewashed houses, interspersed with a few old churches and some pretty little squares surrounded by orange and lemon trees, under which the natives sit and puff their cigar- ettes, beggars and all. Water is supplied by peddlers, who carry it in jars and kegs on the backs, or rather the sides, of donkeys, for the huge racks or frames in which the jars are carried cover the animal's sides, while the lazy owner often rides on the back of the patient creature. At the fountains, one may see scores of these animals be- ing loaded with water-jugs, and in front of the houses others stand, while the empty jar is brought out and the full one taken in. This method of getting water prevails in this part of the world. The water is stored in large earthen jars, such as the forty thieves were secreted in, each jar being quite large enough for a man to get into. But few of the stores or shops have windows, the open doorway supplying all the light they have. An apothecary shop has its doors closed. By the sides thereof are little windows with a sliding sash, which the cus- tomer pushes aside to give his orders to the shopkeeper, and by means of which he returns the thing wanted. The picture gallery contains some choice works by Mu- rillo, (Seville was his home,) and in a little, dark, gloomy church attached to a hospital are two of the great master's best pictures, " Moses Smiting the Rock" and " The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," both placed so high upon the 76 Papers from over the Water. church-walls as to be almost out of sight, though enough can be seen to show the great artist's genius. There are many of his pictures to be found in the churches here, but all in dark and obscure places. These people seem to have but little taste for art ; cock-fighting, murdering poor old horses, and tormenting bulls to death being more to their liking. MOORISH PALACE. Near the cathedral is the "Alcazar," a portion of a once grand Moorish mosque, founded some seven hundred years ago. It consists of the usual highly-ornamented, stuccoed, marble-floored rooms, halls, and corridors peculiar to that class of buildings, most of which have been spoiled in ap- pearance by the hands of those who drove the Moors out of Spain — men who did not understand and could not appre- ciate the luxurious taste of the vanquished. Some royal marriages and kingly murders have taken place in it — mur- ders of treachery, of hate, of ambition and royal jealousy. Under a portion of the palace are the remains of the Royal Baths, dark, stone-walled, and marble-floored. In one of these a mistress of Don Pedro the Cruel used to bathe in presence of the king and his courtiers, each of whom showed his gallantry by drinking of the water as she left the bath. The gardens of this old palace are quite pretty, being full of flowers, orange-trees loaded with golden fruit, choice plants, sweet lemon-trees, bananas, palms, etc., but the old walls around them, and the old fountains in them, speak more of the past than of the present. One can not visit these old places, once so full of all that life is made of, but now so desolate, without feelings of sad- ness mixed with admiration. Women sweep the streets with little short brushes made of A Grand Cathedral \ 77 grass, without handles, stooping over almost to the ground to do their work. While at dinner at the public table of the hotel, a Spanish gentleman (not a guest of the house) sat down to visit a guest, took out his cigar, and puffed away till dinner was over, notwithstanding there were several American ladies at the table. Rather a queer custom. In the markets, vegetables and fruits are always sold by weight, never by measure. A GRAND CATHEDRAL. On entering the Cathedral of Seville for the first time, the visitor is appalled, struck dumb with wonder, overwhelmed, feels perfectly insignificant, stops, looks, takes another step or two, halts, looks up toward the stone-vaulted ceiling, moves again, again stops, gazes at the massive stone columns that support the roof; his eyes dilate, his mind expands ; he looks at the stained glass window through which the sun is forming all the colors of the rainbow ; he walks slowly around one of the great stone columns, wonders how far it is around it, looks up to its top, tries to guess how high it is, looks at a moving figure at the other end of the nave, wonders whether it is a man or child, moves again, looks at the great organs, would like to know how many yards it is from the marble floor to their tops, so very tall and- steeple-like are they, again he moves on, begins to walk toward the far off part of the building ; he walks, and looks and walks, and turns around to see the door at which he entered ; it is lost in the distance ; he too is lost in wonder. This cathedral is one of the most magnificent in Europe, ranking very near to the great St. Peter's of Rome. We spent a long time, in fact several long times, in visit- ing it, looking into its chapels, examining its pictures, seeing 7 8 Papers from over the Water. the gorgeous robes of its priests, looking at its tons of silver and pounds of gold, and measures of precious stones. The chapels were not open; but on furnishing the person in charge with a silver key, (one that has locked and unlocked many another door for weal or woe,) we gained access to all we desired to see. As the heavy irpn gates groaned and sway- ed on their rusty hinges, they reminded one more of prison- gates than of the sanctuary. . But this is the custom here. Every thing is barred and bolted, and spiked and grated, even the minds of the people. The royal chapel was built to con- tain the bodies of royal personages. In the sides are recesses containing royal tombs covered with cloth of gold, on which are emblazoned the royal arms ; the walls and ceilings of the recesses being covered with velvet, on which the royal arms are also seen. The front of the high altar in this chapel is of silver, with a large cloth of gold, on which figures of men are elegantly embossed. Just over this altar is a figure of the Virgin, with St. Ferdinand's crown on her head, and over her is placed a large silver canopy, having in it a massive emerald, hanging directly over the crown. In front of the altar there hangs a very large silver lamp. Under the altar are the remains of St. Ferdinand, which are carried in solemn procession about the city on certain days, on which occasions the ivory crucifix used by the saint is also carried. TOBA CCO. The Spanish government have a very large tobacco factory here, employing some four thousand females. It is a very large building, some six hundred feet square. It turns out vast quantities of snuff, cigars, and cigarettes. The motive power for grinding is purely Spanish — mules. The walls of Tobacco. 79 the vast rooms in which the women work are covered with their out-door garments, all changing their clothes on going to work. Among the operatives were many children, and by the side of many of the elder females were little boxes and baskets, each with a fat, black-eyed little " babby," while in other boxes might be seen pet dogs. At the head of the staircase, which all have to ascend to reach their work, there is a picture of the Virgin, surrounded with flowers and other offerings, made by the pious ones among the girls. Large numbers of the females employed in this concern are pure gypsies, with the hair and black, fiery eye peculiar to the Spanish branch of that strange people. Passing through one of the suburban streets, we saw men dressing a large pig just slaughtered. Instead of scalding the carcass, as is done in America, the hair and bristles were singed off, just as a cook singes a chicken. I suppose this is done to save the skin, which is used as a cask to carry wine in. X. Seville to Granada via Malaga — Orange, Fig, and Palm Trees — Beggars — A Cemetery — Impudent People — Raisin Girls — A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers — Armed Guards — Peculiar Scenery — Wine-Shop Sign — Archbishop, etc., Granada, Spain, December, 1867. From Seville, whence I last wrote you, to Malaga via Cordova, is a long day's ride, through a very fine country, occasionally broken into by wild mountain scenery, cut and gullied by great gorges and deep ravines. As we approached Malaga, we rode for miles through or ange orchards, loaded to the very ground with golden fruit, and other miles through groves of fig-trees, now destitute of foliage. Fig-tree, at this season look like small American butternut-trees. Occasionally a tall palm, with its beautiful crest of green, w r ould smile complacently on its orange and fig bearing neighbors, and sometimes would shake its datey fruit boast- ingly over their heads. Malaga is on a small bay well sheltered from the winds of the Mediterranean, and is flanked on the north by a range of very high hills, and back of these are great mountains. The loading and unloading of vessels is done by lighters, the waters of the bay being too shalloAv to admit of their lay- A Cemetery — Beggars. Si ing alongside the little quays, which, unlike bur wharves, slope down to the water. The city does not contain much to interest the traveler. A CEMETERY. On a hillside just out of the city there is a burying-ground for Protestants and strangers. As we rambled through it, we saw the graves of a few Americans who had died in this far- off land, away from home and friends. But it matters not where the dead sleep, whether on the shores of the blue Mediterranean or in the valleys of the land of the setting sun, the judgment-day will find all. To be the right man in the right place when alive is the great duty ; that done, no matter where the dead lie down. The tombstones in the cemetery are lettered red and black ; the first letter of a name or sentence being in red. Some of the graves are covered with cement, are raised some inches above the ground, and painted red, giving them the appear- ance of stained pine coffins. Many graves are thus made and covered with scallop shells laid in cement, giving them a rather singular appearance, and indicating that the deceased died at sea, or was a seafaring person. BEGGARS. Malaga is full of beggars, old and young, some with one arm, some with none ; some with one leg, some with none ; some with one eye, some with none. Some on crutches and others on none ; one man on his hands and knees, his feet sticking out behind him, with their soles turned up on a line with his hips, a poor, ragged, forlorn creature, smoking the irrepressible cigarette. Blind beggars peddle lottery tickets. The people of Malaga complimented us by staring at us at every turn ; if we halted to look at any thing, we were in- stantly surrounded by men, women, boys, and girls, and many 8 2 Papers from over the Water. of them appeared to be persons of the better class who ought to have been more polite. • As we rode through the streets, the shopkeepers would jump or rather fall over their counters — for your true Spanish shopman is too lazy to jump — and run to their doors to see us pass, and make such remarks as pleased them. Spanish people are not so polite as the French. Strangers are not thus rudely gazed at in France. The fish-dealers of Malaga carry their merchandise in broad, shallow baskets hanging to cords tied over their el- bows, their hands being placed on their hips for support, an awkward way of doing a very simple thing. Many of the streets of Malaga, like those in most of these old towns, are so narrow that people have to ensconce them- selves in doorways to get out of the way of a passing vehicle, but as only a few vehicles are used, they are not much troubled in this way. A DRY RIVER. There is a small river running through Malaga, or rather^ a place where there is a river when there is any water — which is but seldom, there having been but seven days' rain in eight months. The banks of this waterless stream are walled in through the city to protect the houses from the floods, for floods do sometimes come and carry off all before them. Now the river-bed is as dry and dusty as any dusty highway RAISIN GIRLS. As we were walking about the city we went into a raisin warehouse to see the girls pack the sweet fruit for foreign markets. We had scarcely entered before my companion, a good-looking New-York publisher, had a 'kerchief tied around his arm by one of the girls, who at the same time gave him A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers. 83 a bunch of raisins. These girls always play this trick on strangers for the purpose of getting a little money, as it would be considered insulting to return the 'kerchief to its owner without a piece of silver. After a brief sojourn at Malaga, we started for Granada, the Granada of Alhambra fame. A STAGE RIDE— CRUEL DRIVERS. We left Malaga before daylight of a cold morning, seated on the top of the stage, drawn by six mules, with two horses on the lead — the near horse being ridden by an active young Spaniard, who displayed great dexterity in mounting and dis- mounting and in managing the team. Besides this rider, we had a manager or conductor, who sat on the front seat of the diligence, (as the stage is called,) a young fellow to go on foot, where the road was ascending, to whip the mules and horses ; a guard by the side of the manager, armed to the teeth and feet, for he had pistols in his boot-legs, and another guard, armed with muskets, on the steps of the stage. Thus provided with riders and managers and whippers and guards, we bounded off up the dry river, around sharp corners, through crooked, narrow streets, and out of the city, and up the hills and over the mountain, having to climb sev- eral thousand feet to reach Granada. As we ascended the hills, daylight broke over their top, showing us Malaga and the Mediterranean at our feet and the snow-covered Sierra Nevadas in the north, and now commenced the most outrageous whipping of horses, pound- ing of mules, yelling of drivers, ever witnessed by poor mor- tals. No matter how hard the* poor beasts tugged — no mat- ter how much they puffed and blowed and sweated and strained — whack and pound, and pound and whack, and yell and scream, and kick and strike — first one, then another 84 Papers from over the Water. — all had to take such blows as poor beasts always take from human brutes. The off-horse seemed to be the favorite pounding-ground for the whipper on foot, who would steal up behind him, and, while the poor lame creature was straining every muscle, sweating at every pore, he would, with all his might, lay a great thick stick on his bare ribs, over his head, on his legs, and on his flanks — all the while the manager on the box yell- ing in concert with him on foot, making the hillsides echo with blows and howlings. Such shouts as " a-yah," " a-yah," " pastorah," " pastorah," " vallay-roastah," " vallay-roastah," "whoop," "whoop," in- termixed and sandwiched with Spanish curses and Spanish blows, were the music with which we wound our way up the hill. Spanish teamsters are the most cruel wretches that ever tormented working-cattle, just the creatures to worry bulls to death with bloodhounds, and murder old horses with pain- maddened bullocks, in a bull-ring. SINGULAR LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY. The scene around us, as we wound our way up the zigzag road, turning its abrupt curves on a lively gallop, as we al- ways did, no matter how dangerous, was one of singular beauty and grandeur. Beneath us, on the south, lay Malaga with its narrow streets, dry rivers, impudent people, and shallow bay, bounded by the blue sea, while on the east, the north, and west, rose up hill on hill, and back of these great, high mountains of rock, without a tree, or plant, or shrub to hide their stony naked- ness ; and back, far back of these, in the north and east the morning's sun was gilding the snow peaks of the Sierras. The hills nearest us were the most peculiar ones I ever saw ; Landscape and Scenery — Armed Guards. 85 some looking like huge ant-hills, overtopping each other, some like great pyramids, others like huge sugar-loaves; some, like monster animals with glossy coats, while between and all around them were ravines, gullies, and on their tops, up on their highest peaks, were the whitewashed cottages of the peasants, standing like so many watch-towers solitary and alone, not a green thing around them. Winding around these hills, mule paths are seen in all di- rections, leading from house to house and to the great high- way, twisting and crooked as serpents. In the spring and summer, when covered with crops, these hills must look beautiful, but now, being bare of verdure and all under cultivation, showing nothing but brown earth, not a blade of grass or green tree, they look barren and cheerless. On and up we went, hour after hour, till we passed the hills and began our descent toward the railway that was to take us to Granada. It is easier going down hill than up, and as the whipper could not run as fast as the poor beasts could travel down the hill, they were relieved from his merciless pounding. ARMED GUARDS. At regular intervals we passed armed guards patroling the road, two by two ; while men at work on the highway had their guns conveniently near them, and nearly every solitary traveler, whether on mule-back or on foot, had a musket, giving a stranger the impression that somebody was afraid. SPANISH PEASANTS. The peasants were generally poor-looking, meamy clad in trousers of goat and sheep skins, with hair and wool on, their feet wrapped in rags, tied with grass and straw strings, and a dir- ty blanket over their shoulders, the outer corner or portion 86 Papers from over the Water. always being carried on the left shoulder, never over the right. This is also the custom with those who wear cloaks. I have seen but two men in Spain wear the cloak or shawl in any other manner. Occasionally we met a few peasants decently clothed in cloth garments, trousers opened and laced on the outside of the leg, and reaching to the knee, the calf and ankle covered with white stockings, and sometimes these were protected from the saddle by neat leather leggings laced on the outside, making a very picturesque and pleasing costume.- SCARCITY OF FUEL. The people are bothered for fuel. True, they need but little; but, like the Irishman who boasted how much he could buy at home for sixpence, if he only had one, the trouble with the people is, to get the little needed ; and the women could be seen gathering up, and carrying home on their heads, such little twigs as they could find in the fields where a few scraggy grape-vines had been trimmed, or where a straggling olive-tree had dropped a decayed branch. The mode of cultivation is very rude, and their tools«Hicon- venient. Instead of breaking up their land with the plow, they use a short, crooked, hook-shaped tool, resembling a cooper's adze, with which they dig up the earth ; so short and crook- ed is it that, to get the edge or blade into the ground, the workman must bend over till his face almost touches the earth ; then, with a blow to drive the hook into the ground, and a jerk to turn it up, he makes out to fit the ground for the harrow and the scratching thing used as a plow, that be- ing the last tool used, instead of being the first. I saw forty men in a row, thus hooking up the earth. Such a thing as a shovel or spade, either of which would An Archbishop. 87 enable a man to do four times the work with great ease, I have not seen in Spain. This part of Spain eats a little pork, the raw material for which is seen in droves of black pigs, no other color being in favor. As I agree with Moses on the pork question, I can not tell whether the flesh of these colored individuals is good, bad, ro indifferent. Spanish farmers have no barns ; they need none in their dry climate. Where grain is raised, it is thrashed in the field, on a stone or brick-paved thrashing-floor, hundreds of which are seen between Malaga and Granada. They are from fifty to one hundred feet in diameter, simply a level, paved plateau. Before reaching. the railway, we passed through the old city of Lojar, founded by some Roman marauder before Christianity began. Over the door of a low wine-shop was a sign telling the thirsty that it was the Posado del Jesus Nazareno ; in other words, the Wine-Shop of Jesus of Naza- reth ! Rather a queer sign for Protestant eyes. AN ARCHBISHOP. We finally reached the rail, and sped on for Granada ; but before getting there, we halted at a little, decayed village, around the depot of which quite a crowd had collected to wit- ness the departure of the Archbishop of the province. His reverence was a fine-looking, old gentleman of some sixty years, who seemed to be greatly beloved by the people, many of whom had the pleasure of kissing his hand, which he kind- ly held out for any body and every body that could reach it As the cars started off, the crowd set up cheer on cheer for their spiritual leader, just as our American heretics would 88 Papers from over the Water. cheer a departing politician who had made a good speech. It seemed a strange way of showing respect for a religious dignitary; but as the affair was none of mine, I merely looked and wondered. In due time we reached Granada, and were met at the de- pot by a host of the Archbishop's followers, official and other- wise, all led by a dignitary bearing a long silver mace. He undertook to get things into shape, but it was of no use. Things would not get into any shape but the shape of confusion, turned upside down, and to add to the poor man's troubles, I was pushed in between him and his reverence the Arch- bishop, and thus we passed through the double rows of lookers-on, some admiring the Bishop and others staring at me; but at last we got out of the crowd, dignitary with mace, Yankee heretic, Archbishop, and all ; and I found my way to my hotel, under the very walls of the Alhambra, that monument of Moorish times and Moorish tastes, and leaving the moonbeams glistening its old walls, I fell asleep. XI. Granada — Moorish Buildings — Convicts in the Alhambra Grounds — Gypsies — Poor Old Monk — A Painted Cross — Sectarian Pictures — A Child's Funeral — Valencia Bull- Ring and Bankers — Barcelona — A Moor's Head in a Church — Farewell to Spain, etc. Perpignan, France, December, 1867. Books about the Alhambra create in the minds of readers anticipations not to be realized, especially by those who first visit the Alcazar at Seville. True, there is much to admire in and around the Alham- bra, but with all its present glory, telling of greater glory gone forever, it failed to impress me as I had anticipated. However, there is enough to interest the traveler and well repay the incon- venient journey to reach it; but I earnestly advise all who visit it, to do so before going to Seville. MOORISH TASTES. The cathedralized mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar at Se- ville, and the Alhambra at Granada tell wonderful tales of the vanquished Moor; speak impressively of his industry, tastes, habits, religion, luxury ; they talk eloquently, with their horse-shoe arches; their curiously cut marble and stone columns and pillars, their elaborate courts and baths, their 9