SPAIN AND MOROCCO BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE PACIFIC COAST SCENIC TOUR, $2.50. CHOPIN, AND OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS, $1.50. ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY, $2.00. SPAIN AND MOROCCO STUDIES IN LOCAL COLOR BY HENEY T. FINOK NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1891 COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY CHAELES SCRIBNER'S SONS TROWS PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK. Co MISS BESSIE A. -CUSHMAN 261233 PEEFAOE Is a tourist justified in writing a book on two vast countries like Spain and Morocco, after a flying visit of barely two months? That depends obvi- ously on his aim and his method. If he ventures to write about their political and social institutions after so brief an acquaintance, he doubtless deserves censure for presumption and hasty generalization. But if his aim is merely an attempt to transfer to the pages of a book an impression of some of the most striking samples of local color he came across, then he is actually better qualified, and more in the mood, for doing his work properly after a visit of two months than after a sojourn of two years ; for what is most novel, characteristic, and romantic in a foreign country strikes us most vividly at the be- ginning, and gradually loses its fascination as daily repetition makes it seem normal. viii PREFACE It is for this reason that the most vivid descrip- tions of Spain as of other countries have been written by authors foreign to the soil : the French Gautier, the Italian De Amicis, the English Ford, the American Irving ; while for the inner life of the people we must go to the literary mirror of the nov- elists and dramatists. By combining these inter- national sources of information one can get a toler- ably good idea of a foreign land without leaving his easy-chair before his grate ; and some are so fond of personal comfort that they prefer this method of travelling to the real thing, with its various annoy- ances, exposures, and privations. We Americans, however, have inherited so strong a travelling ten- dency from our ancestors, who were those of the Europeans in whom the migratory instinct was most powerfully developed, that we are rarely con- tented with merely imaginary travels in an eas} r - chair, but long to see everything with our own eyes. And when we have seen it, we are led by another irresistible impulse to write about it to our friends, to the newspapers, to the book publishers in order to convince others that it really is more interesting to take part in a banquet than to read the menu in the morning papers. PREFACE IX This impulse is my chief excuse for offering the public another book on a part of the globe that has been so much written about. And, after all, Spain and Morocco have not been nearly as much overrun by literary and other tourists as Italy and the East- ern parts of the North African coast, and there is, therefore, more unadulterated local color left in them. In Spanish cities the natives have not yet got to the point of posing all the time for tourists, and spreading their nets to catch their money ; and in Morocco, the only city in which tourist influ- ences are at all perceptible is Tangier. Tetuan, to which I have devoted a chapter, is not even de- scribed in the entertaining books on Morocco by Pierre Loti and De Amicis ; and reviewers or others who lack time to read the whole of my book will find this chapter, and the one entitled "A Romantic Episode," the freshest part of the territory covered by me. Those who wish to follow me in this last chapter will do well to procure a copy of Borrow's entertaining book on the " Gypsies of Spain." Travellers need not fear that because Spain still remains out of the beaten track of globe-trotters therefore they will suffer from lack of accommoda- tions and an excess of " local flavor " in the cookery. X PREFACE Good " Swiss " hotels are now to be found at all the larger places, the railroads are at least as good as those of Italy, there is no more danger from brigands than in that country, and the beggars are rather less than more importunate, being partly restrained by Castilian dignity and partly by the fact that they look on their business as a fine art, less dishonora- ble than work. The best time to visit Spain is in the spring and autumn months. H. T. F. NEW YOKE, March 31, 1891. CONTENTS I. FROM PARIS TO MADRID. PAGE Scenes at Bordeaux. Foreign Influences. Beer ver- sus Wine. A Chamber of Horrors. In the Pyrenees. Musical Tunnels. Don Quixote. Primitive Agricult- ure. A Day in Burgos. Beggars and Peasants 1 n. COSMOPOLITAN MADRID. Where "American " means South American. English and French Influences. The Heart of the City. Mule Cars. Climate and Scenery. Spanish Cafe's and Hotels. Breakfast and Dinner. Free Wine and Temperance. Turning Night into Day. The Promenade. A Folk Festival. Cowardly Bull-Fights Xll CONTENTS III. Two SKELETON CITIES. PAOE The Round Trip. A Toledo Boarding House. Nar- row Streets. A Deserted Cathedral. Stronghold of the Priests. A Country Railway Station. A Proud Beg- gar. Popularity of Bull - Fighters. Cordova and its Mosque. The Marble Forest. Moorish Relics. Water Carriers.. , 27 IV. LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE. Moorish and Christian Architecture. Ascending the Giralda. Cafes and Awning - covered Streets. Street Cars a Novelty. A Funeral Procession. A Remarkable Post Office. Historic Contrasts. Moorish Patios. Beauties of the Alcazar. Noisy Serenos. A Ballet in the Cathedral. Musical Students of Salamanca 41 V. SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ. The "Great River." Grazing Bulls. Shade a Lux- ury. Cactus Fences. A Cordial Welcome. Miles of CONTENTS Xlll PAGE Sherry Barrels. Spanish Wine and German Alcohol. In the Marshes. Pyramids of Salt. The Spanish Ven- ice. Seven Miles at Sea. White and Blue. Poor Food. Smugglers and Plundering Officials. The Span- ish Character. ., , 58 VI. THE " INFIDEL CITY" OP MOROCCO. v The China of the West. Sights in Tangier. The Moorish Quarter. The Market Place. Lepers in the Streets. A Snake Charmer. Coy Women. Jewesses. Arabic Money. The Prison and the Judge. A Moor- ish Cafe. Native Dancing Girls 75 VII. ON HORSEBACK TO TETUATT. * Getting a Soldier. Canaries and Flowers. A Unique Inn. A Mohammedan Rooster. African Donkeys. The Jewish Quarter. Why the Jews Emigrate to Amer- ica. Oriental Scenes. African Tea and Coffee. Ne- groes and Riffians 99 XIV CONTENTS vm. GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA. PAGE Back to Spain. England in Spain. A Protean Rock. The Fortifications. The Monkeys of Gibraltar. Con- victs and Soldiers. Across the Border Line. Climate and Scenery of Malaga. Crime and Poverty. Malaga Wine and Raisins 123 IX. GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA. From Malaga to Granada. An Andalusian Summer Resort. English Trees in Spain. The Alhambra To- day. Vandals and Visitors. The Court of Lions. Sun- set in the Sierra Nevada. Andalusian Funerals. The Truth Concerning Beggars. Gypsy Caves 137 X. A ROMANTIC EPISODE. A Stage Ride. Off the Beaten Track. Third-Class Best. The Mules and the Priest. A Suspicious Tavern. Saved by a Lie. A Spanish Thunderstorm. Fantas- tic Mud Architecture. Gypsy Cave Dwellings. Garlic and Raw Ham. Murcia. Street Music and Dancing. . . 157 CONTENTS XV XI. MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN. PAGE Palm Groves and Vineyards. Where "French." Wines are Raised. Alicante and Valencia Compared with Andalusian Cities. Ludicrous Tartanas. Old Roman Ruins. Barcelona. Local Pride versus Patriot- ism. Montserrat. A Magnificent Mountain View 169 SPAIN AKD MOEOOOO FROM PARIS TO MADRID Scenes at Bordeaux. Foreign Influences. Beer versus Wine. A Chamber of Horrors. In the Pyrenees. Musical Tunnels. Don Quixote. Primitive Agricult- ure. A Day in Burgos. Beggars and Peasants. IN going from New York to Spain one can plunge at once in medias res by taking one of the Mediter- ranean lines of steamers which call at Gibraltar on their way to Italy. But the Horatian maxim is not a good one for travellers to follow. No expert tour- ist would care to be placed abruptly on the top of Mont Blanc and then walk down, because what would have been, on going up, an endless series of picturesque surprises, gradually leading to a climax of sublimity, must, on going down, prove so many disappointing degrees of an anti-climax. Similarly, in making a tour of Spain, it would be foolish to be- gin with Seville and Granada, instead of approach- ing these centres of local color from the north, by 2' ' "SPAIN AND MOROCCO way of the semi-Spanish Bordeaux and the semi- French Madrid. And there is another cogent reason for taking this northern course ; it enables one to cross the ocean on one of the new and comfortable English, German, or French steamers. It is not so much the superior speed and safety of these new steamers that speak in their favor as the superior arrangements for ventilation. Going this way, more- over, tourists who have never been abroad will have the advantage of seeing something of England and France en route, which will enable them to form a better estimate of the present state of civilization in Spain by making interesting comparisons ; and from this point of view comparisons are not odious. As the subject of this book is Spain, we may pass over London and Paris in silence, and at once take the express train for Madrid via Bordeaux. On the way from Paris to Bordeaux there is very little to see, except an abundance of gardens and fields, and peasants busy in them, and herds of sheep, and women doing their washing in the creeks, and oc- casional groups of trees remarkable for their abun- dant supply of the parasitic mistletoe. Bordeaux, like most French cities, resembles a copy of Paris made by a second - rate artist. The surroundings are uninteresting, and it must be a tiresome place to live in. Theophile Gautier remarks that at Bordeaux FROM PARIS TO MADRID 3 Spanish influences begin to assert themselves, and he states that most of the street signs are in two languages. This may have been true fifty years ago, when he wrote his book on Spain, but to-day one sees few Spanish signs. Possibly the railroad has changed this by bringing nearer the influence of Paris to neutralize that of the Spanish boundary. But the women of Bordeaux perhaps do indicate the presence of Spanish blood. They are not only prettier but more graceful than the Parisiennes. And there is another kind of foreign influence vis- ible in Bordeaux, which ought to arouse the indig- nation of the chauvinists. Nothing strikes one more in the cafes of Paris than the yearly increasing num- ber of beer-drinkers. In Bordeaux, the home of French claret, this phenomenon appears still more incongruous. Of every five men I saw, four were drinking beer. Perhaps they have discovered that ordinarily there is more honesty in a glass of Ger- man beer than in a barrel of French wine. Yet the Bordeaux I drank at the hotel was both cheap and good. Bordeaux has at present 221,000 inhabitants. Its port admits vessels of 2,500 tons, and has room for 190 of them. The city has a fair picture gallery, a library of 170,000 volumes, and an old opera-house which is considered the largest and best in the country outside of Paris. But there was no per- 4 SPAIN AND MOROCCO formance on the evening when I was there. Per- haps the greatest curiosity is the tower beside the Church of St. Michel, with twenty-two bells near the top. There is nothing strange about this end of the tower or the bells, but the other end of it contains a chamber of horrors which is absolutely unique. After receiving half a franc, a young woman takes a lantern attached to the end of a long stick, and precedes the visitor down a flight of stairs. Here, below the tower, is a circular chamber, along the wall of which are placed, in an upright position, about thirty or forty mummies men, women, and children. They are not artificial mummies like those found in Egypt, but natural mummies, the soil be- neath this tower having once possessed the mysteri- ous chemical property (which it has now lost) of preserving human bodies in a state resembling leather. There they stand, exactly as Gautier de- scribed them half a century ago, with a gruesome realism worthy of Zola the general killed in a duel, the woman who died of cancer, the negro woman, the baby who looks like a rubber doll, the boy whose clenched fists and agonized expression indicate that he was buried alive, etc. The young woman de- scribed these mummies and touched them with her stick and her hand as if they were so many alligator skins on exhibition. As Bordeaux is not exactly a cool place in the FROM PARIS TO MADRID 5 middle of May, I was glad to get away and start for the Pyrenees. I expected that it would be cooler in the mountains, but was hardly prepared to find snow still lingering on some of the summits. The scenery in some places is grand, in others delight- fully picturesque, but not sufficiently so to tempt the tourist to come and see it for its own sake. The road is a well-built one, and the engineers had many unusual difficulties to overcome. A peculiar prop- erty of many of the numerous tunnels is that while the train passes through them they become musical instruments, emitting a deep, hollow sound like that produced by blowing into a large empty bottle. At Irun, the first Spanish station, cars have to be changed, the Spanish rails being of a different gauge from the French in order, it is supposed, to pre- vent any sudden invasion from France in case of war. Fontarabia, San Sebastian, and other inter- vening stations are passed, where one would like to linger for a few hours, but cannot unless he has un- limited time, as there is but a single train a day. Some amusement is afforded by observing, from the car-windows, the customs of the Spanish mountain peasants. Agriculture is still in that primitive con- dition in which women and cows are used as beasts of burden. I saw in one field a man pulling along a harrow, while two women held it down. We were now in the country of the Basques, 6 SPAIN AND MOROCCO whose language is so unique and BO difficult that, according to the legend, the devil gave it up in despair, having succeeded in mastering only three words in two years. I have since, however, met an English wine-merchant who says he can speak the Basque tolerably well, and that he does not consider it so difficult as Welsh. I had no opportunity to hear it spoken, as the only native in my coupe was a very intelligent and courteous Castilian, who gave me and a Frenchman a free lesson in Spanish, and much useful information. When I told him I had read "Don Quixote" twice, I could see how I rose in his estimation. He and the other Spaniards, he said, read it all the time ; and then, as if to show how much modern Spaniards have improved over their ancestors in their appreciation of good litera- ture, he dwelt with much emphasis on the fact that, although now his books are read in every country, Cervantes was a poor man emphasizing the pobre by striking his pocket repeatedly. Burgos, the first Spanish city in the north which no tourist can afford to miss, is, like most of these cities, reached at night. In the morning I was waked by a military band and procession passing beneath my window. The soldiers were dressed in loose red trousers and long blue coats. The band consisted of a dozen trumpeters, followed by a reg- ular brass band. The trumpeters first played alone, FROM PAEIS TO MAD KID 7 whereupon the band took up the strain, and finally they all united, which produced an excellent effect. I had read so much about Spanish beggars that when I went out into the street I expected to be imme- diately surrounded by a dozen of them ; but, to my surprise, I was not accosted half-a-dozen times during the whole day. I took a guide to show me the sights of the town, including the Cathedral, the ruins of the Cid's house, his bones, and other relics. On discharging him at lunch time I gave him three pesetas (sixty cents), expecting him to remonstrate and demand at least twice as much. But he was most profuse in his thanks, and appeared to be so impressed by my extravagant generosity that when he casually met me in the afternoon, he actually of- fered to devote a few more hours to me without extra charge. Obviously, Burgos was destined to overthrow all my preconceived notions regarding Spain. The lion of Burgos is, of course, the Cathedral, which differs from most Gothic cathedrals in having been actually finished, and differs, moreover, from other Spanish cathedrals in being more impressive from without than from within, although its effect would be immensely heightened if it stood on the top instead of at the bottom of the hill. The charm of the interior lies less in the architectural features than in the great profusion of marvellous sculptured 8 SPAIN AND MOROCCO ornaments, executed with extraordinary finish. Many of the houses in the city are painted, and in such gaudy colors that De Amicis exclaims, with pardonable exaggeration : " If there were an insane asylum for painters at Burgos, one would say that the city had been painted some day when its inmates had escaped/* But these lively colors do not con- ceal the fact that Burgos is a dead city, whose great- ness lies in the memories of the past. There did not appear to be enough people to fill the houses and the streets, although the day I spent there was a holiday, when many peasants in picturesque cos- tume visited the city. From the way they stared at me, I concluded that a stranger in those parts is indeed a stranger. II COSMOPOLITAN MADRID Where "American" means South American. English and French Influences. The Heart of the City. Mule Cars. Climate and Scenery. Spanish Cafe's and Hotels. Breakfast and Dinner. Free Wine and Temperance. Turning Night into Day. The Promenade. A Folk Festival. Cowardly Bull-Fights. SPAIN ought to be the favorite resort of those An- glomaniacs who turn up the ends of their trous- ers in New York or Boston when it rains in London. In Spain they would be inevitably taken for English- men even if they did not ape the latest London fads ; for the Spaniard makes no distinction be- tween Englishmen and North Americans, but labels them indiscriminately as " Ingleses." " American " here means South American, and if you tell the natives you are an American, they are apt to ex- press surprise that you do not speak Spanish as fluently as they do. This misunderstanding seems to extend even to South Americans who visit the " old country," and who not infrequently apply to the " American " Ministry in Madrid for assistance or advice. In view of the close relations between 10 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Spain and South America, all this seems natural enough ; but it is not flattering to one's national van- ity to be thus unceremoniously sponged out of ex- istence. What is particularly aggravating is to find a number of American inventions utilized in Spain and invariably placed to the credit of the " Ingleses." I was annoyed to find that street- cars are supposed to be an English invention ; but my indignation rose to fever heat when I entered a place marked "English Drinks " and found a genuine American soda-water fountain, an article positively unknown in England ! The word " Ingleses " meets the eye at every cor- ner in modern Madrid. There are for sale English hats, English cravats, English biscuits, English can- dles .and matches, etc. One also comes across Ger- man goods occasionally a lithographic establish- ment, or a Wagner opera in the window of a music store by the side of "Carmen;" but the English predominates, even over the French, which has always hitherto made its influence felt in Madrid. In fact the Spanish capital has never been a thor- oughly Spanish city. Though known to history al- most a thousand years, it remained a mere village until Charles V. made it his occasional residence, and Philip IL, in 1560, his capital ; and even then it did not grow with special rapidity, for of its 500,000 inhabitants, 300,000 have been added with- COSMOPOLITAN MADRID 11 in the last thirty years consequently a large part of the city has an essentially modern aspect, re- sembling other European cities. This is especially true of the heart of the city, the square known as the Puerta del Sol, where ten streets and all the tramway lines meet, and whence they diverge in different directions, like so many arteries. By tak- ing each of these tramway lines in succession one can get in a few hours a general impression of the city, at a most insignificant expense, for the fare is only two cents. The cars are moved by mules who are always urged to run, even up hill ; but in steep places an extra mule is attached. These tramways pass through some streets that are tortuous and narrow enough to remind one of southern Spain ; but as a rule the streets are wider than in the south- ern cities, and the houses higher, since there are no earthquakes to guard against in this part of Spain. The streets are very badly and roughly paved, and therefore exceedingly noisy, but otherwise they are kept in excellent condition, free from dust and filth ; the inhabitants having learned a lesson or two in hy- giene since the days of Charles III, whose efforts to clean the streets were opposed on sanitary grounds ! An inestimable boon to the city from this point of view is its abundant supply of water, with which the streets are sprinkled with hose at intervals suf- ficiently frequent to lay the dust. This water is 12 SPAIN AND MOROCCO brought to the city from the Guadarrama Moun- tains, a distance of thirty-two miles, by means of an aqueduct which cost nearly $25,000,000. The in- troduction of this water deprived Madrid of one of its most picturesque features, the water-carriers ; but it gave it instead not only cool and clean streets, but gardens and parks and good drinking-water. Three hundred years ago, we read, Madrid lay in the midst of dense forests, in which kings hunted boars and bears. Subsequently these trees were cut down, so that to-day the same regions are bleak and barren as a desert. But since the building of the new water-works, green oases of groves have sprung up again, and these, it is said, are already beginning to modify the climate, so that it is probable that if the present policy is continued, irrigation may re- store to Madrid its former pleasant climate, instead of its present one, which is described as consisting of nine months' winter and three months' hell. Shade is the one thing Madrid needs, and if this were sup- plied, its trying and sudden changes of temperat- ure would not be so great. The neighborhood of a range of mountains which even in summer are crowned with snow, renders the winter exceedingly cold, all the more since Madrid itself lies at an ele- vation of almost two thousand five hundred feet above the sea. But from an aesthetic point of view these mountains constitute one of the greatest COSMOPOLITAN MADRID 13 charms of the Spanish capital. In walking along the superheated streets of Madrid, nothing could be more delightful than the occasional glimpses one gets of these snowy summits, which make the tour- ist fancy himself in Innsbruck or Interlaken, instead of in sunny Spain. Altogether, I think the sur- roundings of Madrid have been too much depreci- ated by tourists and guide-book makers. From the neighborhood of the chapel of San Isidro, across the river, one overlooks a wide expanse of dreary but sublime plains, interrupted by hills, with the chapel which marks the exact centre of the Iberian Peninsula on one side, and the Snow Mountains on another. I know of few more picturesque situations for a capital ; and the rapid increase in the popula- tion of Madrid, together with the healthy appear- ance of the inhabitants, indicates that the climate is not quite as bad as its reputation. Returning to the Puerta del Sol, and subjecting it to a closer scrutiny, one cannot but wonder at first why it should be such a famous place. It is an ordinary square, such as may be found in almost any city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, and is not even the finest square in Madrid. Its impor- tance lies in the fact that, as already intimated, it is the heart of the city, and the centre of its traffic and amusements. The buildings which frame it in are the principal hotels in the city, and here, too, are 14 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO situated several of the principal cafes, in which the gossips discuss and the politicians settle the affairs of the nation. These cafes are very large, but not so elegant as the Parisian and Viennese cafes, nor is the coffee as good. But the chocolate is excellent, and still better are the various sherbets and com- pounds of lemon, sugar, and water, in the brewing of which the Spaniards exercise as much ingenuity as the "Ingleses," i.e., Americans, in their mixed drinks. There are no newspapers at the disposal of frequenters of the cafes, but they can buy the local sheets at the door, where there is generally a small news-stand. Most of these Spanish newspapers sell at one cent, and they contain very little of interest to foreigners. The Madrid cafes give one a vivid sense of the fact that the Spaniards are the most democratic na- tion in the world. In Paris or Vienna one hardly ever sees a peasant or an ill-dressed city loafer enter a cafe ; but in Madrid all classes meet in these places on equal terms, the peasant thinking he has as much claim to the title caballero as the poli- tician or officer. In this democratic atmosphere it strikes one as all the more odd that the guests should call the attention of the waiters by clapping their hands which is evidently a relic of Moorish days in Spain. The hotels in Madrid and other Spanish cities are COSMOPOLITAN MADEID 15 becoming modernized so rapidly that one has to go to the cheaper ones if he wishes to see what a Spanish fonda is like. In the larger hotels the menu is printed in French, and the cookery is French too. Certain dishes, peculiar to the country, continue, however, to give a local flavor to the meals, and the Spanish hours are always retained. For those rare and eccentric beings who get up before ten o'clock a desayuno is provided, consisting of chocolate or coffee, with bread and butter. It is a most unsat- isfactory way to begin the day, because it leaves one hungry all the forenoon, even if one can swallow the bread and butter. Spanish bread is, perhaps, not unwholesome, but it is unappetizing and heavy, and the crust is almost as hard as a cracker. Of the butter a little goes a great way. The Spaniards need what little pasturage they have for their bulls, so that cows are scarce, and goats have to be de- pended on for the breakfast requisites. Goafs-milk to me is an abomination, yet it is the only kind one can get here. It is quite unwholesome in summer to foreigners, and hardly less so to the natives, who have a not very charitable proverb to the effect that in March milk is good for yourself, in April for your brother, and in May for your mother-in-law. If the guide-books would condescend to mention this matter, many a tourist might be saved a few days of discomfort, such as I suffered from until an 16 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Englishman, who has long lived in the country, ad- vised me to drink my coffee without milk, or take chocolate, and quoted the proverb just referred to. Much more satisfactory are the other two meals which are served in this country the almuerzo or breakfast, and the comida or dinner. The latter is generally served as a table d'hote at a fixed hour, while the almuerzo must be a sore trial to cooks and waiters, since it lasts from ten to one o'clock. Every one drops in when he feels hungry, and or- ders, from a list of a dozen or twenty, three dishes, which are cooked to order in ample portions. The first course generally consists of eggs in some form or other, or some kind of sea-food, of which there is a great variety. Kidneys, beefsteak, and mutton cutlets are always on the list. For dessert there are cheese, oranges, cherries, strawberries (small but good), apricots, roasted almonds, etc. Strawberries are eaten with sugar and the juice of an orange squeezed over them, which I find better (i.e., with a Spanish orange) than the French way of adding claret, or the American of adding cream. At the table d'hote one occasionally, but not often, gets opportunity to taste the famous national dish, the puchero, of which De Amicis happily says that " it is, in regard to the culinary art, what an anthology is to literature : it is a little of everything and the best," There are slices of beef, ham, smoked sau- COSMOPOLITAN MADEID 17 sage, fowl, and other kinds of meat, and little piles of various kinds of vegetables heaped around the plate. The guest helps himself to one or all of these as he chooses. A decanter of red wine, Val de Pefias, is placed between every two plates, and if emptied is filled again, without charge. But it rarely is emptied unless two Frenchmen happen to get hold of the same bottle. Spaniards drink very little of their wine (although it is good and much purer than French wine), and tourists soon follow their example, whatever may be their habits at home. The climate of Spain is antagonistic to strong drink, and a temperance question does not exist here. Indeed, I do not think a Spaniard could be more astonished than by the question whether there was a temperance or total-abstinence movement in his country. I believe that not a few persons who would like to see the art treasures of Spain are deterred from visiting the country by their belief in the old myth that fastidious strangers must starve here, because everything is fried in unpalatable oil and seasoned with garlic. This apprehension is to-day as ground- less as the fear oj meeting with highwaymen. Since the Government placed the country under the protection of the " civil guards," who are to be seen in couples wherever needed, Spain is as safe as any country in the world to travel in ; and since 2 18 SPAIN AND MOROCCO French or rather Swiss methods have been intro- duced in the hotels, garlic and bad oil have become memories of the past, and one fares as well in Spanish hotels, at least in the cities, as anywhere, while the charges are remarkably reasonable, rarely exceeding $2 to $3 a day, everything included, $2.50 being the average, at the best hotels. Nor are Spanish trains so slow or so inconvenient in their hours as they have been represented by tourists who know of no other way of spicing their letters than by exaggeration. The fast train from Paris to southern Spain necessarily traverses part of the way at night. But one sees the Pyrenees scenery, and subsequently, by selecting the proper trains, one can traverse the whole of Spain by daylight. The only real ground for complaint which tourists have is that the natives stubbornly refuse to modify their climate and their habits to suit the conven- ience of strangers. It is embarrassing, on arriving in Madrid, to find that, roughly speaking, the in- habitants sleep in the daytime, and live and move about at night. Now, a tourist wants to see both the city and its inhabitants. But the city can only be seen comfortably from 8 to. 10 A.M., before the sun becomes unbearable, and the inhabitants can only be seen from 7 P.M. to 2 A.M. The only way out of the dilemma is to " do as the Romans do" : take a two-hour nap, or siesta, in the afternoon ; COSMOPOLITAN MADRID 19 then you can get along with six hours' sleep at night, and rise early to see the sights. The afternoon is of no use any way, as the heat is too enervating to allow any mental or physical exertion. But the Spaniards, not content with their siesta, devote the golden morning hours also to sleep, and herein, I am convinced, lies the main cause of Spanish de- cadence. The five hours from 8 A.M. to 1 P.M. are worth more for solid work of any kind than all the other nineteen hours, and these precious hours the Spaniards waste, partly in sleep, partly by an untimely, heavy meal at eleven or twelve. No amount of night work can ever atone for the hours thus sacrificed. " Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde." Yet it cannot be denied that there is a peculiar fascination in Spanish night life ; and a nation which lives more for pleasure than for business can- not be blamed for its customs in this respect. Sun- worship could never have originated in Spain. The most delightful thing in Spain is the wonderfully blue sky ; the most detestable thing, the sun that causes it. No Spaniard would ever have sold hi3 shadow to the devil, like the German, Peter Schlemihl, for such a paltry thing as a purse of gold which never became empty ; for, much as he likes gold, he likes shade more. A " sombra " seat in the bull ring costs twice as much as a seat in the sun, 20 SPAIN AND MOROCCO and in walking about during the daytime along their tortuous streets, the natives constantly cross and recross them in order to utilize every yard of shade. No sooner has the sun set than the deserted streets become populous, and everybody hastens to the Prado, or public promenade, to enjoy the cool and fragrant breezes and greet his friends. All who can afford it and many who ought to spend their scant income in a more sensible way come out in their carriages. No other city in the world can turn out so many teams of Andalusian horses, as proud and graceful as their masters and mistresses ; but nowhere, on the other hand, would one see the ignoble mule team amid such a procession of aristo- cratic carriages. The mule may be a noble animal, but, by the side of the Andalusian horse, he looks very uncouth and utilitarian. Yet those who sit in the carriage behind the two mules appear not a bit less vain than the occupants of a four-horse carriage, and doubtless consider themselves a degree higher in the social scale than those who walk along the Prado. On Sundays and holidays there is such a dense throng of pedestrians that one can move along but slowly which is just what you want, since there is much to see. I saw more feminine beauty in one week in Madrid than I ever saw any- where else in four weeks. And it is pleasant to COSMOPOLITAN MADEID 21 notice that there seems to be a reaction in favor of the mantilla, at least in the middle classes, whose heads are not so often disfigured as ten years ago by the hideous Parisian hats. The procession and public reception in the Prado is a bit of genuine Spanish local color in cos- mopolitan Madrid. To see more local color one has only to go to Toledo Street and the older quarters of the city to find it in abundance. I was so fortunate as to be in Madrid on May 15, when the principal festival of the year is celebrated by the lower classes and the peasants who come from neighboring villages. It is the festival of San Isidro, the patron saint of Madrid, a bishop of the seventh century, who is also by some considered the inventor of harmony in music. I had no idea where the festival was to be held, but simply went into the Puerta del Sol and followed the crowd, in the afternoon. Thus I got across the Manzanares, in the meadow along the bank of which, for a mile or so, a most interesting sight presented itself. The road was lined with men and women offering their "agua fresca" from large jugs. The street-cars, 'busses, and miscellaneous vehicles (some with aa many as six mules) emptied their crowded cargoes, and soon the meadow was like an ant-hill, except that ants are usually in mourning and do not wear such bright colors as the peasant women and the 22 SPAIN AND MOROCCO soldiers in this crowd. There were innumerable booths for eating and drinking, carrousels, and other common features of folk festivals. More unique were the family groups scattered every- where, eating their slices of cold meat, salad, red- pepper, and oranges. Many had their wine in the same old pig-skins of which one reads in Don Quixote. Every hundred yards there was some sort of primitive music often simply a drum to the rhythm of which the young men and women danced with an expression of intense delight. Indeed, the whole crowd wore a look of indifference to the past and future, and determination to make the most of the passing moment. A greater number of happy faces I never saw together in my life, nor a more good-natured crowd. Further up the hill were long rows of booths with pottery, toys for children, cakes, etc. ; and, further up still was the saint's Chapel, into which all crowded, to kiss a silver image held by a priest, to receive a printed picture of the saint, and to drop a copper. These are some of the ways in which the people of Madrid amuse themselves. There is another way concerning which, with many apologies, I wish to say a few words. Mr. O'Shea, in his very unro- mantic book called "Romantic Spain," says he met a colleague of the press at Madrid, a representative of a great English paper, who told him that almost COSMOPOLITAN MADRID 23 the only instructions he had received on leaving London were not to write anything of bull-fighting, or "hackneyed rubbish of that sort." No doubt, since the day when Byron gave his rhymed de- scription of the bull-fight he saw in Cadiz, this sort of thing has been overdone. But it may still be permissible to record a few of the thoughts which occurred to me during the bull-fight I saw at Ma- drid. Six bulls were to be killed ; I left after the third had been butchered, and his carcass dragged out by the mules equally disgusted and bored; and nothing could ever induce me to attend an- other ; not only because of its brutal and cruel character, but because it is the most unsportsman- like and cowardly spectacle I have ever seen. It is useless to argue against bull -fights with Spaniards on the ground that they are cruel. The priests keep them in ignorance of modern science, and their theology denies that animals have souls and feelings like men ; hence they cannot be ex- pected to sympathize with animals ; the priests are partly responsible for the bull-fights, as for many other things that are deplorable in Spain of to- day and the past. But there is another way in which a Spaniard might be induced to mend his ways : by appealing to his highly-developed sense of honor and making it perfectly clear to him that bull -fighting as at present conducted is cowardly 24 SPAIN AND MOROCCO and unsportsmanlike. The treatment of the poor horses, in the first place, is cowardly in the extreme. They are blindfolded, and therefore advance fear- lessly until the bull rips up their bellies, so that often the entrails drop out and the horse steps on them. It appeared to me that this sight pleased the audi- ences at bull-fights more than anything else. In the telegrams published regarding these fights, however brief, it is always stated how many horses were killed, obviously because that awakens pleasant memories in the reader's mind. There is no neces- sity for thus torturing the horses ; by simply pro- tecting their bellies with strong canvas they might be saved. The excuse given is that the horses are old and worthless. Quite so : the same reason that is given by those savages who abandon their wives and parents when they have become useless to them. And these are the Spaniards whose proudest dis- tinction is to be called a caballero or a "horse- man ! " Equally cowardly is the treatment of the bull. A dozen skilled men armed with lances and swords combine to murder a beast who is naturally one of the stupidest of animals, and who is still more blinded by the rage into which he is goaded. No man who has a sense of true sport would engage with a dozen other men against a brute that is so stupid as to expend its fury a hundred times in COSMOPOLITAN MADRID 25 succession on a piece of red cloth, ignoring the man who holds it. Such a performance is considered an exhibition of skill and daring. A Frenchman, The- ophile Gautier, was so demoralized by his first bull- fight, that he exclaimed, in his ignorance of the true state of affairs, that the first moment, when the es- pada faces the bull with his sword, "is worth all the dramas of Shakespeare ; in a few seconds, one of the two actors will be dead. Will it be the man or the bull ? " This seems very dramatic, but it is rubbish. There is no doubt whatever about the result. In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand the bull will be killed. Men who know have told me that it is only once in two or three years that an accident happens to a bull-fighter. These fellows are experts whose apparent risks are not risks at all. It is a sort of billiard game with the bull's horns ; and everyone knows what marvellous skill one can require by devoting one's self to one special thing. Besides, when the bull finally faces the espada all the vitality has been taken out of him by the prelim- inary skirmishes and the slaughter of horses, and the espada, unless he is a fool, runs no risk at all. There was a time when bull-fighting was an exhibi- tion of courage the time when knightly amateurs took part in it ; but now that it is done by special- ists it is simply butchery ; and butchery of the most unsportsmanlike kind, because the bull, however 26 SPAIN AND MOROCCO brave, never has a chance to save his life ; he is inevitably killed, unless he is a coward and refuses to fight from the beginning. I do not believe that the Spanish rabble is natu- rally more cruel than the rabble of other countries. If bull-fights likes these in Madrid were given in London, Berlin, or New York they would not fail to draw equally large audiences ; as witness the enor- mous popularity of the disgusting exhibitions of Sullivan and other pugilists. The only difference is that in England, Germany, and America there is sufficient refinement among people of influence to discountenance bull-fights. In Spain, too, among the better classes, there is a growing feeling against these barbarous exhibitions, but they have not suffi- cient influence to forbid them. The women, be it said to their credit, rarely attend these fights. At those I saw in Madrid there were two hundred men to every woman ; and at Seville and elsewhere I re- peatedly went to the bull ring toward the closing of a performance to watch the people come out. As a rule there was not one woman to every three hundred men in those degraded audiences. Ill TWO SKELETON CITIES The Round Trip. A Toledo Boarding House. Narrow Streets. A Deserted Cathedral. Stronghold of the Priests. A Country Railway Station. A Proud Beg- gar. Popularity of Bull Fighters. Cordova and its Mosque. The Marble Forest. Moorish Relics. Water Carriers. SPAIN has been hitherto outside of the regular cur- rent of tourist travel in Europe, but every year adds to the number of sight-seers. Apart from the in- teresting sights which it contains, it offers unusual facilities for a " round trip," for, with few exceptions, the most attractive points are grouped in a circle along the principal lines of railway and steamboat travel. Starting at Burgos, the tourist whose time is limited to six or eight weeks proceeds to Valla- dolid and Madrid ; thence to Toledo, Cordova, Se- ville, and Cadiz, thence by steamer to Tangier, Gibraltar, and Malaga ; thence to Granada, Valencia, and Barcelona, and finally, to complete the circle, back to France via Saragossa or Barcelona. Village life may be easily studied by stopping over at some 28 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO of the smaller stations ; and even this is hardly nec- essary, so far as the populace is concerned, for on the religious holidays, which are as numerous as Sundays, all the villagers and peasants visit the cities in their best clothes, ready to be inspected and to inspect you in turn. The three cities at which a stop of at least a week each should be made are Madrid, Seville, and Gra- nada ; and if the tour is made in spring, Seville should be visited before Granada, because it is a much warmer place, many Sevillans, in fact, going to Granada in summer for fresh air. I am not of the opinion of those who advise tourists to waste as little time as possible in Madrid. The capital has fewer architectural and antiquarian attractions than such places as Toledo and Cordova, but it has the finest picture gallery one of the best in Europe, full of gems the streets are more animated, both day and night, than elsewhere ; the promenades more frequented, and the women not inferior in beauty to those in Andalusia. As Toledo, though visited by all foreigners, has not a single tolerable hotel, tourists are in the habit of going there in the morning from Madrid, and returning in the evening, which leaves them only about four hours to see the place and its wonders. It is much better to take the evening train to Tole- do, and spend the night at a casa de huespedes, or TWO SKELETON CITIES 29 boarding-house, kept by two ancient dames, where one can find a tolerable amount of comfort and fair meals. We chose this plan, and did not regret it, although the noise in the narrow streets, where a whisper sounds like a shout and a footstep like a horse's gallop, precluded the idea of sleep which would have been murdered anyhow by what seemed to be bloodthirsty inquisitors transformed by me- tempsychosis into their entomological equivalents. The only serious disadvantage of arriving at Toledo in the evening is that one misses the general sight of the hill-town on approaching it ; but this can be easily compensated for by ascending the hill across the river on the following day, and thence enjoying the bird's-eye view of this fortress city, which was strong enough at one time to withstand a four year's siege, as one can readily believe on noting its com- manding, inaccessible site on a hill, surrounded by high walls and by the river Tagus, which sweeps around it in a semicircular curve. The omnibus from the station, after crossing the old bridge and passing through the Puerta del Sol, once the only entrance to the city, plunges reck- lessly into a maze of streets so narrow that there is hardly room for the few people in them to pass by without being ground to powder, and one begins to speculate what would happen if it should meet an- other wagon. But this fear is idle, for the railway 30 SPAIN AND MOROCCO omnibus is the only vehicle in this town of 20,000 inhabitants, traffic being carried on chiefly with donkeys and mules, as elsewhere in Spain, and as it- doubtless was at the time when Toledo was the capital of the country and had ten times as many inhabitants as at present. The houses remain, but in a more or less dilapidated state, and what one sees is merely " the skeleton of the ancient city, the necropolis of three empires." The flesh and blood, the people, are gone, never to return, and I actually believe there are to-day more dogs than human be- ings in Toledo. One need only walk for ten minutes along these narrow, tortuous streets to realize the absurdity of the sentimental complaints that the capital should have been transferred from Toledo to Madrid. Such streets, doubtless, are of great ad- vantage in so far as they keep out the scorching rays of the sun, but they would be wofully inadequate to sustain the traffic of a modern capital, all the more as most of them run up and down hill. As, moreover, the scenery at Toledo is by no means equal to that at Madrid, while the climate is quite as trying as scorching in summer and as cold in winter and the streets more dusty, owing to the scarcity of water, it seems time to protest against the habitual scolding of tourists for devoting a whole week to Madrid and only a day to Toledo. All that the ordinary tourist cares for in Toledo the cathe- TWO SKELETON CITIES 31 % dral, the Alcazar, the gates and churches, the re- mains of the Roman circus can be seen in a day, and some little time will even perhaps remain for visiting the place where the famous "Toledo blades" are manufactured for the army, at the rate of about 3,000 a year ; they are, however, made of imported metal, and said to be inferior to the ancient original article. As I am not writing a guide-book, I shall not attempt to describe the famous Toledo Cathedral, all the more as I find in my own experience that the most vivid descriptions of architectural monuments make but a confused impression on the mind until one has seen them with his own eyes. How much there is to be seen in this cathedral may be inferred from the fact that Seiior Parro, author of a work of 1,550 pages on Toledo, devotes as many as 745 to the cathedral. Special admirers of ecclesiastic sculpture and architectural details have here a week's study and enjoyment laid out for them. The priests thor- oughly understood the art of blending artistic with religious emotions, and thereby increasing their power over the populace very much as Wagner in- tensifies the interest in his music by means of his poetry and scenic accessories. Nevertheless, times have changed, and the power of the priests in Spain is not what it was. The churches are attended by mere handfuls of people, mostly women, or a few 32 SPAIN AND MOROCCO men of the lower classes ; the monasteries have been suppressed ; and no outward respect is shown to the priests no one bows or runs to kiss their hand as formerly ; while there is much scoffing and " irreverence " among all classes. Indeed, compe- tent observers agree that the pendulum has swung from the extreme of bigotry and fanaticism to the opposite extreme of scepticism and indifference. Toledo, which was once the chief seat of the Inqui- sition, is still the great stronghold of the priesthood. Here lives the primate, second in dignity to the king alone ; but he no longer has the power to im- pose a fine of two thousand maravedis on kings for not attending service. Could he at present impose proportional fines on all Spanish " Catholics " who neglect to attend service, he would be the richest man in the world. Toledo is such a labyrinthine, dreary, desolate place, its deserted streets so suggestive of Pompeii, that, notwithstanding its numerous art treasures, I fancy that few tourists are sorry to leave it after see- ing the principal attractions. It is customary to return to Madrid, and take the train the following day for Cordova, but it is possible to save a day by going from Toledo to Castillejos, and waiting there about five hours for the night train to Cordova. I chose this plan, and thus had an opportunity to see what sort of a life people lead at a small station TWO SKELETON CITIES 33 consisting of two or three houses. A very quiet life it is, the only " events " being the arrival of the trains, which are rather frequent. One freight train contained several carloads of soldiers, while on sev- eral other cars were a dozen peculiarly shaped high wooden boxes, through the chinks in which small boys peeped with an expression of awe. I thought that possibly a band of robbers had been caught and boxed, and that the soldiers were their escort, but on following the example of the boys I found that the boxes contained Andalusian bulls for the ring in Madrid. Small a station as Castillejos is, it has its two well-armed and well-dressed civil guards and its beggar. The beggar accosted me only once, and when I paid no attention to him, he stalked away proudly, lit a cigarette, and paid no further attention to me. Afterward I saw him at the buffet buying his supper. I followed his example, and succeeded in securing some hard-boiled eggs, bread, and a bottle of wine. At eleven o'clock the train arrived, and when I awoke in the morning, I was in Andalusia, the " gar- den of Spain," famed for its fragrant orange-groves, its wine, women, and song, its dances, its gayety, its festivals, its Moorish architecture, its Murillos, living and painted, and its perennial blue sky. After fasting so long among the arid, treeless hills of northern Spain, it was a perfect picnic for the eyes 34 SPAIN AND MOROCCO to feast once more on green meadows, groups of trees, and a tropical luxuriance of vegetation. On entering the station, we found it filled with an eagerly expectant crowd, and a brass band struck up a lively tune. The crowd and the music were intended for a group of bull-fighters, who soon emerged from a first-class car, and were at once greeted by the authorities and surrounded by ad- mirers. Subsequently I repeatedly found a group of people waiting in front of their hotel to catch a glimpse of them. These bull fighters, although the most vulgar-looking and brutal persons to be seen in Spain, and although despised by refined people, are worshipped by the masses with an ardor hardly credible unless one has witnessed its mani- festations with his own eyes. If you ask a boy what he intends to be when he grows up, he will instantly reply, "Un torero." Biographies of these heroes are sold in front of the bull-rings, and there is hardly a window in the town where their photographs are not exposed for sale, together with pictures of the fights in every stage pictures which also adorn fans and handkerchiefs. At first sight Cordova does not belie its Andalu- sian title, by right of which it ought to be animated and gayly decked out with trees and flowers. The hotel omnibus passes a fine public garden and a number of new houses in the outskirts. But as TWO SKELETON CITIES 35 soon as the city proper is entered, the tourist be- comes aware that Cordova is still what Gautier called it half a century ago a city of whose body "nothing remains but the bleached and calcined skeleton." We have entered another skeleton city a term the more applicable from the prevalent habit of whitewashing all the walls and all the houses. The same narrow, dark, tortuous streets as in Toledo, and equally deserted. Mr. Augustus Hare says of these streets that " they have a more thoroughly African appearance than those of any other town in Spain. One threads one's way be- tween interminable whitewashed walls, their scanty windows guarded by heavy iron bars, over a pebbly pavement so rough that it is like the bed of a tor- rent littered with straw from the burdens of in- numerable donkeys." This is quite graphic ; but what shall we say of the impudence of Theophile Gautier, who wrote exactly the same thing in the same words many years before Hare ? " Cor- doue a 1'aspect plus africain que toute autre ville d'Andalousie ; ses rues, ou plut6t ses ru- elles, dont le pave tumultueux ressemble au lit de torrents a sec, toutes jonchees de la paille courte qui s'echappe de la charge des anes, n'ont rien qui rappelle les moaurs et les habitudes de 1'Europe. L'on y marche entre d'interminables murailles couleur de craie, aux rares fenetres, treil- 36 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO lissees de grilles et de barreaux," etc. I find in Gautier's otherwise most charming " Voyage en Es- pagne " numerous plagiarisms of this sort from the works of his successors, who, however, have duly punished him by rarely, if ever, mentioning his name. Washington Irving was another sinner like Gautier, having surreptitiously anticipated many things to be found as original matter in subsequent tourist and guide-books. All of which argues a sad state of literary morality in the good old times. Having an invincible prejudice against profes- sional guides (except when limited time makes them a necessary evil), I studied the map of Cordova, and resolved to find the great mosque alone. But in five minutes I was as hopelessly lost as if I had de- scended in a balloon into the midst of an Alaskan forest. When I began to ask my way, it was amus- ing to note the perplexed expression on the faces of the Cordovese. They knew exactly where I wanted to go, but how to direct me was the puzzle. It was " no go." Finally, I gave a boy a copper to take me to a place where I could buy a pocket compass. I might have had him take me to the mosque quite as well, but my spirit was aroused, and I resolved to find that mosque alone, if it took all summer. With map and compass in hand it was easy enough to walk straight up to it, and in the same manner I found my way about the city subse- TWO SKELETON CITIES 37 quently as infallibly as if I had been a Cunarder in mid-Atlantic bound for New York or Queenstown. And the mosque was quite worth the trouble I had taken to find it. Notwithstanding that much of its glory is gone (thanks to the stupidity of the bishop who marred the central portion by building a church in it, thereby reducing the number of col- umns from 1,400 to 860, and partly destroying its sublime proportions), it made a deeper impression on me than any building I had ever seen, except- ing the Doges' Palace in Venice. It was a sensible idea on the part of the Moorish builders to seek to attain sublimity by lateral expansion and distance, by length and width, rather than by height (as in Gothic cathedrals), and by the superabundance of columns. The one disadvantage of the Gothic style is, that height can only be appreciated amid great physical discomfort and straining of the neck mus- cles, while the beauties of the ceiling can only be appreciated with the aid of an opera-glass. The Cordovan Mosque is quite low, but if the original ceiling remained, and the central columns were restored, I am sure this would not be felt as a dis- advantage. I cannot refrain from once more referring to Theophile Gautier and his influences. Concerning the impression made by this many-columned mosque, he says : " You appear to be walking 38 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO about in a roofed forest rather than in a building ; whichever direction you turn to, your eye strays along rows of columns which cross each other and lengthen out endlessly, like marble trees that have risen spontaneously from the soil" Possibly Gautier was not the first who compared these col- umns to a marble forest, but I suspect he was, and the comparison did not strike me as very pertinent on the spot. Nevertheless, it was eagerly taken up by all subsequent writers, and underwent a regular evolution in specificality, so to speak. De Amicis, for instance, says : " Imagine a forest, fancy yourself in the thickest portion of it, and that you can see nothing but the trunks of trees. So, in this mosque, on whatever side you look, the eye loses itself among the columns. It is a forest of marble whose con- fines one cannot discover." And Mr. E. E. Hale caps the climax by saying regarding this "forest of marble" : "It is not hard to persuade yourself that you hear the wind, as you might in a forest at home." The costliness of the "marble forest," and the other evidences of wealth in the mosque, though but a shadow of what they were once, almost con- vince one that there is little exaggeration in the as- sertion of the old Arabian historian, that Cordova, about a thousand years ago, was the most impor- tant city in Europe, containing 1,000,000 inhabit- TWO SKELETON CITIES 39 ants, 600 inns, 300 mosques, and 900 baths. It has now about 50,000 inhabitants and one public bath. And this change is due to the influence of the priests, who expelled the industrious Moors and Jews, and compelled them to seek new homes in Granada and Morocco. The influence of the Moors, however, has remained in the character of the streets and the houses, with their cool inner courts or pa- tios. In a walled town, where space is very valu- able, only a great inherited love of gardens, foun- tains, flowers, and fresh air could induce the inhabi- tants to sacrifice so much space to these patios. I was fortunate in arriving at Cordova during its principal festival week, even though I had to pay double price at the hotel, and to consider myself lucky in getting a room at all. The festival con- sisted in illumination with colored lights of the ala- meda, or public promenade, both sides of which were lined with booths containing chiefly toys for children. At one end were some cheap shows and some restaurants, in front of which a kind of crul- lers were fried in olive-oil. Behind the booths was a donkey market, but the purchasers seemed to be scarce, being probably frightened away by the frightful braying choruses ; and toward evening the roads were crowded with the unsold donkeys return* ing home. The seats along the alameda (for which two cents is charged) were all occupied, and a dense 40 SPAIN AND MOROCCO throng of pedestrians made locomotion difficult for any one but the water-carriers, more numerous here than anywhere else. They keep their water cool by having it in porous jugs, the evaporation from which keeps the water at a pleasant temperature, and obviates the necessity of using microbe-infected and dyspepsia-breeding ice. Spain has much to learn and adopt from other nations, but it has some im- provements to offer in return ; and among the fore- most are the Andalusian water jugs, and the cool and cosey patios, which serve as reception-rooms in the morning and evening. IV LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE Moorish and Christian Architecture. Ascending the Giral- da. Cafes and Awning-covered Streets. Street Cars a Novelty. A Funeral Procession. A Remarkable Post Office. Historic Contrasts. Moorish Patios. Beauties of the Alcazar. Noisy Serenos. A Ballet in the Ca- thedral. Musical Students of Salamanca. SPAIN is doubtless the only country in the world where one can on the same day within six hours admire and study two of the greatest masterpieces of Christian and Mohammedan architecture. I left the Cordova Mosque one morning at ten o'clock for the railway station, and at four o'clock I was in the Seville Cathedral, thus having an excellent op- portunity for comparison. In speaking of the Cor- dovan Mosque I ventured to question the apposite- ness of Gautier's comparison of the interior of that building to a marble forest. The coro which was unwisely built in the centre of the old mosque in 1523, militates against such an impression, and the red and yellow arches which were put up in 1713 in place of the original ornamented Moorish ceiling, are extremely unsuggestive of forest trees and their 42 SPAIN AND MOROCCO branches. To my mind this comparison to a forest seemed much more natural in the Seville Cathedral. Vast height, dim light, gloom and awe are the char- acteristics of a primitive forest, and all these, absent in Cordova, are to be found in the Cathedral of Sev- ille. But if this Cathedral be compared to a petri- fied forest, it must be to a forest of giant trees, such as those in the Yosemite Valley. There is some- thing supremely massive, colossal, mammoth, in the huge, high pillars of this building something which makes one wonder, as do the pyramids of Egypt, that human might should have sufficed to place these monstrous stones in an upright position, and in symmetrical rows. The Cordovan pillars are mere walking-sticks in comparison, and the ceiling which they support only one-quarter as high as that in the Seville Cathedral, which is the largest and its tower the highest in Spain. So vast is its in- terior space that, notwithstanding its 93 windows, a dim, mysterious twilight pervades every part all day long. Yet, although Seville is the warmest and sunniest place in Spain, and this Cathedral its cool- est spot, the flock of worshippers is very small indeed. The number of priests who officiate at the 30 chapels and 82 altars has been reduced from 133 to 97 ; but it seems as if to-day one-quarter that number would. suffice for all needful purposes. After seeing the Cathedral, the most important LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 43 thing to do is to ascend its tower, the famous Gi- ralda, and get a bird's-eye view of the city and its surroundings. A glance suffices to show why Seville is such a warm place. The immediate surroundings are flat and marshy, and the encircling mountains, although they make a fine picture, are too far off to benefit the city with their breezes. But, as the roofs of the houses are mostly flat and of a Moorish character, the inhabitants can, on warm nights, wrap themselves in sheets and sleep in the open air. The belfry, near the top of the Giralda, has twenty-two bells, of which Ford remarks that " they are almost treated as persons, being all duly baptized, before they are suspended, with a peculiar oil, and they are christened after saints." Nevertheless they are sub- jected to the undignified treatment of being tied bottom side up a somewhat risky arrangement, for if one of the ropes should break, a visitor standing underneath might suddenly find himself reduced to the alternative of following his head down into the street, or doing without one. The Spaniards have a peculiar way of ringing their church bells. They not only ring them as fast as fire bells, but, instead of moving them simply to and fro, they make them turn complete somersaults. The bell-ringers have to look out for their heads, under these circumstances, and I was told that a few years ago one of them waa fatally injured. 44 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Although the Giralda is 350 feet in height, it is so easy to ascend that one arrives at the top before one is aware, and without the slightest fatigue or neces- sity of pausing. The ascent has even been made with horses, for there are no steps, but a series of moderately inclined planes winding along the sides of the tower an arrangement which ought to be adopted in other towers. It is not till one leaves Seville, and notes how the Cathedral, with its tower, looms up more and more above the houses, that one realizes the height of the Giralda. In the city itself the streets are so tortuous and narrow that one con- stantly loses sight of it, so that it does not serve so much as a useful guide-post as one might imagine and hope. Nevertheless, after Toledo and Cordova, some of the streets of Seville appear neither narrow nor labyrinthian, but almost modern and metropoli- tan. The most interesting of them is the Calle de Sierpes, which no wagon is allowed to enter, and which is lined with cafes, club-houses, and elegant shops. Many of the shops are semi-Moorish ; for although you do not see a turbaned Mohammedan squatting on his hind legs in a small booth open to the street, where customers, without leaving the street, bargain for the goods stored round about him, you do see no end of shops which are practically in the street, the whole front wall (consisting of doors) being removed in the daytime, so that the LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 45 clerks can look up and down the street without get- ting from behind the counters. To the clerks, no less than the customers, it is a great boon to be thus all day long in the open air instead of being cooped up, as elsewhere, in close, hot, stuffy rooms. Addi- tional comfort and coolness is provided by stretch- ing awnings across some of the streets, so that one can walk comfortably even in the early afternoon. But as this is done only in the principal streets, few of the natives go out at that hour. Everybody takes his siesta either in the house or in the street, and one has to take care in turning a corner not to stumble across men, or sometimes even women, fast asleep in a shady spot. Even the street-cars, which were built a few years ago by foreign enterprise, of course are empty at that hour, though otherwise a paying investment. To an American it is difficult to realize a city which once had 400,000 inhab- itants, and still has 135,000, covering a very large territory, only just making up its mind to have means of cheap and rapid transit. But time is not money in Spain. If it were, the Spaniards would all be rich, for they have plenty of it. What surprised me most in the streets of Seville was that even toward evening and at night they were by no means as crowded as I had been led to expect, nor was the evening promenade at all well attended, except on Sunday. Yet it is the orthodox 46 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO thing for tourists who come to Seville from Cordova to contrast the bustle and animation of the first- named city with the tomb-like solitude of Cordova. I appealed to a resident Englishman for an explana- tion, and he said that the writers had not misrepre- sented the state of affairs, but that Seville was for the moment in an apathetic, comatose condition, because quite recently two leading banks, contain- ing the savings of thousands, had failed. "How- ever," he added, "the Andalusian never indulges long in any feeling, whether depressed or joyous, and in a few weeks Seville will probably be as gay as ever." Nevertheless, various indications led me to believe that Seville will never again be what it was in the times of the famous "Barber," even though its commercial activity is said to have been greatly Stimulated by the improvements in the Guadalquivir which have made Seville accessible to the largest steamers. My attention having been attracted by some pe- culiarly lugubrious music, I followed it to its source and came across a funeral procession. Its head was formed by a dozen boys bearing long candles. Then came the coffin, carried by four men whose heads and bodies were buried under the cloth which covered the coffin, leaving only their legs visible, so that at the first moment I actually mistook the group for a huge animal. Priests followed, arrayed in LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 47 black robes with red stripes, and the rear was brought up by the music, consisting of an oboe and two bassoons a peculiarly melancholy combination accompanying the solemn chant of the priests. The procession stopped in front of a house, and, with the bystanders, formed a group around the coffin, which was opened and the features of the corpse once more exposed to daylight. The crowd then dispersed, and the ecclesiastics returned to their haunts. Half an hour later I came across a different pro- cession, but quite as characteristic of the city and the country. A cow, gayly decked with flowers, was slowly led along the street by a girl, the rear being brought up by a blind man blowing a flageo- let and beating a drum incessantly. A crowd of children followed, of course, and on inquiry I dis- covered that the cow was to be raffled for, anyone paying a trifle and taking his chances. In the course of ten days I saw several of these processions in Seville. The lottery is, next to bull-fights, the great passion of the Spaniards. The public lotteries are innumerable and on a large scale. If you sit in a cafe near a window, you will be annoyed every five minutes by a man or woman offering lottery tickets. They sell them at cost price, but expect a small gratuity. As Span- iards, at least the lower classes, rarely read a news- 48 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO paper, the prizes are not printed in them, but are loudly proclaimed in the street by men who make a business of it, and who also expect a gratuity if they give you welcome news. But perhaps the most peculiar thing about Spanish lotteries is that the numbers immediately preceding or following the great prizes are also winning numbers. For instance, in one case where the highest prize was 200,000 pesetas, and five others were 40,000 each, the contiguous numbers above and below were worth 5,000 each. This is shrewd philosophy, for it is well known that the bitterest disappointment comes to those who get within one number of winning. The lottery tickets are not sold in cigar-stores, as in most other countries, but in special shops which are almost as numerous as wine houses. To atone for this, the cigar-stores have a monopoly of a kind which strikes every foreigner as by far the oddest thing in Spain : the sale of postage-stamps. You cannot get a stamp at a Spanish post-office for love or money. You get it at the nearest cigar-store, where also you will find a letter-box, and nowhere else except at the post-office. A strange story was told me by an English chaplain at Malaga. Casu- ally strolling into a cafe one day, he noticed a num- ber of letters stuck upon the wall, and to his su- preme astonishment found that several of them were for him. On investigating the matter, he discov- LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 49 ered that a postal clerk had entered into an ar- rangement with the cafetier to send him letters ad- dressed to foreigners, the understanding being that the latter probably would pay him a fee for his trou- ble, or, at any rate, frequent the cafe* ! The chaplain referred the matter to the Consul, and the little game was stopped. Among the letters in the cafe* were several addressed to persons known to the chaplain, who had left weeks before. The moral would seem to be, don't address your letters poste restante, but send them to the Consul or the banker named in your letter of credit. Kegistered letters appear to be safe, on the other hand, but the extraordinary precautions taken to make them safe appear like an accusation of gen- eral dishonesty. If you receive a registered letter, you have to return the envelope with the signature of your receipt. This is simple enough. The diffi- culty lies in knowing how to send off a registered letter. I shall never forget my first experience in that line. When I handed in my letter it was re- turned, with the remark that it must be sealed. I took it to a cigar-store and had a seal put on it, but again it was handed back. " There must be five seals," said the clerk. Not wishing to expose my ignorance to the black-eyed beauty in the cigar- store, I went to a stationer's and bought a bar of sealing-wax, but, having no stamp, used a coin in- 4 60 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO stead. Once more the letter was returned: "The stamps on the sealing-wax must be all the same." In despair I took it back to the black-eyed girl and explained my difficulties. She put on the five seals, and then at last the letter was accepted. The most absurd part of the story is, that although Sev- ille swarms with foreigners in spring, there are no directions regarding this matter posted up any- where. Indeed, not even the time (three or four hours a day) when the post-office is open, is an- nounced at the window. Obviously, the Spaniards are not much in need of postal facilities, and for a very good reason, since not much more than twenty-five per cent, of the population can write and read. However, one can afford to put up with such little annoyances at Seville, which richly compensates for them by its novel sights and inexhaustible art treas- ures. Seville is a city of historic contrasts. Hav- ing been successively a Phcenician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Moorish, and Catholic city, it preserves traces and monuments of almost all these dynasties. At the suburb Italica, the birthplace of three Roman emperors, the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre, with the various subterranean divisions for the gladiators and the wild beasts, may still be seen. The city itself is Moorish in the arrangement of the streets and the houses, and the Alcazar is the best pre- LOCAL COLOK IN SEVILLE 51 served specimen of Moorish architecture in Spain. Adjoining it is the Christian Cathedral. In the streets the mediaeval donkey grazes the modern horse-car. In the windows of the book-stores the latest French novels, and photographs of pictures from the last Salon, are exposed side by side with the omnipresent Murillos ; and at the hotel sits an Englishman in a Moorish patio reading the latest number of the London Times. These Moorish patios are, of all the sights in Seville, the most in- teresting. One finds imperfect specimens of them further north, at Cordova and even Toledo, and not a few also at Malaga and Granada, and else- where, but Seville is the place where the delightful Moorish courtyard is seen at its best. There are patios of all sizes and degrees of splendor, but always patios, in every house, and one never tires of peeping into them on walking along the streets. This is easily done, for even if the iron gate which leads to the patio is not open, one can look through the interstices left by its elegantly wrought and painted configurations. In the finest of these square courtyards the floor is of marble, and the walls in- laid with elegant mosaic. In the centre is a flower- plot, or a fountain surrounded with flowers, or stat- uary. Marble columns on each side support the inside projection of the upper story, which is some times provided with windows, while the patio itself 52 SPAIN AND MOROCCO is open above to the sky at night, and covered in the daytime with an awning, so that it serves at all hours as a refrigerator for the house and its inhab- itants. Here the Sevillans hold their morning and afternoon receptions, and here they breathe the fresh air, which accounts for the plump figures and the sparkling eyes of the women. On warm afternoons it is eight to ten degrees cooler in the patio and the adjoining rooms than in the upper story of the house ; a fact which tourists will do well to remem- ber. I see no reason why these patios should not be universally introduced in warm climates, and I believe they will be as soon as some one sets the fashion. I met a California millionaire who vowed he was going to build a house in the Moorish style, and who was busy at the time getting the prices of some elegant tiles, which he pronounced very cheap. By far the most sumptuous patios are of course to be found in the Alcazar. I must confess that I was more impressed and thrilled by the marvels of this palace than subsequently by the Alhambra it- self, for the simple reason that the Alcazar, having BO long been used as a royal residence, is in a better state of preservation. The charms of this palace are bewildering, and can no more be described in words than the love duo from "Tristan und Isolde." I always thought Schelling's comparison of archi- tecture to "frozen music" rather far-fetched, un- LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 53 til the moment I saw this Alcazar. Here, as in an opera, one can yield himself merely to the general impression of the situation, or else one can pursue the details attentively, and ever discover new beau- ties and unsuspected relationships. The variety of patterns on the walls and ceilings is incredible, and more than kaleidoscopic. There are geometric fig- ures, stars, leaves, flowers, lions, birds, and creat- ures half fish, half plant, besides Arabic letters and proverbs, and all these as subtly interwoven and endlessly varied as the harmonies in a modern orchestral score. And the instrumentation of all this the coloring is truly Wagnerian. No two rooms are alike, a different tint prevailing in each red in one, blue, green, or gold in others. And most beautiful of all are the black squares, whose glazed surface is iridescent, reflecting all the colors of the rainbow. At the moment I felt as if I would rather be the creator or owner of this building than of all the Gothic cathedrals I had ever seen. A delightful solitude reigns throughout the Alcazar. I saw no living being except an artist copying a ceil- ing. The wind was whistling dismally through the empty spaces, and I could not help thinking how these sounds, so romantic to a modern visitor, must have harassed and haunted Don Pedro the Cruel after he had caused his brother to be murdered in one of these apartments. 54 SPAIN AND MOROCCO The Sevillans are obviously proud of their Moor- ish patios and their belongings, for they still build their new houses in the same style. The leading hotel has two fine patios, with a fish-pond, flowers, and fountain, where one can always find a comfort- able temperature. At night the perfume in this patio is so rich and overpowering that one almost hesitates to admit the air from it into one's bed- room. But it must be done, for to open the win- dow looking on the street is to bid good-by to all chances of sleep, not only on account of the belated revellers who wend their way home noisily at in- tervals till four or five o'clock, but chiefly on account of the watchman, or sereno. This lugubrious in- dividual, armed with a spear and a lantern, peram- bulates the streets all night long, endowed with a threefold function, his first duty being to preserve order, his second to open doors, his third to sing out the hour of the night. As in Berlin, so in Spanish cities, persons living in apnrtment-houses carry no street-door keys, but are dependent at night for admission on the watchman, who appears with his bunch of keys and unlocks the door, after he has heard them yell " Sereno " at the top of their voice. This is bad enough, but his song is worse. Every half-hour he sings his Ave Maria at every corner, fortissimo, winding up by stating the condition of the weather. As this is almost always " serene " in LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 55 Spain, his name is plausibly accounted for. Possibly an audacious philologist might also trace the word serenade to this source. Notwithstanding the sereno nuisance, I prolonged my stay in Seville to ten days in order to see what is considered its most interesting festival, the Corpus Christi procession. Great preparations are made for this, and thousands flock to see it from the country and neighboring towns. Five days before the great day, workmen began to put awnings over all the streets and squares along which the proces- sion was to pass, and chairs were placed in every available corner, with flowers in the background. In the cathedral the columns were wrapped in gor- geous velvet cloths, and in every part of the town, even in the remotest suburbs, women and children were busy the day before the festival in sweeping the streets clean. The procession itself was hardly worth seeing, its principal feature being a number of images of saints carried along by priests on their shoulders. Much more interesting was it, after see- ing the slow procession, to get ahead of it some distance and observe the Andalusians, in all their glory, who lined the whole way, sitting on rows of chairs on both sides, and occupying all the windows and balconies, some of which were gayly draped like opera boxes. It was a beauty show such as I had never before seen ; and hardly less interesting was 56 SPAIN AND MOROCCO the sight of the soldiers who were placed along the whole route in two lines, either on foot or mounted on Andalusian steeds, proud as their masters and graceful as the senoritas who looked on them with their big black eyes. Before the procession had formed I witnessed the strangest incident of the Festival the ballet in the Cathedral. This was not so startling as its name implies. A dozen beautiful boys went through various simple evolutions, singing an air which sounded like a Mozart minuet, and accompanied by flutes and violins. Twice, in the concluding meas- ures, the castanets were used, and these, associated with dance halls, did have an odd effect in the echo- ing cathedral. The musical effect of the perform- ance was delicious, and none but the most bigoted could have taken offence at the dancing, which was, after all, but a slight exaggeration of the proces- sions that can be witnessed in other cathedrals. In the evening another and quite unexpected musical treat awaited me, which was also a delight- ful bit of local color. As we were at dinner at the Hotel de Madrid, enter suddenly a dozen students in the old-fashioned Salamanca costume, with pict- uresque cloaks and hats. They marched around the table twice, playing a gay march, and then took seats arranged for them on one side, where they played for us over an hour. The band comprised LOCAL COLOR IN SEVILLE 57 violins, flutes, a 'cello, tambourine, and several guitars, and the effect was very Spanish and very enjoyable. When dessert came on the table they marched out again, and subsequently played another hour in the picturesque patio, being assisted by a lovely young girl, who played the castanets and danced with bewitching grace. And, strange to say, no collection was taken up. The host had evi- dently arranged all this as a treat for his guests. Was there ever host so generous ? After all, Spain remains the land of romance. SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ The "Great River. "Grazing Bulls. Shade a Luxury. Cactus Fences. A Cordial Welcome. Miles of Sherry Barrels. Spanish Wine and German Alcohol. In the Marshes. Pyramids of Salt. The Spanish Venice. Seven Miles at Sea. White and Blue. Poor Food. Smugglers and Plundering Officials. The Spanish Char- acter. IN going from Seville to Cadiz, tourists have the choice between rail and river. A careless perusal of De Amicis's lively description of his journey down the Guadalquivir might induce one to try the steam- boat ; but on closer examination it becomes ap- parent that De Amicis derived less amusement from the river scenery than from a company of Italian comedians who happened to be aboard. Moreover, the well-posted Ford admits that an actual ac- quaintance with the far-famed Guadalquivir dispels any illusion which the native poets have conjured up: "This 'pellucid river* is in sober reality as dull and dirty as the Thames at Sheerness. The turbid stream slowly eats its way through an alluvial level given up to herds of cattle and aquatic fowls ,* SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 59 nothing can be more dreary ; white sails occasionally enliven the silent waters, but no villages cheer the desert steppes." At Seville itself nothing appears more uninviting than this narrow, dirty, yellow stream, which both Moors and gypsies united in calling " the great river " a name which it might have better deserved in the Eoman period, when Spain had more forests and this river was navigable as far as Cordova. Under these circumstances, I re- solved to follow the implied advice of the practical Englishman rather than that of the imaginative Italian, and took the railway ; nor did I regret it, for, although there are neither forests nor mountains between Seville and Cadiz, there is more to see that is novel than between any other two Spanish cities. The immediate surroundings of Seville are green with gardens and vineyards, and olive and orange orchards. But the higher vegetation soon disappears, and the ground becomes level and marshy. Here, then, are bred those huge mosquitoes which pester one so in Seville, and which would win the prize in a musical and knightly contest with their Jersey and Long Island cousins. Still, there is plenty of grass, and every ten minutes may be seen a flock of sheep, or herds of cattle and horses. Here the Andalusian bull grazes peacefully, without dreaming of molest- ing the poor horses not far away. He is, in fact, ordinarily a harmless enough animal, and often, in- 60 SPAIN AND MOROCCO deed, has to be tormented with sharp sticks and acids before he gets up enough ferocity to go into the ring in becoming style. I could not help think- ing that these animals must suffer from the fierce sun and the sultry evaporations from the marshy soils pn summer afternoons. As far as the eye can reach, there is not a tree, nor even a brush to afford any shade. I now began to understand why the peasants, in coming to Seville or resting anywhere, take no pains to put their donkeys in the shade, but leave them in the broiling sun. It seemed cruel, but those animals, bred in the treeless plains, obviously do not know what shade is, and might possibly shy at it the first time. Some of them, perhaps, might have come near one of those wooden boxes, ten feet high and five or six in width, which are the homes of the solitary men placed along the line of the railway at intervals. No fences are to be seen anywhere, but a hedge of cactus follows the road on both sides, its object being apparently to prevent the cattle from getting on the track. These hedgerows of prickly pear, with their yellow flowers, make lovely fences, nor do they, like other fences, need any spikes and broken glass on the top to pre- vent small boys from climbing over them. They are quite able to take care of themselves. For miles and miles these are the only scenic features, excepting an occasional straw hut, a pool SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 61 of stagnant water, or a wheat field which would seem rather big to one who has never been in our Western States. When the train stopped at the first station, everybody rushed to the windows, at- tracted by an extraordinary chaos of vociferation. I thought an accident had happened, but the mystery was soon explained. Our train was filled with soldiers returning home, and at every stopping- place their relatives had assembled to receive them. To judge by the truly southern warmth of the re- ceptions, they must have been absent a long time, for the mothers actually shrieked with delight. Other nations may be equally affectionate, but cer- tainly they give no such evidence of it in public as these Spanish villagers and peasants did. Fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and sweethearts fairly fought for the soldiers as soon as they had stepped off the cars, and almost tore their uniforms from their bodies in their eagerness to get the first kiss and the first embrace. Finally, as the train moved away, they were seen dragging their hero homeward, the father's arm round the neck, the mother's round the waist, and the younger women carrying off his baggage triumphantly. The same scenes were enacted at the other stations, and I thus had an opportunity of seeing these country people such as one ordinarily gets only at the religious festivals. 62 SPAIN AND MOROCCO As we approached Jerez, the home of the wine whose name the English have corrupted into Sherry, because that is easier to pronounce than Hdreth, the landscape, by a curious coincidence, became some- what rolling, as in England, though without Eng- land's chief ornament a treeless England. The vineyards immediately about Jerez are, however, flat, and I was told that the vines need no irriga- tion. I stopped over between two trains in order to see one or two of the famous bodegas, which are the only remarkable sights in this city of almost sixty thousand inhabitants, many of whom are Eng- lish or semi-English. The extraordinary ignorance of the ordinary Spaniard may be inferred from the fact that I had to ask three persons before I suc- ceeded in being directed to the largest of these wine-firms the industry to which Jerez owes its name and prosperity ! In this establishment seven hundred workmen are employed at some seasons, everything being made on the premises, including the barrels. The wood for these barrels, however, has to be imported from America. Spain has only a quarter as much forest as Prussia, and less than half as much as Italy or France, and this scarcity of wood has for a long time seriously injured the or- dinary Spanish wine trade, for the smaller wine- growers, being unable to purchase expensive casks, have been obliged to keep their wine in pig-skins, SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 63 which, with the pitch that is used to stop up cracks, gives it such a disagreeable flavor that, although the wine is intrinsically good especially the Yal de Penas one can hardly drink it until one has be- come reconciled to that gastronomic dissonance. Mr. E. E. Hale remarks in his "Seven Spanish Cities," that " the guide-books and other superficial critics say that if more care were taken, the rough Spanish vin da pays might be much better than it is. But for me, I take such criticisms with a good deal of caution. I think the people on the ground are apt to understand their own business better than travellers do." But the fact is that they do not, as a rule, understand their business, although lately some of the larger growers have followed the exam- ple of foreigners, who came and made excellent wines in Spain by excluding unripe and inferior berries and discarding the pig-skins. The ordinary Spaniard does not object to the pitch flavor of his vin ordinaire, simply because his gastronomic taste is not educated. As the famous Spanish novelist, Mateo Aleman, remarked two centuries and a half ago, these people "eat everything, as it were, with a garlic-tooth. There are but few of them in whom the senses arrive at any perfection. . . . They are like dogs that devour the meat without tasting ; or like the ostrich, that can swallow a red- hot horse-shoe." It is the same with olive-oil as 64 SPAIN AND MOROCCO with wine. An English merchant at Seville told me that Spanish olive-oil would be the best in the world if they knew how to make it. As it is, it has, like the ordinary wine, such a disagreeable flavor that most of it is unfit to export, and at the best restau- rants in Spain a bottle of French olive-oil is kept os- tentatiously on the table for fastidious customers. Obviously, education would be wealth to the Span- iards. But they lack not only knowledge but capi- tal and enterprise, and the result is that foreigners are at present invading Spain en masse, and work- ing the rich mines in the mountains and the olive- groves and vineyards. To return for a moment to sherry that wine does not suffer from slovenly manufacture and pig- skin storage. It has another enemy, more serious even than ignorance, and that is adulteration. There has never been a better illustration of the fact that honesty is the best policy in the long run than the fate of the sherry industry. Everybody knows what fortunes have been made in sherry ; but those times seem to be past. Mr. Ingraham, formerly American Consul at Cadiz, printed in one of his reports the translation of a letter written by the Mayor of Jerez to the Civil Governor of the province of Cadiz. The Mayor complains that the condition of the wine trade in Jerez could not be more deplorable than it is. Capital bears no inter- SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 65 est, the vineyards have no value, and the town has become poor. Twenty years ago eighty to ninety francs were paid per hectolitre, now only thirteen to fourteen. The key to the change thus deplored by the Mayor lies in the fact that some firms began to import German alcohol, and to manufacture a vile, cheap compound, which has injured the popularity of the wine and limited the sale of genuine sherry, which cannot be sold at any such price. Good sherry is still to be had I tasted some excellent samples but there is little market for it. The ex- tent to which the adulteration of Spanish wine is carried on may be inferred from the fact that twelve million dollars' worth of German alcohol (made of potatoes and beets) is imported into Spain annually, of which Cadiz alone (the port of Jerez) got $880,- 000 in 1886 ! Thus the change from honest sherry to the rank compound of villainous stuffs usually served up under that name has benefited no one but the German distillers. It would seem as if a remedy for this state of affairs might be found. After leaving Jerez, with its (literally) miles of sherry barrels piled up in rows like cannon-balls, the proximity of the seacoast soon makes itself evident in the saline marshes and the breezes redolent of salt water and seaweeds. At Seville one sees at almost every street corner a man or woman with a basket filled with moderately sized lobster-like 5 66 SPAIK AND MOROCCO claws, which are eaten with great avidity by the Spaniards of all classes. And no wonder, for they are excellent much better than real lobsters, and almost as delicate in flavor as the " Oder Krebse " one gets in Berlin, or the Oregon crawfish. I often wondered what became of the bodies of these can- grejos, but could not find anything about them in the guide-books. But everything in its place ! In speaking of the salt marshes, just referred to, Ford says : "In these marshes and along the coast breed innumerable small crabs, cangrejos, whose fore-claws are delicious and form titbits for the Andalusian ichthyophile. These bocas de la Ixla are torn off from the living animal, who is then turned adrift that the claws may grow again." Here is another opening for a Spanish Henry Bergh. Still, it is a nice question of casuistry whether the cangrejos would rather be robbed of their claws only, or be killed. It would doubtless be a lingering death, involving more suffering than the tearing out of the claws, and with this sophistry the epicure may ease his conscience. Presently, a unique sight meets the eye of the tourist. As far as the eye can reach the landscape is picturesquely studded with small, snow-white pyra- mids. Around each pyramid the ground is divided into square plots, like flower-beds, but dug out and filled with salt water, which is conducted thither by SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 67 numerous narrow canals. That explains the mys- tery. The pyramids are solid salt, and the shallow beds are the pans in which the salt water evaporates. The salt crystallizes first along the edges of the pans, and looks very pretty like a border of fresh- fallen snow. At Cadiz I was informed that ordi- narily it takes ten or twelve days for one of these pans to evaporate, but when the African wind called the levanter blows, three or four days suffice. As the dry, blustering levanter is greatly disliked in Cadiz, we have here a literal confirmation of the saying that it is an ill wind that blows no one good. The importance and extent of this salt industry may be inferred from the fact that it supports a whole town of 27,000 souls, San Fernando, ten miles from Cadiz. And now, on approaching " fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea," it is absolutely incumbent on the tourist to take his eye away from the window and turn it inward to indulge in historical remin- iscences and enjoy the thrills of archaic emotion. For is he not coming to a city which was founded by Hercules himself, eleven hundred years before Christ, and which is, therefore, half as old as the world itself, according to the Hebrew legends ? a city which supplied the ancient Roman epicures and amusement-seekers with salt-fish and dancing-girls ; to which the ancient philosophers resorted to study 68 SPAIN AND MOROCCO the curious phenomena of the tides, and which was long considered the end of the world. It seems strange that it never occurred to anyone so far as I know to call Cadiz the Spanish Ven- ice. Like Venice, it lies at sea seven miles at sea ; and had the inhabitants of Cadiz wished it, they might easily have had canals instead of streets, for most of the streets begin and end at the ocean. Coming straight from the ultra-Moorish Seville, with its narrow, winding streets, one finds it strange that the neighboring Cadiz, which also belonged to the Moors more than five hundred years, should have so much wider and straighter streets, and few or no patios or other Moorish characteristics. The explanation lies in the fact that almost the whole town was newly laid out and built after the English bombardment in 1596. Cadiz being practically on an island, is much cooler than Seville indeed, many Seville families come here to spend the sum- mer so that Moorish patios are not essential for comfort ; and one might say that their places are taken by the curious miradores, or turrets on the tops of the houses, whence the natives can enjoy the sea-breezes and a magnificent view at the same time. The blue of the sky and the sea is no deeper at Cadiz than at Malaga or at Marseilles, and the reason, therefore, why it is always so much empha- sized in descriptions of Cadiz is because it obtrudes SHEREYLAND AND CADIZ 69 itself so much more vividly than elsewhere, owing to the entire absence of smoke in the air, and to the glaring white of the houses, which are constantly being whitewashed. It is difficult to understand the motive of this eternal, monotonous whitewash- ing in Spain. Religious fanaticism probably had something to do with it the desire to hide and des- troy the Moorish ornaments on the buildings. Or else the habit originated in the mistaken notion that because black absorbs the heat of the sun, white ought to afford a grateful relief. No doubt white is cool, but in large masses it is the most dazzling and intolerable of all hues. If snow ever fell in south- ern Spain, the inhabitants might be able to infer from the phenomenon of snow-blindness that the glare of white houses is very injurious to the eyes ; or, if they were better educated, the same conclu- sion would be forced on them by the remarkable frequency of weakness or diseases of the eye. For- eigners, too, at Cadiz, are very apt to suffer from headache, which can be readily traced to the nerves of the eye. Why not " paint the town " if not "red," at any rate a sombre blue or green? One never hears of such a thing as "grass-blindness." But perhaps yellow, the complementary color of the circumambient blue, would be the most poetic tint for Cadiz. It is the custom of tourists to hurry through 70 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Cadiz, making it a mere station on their way to Gibraltar or Tangier. From the mere sightseer's point of view this may be justifiable, for the cathe- dral is not a remarkable specimen of architecture, and of works of art there is only one that engages the attention of tourists the last Murillo, in the former convent of San Francisco, in painting which the artist fell from the scaffolding and sustained fatal injuries. It must also be admitted that Cadiz is one of the noisiest cities in Spain at all hours of the day and night except between one and five A.M., the street-criers atoning by their abundance and loudness for the absence of the sereno's song, which has been suppressed, notwithstanding the opposition of the lower classes, who have no clocks to tell them the hour of the night. But, aside from these draw- backs, Cadiz is one of the pleasantest places in Spain to spend a week in. It is a very clean city, the beg- gar nuisance hardly exists, the society is the most cultivated in Spain outside of Madrid and Barce- lona, the women the most graceful in Andalusia, and the Alameda, where everybody promenades in the evening, the coolest and the finest in Spain, com- manding lovely views of the ocean, which is by no means always as blue as it is painted, but has its zones of dark green and purplish, according to the light. And in a walk along the sea-walls surround- ing Cadiz, one meets with many unique sights, such SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 71 as the large mercantile storehouses, sailors from all parts of the world, including a sprinkling of negroes and Moors, betokening the neighborhood of Africa, troops of soldiers always walking prestissimo, and, finally, the numerous fishermen sitting unprotected in the broiling sun, which would be insufferable were it not for the sea-breeze. The fish they catch are of the most delicious flavor, especially when one gets them hot at the numerous small fish kit- chens opening on the street, where they are fried in large kettles of olive-oil. I tried these on the recom- mendation of the German Consul, who said that, however objectionable the original flavor of Spanish olive-oil might be, this flavor entirely disappears after a few dozen fish have been fried in it. It then becomes as clear as water, and the fish fried in it are as crisp and as delicate in flavor as the best chef could make them. But that, the Consul added, was about the only thing fit to eat one could get in Cadiz, and as for himself, he chiefly lived on im- ported canned meats. Almost all the fresh meat is brought from Africa (Tangier), and is by no means of superior quality, while its price is so enhanced by the duty levied on all edibles at the' city gates that only the wealthy can afford to eat meat a chicken, for instance, costing 75 cents in the market. This tax on the most necessary articles of food, which makes living so much more expensive to all 72 SPAIN AND MOROCCO classes (not only in Spain, but in some other Euro- pean countries), has always seemed to me protection- ism gone mad, and made me look upon smugglers as the only upholders of natural law and human rights against tyrannic and idiotic legislation. Sit- ting on a bench in front of the hotel one day, a man accosted me in a mysterious manner, and offered me a splendid lot of fine cigars at a ridiculous price. Of course he was a smuggler, and I was almost sorry that I don't smoke. The worst of these im- posts is that neither the city nor the state derives any considerable benefit from them. Most of the money goes into the private pockets of the officials. Southern Spain is overrun with smugglers, whose trade is the safest one in the world, for they simply share their plunder with the officials and go scot- free wherever they please. An incident illustrating their methods was told me on good authority. There is an old law according to which a foreign vessel that enters the harbor of Cadiz without hav- ing undergone certain formalities of registering at a certain place, can be seized and fined to the amount of ten times the duty that would be levied on the goods. One day a German vessel entered the har- bor without having complied with these regulations, through no fault of the captain's, but because the official could not be found. Although the vessel was not bound for Cadiz, but simply stopped there SHERRYLAND AND CADIZ 73 to wait for telegraphic orders before proceeding on its course, it was seized, and the captain was in- formed that he would have to pay a fine of over a hundred thousand. He appealed to the consul, who immediately went to Madrid, where he found that the officials, from lowest to highest, had already figured out what would be their share of the plunder ; and if he had not been backed up by the embassy of his country, and assumed a threat- ening attitude, his mission would have been a failure. From time immemorial it has been the custom in Spain for every one, beginning with kings and ec- clesiastics, to plunder and cheat subordinates, who in turn could hardly avoid following their example ; and thus the thing has gone on from one end of the chain to the other. My own experiences having been entirely of an unofficial nature, my impres- sions of the Spaniards are almost all of a favorable nature, except in the matter of bull-fights and occa- sional instances of stupendous ignorance which the present methods of education are hardly likely to modify ; for I am told that even in Cadiz, cultivated by constant contact with foreigners, boys of six and of sixteen years are put into the same classes, study- ing the same lessons. Yet the kernel of the Span- ish people is sound and sweet. I have travelled a good deal, but nowhere have I found well-dressed 74 SPAIN AND MOROCCO people so willing to go several blocks out of their way to direct you to a certain street. They con- stantly do it, however much you may protest. At the popular festivals, again, the most perfect order prevails, and one never sees so much as an angry look. The peasants are extremely polite and good- natured. When I left Seville, a score of peasants waited until a dozen foreigners had bought their tickets, although they were at the window first. I do not think such a thing would happen anywhere else, nor do I believe that, in the same class, one could witness in any other country a little idyllic scene such as I saw one day in Seville. I was sit- ting in the Alameda, and on the opposite side of the bench sat a nurse with a lovely black-eyed boy of seven years. Presently three ragged boys, a year or two older, came along, one of whom held a rose in his hand. Seeing the boy in the nurse's lap he approached him, put the rose in his hand, and re- joined his companions, smiling, before the nurse had time to say, " Gracias." Such abundant in- stances of amiability and innate love of beauty could not be found in a nation which is corrupted in its core. YI THE " INFIDEL CITY " OF MOROCCO The China of the West. Sights in Tangier. The Moorish Quarter. The Market Place. Lepers in the Streets. A Snake Charmer. Coy Women. Jewesses. Arabic Money. The Prison and the Judge. A Moorish Cafe. Native Dancing Girls. No tourist who makes the round trip of Spain should neglect to pay a flying visit to Morocco, " the China of the West." Indeed, he is obliged to go there, unless he wishes to have the solidity of his bones tested on the nocturnal stage ride from Cadiz to Gibraltar a ride which must be peculiarly atro- cious, to judge from the smile which always flits across the face of an honest citizen of Cadiz when consulted about it by a stranger. Regular steamers used to ply between the two cities, but have lately been taken off; and those who wish to continue their Spanish tour by steam conveyance therefore have to take a steamer from Cadiz to Tangier, and thence another to Gibraltar. In the latest edition of Murray's "Handbook of Spain," we read: "To Tangier occasionally, by James Haynes steamers, 76 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO Bmall and dirty ; take provisions." There is no ex- cuse for this statement, since more than half a year before the appearance of this edition, the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique placed a special steamer on the route Cadiz-Tangier, making three trips a week each way, in six or seven hours. The boat is no larger than those which ply on the English Channel between Dover and Calais, but it is clean and comfortable, and a fair breakfast can be ob- tained on board. As in all other Spanish ports, the steamer is an- chored far out in the harbor, and passengers are conveyed to its side in small boats. Several Moors are among the passengers, with red turbans and red sashes around the waist ; and one of them carries a peacock in a basket fitting its body as tightly as a corset, with its head sticking out on one side and its tail on the other. It is seven in the morning, and the numerous vessels in the harbor are still asleep, excepting a few which are loading salt from barges. As the steamer leaves the harbor it becomes more and more noticeable how far Cadiz lies in the sea ; and so intensely white is the city that even after the steamer has been sailing away from it for an hour and a half, it still pains the eye to look at it in the glare of the morning sun. Finally, as the rotundity of the earth makes the ship sink down on one side, the city on the other, the turreted roofs alone re- THE " INFIDEL CITY 5 ' OF MOEOCCO 77 main visible, looking like the white tents of a mili- tary encampment. Surely, in all the world there can be no excursion more suggestive than this, during which Europe and Africa, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, are in sight at the same time, affording the imagina- tion a wide scope for varied exercise. The distance which separates Spain from Morocco is insignificant ; yet, although Spain is not exactly the most civilized part of Europe, the contrast between the two countries is startling. "When the curtain rises again after the short watery entr'acte, the scene has completely changed to the Orient. After visit- ing Cordova and Seville, with their Moorish houses and " African " streets, a tourist might fancy himself prepared for these new scenes of Moorish life ; but Tangier remains, from the first moment to the last, a surprise bordering on amazement, that here, almost within stone's throw of Europe, should be a country BO dissimilar to it in every detail of life and man- ners. Indeed, were it not for the " European " ho- tels and the suburban residences of the consuls, the unlucky tourist might fancy that some demon had taken him by the neck while asleep and dropped him on another planet ; a demon, because no benig- nant spirit would ever drop a man into such a dread- ful place, even by way of well-merited punishment. At the same time Tangier might be made one of the 78 SPAIN AND MOROCCO most charming of seaports. It is picturesquely situated, has beautiful mountainous surroundings, and a climate so cool that in summer the English often come over from Gibraltar for a breath of fresh air. But the town itself is a colony of savages, vio- lating every hygienic and sesthetic law under the sun. It seems almost a pity that a pier has been built on which passengers can be transferred either di- rectly from the steamer, or on boats. The old way, by which Jews carried the passengers on shore on their shoulders (Mohammedans scorning to carry a Christian) seemed much more in harmony with the primitive arrangements and aspect of the whole city. Hotel porters receive the guests at the pier, and pilot them through the town, after stopping in front of two Moorish customs officials, squatting on their hind legs and too lazy to rise while conduct- ing their examination. They hardly glance at the hand-baggage, and motion to us to proceed. We move up a dirty, unpaved, malodorous street, so nar- row that there is hardly room to pass by the in- numerable laden donkeys that meet us. At last the porter stops and opens a door. Can this be the Continental Hotel ? and if so, hadn't we better go back to the steamer at once ? Inside, however, the hotel is found to be a very clean, comfortable, and almost elegant abode ; and on the back side it has a THE "INFIDEL CITY" OF MOROCCO 79 number of much-coveted rooms -with a fine view of the ocean, and the coast and harbor scenery. Be- low the balcony is a wilderness of cactus, inhabited by a black cat. Adjoining it, and further down, near the ocean, half a dozen half -naked boys are playing marbles on a flat white roof. Another half dozen, entirely naked, and of all colors from black to white, are bathing in the ocean. To the right, along the curved beach, are some bathing houses backed up by small hotels ; but it seems hardly warm enough to bathe with comfort, and an exploring expedition into the town seems more tempting. So, thinking of Livingstone and other heroes who had preceded me in exploring the Dark Continent, I started up a street to the right. But hardly had I gone a hun- dred yards when I saw three men in Moorish cos- tume running after me. They proved to be the guides who had offered their services at the hotel, and who now assured me in English and French that I was in the Moorish quarter, where "Euro- peans " could not safely go alone. But their ruse was in vain, as I had been told I could go anywhere in Tangier without a chaperon. They looked after me as if I were a doomed man, when I waved them back and boldly plunged into the dizzy labyrinth of streets, trusting to luck and the Prophet to bring me back safely to the hotel. The difficulty in Tangier is that one cannot even 80 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO use a map and compass to find one's way, as in Toledo and Cordova, since there is no map of Tan- gier, and the streets, though they are said to have their (Arabic) names, are not marked. However, the town is not large, having only 15,000 inhabi- tants ; and if it comes to the worst, one can go up the hill and get the bearings of the steamboat land- ing, whence it is easy to find the way to the hotel. All the streets of Tangier run up and down hill ; but it seems hardly correct to call them streets, as they are mere narrow alley-ways ; and the white- washed houses on both sides, having no windows, look like stone walls pierced here and there by a door. The doors are always closed, and it is very rarely that one gets a glimpse of an interior with its inevitable patio or courtyard. The shops, on the other hand, are all open to the street, being mere booths in which the Moors sit with crossed legs, having their wares arranged along the walls, and so near that they can reach any of them without stir- ring from their seats : a great scheme for the con- servation of energy. The customer of course re- mains in the street. Tangier being overrun with strangers, my ap- pearance did not create much excitement among the natives, even in this " Moorish quarter," as the guides called it. The children, however, seemed to regard me as a sort of circus, and eyed me curiously. THE " INFIDEL CITY" OF MOEOCCO 81 Some of them have perfectly " white " skins, and the loveliest black eyes. A little boy held out his hand, and I gave him a copper ; a very unwise thing to do, for immediately I was besieged by a dozen others, and had to walk faster to get away from them. Begging, however, seems to be a rarity in Moroc- co as compared with Spain ; nor are the beggars so importunate, a simple shake of the head being suf- ficient to make them desist. Perhaps some of them scorn to receive anything from a " Christian dog," which is the pet name the natives have for all for- eigners. They have a habit, these African beggars, of pulling strangers by the sleeve as they pass by to attract their attention. It is not so much the familiarity that breeds disgust at this practice, as the evident fact that their microbe-infested hands have never been washed. And after one has no- ticed a snow-white leper or two among them, one is apt to become very shy of these sleeve-pulling beg- gars. The Moroccans, I am told, are not so afraid as we are of this most loathsome of all diseases ; and in Tangier the lepers are allowed the freedom of the streets. In the city of Morocco there are so many that a special suburb is given up to them. And no wonder there are so many, since even at Tangier, where the presence of foreigners has ef- fected some reform, the condition of the streets is indescribably foul and filthy. Everything that 6 82 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO ought to go into the gutter, together with kitchen refuse and dead cats and dogs, is thrown into the street, where the scorching sun soon does its work. Hence the tourist in search of local color encount- ers a good deal of local odor as well. Occasionally the rubbish is removed in baskets, on donkeys ; but the street-cleaning department seems to be as re- miss here as in more civilized cities. And yet it must be admitted that even the canine and feline carcasses in the street are not an unmitigated evil ; for they attract the innumerable large black flies, which prefer them as sporting ground to the human countenance, so that in the city itself one is never molested by them ; whereas at the European and American consulates, where they miss their favorite food, they almost devour human beings, as I dis- covered the next day. In rainy weather the streets of Tangier, unpaved, and with all this rubbish, must be terrible ; and the proprietor of the Continental Hotel informed me that some of his guests remain in the house all the winter, taking their exercise on the roof. Having found my way back to the hotel without any difficulty, I set out again about sunset time in the opposite direction, toward the Soko, or market place, which is the sight of Tangier. I arrived just in time to see a caravan of camels filing across the place, which is a large open space, surrounded by THE " INFIDEL CITY" OF MOROCCO 83 booths and tents, and filled with men and women, donkeys, oxen, and camels, and wares for sale. The women and donkeys are the most numerous. To describe all the various groups and scenes would require a chapter, and a page might be devoted to the headdresses of the men alone. Around the body they all have a large, shapeless woollen cloak or sack, which no two wear exactly alike, and with about as much grace as an Indian displays with his horse- blanket. On their head some wear an ordinary tur- ban, others a mere bundle of cords, or a red band, or a colored handkerchief, or what looks like the lining of a hat, or a sort of monk's-hood which forms the upper part of the cloak. The women and girls, dressed in shapeless sack-cloaks, so sim- ilar to those of the men that at some distance it is difficult to distinguish them, are scattered in groups all over the place, each with a bundle of fresh- mown grass in front of her, which the men buy for their donkeys, after much parleying and bargaining. The women are all bare-legged to the knee (and) plus ultra, but most of them, and especially the younger ones, have the usual Oriental coyness about show- ing their faces. Some wear a handkerchief tied around the lower part of the face, leaving only the eyes and part of the nose exposed ; a very sensible custom, since their eyes are always beautiful and their mouths generally ugly. Others simply draw 84 SPAIN AND MOROCCO their hood over the face when they see a man gazing at them. The very old or quite young are rather careless about covering their faces, with exceptions; but all appear to be more sensitive to the gaze of foreigners than to that of believers. Grass-selling seemed to be the only business car- ried on this evening in the market-place ; but the next morning, being a regular market day, the scenes were more varied. Besides their bundles of grass, the women now had for sale all kinds of household goods and clothing, gaudily-colored shawls, towels, pottery, etc. In some of the sur- rounding booths flour, nuts, butter, dates, fresh fruits, and colored candies all of them very unap- petizing in appearance were on exhibition, while in others busy Moors were at work in embossing large plates of a yellow metal with diverse orna- ments, in which they evinced some of the good taste which their ancestors so often exhibited in Spain. Adjoining these booths, to the right, and just below one of the " European " hotels, was a group of tents which beggar description, the canvas being even more dirty than the never-washed cloaks into which the Moors received the bread and dates they bought, and comparing with our ordinary camping tents as a New Jersey tramp's suit does with a gentleman's evening dress in an opera-box. The donkeys were again so superabundant that one THE " INFIDEL CITY" OP MOROCCO 85 could hardly make one's way among them, and in one corner a score of oxen were shambling along in the most ludicrous fashion with their fore legs shackled fortunately, for if they had stampeded among the women and their pottery, there would have been a pretty scene. A band consisting of two stringless snare-drums and an instrument which sounded like a cross be- tween a bagpipe and a young oboe gone mad, made the day hideous with its music and attracted attention to a show in one corner the inevitable snake-charmer. He was a most ferocious-looking fiend, and seemed to try to drown the band with his savage shouts and yells, as he exhibited hia reptiles. There were five of them, of various sizes. He pulls the biggest one out of his bag, and after going through various contortions with it, seizes it in the middle with his teeth and holds it in his mouth while he takes out two smaller ones, which he tries to make bite each other. They refuse to bite, however, until he applies their heads to hia own forehead, nose, and eyes, whereupon they wake up to business. The old man does not move a mus- cle, but his small boy, whom he next allows his snakes to bite in the face, shrinks back a little at each bite, yet holds his ground. Finally he makes one of the small snakes hold the large one by its teeth suspended in the air. These snakes, it is 86 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO said, are really poisonous, but the charmers eat of a certain plant which serves as an antidote. Yet I could not help feeling sorry for the boy, whose face was all covered with scars, and who did not seem to enjoy the performance a bit. The showman having espied me in the circle of spectators, made straight for me and held out his hand for money. The natives gave him nothing, or at most a copper worth a tenth of a cent ; but when I offered him a Spanish two-cent piece he wanted more, and shook his head and looked fierce till I added another cent three cents being fully equal to a quarter of a dollar as prices go in Tangier. As I was turning away from this scene, a voice behind me inquired, "Do you speak English?'* As no reply was forthcoming, "Parlez-vous fran9ais " was asked ; and this in turn followed by the same inquiry in Spanish and Italian. My curiosity being at last aroused, I turned around and saw that the polyglot, who I supposed must be a Jew, was really a Moor. Surely, such linguistic genius in one of a race not noted for such accomplishments deserved recognition, and I asked him how much he would charge per day to take me about Tangiers. " Six shillings," he said ; and let no one suppose that he said " shillings " because I spoke English. There was a deeper reason than that. The Spanish peseta is the silver coin used as a standard in Tangier, THE " INFIDEL CITY" OF MOROCCO 87 shillings not being current at all ; but the guides, and the Jews in their bazaars, always give their prices in shillings, because a shilling, forsooth, is worth four cents more than a peseta. I employed this guide for five days, but though he proved well- informed and trustworthy, I could not cure him of his rascally habit of reckoning everything in shillings when justice and convenience called for pesetas ; and he had a ready way of computing a shilling at a peseta and a half, until I gave him a lesson in arithmetic, which I dare say he had for- gotten a week later. The Moorish silver coins five, ten, and fifty cents, and a dollar in value, coined in Paris and marked with Arabic characters and the figure 1299 do not seem to be much in use, the natives transacting all their business with dirty coins as large as English pennies but worth only a centimo, or tenth of a cent ; and as there are no wagons in Tangier I refused to burden myself with any of this " small change," always allowing the grateful guide to dispose of it at will in the re- cesses of his ample cloak. He took me first up the hill to the ruins of the Sultan's palace and the prison, whence a fine view of the city and the harbor is obtained. According to the guide-book the horrors of this prison are " ut- terly indescribable ; " but I could not see that it was any worse than Tangier in general, and certainly 88 SPAIN AND MOROCCO cleaner than the streets and public places. There was a small opening through which one could look into a large room in which the prisoners were walk- ing about or sitting, and looking quite as cheerful and contented as any other Moors. One of them handed out some neat colored straw bags, as speci- mens of prison labor. Just as we left the prison, five more captives were marched in, while on the street several others were quarrelling in such loud and angry tones that it seemed only a question of minutes when they would come to blows and be arrested too. Subsequently we saw several other groups on the point of fighting, widen led me to ask the guide if his countrymen were always in this quar- relsome mood. He said, No, but that the Ramadan made them sleepy, hungry, and cross. And no won- der. The Ramadan is a sort of Mohammedan Lent, which lasts twenty-eight days, and during which no one is allowed to eat or drink anything whatever, all day long, no matter how hard he has to work and how burning the sun. At sunset a gun is fired, which is heard all over town, and shortly before sunrise another, and in the interval between these two guns the faithful are allowed to eat and drink, which they do with a vengeance, making all their preparations beforehand so as to be ready to "pitch in " at the signal. Opposite the Sultan's palace a scene meets the THE " INFIDEL CITY" OF MOROCCO 89 eye which greatly strengthens the general impres- sion given by Tangier, as if all its inhabitants were engaged in an eternal masquerade, and constantly getting up tableaux illustrating life on this planet as it was two or three thousand years ago. There, in a large niche, fronted with an oriental arch and columns, sits the Kady, or judge, with his big white turban and flowing robes, ready to dispense justice off-hand, and looking for all the world like a picture from an illustrated edition of the " Arabian Nights." I could have been hardly more surprised to come across Socrates, arm in arm with Alcibiades and Pericles, going down the street to call on Aspasia. A few moments later we passed a booth about ten feet square, open toward the street. This, the guide explained, was a lawyer's office. On the out- side sat a client explaining his case, with many gestures ; inside were two not unintelligent-looking Moors, one of them with a dozen eggs lying in front of him ; doubtless the fee, or possibly a retainer. Later on we saw another lawyer's office, somewhat larger and more elegant, and with a pile of books in a corner. In this high-toned place, no doubt, copper was exacted in payment, in place of eggs. We passed the town offices of several foreign embassies, very much less inviting than those in the suburbs ; and, not far from them, Tangier's three post-offices, adjoining each other ; one of them 90 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Spanish, one English, and one French. According to anyone's desire to benefit this or that govern- ment, he buys his stamps and chooses among these post-offices. The State of Morocco has no postal arrangements, and if the natives should ever wish to despatch a letter to Europe they must patronize the foreign offices. Within Morocco, private mes- sengers are employed, who have a hard time of it swimming the rivers and braving the scorching sun of the interior. Of course there is no newspaper in the Moorish language (which is a corrupt form of Arabic, the Moors being the descendants of the Moroccan Berbers who went to Spain and there be- came mixed with Arabs), and public announcements therefore have to be made in writing, or orally. I came across a specimen of the latter mode on my first day in Tangier, before I had engaged a guide. As I was walking along the street, a Moorish official accosted me with a " Parlez-vous fran9ais ? " " Oui, Monsieur." Whereupon he took a letter out of a large envelope, containing a proclamation in French forbidding the exportation of human bones from Morocco for agricultural purposes (a thing which had been done some time previously). I asked him why he showed me this edict. But he shook his head, smiled, and passed on. The parlez- vous was evidently all the fransais he knew. Hence I could not reprove him for taking me, a harmless- THE "INFIDEL CITY" OF MOROCCO 91 looking individual with eye-glasses, for a ghoulish bone-pirate. Many other instances might be given showing how deeply the Moors have sunk from the position occupied by their ancestors in Spain, who at one time were the advance guard of the civilized world, had famous universities, and built masterpieces of architecture at Cordova and Granada which are still the chief boast of Spain, four centuries after the ex- pulsion of the Moors. In Tangier there is no trace of that old civilization, not even a mosque with any pretensions to beauty. The chief mosque has some pretty mosaics on the outside, but otherwise is hardly worth looking at, the interior, too, being said to be very plain. Unbelievers are not allowed to enter a mosque in Morocco, which in this respect is less tolerant than Turkey. The Sultan, however, has unbent so far as to allow the building of a catholic chapel (Spanish) ; but then the followers of the Prophet look upon Tangier as an " infidel city," hopelessly defiled by the presence of so many Chris- tians. Even the Jews are allowed certain privileges, not being cooped up and walled in a separate quarter, as in other Moroccan cities. However, they naturally flock together in certain streets. The guide took me into a synagogue, where about three dozen boys were sitting on benches, reading from a text-book. The teacher, an intelligent and refined-looking man, 92 SPAIN AND MOROCCO got up and bowed as we entered, and at a signal the "boys followed his example, and one of them gave me his book ; but it was all Hebrew to me. The Jews wear as tasteful headdresses as the Moors, but do not shamble along so ungracefully in hideous cloaks, their costume being peculiarly neat and becoming, especially on their Sunday. (Tangier has three Sundays, the Mohammedan on Friday, the Jewish on Saturday, and the Christian. On Thursday, all the Moors slaughter chickens for their " Sunday " feast, throwing them into the street to end their struggles. (The toughest are sent to Cadiz, as I knew from sad experience.) The Jew- esses wear a colored silk handkerchief very much more becoming than any hat or bonnet ever de- vised by a French milliner, and much cheaper ; and among them are not a few who fully sustain their reputation for beauty, with their dark oriental eyes, clear complexions, and plump figures. In the fashionable part of town, along the beach, I met a group of Jewesses in European clothes. If they could have only realized how much less graceful and elegant they looked than their sisters in sim- pler garb ! The Spanish women in Tangier seem to be quite as attractive as their countrywomen at home, though, like the Jewesses, they may owe some of their charms to contrast, by being allowed to show THE u INFIDEL CITY " OF MOROCCO 93 their pretty faces and not shrouded in funereal sheets like the Moorish women. Of the latter one can judge only by the children, who go unveiled, and some of whom have complexions as white as Northern blondes, which contrast strangely with their large, coal-black eyes, and long dark lashes. The negro women, as a rule, are better looking than they are in America, and one I shall never forget was a slave girl carrying water on her head up a hill. Her bare arms were gracefully held up to balance the bucket, and, like the rest of her half- clad figure, were plump and beautifully rounded and tapering a perfect model for a sculptor. Her large dark eyes looked with timid wonder at the foreigner, who wished for nothing so ardently at that moment as for a detective camera on his vest, prepared for an instantaneous photograph. In the evening, after partaking of a good dinner, served by Moorish waiters wearing turbans and red stockings, I sat on the stoop in front of the hotel, where I noted a scene which showed the Moor in a new light. In front of a humble building opposite sat a Moor on the ground, holding a young child in his lap. I sat there fifteen minutes, and Moors were constantly passing, yet .hardly one of them went by without stopping a moment to fondle the boy and address a word to his father. Surely, these people are not so fierce as they look, and were 94 SPAIN AND MOROCCO their features less enshrouded in cultivated igno- rance, and stolidity, might look more like ourselves. At eight o'clock, by arrangement, the guide came again to show me the literally benighted town. Not a light anywhere in the streets, nor a ray from any of the windowless houses. My guide carried a lantern, but the few Moors we met in the streets seemed to be guided by instinct and feeling, like the blind beggar in Bulwer's "Last Days of Pom- peii." Our goal was the cafe, where there is gen- erally " music " in the evening. It proved to be a dingy old place, with two rooms to the right, in which Mohammedans were sitting (on the carpet, having left their shoes on one side), drinking black coffee, or tea with peppermint, smoking keef, and playing. To the left was the music room, where some chairs were placed for foreign visitors, about half-a-dozen of whom came in while we were there. The band included a modern violin, a rebec (an Arabic ancestor of the violin), and two broad in- struments like a cross between a guitar and a mandolin. One rattled his castanets, another clapped, and all sang while they played, with an occasional " orchestral " interlude. For some time they appeared interminably to repeat the same phrase, with much loudness and a glissando which threatened to become monotonous, when suddenly the melody grew more interesting, the tempo more THE " INFIDEL CITY " OF MOKOCCO 95 rapid, and all was fire and animation. The guide, who was evidently enjoying the music, here turned to me and said that they were now singing about the good old times in Spain. That explained why their hearts were in it so ! The Moors and Jews of Morocco still dream of Spain day and night, and to return there is the one desire of their life. But just as the music was becoming interesting, some of the " Christian dogs " for the moment I felt the appropriateness of the term got up and left, just as some unappreciative persons may be seen leaving our opera houses at the moment when the very gem of the opera is being sung. The musi- cians seemed surprised at this mark of insensibility to their enthusiasm, and stopped short in the mid- dle of a phrase. The guide now asked me if I wished to go and see the Moorish dancing girls. By all means al- though I had my suspicions that the " Moorish girls" would prove to be Spanish, or Jewesses. But the sequel showed that they were the genuine article. Public sentiment, however, evidently did not approve of the idea that native girls should debase themselves by dancing before " Christians ; " for the guide sneaked down a narrow street, anxi- ously peeping right and left, as if engaged in some burglarious enterprise, and finally knocked gently at a door. A shutter was cautiously opened, and 96 SPAIN AND MOROCCO we were admitted, whereupon the door was quickly shut again and bolted. I might have been robbed and murdered here, but the guide's appearance and manners had inspired me with perfect confidence in him. As we passed through the courtyard several women were seen sitting on the floor, in two rooms. They either covered or turned away their faces as we passed. We went upstairs into a moderate sized room where some chairs were placed. The old woman who had admitted us now disappeared, and presently returned with a tambourine and two young girls coyly veiled with white lace hoods. They began to dance to the sound of the tambourine and presently uncovered their faces, which were de- cidedly pretty, though one had a snub nose and the other's mouth was too large. Their eyes were glo- rious, and one could see at a glance where the wom- en of Spain got their wonderful eyes. There was a roguish expression on their Moorish faces, and a fascinating smile as they danced not the forced, sickly smile of European ballet girls, but the natural, sweet smile of girls belonging to a race among which women depend for their happiness in life more even than elsewhere on their power to please men. Though plump, these girls were not as fat as the Mohammedan ideal desires them, else they would have probably luxuriated in some harem instead of dancing before foreigners. THE " INFIDEL CITY 5 ' OF MOROCCO 97 When we regained the street the stillness of Tan- gier forced itself on the attention more than ever, their being no wagons, no noisy groups of revellers, no serenos calling out the time of night, and no street criers none, in short, of the endless noises which make life in Spanish cities intolerable to the nervous. The Kamadan guns, however, were a tem- porary nuisance of no slight import, especially as they were placed within a stone's throw of the hotel. In the evening, the explosion, which shook the hotel and rattled all its windows, was annoy- ing ; in the morning, before sunrise, simply dis- gusting. The voice of the muezzin could also be heard at intervals from the minaret of a mosque calling the faithful to prayers ; but this voice in the air was not loud, and rather pleasant than other- wise. Then there was another musical phenomenon which would have been pleasanter in the daytime than after midnight. About eleven o'clock, and at intervals thereafter, a long-drawn trumpet note was heard, beginning softly and swelling to a loud cli- max, followed by a decrescendo very much like the trumpet solo which opens the overture to Wagner's " Bienzi." In the morning I was awakened by the bellowing of cattle, and looking down into the har- bor saw dozens of oxen standing up to their bellies in the water, whence they were driven on inclined planes into a flat boat and conveyed to the steamer 7 98 SPAIN AND MOROCCO which was to carry them to the beef-eating Britons of Gibraltar. This steamer was to have taken me too, but I had made up my mind to stay and go to Tetuan on horseback, with my guide and one of the sultan's soldiers. YII ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN Getting a Soldier. Canaries and Flowers. A Unique Inn. A Mohammedan Rooster. African Donkeys. The Jewish Quarter. Why the Jews Emigrate to America. Oriental Scenes. African Tea and Coffee. Negroes and Riffians. A TRIP from Tangier to Tetuan, forty-five miles along the northern coast of Africa, is considered perfectly safe for tourists, provided they go under the escort of a Moroccan soldier. Not that the soli- tary soldier, with his old-fashioned rifle, could do much to defend one in case of attack, but by engag- ing him the tourist places himself under the Sultan's protection and renders an attack improbable, even from the semi-independent hill-tribes. The ambas- sador or consul of the nation by which the traveller swears, provides the services of the soldier. Early in the afternoon I had sent my guide to the American consulate with a request for a soldier ; but the Consul happened to be on a mission to the Sultan at Fez ; and the cat being away, his secretary sent me a playful note saying it was too late to get a soldier 100 SPAIN AND MOROCCO for the next day, but that " steps will be taken to- morrow to secure one." This note I took to Mr. Ansaldo, the obliging proprietor of the Continental Hotel, wondering how many "steps "the secretary could take in a day, and how many days would be required to get the soldier. Mr. Ansaldo was highly indignant at the secretary's conduct, and said he himself would undertake to get the man for me ; and half an hour later the soldier was introduced to me to get his instructions. The question naturally occurred to me whether the consul's secretary at Tangier was earning his salary. Mahomet, my guide, rapped at my door at four o'clock next morning, and packed the lunch on his horse while I took my breakfast ; and half an hour later, at the first signs of dawn, we noisily galloped down the deserted streets, waking up the paupers who had made their bed on the sidewalk or rather the place where the sidewalk ought to be. The city gates were still closed, but a gratuity to the keeper easily opened one of them, and we rode out past some more groups of somnolents, apparently waiting for the gates to be opened for them. At first the road followed the deserted beach, but after a mile or two we struck into the interior, across some huge sand-banks looking like glaciers in the dim light. We passed some villages on the hill sides, pictur- esquely buried amid rich tropical vegetation figs, ON HORSEBACK TO TETTJAN 101 cactus, aloes, etc. and otherwise so extremely Afri- can in the structure of the houses and general aspect, that no one could have dreamed that Europe was visible from the summits of neighboring hills. Presently a brook appeared to the right, lined with oleanders and other trees, the branches of which were musical with the song of numerous canary birds. It was pleasant to think that these songsters might have but recently left the neighboring Canary Islands ; and their song of freedom was infinitely more pleasing than that of the poor captives in our cities, whose notes are much too loud for a parlor, while here in the open air they rivalled those of the skylark or nightingale in sweetness. The oleanders grew more and more abundant until they gave the whole landscape a rose-colored tint, like Persian rose fields. But the guide did not seem to care either for canaries or oleanders ; for when I asked him what was the Arabic name for oleander, he replied contemptuously : " Oh, they no good." I doubt if he even realized what a pictur- esque group we made amid the green shrubbery, he with a red turban, the soldier with a whitish one, and mine red with a cincture below of white lawn. The soldier rode a long-legged mule which took pro- vokingly long steps, so that the guide and I, with our small horses, constantly had to trot or gallop to keep up with him ; and walking was the only 102 SPAIN AND MOROCCO tolerable mode of procedure on the abominable road, which is a mere donkey-path, never used by a wagon, and full of stones and other impediments. And this the only road between two of the principal cities of the Sultan's realms ! We met a few parties on donkeys, and a number of natives on foot, some of whom had pleasant faces and greeted us in Arabic, while on the faces of others religious fanaticism and hatred of the foreigner were plainly painted. Not a few were armed, and had any of them been in a bellicose mood, they might have bagged us all three before my soldier would have had time to get his rifle into position, it being wrapped up carefully in a red flannel bag, tied up at both ends ! And such a rifle ! almost ten feet long, with a single barrel, and most primitive lock, and no doubt an exact copy of the first rifle ever made. In view of this fact, it did not seem to make much difference that the soldier was generally half a mile in front or be- hind us, or that the guide should carry the harm- less implement half the time. Noticeable among the natives whom we passed were some shepherds, with massive lirnbs like Ro- man gladiators, which led me to ask the guide if that was the reason they were called musclemen ; but he only stared and looked blank. Happy youth ! He had evidently never been punned at be- fore. The large flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 103 under the care of these gladiators added life to the fine landscape, with its splendid mountainous back- ground. All along the road were excellent grazing grounds, well adapted for the plough ; but hardly any of it was devoted to agricultural purposes. The Moors might easily alleviate their indescribable poverty by raising wheat for European markets; but their religion does not allow them to raise grain for infidels. Their religion, likewise, is the only thing that renders the interior of the country un- safe for foreigners, and prevents them from intro- ducing the comforts of civilization. Indeed, if any one should ask if religion has done more good or harm in the world, the answer, so far as Morocco is concerned, could not be dubious. The guide suggested it would be advisable to rest during the hottest hours of the day, and asked if I wished to stop for lunch at the Fondak or at a spring a short distance before reaching it ? I decided in favor of the Fondak, as I wished to see that curious place ; nor did I regret the decision, for never had I seen a place so awful in its loneli- ness or so unique a daub of local color. It is an I immense, solitary, square, stone building surround- ing a large unpaved courtyard, in which the animals are fed, while all around the walls are small and dirty rooms for the use of travellers, who, however, if so unfortunate as to have to spend the night here, 104 SPAIN AND MOROCCO generally prefer the terrace as camping ground. Two men, and a boy who looked like a girl, seemed to have charge of the place, and of them the guide purchased a bale of hay for our animals before he proceeded to spread the lunch in a shady nook just inside the door. After I had carved the meat I offered some to the soldier and the guide, but they only shook their heads with a sad smile. The Kamadan was not yet over, and the poor fellows, tired, thirsty, and hungry, had to sit by and see me, like a selfish brute, consuming the chicken, eggs, and oranges, and the bottle of Val de Perias, while they were not allowed to touch a morsel or a drop till sunset. Morpheus took pity on them, and soon they were fast asleep, wrapped entirely in their cloaks, like silkworms in their cocoons. The guardians of the place, after watching me at my sacrilegious lunch, had also retired, apparently for a siesta ; and all was silent as a tomb. A number of birds, which came in and boldly picked up the crumbs at my feet, emphasized the loneliness of the place. On the way I had noticed several cranes which had allowed us to come very near them without stirring ; and when I expressed my surprise, the guide explained that these birds were sacred, and therefore never molested. This religious protection seemed to extend to the small birds, judging by their tameness. Here was one of ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 105 the pleasant aspects of the Mohammedan religion ; but it seemed a pity that the Prophet did not ex- tend his protection to some other animals, notably that poor beast of all work, the donkey, whom his followers treat with such indescribable brutality. In the courtyard was a rooster with his harem the first of the Mohammedan persuasion I had ever seen. He was a nobler animal than many a Chris- tian rooster I have seen, and might have taught his master a useful lesson. When a Moor travels he selfishly sits on his donkey or camel, and lets his heavily-laden wife walk along behind ; and when he eats, the wife comes in at the end for the crumbs. Not so with this rooster. He, too, was a polygamist, and could not prevent his wives from persecuting one another ; but in gallantry he set a noble exam- ple to the Moor. He was the first to discover the remnants of my lunch, but not a crumb would he touch before he had loudly summoned all the chickens, old and young, and given them an equal chance, and more. Leaving them to their feast, I went outside to have a look at the grand scenic surroundings of the place ; high mountains on all sides, covered with a green carpet, and here and there a spacious fig or other tree inviting to repose in its shade. A brisk breeze was blowing, tempered by the sun, and so delicious in quality that I could not but think that 106 SPAIN AND MOROCCO here would be one of the finest places for invalids in the world, if some one would have sufficient en- terprise to build a hotel and make it known to the world. The place is lonely, but no lover of nature would ever tire of it, the flora alone offering endless amusement. In ten minutes I had collected a choice bouquet that would have been worth several dollars in New York. There were some wild flowers that we laboriously cultivate in green-houses, and others new to me, with most exquisite forms, colors, and pencillings. And here they grow, by the myriad, with no one to appreciate them. Yet, notwithstand- ing the guide's " Oh ! they no good," it is possible that these African flowers, as has been suggested, furnished the Moors with patterns for their skilful embroideries and their ornamental work ; and they may have taught them to scorn the European hat in favor of the infinitely more becoming turban. On returning to the Fondak I found that some one had stolen my corkscrew, and that my guide and soldier were still fast asleep. I couldn't tell them apart in their cocoons, and shook the soldier by mistake. He started up nervously and seemed to grasp for his gun ; probably fancying a hill- tribe attack ; for he must have known, as well as the guide-book, that " the mountains near the Fondak are not always safe camping ground ; " that the Fondak was built for protection against these tribes ; ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAX 107 and that the soldier " is responsible with his life for the tourist's safety." Shortly after leaving the Fondak we had some blood-curdling evidence of the ferocity of these hill tribes. On descending the mountain we came across a brook, and a short distance from the road some sheets and blankets, which had been washed in it, were lying to dry on an immense rock ; they were guarded by two naked, big-bellied negro boys of thirteen or fourteen, who, notwithstanding my con- ciliatory turban and the soldier's flannel-swathed rifle, shook their fists at us and used threatening lan- guage. However, we managed to make our escape without loss of life. It would be decidedly unpleas- ant to flee from an enemy in this region, for the road became worse and worse as we proceeded, now winding along a steep hill-side and again following the bed of a stream, full of large stones. Never, not even in the most inaccessible alpine passes, had I seen such a rough road, and I can well believe that the trip which we made in eleven hours takes four or five more in rainy weather. From the top of a hill which we crossed we had a fine glimpse of the Mediterranean and of Tetuan almost three hours before we reached it. It was like a glimpse of a snow-field lying between two high mountains ; and then it vanished, not to appear in sight again for two hours. My horse, affected by the great heat, began 108 SPAIN AND MOROCCO to show symptoms of fatigue or laziness, and the guide, who rode behind, encouraged him with Ara^ bic expletives, and an energetic " Cid " every five minutes. He was not a very good horse, and this was probably the reason why he was called Cid, in retaliation for the harm inflicted on the Moors some centuries ago by the famous Spanish hero. Revenge is sweet. But Cid had his revenge too, for one time when Mahomet struck him with his whip he lifted up his right leg and let it go at the guide's shin- bone, which drew blood and an oath and made him limp during our sojourn at Tetuan. As we drew nearer to the city, we met more and more natives, mostly peasants returning from the market-place Tetuan's market being a day later than Tangier's. On leaving Tetuan very early in the morning, two days later, we met these same people bound for the city, with loads of wood, charcoal, grass, and fruits, some of them at a dis- tance of two hours' ride from Tetuan. The donkeys were loaded down to their utmost capacity, and what they could not carry was loaded on the women, who were always on foot among them girls of no more than fifteen years of age while the men generally sat on the donkeys, calmly smoking a pipe. Most of these donkeys were very small, and the men so long that their legs scraped the ground, reminding one of Thackeray's remarks about the ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 109 Orientals who " descend " on their donkeys. There is something marvellous in the strength and endur- ance of these diminutive beasts, and their patient tolerance of all their undeserved floggings and the ugly wounds worn by their cruel burdens. The African donkey is a patient animal. He does not often complain of his unjust treatment. But when he does lift up his voice, it contains the sonorous quintessence of all his suppressed woes. Nor is he always as stupid as his unfortunate reputation. In the market-place at Tangier I saw one lying down flat on his side in order to rest his heavy burden on the ground ; and at Tetuan I saw a donkey-fight (caused by jealousy) which evinced much sagacity. One of them repeatedly placed himself in such a position that his hind legs faced the neck and head of his rival, on whom he then proceeded to rain a shower of vigorous kicks, prestissimo, till the other brayed for mercy. But in 'one respect even the African donkey is open to further enlightenment Our road was often narrow and winding a mere rut worn deeply into the soil ; and the donkeys we met, though they usually made room for us to pass themselves, never allowed for their broad loads, thus subjecting us to the danger of being brushed off our horses. This was done with such aggravat- ing persistency that one could not but conclude it was for this that they were originally called donkeys. 110 SPAIN AND MOROCCO In these situations it was amusing to see the Moors pushing them bodily aside as if they had weighed no more than a sheep, or else using their tails to steer them by. Some of the natives politely made way for us, while others stubbornly asserted their right of way. In steep places, where a collision might have been attended by serious consequences, the soldier always stopped in the middle of the path until I had come up, thus compelling the natives to make a detour. All of which trials and tribulations we infidels obviate by building railways between our principal cities. But it will be a long while before the Moroccans can afford to build a railroad. An Englishman at Seville remarked to me that he always estimated the general wealth of a town or region in Spain by the comparative number of horses, mules, and donkeys. On this principle Morocco must be the poorest land in the world the donkey-land par excellence, with a few camels thrown in for variety. Just before we entered the gate of Tetuan we met a caravan of these hid- eous beasts, bringing up the rear of the market pro- cession. The approach to Tetuan is remarkably impressive. Its general aspect is as white as Cadiz, even the walls which encircle the city being painted white as snow. To the left this white wall runs far up to the hill, enclosing what looks like a citadel, ON HOESEBACK TO TETUAN 111 and this gives a unique aspect to the place. To the right is a finely shaped high mountain, of the Atlas range, which is said to be the abode of numerous monkeys ; the cousins, probably, of the few speci- mens which are still to be seen at Gibraltar, as a reminder of the time when the Mediterranean did not yet completely separate Europe from Africa. Not long ago, it is said, monkeys were so plentiful at Tetuan that they cost only sixpence a piece. As meat is dear and monkeys are good to eat, I ex- pected one on toast for breakfast, but was doomed to disappointment At the gate we were stopped and the soldier's gun taken away from him, to be kept until we left again. Then we rode through some "streets," like those of Tangier, only "more so," until we drew up in front of a most dismal and forbidding building. This, the guide explained to my horror, was the " hotel." A man came out and greeted me in Spanish, and I inquired, after scanning the building, if he had a room with a window. He had none, and I told the guide I would not stay there under any circumstances, and asked if there was no other inn. " Yes," he said, " Nahon's, in the Jewish quarter." Now I had told the rascal in the morning that I wanted to go to Nahon's, but his anti-Semitic proclivities, or a desire to make a bargain for bringing me there, had led him to take me to the Spanish inn. So we turned 112 SPAIN AND MOROCCO about and soon reached the Jewish quarter, after passing through a special gate which is locked up at night, no Jew being allowed to enter the Moorish quarters after sunset unless he does as we did sub- sequently, and convinces the keeper with a small piece of silver that he has important business to attend to. The Jewish quarter is not a bit cleaner than any other part of Tetuan ; the only apparent difference being that in the Jewish streets vegetable garbage seems to predominate, while in the Moorish the nose is more offended by animal refuse. Some of the streets were regular cellar-vaults, being spanned by broad stone arches ; an exaggeration of the Span- ish method of extending canvas over the streets to keep out the sun ; and I have no doubt that in mid- summer these vaulted streets are the only tolerable ones in Tetuan. The streets were crowded "with children, and some of the larger boys endeavored to show off their educational attainments by greeting me with a loud "Bon Soir, Mosoo ! " As we entered the side street in which Nahon's hotel is situated, two of them even grasped my horse by the bridle to pre- vent it from slipping on the smooth stone pavement. The host, Mr. Isaac S. Nahon, British consular agent for Tetuan, received us in person, and took us into his house, with its usual Moorish patio or central court. Mr. Nahon wears European clothes and a ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 113 Derby hat, as becomes his position, speaks English fluently, and provides tourists with various comforts which are all the more appreciated after riding through the forbidding streets. He gave me the choice of several rooms, one on top of the house with three windows, whence I could enjoy a fine mountainous prospect on two sides, and a bird's- eye view of half the terraced city. This, of course, I chose, admitting the delicious night-air at all the three windows, and soon fell soundly asleep, think- ing of the narrow escape from the windowless Span- ish inn, and regardless of the fact that I was doubly locked in, first in the Jewish quarter, and, secondly, within the walls of Tetuan. Tetuan is considered one of the headquarters of the Hebrew race ; and, according to Hooker and Ball, it " boasts of being the cradle of more wealthy Jewish families than any other town in the world." Their chief occupation is gold embroidery on velvet and silk, and some, probably, brought a part of their wealth along from Spain, when they were ex- pelled from that country. That was four centuries ago, but they still use the Spanish language in their families ; and it makes a most agreeable impression on a tourist in this howling African wilderness to see a pretty Jewish maiden coming into the hotel patio, and saying her " Buenas noches, Sefior," with a sweet smile. Mr. Nahon told me that many of. his 8 114 SPAItf AND MOROCCO race are leaving Tetuan and emigrating to America, chiefly to Boston ; and I could not but admit that that suburb of Cambridge must be, on the whole, a pleasant er place for them to live in than Tetuan. Though they are locked up at night, they have otherwise about the same privileges as at Tangier, whereas at Fez Jews are not allowed to wear shoes, but must go barefooted ; nor can they ride on horses, which are considered too noble animals for them. They are personally exempt from military service, but have to furnish an equivalent in cash. It seems difficult to understand why any of them should remain in such a place, but the government places special impediments in the way of those who wish to emigrate. Were these removed, Tetuan, which is already half -depopulated (having houses for forty thousand inhabitants and only half as many to fill them), would, perhaps, soon be deserted entirely, BO far as the seven thousand five hundred Jews in it are concerned. There is not a single policeman not even a sereno in this or any other Morocco town, to protect life and property ; nor can the sit- uation of Tetuan be healthy, to judge by the pallor of the inhabitants. In case of sickness, there are no doctors ; although, thanks to Sir Moses Monte- fiore, a few apothecary shops (and schools) have been introduced. In personal appearance the Jews of Tetuan are ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 115 greatly superior to the Moors, the children especial- ly being very pretty ; and among the women not a few are conspicuous for physical beauty. Hooker and Ball think that the facial beauty of these Jew- esses is lacking in expression. This, no doubt, is often true ; but how could it be otherwise in such a dreary, stupid, out-of-the-world town ? Tetuan seems to have been built where it is, by the water- loving Moors, on account of the numerous springs and rivulets in the neighborhood ; and it is pos- sible that with superior sanitary arrangements it might be made into a habitable and even an at- tractive place, for its site, as I have said, is remark- ably fine. But as things are managed at present, a prudent foreigner would no more dream of tasting the city's water than he would in Fez, where he runs the risk of drinking the water in which five hundred beauties of the Sultan's harem have taken their morn- ing bath. Mr. Nahon told me that he has had so much trouble with water that he now has it specially brought down from the mountain for his family and guests ; and this is only another illustration of the way in which he discharges his duties as a host. He showed me his hotel register, exactly fifty years old, with the comments of hundreds of tourists on the trip, on Tetuan, and on the host ; and it speaks volumes in favor of Mr. Nahon and his father, who preceded him, that there is only one that was so 116 SPAIN AND MOROCCO unfavorable in its comments that he deemed it ex- pedient to ink it over. He also has a small library, consisting chiefly of books of travel in which Tetuan and his hotel are mentioned. After breakfast the guide came to the hotel and we went out to see the city. The soldier also joined us outside of the Jewish quarter, without uniform, gun, or badge of any sort to distinguish him from civilians ; I believe the Moroccan army has no regu- lar uniform. Before we had been out five minutes I realized that foreigners are much rarer in Tetuan than at Tangier, and that if a popular vote had been taken the majority would have decided that I was the greatest curiosity in the city. All the children and women turned, after we had passed, to look at us ; and if any one wishes to know how it feels to be a king or a white elephant or a lion of any sort, he ought to go to Tetuan. Whenever we passed a group of men they whispered something which the guide told me meant " A European." In Spain I had to put up with the indignity of being called an "Inglese," and here I had to swallow the still greater, because more comprehensive, insult of being called a European ; but what could I do with but a single soldier against all the Sultan's forces ? To me the greatest curiosity in town was a number of women (from the country, the guide said) wear- ing enormous hideous hats, with brims at least ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 117 eighteen inches wide, without the slightest exaggera- tion so wide in fact, that they had to be held up by means of four strings attached to the crown. Beyond a doubt, if a member of the Parisian demi- monde should chance to see one of these hats they would be worn the following season by fashionable women the world over. In Africa, under the glar- ing sun, they seemed sensible enough ; but why a nation which has practical sense enough to invent such hats should persist in the intolerable habit of painting every square inch of surface in the cities a glaring white, passes comprehension. Stutfield, speaking of the city of Morocco, says that " half the population seems to be semi-blind, or to squint in an extraordinary manner ; " and the same is true of Tetuan. Eye-glasses, either plain or colored, seems to be unknown in this country. The monot- ony of this everlasting whiteness soon becomes as wearisome to the mind as to the eyes. In another sense, too, the streets of Tetuan are monotonous, owing to the curious division of labor, BO to speak, among them. The principal industries are gun-making and leather goods, and to these trades whole streets are given up. Other streets consist entirely of butcher-shops, or blacksmiths, or carpenters, or grocers. In the grocers' street we did not remain more than a minute as there were everywhere huge pots of rancid butter, the " carry- 118 SPAIN AND MOROCCO ing qualities " of which (as the operatic critics say of voices) were as good as those of Limburger cheese, and made us beat a precipitate retreat. We went into one of the gunsmith's shops, where the long, odd rifles of the country were being made in the most primitive fashion, one man turning a wheel and the other holding an iron rod with which the hole is bored. The price of these guns is from $5 up. On passing through the market-place we found it deserted, except for a band of camels kneel- ing in a semicircle as if saying their prayers to the Prophet. But on closer inspection their adoration proved to be mere cupboard love ; they were eating their grass. Near the market is a large building in which the guide and soldier had established their quarters, which I asked them to show me. Like the Fondak it had a central court for the animals, but the rooma for the drivers were upstairs and consisted of little holes in the wall, about ten feet by six, with a win- dowless opening for air and a straw mattress in one corner, while in another were some loaves of bread and a pot of raw meat, ready to be cooked in time for the Karaadan gun proclaiming the end of the daily fast. For this room the guide and the sol- dier paid a penny a day, they said ; which enables one to understand how the Moroccan soldiers can live on the twelve cents a day which the Sultan pays ON HORSEBACK TO TETUAN 119 them, they finding their own food. Under these circumstances the ten pesetas a day which I paid the soldier the services of the mule and the mili- tary man being impartially rated at a dollar each must have seemed a princely salary to him. The guide received $1.50 a day, and the whole expenses of the trip three men and three animals for three days, feed and hotel included did not amount to twenty-five dollars. When we left this building my companions were greatly amused and burst out laughing at a beggar who called me "selyar" which was as near as he could get to sefior. He was the only one who ac- costed me in Tetuan. The only public place of amusement in this city of twenty-two thousand inhabitants is the cafe, and to it we repaired in the evening. It is smaller than the cafe at Tangier, having only one room and, on this occasion at least, there was no music. The na- tives squatted on the carpet of a slightly-raised plat- form, having left their shoes pell-mell at the lower level. How they ever find out which is which when they leave, is hard to say. The proprietor, or cook, had a stand in one corner, on which was a small boiler with an open fire beneath. He put two tea- spoonfuls of a black semi-liquid substance into a little kettle with a handle, about the size of a small coffee-cup, added hot water, stirred it, and the cof- 120 SPAIN AND MOROCCO fee was ready for use. It had the genuine flavor of coffee, but was spoilt apparently by the addition of some drug. Among the Moors were several full- blooded Negroes, who were treated by everyone on terms of perfect equality ; nor did they seem in any way inferior to their associates. Color is no stigma in Morocco, and even the sultan is said to have a tinge of Negro blood in his veins. Some of them are soldiers, and the majority come from the Sou- dan. The air in the cafe was so redolent of keef- smoke, and so disagreeably close, that I soon begged the guide to take me back to the hotel. He left his cup of tea and mint on the bench to await his re- turn, and steered me back to headquarters, passing on the way another extremely Oriental scene a story-teller sitting in a booth behind a sort of screen and singing his story, which was listened to by a crowd of grave-looking Moors. At six o'clock in the morning we were again in our saddles, bound for Tangier. Once more we stopped for lunch at the Fondak, and while the guide and soldier were asleep, one of the attend- ants begged me for some money. I gave him a piece of silver, which seemed to astonish him exceed- ingly, and he said I was " muy bueno." The present seemed to bear its fruit, for shortly afterward the guide brought me my corkscrew, which he said that man had found "after we had left." This was a ON HOKSEBACK TO TETUAN 121 lie ; he had " found " it before we left ; but no matter ; it showed that one can be a thief without being a Christian. Nothing worthy of note occurred on our return-trip except that we met a band of the notorious Kiffians, all armed with the long rifles of the country, and probably some minor weapons concealed about their persons. There were about twenty of them, of most forbidding aspect, and as they obviously did not intend to budge an inch of the path, I judged it would pay to be polite and dis- creetly steered to the right. These Kiffians are the hill-tribes who refuse obedience even to the sultan, and the Moors themselves are afraid to enter their territory. To travel as far to the east of Tetuan as we were going west, would have been sure death. Stutfield, in El Maghreb, says, " these Berbefs may be recognized by their wild appearance and the shaven crown, whence grows the scalp lock by which the Angel of Death is to pull them up to heaven on the last day. This appendage is cultivated with the care its importance demands, for on its reliability rests the Kiffian's hope of a blessed immortality." One more very African scene we encountered on the way three almost naked negroes lying fast asleep in the shade of some trees ; and at three o'clock we felt so warm ourselves that we made another rest under an enormous fig-tree and idled away half an hour ; we reached Tangier early in the evening, 122 SPAIN AND MOEOCCO and, as good luck had it, it was on the next day that the Eamadan came to an end. On this occasion I did not regret the levanter which had lashed the ocean into such a fury that the small boat did not venture to leave for Gibraltar. The departure of "lent" seemed to be cause for great rejoicing, for the Moors were all gayly decked in holiday at- tire, regardless of expense. The whole city seemed transformed. Instead of their sombre mantles the men wore costumes which would have war- ranted them in joining the chorus of the most sumptuous operetta, while the girls were dressed like shop-window dolls, or Japanese princesses, no two alike. It was a day of good will toward all men, too, for whenever Moor met Moor they stopped to grasp each other's hands in two ways, where- upon they touched them with the lips. Progress was slow under these circumstances, and I was glad I had discharged my guide, for it would have taken us ten minutes to walk a block. That night the occupants of the hotel were not disturbed by the Ramadan gun, nor did I hear the trumpet solo from " Rienzi." YIII GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA _ Back to Spain. England in Spain. A Protean Rock. The Fortifications. The Monkeys of Gibraltar. Con- victs and Soldiers. Across the Border Line. Climate and Scenery of Malaga Crime and Poverty. Malaga Wine and Raisins. THE small steamer which makes its daily trip from Tangier to Gibraltar (unless the levanter blows too rudely) carries three classes of passengers, first and second class and steerage. The steerage passengers are oxen, and, like the steerage passen- gers on most steamers, are treated like cattle. They are brought to the side of the boat in a flat barge, whereupon a rope is thrown around their horns, and the machine lifts them high into the air and drops them into the hold of the steamer. What Mr. Bergh would have said to this I don't know ; but for the oxen it is only the purgatory which leads to the frying-pan. Upon deck not a few of the passengers turned pale shortly after the boat had got under way ; but there was no reason to sup- pose that this was due to fear inspired by the em- 124 SPAIN AND MOROCCO brasured military rock which soon hove into sight. At any rate, when I asked the German Ambassador to Morocco, who happened to be on board, if he thought von Moltke could take that fortress, he replied cynically that he didn't think von Moltke would consider it worth taking. Nevertheless, to one approaching it gradually, this petrified Cerberus of the Mediterranean looks quite sufficiently formidable and forbidding, even though he may know that the cannon which spit fire from its numerous mouths are not of the latest Krupp pattern, and that therefore Thackeray's remark that from its town to its summit " have been piled the most ingenious edifices for murder Christian science ever adopted," is no longer true. To famous travellers this rock seems to have pre- sented as many different aspects as Hamlet's cloud. According to Ford, it looks " like a molar tooth," as seen from Gaucin. De Amicis, as he sailed past, found it looking in turn like an immense ladder, a fantastic castle, a monstrous aerolite, and an Egyp- tian pyramid. Gautier has a fine page in which he compares it to a sphinx "with its head turned toward Africa, which it seems to gaze at with a dreamy and profound absorption ; " and according to Thackeray "It is the very image of an enormous lion, crouched between the Atlantic, and the Mediter- ranean, and set there to guard the passage for its GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA 125 British mistress." To prosaic eyes it is simply an immense rock, 1,396 feet in height, sloping, or rising in terraces, on one side, and precipitous on the others ; in reality a rocky out-post of the Sierra Nevada, but showing no direct mountainous connec- tion, being wave-washed on all sides except where it is connected with the main land by a narrow strip of flat land, known as the neutral ground. So isolated and mysterious is the appearance of this rock, that one might almost fancy it a gigantic bowlder carried to the sea by some glacier of pre- historic dimensions. But, whatever its precise shape and origin, it is certainly one of the most pictur- esque sights in Europe, from whatever side it may be viewed ; while in turn its summit commands an unsurpassed view of ocean and mountain scenery on two continents. The peaceful entrance to Gibraltar is not so diffi- cult as painted in the guide-books. I had succeeded in travelling across Spain and Morocco without a pass, nor was I asked for one in Gibraltar ; and since the indifference of states to passes is to some extent a measure of their civilization, it would have been strange if one had been required here on British soil. That it was British soil could not remain in doubt for a moment as we drove along the macadamized streets to the hotel. Not only were all the shop signs in English (often with " London 126 SPAIN AND MOROCCO prices " added), but at every corner were groups of soldiers in red uniforms and white Indian hats, and the houses themselves were of English pattern, with- out patios or balconies, these Moorish features hav- ing been dropped when the houses were rebuilt after their destruction during the four years' Span- ish siege, a little over a century ago. Nevertheless, although the principal buildings are English, and the streets are wider and straighter than in Spanish cities of the same size, as a whole the rock, and its climate, and the town at its base, proclaim that they are an integral part of Spain, and that the English are usurpers. The majority of the inhabitants are Spanish, differing in nowise from their neighbors across the border except that many of them speak English. The guides at the service of strangers are Spanish, and Gibraltar naturally furnishes inter- preters for other cities of southern Spain. The in- terior streets of the city are Spanish, and as steep- graded as those of Toledo or Cordova, or more so ; there being places where one can see people walking several hundred feet almost perpendicularly over- head ; and sight-seeing in Gibraltar is therefore not to be recommended to the heart-diseased. Span- ish is the market-place with its tempting piles of cherries, figs, apricots and other fruits and choice vegetables ; but English wealth and tidiness are shown in its being cleaner than the market-places in GIBKALTAR AND MALAGA 127 Spain proper, and the fruit of better quality and more carefully selected, thus making it the most ap- petizing market on the peninsula. Spanish, again, is the alameda, or public garden, with its luxuriant tropical vegetation, the proverbial snakes amid flowers here as big as boa-constrictors looming up in every corner, and including the famous hun- dred-pound gun, the firing of which costs such a fabulous sum, and which is fired only " once a year in fear and trembling lest evil should befall it." Even the amusements of the British soldiers partake of a Spanish character. The bull-ring immediately across the line is well frequented by them, and though they have their own English athletic grounds on their side of the line, on the day after my arrival they had a donkey race on them, which seems certainly more Spanish than English, al- though on such subtle sporting questions I do not pretend to be an authority. Military critics have found much fault with the antiquated and inoffensive character of the guns stationed at Gibraltar. These criticisms seem un- just, for the guns are so carefully guarded that I do not see how any harm could possibly befall them. Visitors are not allowed to come near them except under the escort of a sergeant, and after obtaining a pass from the Military Secretary ; and the guide, being the natural enemy of the tourist, would doubt- 128 SPAIN AND MOROCCO less also take the cannon's part should the tourist offer it any violence. The sergeant is armed with huge keys with which he unlocks each gallery and carefully locks it again when you are in. These galleries were excavated by convicts, who might as well have been left in them, for as they have no windows except the holes through which the can- nons poke their noses, they are dark and damp enough to make ideal prisons. We could not go to the topmost galleries because of some new excava- tions and possible danger from explosions ; but the views from some of the higher portholes down the sheer precipices, or toward the Mediterranean and Africa, were extremely grand. I was also shown the part of the rock where the monkeys, the last Mohicans in Europe, do congre- gate. They were not in sight, and the guide said that often they were not visible for days at a time except in the early morning. One time, he said, he saw them just above his head, and one of them threw a stone at him. There are only a few left, and the officer's statement that there were some young ones was subsequently denied by the guide. Though protected by English martial law these simians would no doubt be only too glad to give up the proud distinction of being the only wild monkeys in Europe, if allowed to join their brethren near Tet- uan. If these monkeys had reached the poetic stage GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA 129 of evolution, one can fancy how their bards would scorn the dime-novel fiction according to which they came over from Africa in a submarine cave which is still shown to visitors ; and their chief epic would relate the much stranger true story of how their ancestors failed to join the general simian emi- gration to Africa until the Mediterranean current had widened the strait between Europe and Africa so much that they could no longer jump across ; and there, in the twelfth book, we should find them, gazing across to the promised land, tearing their hair in despair, and howling a mournful chorus about European exile. After we had left the fortifications we went to see the military quarters, passing on the way a group of convicts who were hard at work pulveriz- ing rocks. At three o'clock, the guide said, they would be locked up in a dark cell, where they were kept on short rations. Punishment varies, accord- ing to the offence, from two months to a year. At the sergeant's mess we obtained some good ale, at the London price, and had a look at the billiard- room and library, in which we found all the latest London newspapers and periodicals. With such conveniences the soldiers ought to lead a very agree- able life on this side of the rock, where a pleasant breeze generally blows, and which is not visited by the deadly fevers that ravage the town below. At a 9 130 SPAIN AND MOROCCO point near by I had to stop half an hour, fascinated by the curious aspect of the summit of the rock. The moist, warm air rising into the colder regions, protected by the rock, would at the summit sudden- ly encounter a chilly blast which instantly converted it into clouds which slowly drifted away to the right ; and the rock thus presented the spectacle of a vast cloud-factory driven by wind power and turning out its white fleeces by the mile. It seemed odd to see these clouds coming into exist- ence suddenly, out of nothing as it seemed, in defi- ance of the metaphysical maxim exnihilo nihilfit. In the afternoon I had an opportunity to see the rock from the precipitous side, having accepted the invitation of a resident Englishman to drive acrosa the neutral ground to San Roque. This border town is famous for the beauty of its women, but as we were there in the warm part of the day, when the streets are deserted, we did not see any of them, and the excursion would not have been worth mentioning had it not been for its sequel, which threw an interesting sidelight on life at Gibraltar. Overcome, probably, by the heat, our horse sudden- ly gave out and could not be persuaded to move faster than a walk. We were still several miles from the gate, which, I was informed, would be closed in less than half an hour, after which Gibral- tar would be hermetically sealed till morning, and GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA 131 as there is no hotel, not even a Spanish venta, on the outside, this was not a pleasant prospect. Per- sonally, my entertainer said, he would have no trou- ble in getting in, if he should row around to one of the other gates for which he had a three months' pass ; but if I wished to get in, I had better take the cab which happened to be passing, and offer an extra fee. I did so, and arrived just in time to see the gate shut behind me ; but to this moment I cannot understand why the English should keep up such a cowardly mediaeval custom, which puts Gib- raltar on a level with Tetuan. Had I failed to get into the gate I would have missed the French steamer, which was to sail in a few hours for Malaga, and there was to be no other for a week, while the inland route via Honda is fatiguing and very expensive, and the coast route uninteresting. The French steamer was large, clean, and comfortable, and arrived in the Malaga harbor several hours before sunrise. When I came on deck, about seven o'clock, and wanted to transfer my valise to the rowboat intended to convey pas- sengers on shore, a custom-house official in a shabby, torn uniform, impeded my way. He was evidently hungering for a fee, but after I had complained to one of the ship's officers, and demanded to be set free, he at last accompanied me to the custom house, where I was examined as if I had been accused of 132 SPAIN AND MOROCCO theft ; thus does protection make slaves of us all. However, the Spanish authorities have reason to examine the baggage of passengers coming from Gibraltar, which place, so far as Spain is concerned, is nothing but a great smuggling depot. The hotel to which I was driven, though considered one of the best, was one of the poorest I had encountered in Spain ; and an Englishman, who had been my com- panion from Gibraltar, and who had lived for years in Malaga, said that he had tried them all and found them equally unsatisfactory. In one, where he had remained several months, the host always begged him, as a favor, to pay a week in advance, to enable him to buy provisions ; and at afonda, near Malaga, where he had stopped one day for a meal, the land- lady said " she would be happy to gratify his wish if he would first give her money to buy the meat and vegetables." As Malaga is a city of 120,000 souls, and supposed to be much frequented by invalids and convalescents, these seemed strange tales ; but I had no reason for disbelieving them. The food at our hotel was very poor in quality, and although Malaga is a name almost synonymous with wine, our table wine was absolutely the most abominable stuff I had ever tasted. This, however, was less strange than it seemed, for the Malaga vine- yards produce only sweet, medicinal wines, and table wines have to be imported or manufactured. GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA 133 In several other respects Malaga seems less attrac- tive to tourists and invalids than other Spanish cities. Most of the streets are malodorous and unclean, the authorities seeming to rely on the occasional freshets to remove the filth and rubbish ; but as sometimes a whole year passes without a real freshet, the conse- quences may be imagined. The cholera has often made its headquarters in Malaga, but in the future it will probably escape these epidemics, thanks to the new aqueduct, which, according to Ford, " sup- plies Malaga with water, probably unsurpassed in Europe for purity and abundance," and which fur- nishes strong proof in support of the view that con- tagious diseases are chiefly conveyed in the drinking water ; for " the effect of this water, during the late cholera epidemic, has been remarkable only three cases occurring among persons whose houses were thus supplied." That this water might be utilized in cleaning the streets and a certain numerous class of the inhabitants does not seem to have occurred to anyone as yet. The " great unwashed " is more liberally represented than in other Spanish cities of equal wealth, owing to the numerous manufactories, which supply the communistic element that makes Malaga a rather unsafe place to live in. There is an average of four stabbing cases a week, and in many parts of the city it is unsafe for foreigners to walk after sunset. Little value seems to be set on a hu- 134 SPAIN AND MOROCCO man life, and murderers, if caught, get off with a few years' imprisonment. So I was told, and the information was corroborated by the unusually large number of nocturnal policemen, whose shrill whistles, responding to one another, are heard at brief inter- vals throughout the night. And even if the tourist escapes being assassinated in toto, his sleep invari- ably is foully murdered. Even Cadiz seems a quiet place at night compared with Malaga. Till one o'clock at night the street criers keep up their noise, to begin again at five in the morning ; and it would seem as if not only all the fish, and fruits, and vege- tables consumed in the city, but all the groceries, and clothing, and other merchandise, were sold by initerant venders, whose cries, reduplicated between the high and narrow streets, are a most barbarous nuisance. As a final indictment it must be said that, although Malaga was founded by Phoenicians and successively held by Carthaginians, Romans, and Moors, there are no architectural or other interest- ing historic relics to be studied ; and even the Catholic cathedral is of inferior beauty, the best thing in it being the varied natural colors of the marble columns. To offset these disadvantages, Malaga enjoys a very fine site above its excellent harbor, which yearly gives shelter to about three thousand vessels, and which has caused it to be second in importance GIBRALTAR AND MALAGA 135 among the commercial cities of Spain. The elegant villas in the lovely suburbs attest the wealth derived from this commerce, and nowhere in Spain is there a greater variety and luxuriance of semi-tropical and tropical floral vegetation than that which adorns the grounds of these cottages, and of the English ceme- tery, which is known as the first Protestant grave- yard ever permitted in Spain. Then, again, Malaga boasts an inviting winter climate, which sometimes does not allow the thermometer once to sink below 50 during the whole winter, while rain falls on an average on less than thirty days in the year. Dr. Willkomm also claims that Malaga is the intellectual centre of Andalusia, and he attributes this to the large number of Germans in the city ; a literary club and a philharmonic society having been founded there by German merchants more than forty years ago. Yet one hears more English spoken than either German or French, and I was so fortunate as to meet a young Englishman whose national taste for exercise had not been subdued by the warm climate, and who took me up a high hill near the city. A young Spaniard accompanied us as far as the tramway went, but farther nothing could have induced him to go, and he seemed to regard our expedition as pure insanity. Nor was he quite wrong, for the sun was scorching, and there was not a breath of air even on the top of the hill. 136 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Generally, on going up a mountain, the summit seems nearer than it is, but in this case the reverse was true, and I was surprised to find how soon we reached the top, whence the view fully atoned for our torrid climb. Africa was dimly visible in the distance, picturesque Malaga at our feet, and the color of the Mediterranean so clear and deep that it seemed a good subject for a Malaga debating so- ciety to discuss : " Which is bluest, the sky or the sea?" On the way back to the city we passed hundreds of acres formerly constituting the famous Malaga vineyards, but now barren fields. The phyl- loxera did its deadly work here, in the interest of beer and whiskey. Yet " Malaga wine " and "Malaga raisins " continue to be sold the world over in large* quantities than ever ! IX GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA From Malaga to Granada. An Andalusian Summer Resort. English Trees in Spain. The Alhambra To-day. Vandals and Visitors. The Court of Lions. Sunset in the Sierra Nevada. Andalusian Funerals. The Truth Concerning Beggars. Gypsy Caves. UNTIL recently, tourists going from Malaga to Granada (Grah-na/&-dah, if you please), had to sub- mit to the tortures of a very rough diligence ride ; but now that railway connection is established, the very obstacles which conspired to the traveller's dis- comfort become the source of rare enjoyment. The railroad passes through one of the roughest and most savage mountainous regions of Spain, and those who have written that there is no fine natural scenery in Spain cannot have seen the Hoyo Canon on this route, nor the Pyrenees in the north, nor Ronda, nor Granada, nor Montserrat. The exten- sive and beautiful orange, lemon, and olive groves along this road are also well worth seeing. At a place called Alora a number of women besieged our train, armed with branches torn from lemon 138 SPAIN AND MOROCCO trees, or sticks with as many as fifty lemons at- tached, which they sold for a peseta the lot twenty- five for ten cents. As these lemons looked unusu- ally large aod fine, I bought a few to quench my thirst ; but was disappointed to find that they were not the limon but the lima. The feminine ending, of course, indicates that they were sweet ; yet I must spoil this gallant sentence by adding that they were insipid too, and I should have much preferred a sour lemon, or an orange. Of the olive groves we passed the largest were those on the Duke of Wellington's estates, which yield 20,000 gallons of oil a year. Granada was reached in the evening, and it seemed eminently fitting that the first sound which greeted the passengers as the train stopped should be " Washington Irving." Of course no well-informed tourist would dream of remaining in the lower town when he can have the choice between two good hotels on the hill, near the Alhambra ; and if an American, he will naturally prefer the Irving to the Siete Suelos, which faces it. The road up the hill is rather steep, but by no means so precipitous as one would imagine from the descriptions of some tourists. It ascends through a densely- wooded grove which looks like a natural forest, and is deliciously cool, even on the warmest after- noons, as the trees on both sides overarch the road so as to shut out the sky almost completely, GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 139 while a rapid rivulet to the left assists in cooling the air. The grove consists chiefly of English elms, a gift of the Duke of Wellington in 1812 ; and the tall, grand, stately architecture of these trees con- trasts vividly with the more airy, graceful type of Spanish trees, the oranges, olives, and palms of Malaga. Equally great is the contrast between the barbarous noise and heat of Malaga, and the quiet which reigns on the Alhambra hill, which is as sooth- ing to the nerves as the balmy mountain air is re- freshing to the lungs. The two hotels, however, might have been much more pleasantly located a hundred yards farther up the hill, where they would have commanded a fine view of the snowy Sierra. Nor is the Washington Irving as American as one seems to have a right to expect. The proprietor is the only person in the house who speaks English, and in its arrangements and cuisine the hotel is chiefly Spanish. I succeeded in getting a room fac- ing the garden, whence a fresh, revivifying and voluptuously fragrant air was wafted in ; and in the morning I was awakened by the loud cooing of two beautiful doves sitting at the foot of my bed. They had evidently been fed and tamed by a preceding fair occupant of the room, and for a week I always found them on the table or the window whenever I came in. Granada, since the opening of railway communi- 140 SPAIN AND MOROCCO cation, is not only much frequented by foreign tour- ists, but is a favorite summer resort of Andalusians, thanks to its elevation two thousand one hundred and ninety-five feet above sea level, and its constant mountain breezes. It has two fashionable seasons, one in early spring, the other in midsummer, but is not less attractive at other times. I happened to be there " out of season," and therefore had a choice of evils, i.e, guides. The first day on visiting the Alhambra one may as well take a guide, in order to get a bird's-eye view of the palace and its many courts, and because several rooms are kept locked and can only be seen in presence of an attendant or a regular guide. This precaution has been found necessary thanks to the vandalism of name-writers and mosaic thieves. The Alhambra is not nearly as well preserved as the Alcazar at Seville, and consider- ing the treatment to which it has been subjected for four centuries, it seems a wonder that anything should be left of it. After driving out the Moors, the Catholic kings altered parts of it to suit their convenience. For a number of years it was inhab- ited by smugglers and other vagabonds, and during the French occupation it was even used as a stable for horses. A gunpowder explosion destroyed some of the ceilings, and earthquakes did not pass with- out effect. But the climax of destructiveness was attained by Charles V., who bodily destroyed a part GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBEA 141 of the palace (probably the women's apartments) and erected a stupid, impertinent modern palace in its place. This palace is now used occasionally for floral festivals and exhibitions, but it would seem more appropriate if it were used as a mad-house. Yet after all these trials and disasters, the Alham- bra remains to this day an architectural gem which even prosaic tourists cannot see without deep thrills of emotion. Moorish patios with varied mosaic work, marble columns, fountains, and flowers, may be seen in other cities of Spain, but here are whole suites of patios, and halls, vying with each other in splendor, and all on a regal scale of magnificence and lavish expenditure ; while the situation of this palace, with the snow mountains on one side, the city and the boundless plain on the other, is the most romantic and picturesque in Spain, if not in Europe. No wonder the Moors of Tangier grow enthusiastic when they sing of the good old times in Spain. I have read a dozen descriptions of the Alham- bra, some before visiting it, and some afterward, in order to find out if perchance some nook or aspect had escaped description. In vain ! If anyone should attempt a description without reading these previous efforts, he would inevitably find that all his best things had been said perhaps more than once, before him. Count Schack has given the most 142 SPAIN AND MOROCCO elaborate and artistic account of the Alhambra, but the most vivid and pictorial is Washington Irving's, partly owing to the chaste dignity of his style and the avoidance of rhetorical declamation. Gautier, who, like Irving, enjoyed the privilege and advan- tage of living in the Alhambra itself for a time, is, as always, vivid and suggestive, whereas De Amicis, who is usually so happy in his travel sketches, be- comes in this case almost hysterical in his superla- tive Italian extravagance, and thus misses his effect, like a jester who laughs at his own jokes. And after all, a dozen good photographs give one an in- finitely better idea of the splendors and peculiarities of the Alhambra, of its beautiful marble columns, its graceful Saracenic arches, its curious religious inscriptions, and its infinite variety of mosaic and arabesque ornamentation, than the pages of all the writers mentioned. The laws of literary expression laid down in Lessing's " Laocoon " are always veri- fied in the case of even the best writers if they at- tempt to assume the painter's or architect's func- tion. Perhaps one of the main reasons why the Alham- bra makes such a deep impression on everyone is because the senses and the vital functions are so pleasantly stimulated at the same time that the aes- thetic faculty is gratified. Here is no chilly, half- lighted Gothic cathedral, with a tomb-like, ascetic GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 143 atmosphere, but a series of brightly colored halls and courts into which the deep blue Spanish sky and the fragrance of flowers and orange groves have free access. Through the large un glassed windows blows a stiff mountain breeze in the hot- test hours of the day ; and all these influences com- bine to make the imagination more receptive than it would otherwise be ; nor must the moonlight be forgotten, which, like the sky and the perfumes, has free access, and entirely transmutes and recolors the scenes. As in the Alcazar at Seville, the mural arabesques remind one of the polyphonic intricacies of modern music ; and, as in the vegetal ornaments shaped by nature, the closest inspection fails to re- veal an imperfection, the recondite corners being worked with the same loving care and finish as the most conspicuous portions. Gautier happily com- pares these ornamentations to "a kind of tapestry worked into the wall itself." Many of the finest de- tails are in the ceilings and the pendent vaults in the shape of half an orange made up of a jumble of smaller vaults and arches, and various odd and indescribable configurations, hanging down like stalactites, and richly colored blue or orange. The trouble with these is that one cannot see them well without sacrificing all dignity and comfort and ly- ing down flat on the cold marble floor, levelling his opera-glass at the sights above. 144 SPAIN AND MOROCCO These ceilings, being inaccessible, and protected from wind, weather, and vandals, are remarkably well-preserved, even as regards their colors. But the tiles and other mural ornaments in the various patios and halls are often a mere shadow of their former selves, except where Senor Contreras, who has been the conservator of the palace for more than twenty years, has endeavored to restore the original figures and colors. In a vault above the bath-rooms he has carried out these restorations so minutely that one gets an excellent idea of what the Alhambra must have been in its original splendor. The baths below, where the dark-eyed sultanas used to disport themselves on the warm afternoons, are among the parts of the palace that have only been accessible to the public since it has been placed under government protection. Their spaciousness and dim, mysterious light, their coolness, and the large marble tubs, render them very inviting. Those ancient Moors understood the use of cold water much better than we do. Instead of taking their baths, as we do, in narrow, gas-lit, dingy prison-cells, barely large enough to dress in, they enjoyed theirs in apart- ments and amid surroundings that made them an eagerly-sought pleasure instead of a mere hygienic dut} T . If they brought up their women in intellect- ual darkness, they allowed them, at any rate, to enjoy the feeling of healthy buoyancy resulting from GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 145 the free use of fresh water and fresh air. The tower in which the queen's dressing-room, the Tocador de la Reina, is placed, is surely the loftiest and the air- iest apartment of the kind in the world. The view from this tower is second only to that from the watch tower, and is one which the tourist would like to linger over for hours. Unfortunately, this is one of the parts of the palace which one can see only in the presence of a guide or attendant. And it is so pleasant to have a guide with you in such a place ! My guide entertained me, while I tried to admire and study this view, with an account of how he learned a little English; what book he used ; when he began, and other interesting details. Then he asked if I was an American. He knew I was, because he could understand me so easily. He had always found that the Americans spoke more distinctly than the English. And so on, ad nauseam. Thus are the sins of former wall- writers and mosaic thieves visited on innocent tourists of to-day. The gem of the palace, the Court of Lions, which was the last part of the Alhambra to be completed, has just celebrated its five - hundredth birthday. Oddly enough the group which gives the name to this, the most famous part of the Alhambra, is the least artistic thing in the whole palace. The twelve lions which support the central fountain are al- 10 146 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO most as grotesque as the hideous stone monsters projecting from the buttresses of Gothic cathedrals, like dragons intended to frighten away the devil. The Koran's injunction forbidding its followers to make an image of any living being, evidently sadly disabled or hampered the Moorish sculptors of that period. These lions, with their quadrangular legs, heads without manes in relief, the front part of the face almost as thick as the back, the nose hardly distinguishable from the cheeks, and with water- pipes which look like cigarette-holders in their mouths, represent an almost pre-Assyrian stage of sculpture. Indeed, they are a libel on a noble animal, and no wonder the lions have all left the neighboring Morocco and retired in disgust to the interior of Africa. Only once a year, on the second of January, the an- niversary of the capture of the Alhambra by the Chris- tians, is the lion-fountain, together with the other water- works, allowed to play. Thousands of Anda- lusians always visit the Alhambra on this day. The young peasant girls who make a pilgrimage to the Alhambra on the second of January generally have in mind a superstitious determination to shape their conjugal fate. Any girl who on this date as- cends the watch-tower, or Torre de la Vela, adjoin- ing the palace, and strikes the bell, is sure to get a husband before the end of the year ; and the harder GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 147 she strikes, the better will be the husband. From the noise made on this day it has been inferred that marriage is not regarded as a failure by the unmar- ried women of Spain. On other occasions this bell is used for the less poetic purpose of indicating to the farmers of the vega how long they can use the irrigating stream on their fields. The tower itself enjoys the distinction of com- manding one of the finest views in Europe, especially during the half hour preceding sunset Below lies the Alhambra, so unpromising in its exterior, so fairy-like in its interior, and beyond, to the right, are the Spanish Alps, the Sierra Nevada, powdered with snow, and rising twelve thousand feet into the air. On the other side lies the city of Granada, grouped about its giant religious guardian, the cathedral, and along the hill to the right can be seen the habi- tations of the gypsies, dug into the mountain side. Beyond the city, almost as far as the eye can reach, extends the fertile green plain, studded with villages, gardens, orchards, and farms. Here were fought the last battles between the Moors and Christians in Spain, and to the historically-minded nothing could be more fascinating than sitting here and reading the story of Granada, with a bird's-eye view of the real battle-grounds before him in place of a map. But when the sun begins to sink the book must be shut, for then the aesthetic sense claims a monopoly 148 SPAIN AND MOROCCO of the attention. The snow of a sudden assumes a delicate rosy tint, like the Swiss Alpgliihen, while the lower mountain chain on the opposite side, be- hind which the sun is slowly disappearing, looks like a fantastic coal-black silhouette contrasting vividly with the green sunset sky. For a quarter of an hour this scene may be enjoyed, when all at once the rosy blush on the Sierras disappears, leav- ing the snow more deadly pale than it had seemed before. The snow-fields of the Sierra are not meas- ured by miles, as those of Alaska, and there are many black patches between them. But these very patches have a poetic suggestiveness, for from them came the snow-water which feeds the Alhambra gar- dens and groves, and enables the Granadans to drink in a snow-breeze perfumed with the fragrance of orange-blossoms. Surely, among all of Ovid's meta- morphoses, there is none so strange and charming as this transformation of Sierra snows into fragrant, snowy orange-blossoms on a hill which but for the snow-water would be a barren rock, and was so be- fore the Moors converted it into a paradise. During the week that I remained at Granada, I never once missed this sunset view, the perennial attractiveness of which was attested by the fact that even the guardian of the tower and his wife used to bring up chairs and guests to this tower-terrace, and sit admiring it. Surely no king ever had such a re- GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 149 ception-room as these keepers of the Torre de la Vela! It is not the altitude alone that ensures the charm of this prospect, but the peculiarity of the point of view. This is realized on going farther up the hill to the Generalife, the view from which, though often described in glowing terms, is a decided anti-climax after the watch-tower, and should therefore be seen previously. Nevertheless, the Generalife is well worth visiting on account of its terraced gardens, its perfect system of irrigation, its magnificent rows of cypresses, some of them six centuries old, and the elaborately carved doors. Still farther up the hill is the cemetery, commanding a mountain view which seems pathetically wasted on a graveyard. Having been told that funerals are generally held here a few hours before sunset, I went up one afternoon, and had hardly reached the entrance to the enclosed cemetery when a party arrived, consisting of a man and a dozen boys, some of whom carried the coffin, while the others held in their hands lighted candles, though it was broad daylight. I followed the party till they reached a spot where an old man had just dug a grave, less than three feet deep. The coffin, in which lay a girl of about six years, and which had been open so far, was placed on the ground, the lid put on, and then it was lowered into the grave without any ceremony whatever. While the grave- 150 SPAIN AND MOROCCO digger shovelled in the soil, the man and the boys went aside a few yards, where they quarrelled loudly over the amount the boys were to get. Finally, the matter was arranged, the man gathered the candles from the boys, and they dispersed. This was in the poorer quarter of the cemetery, where there were no monuments or gravestones of any sort. In another part there were a number of chapel- like tombs for families, as in ordinary cemeteries ; and'this part constitutes one of the three large patios, or courts, into which the main body of the cemetery is divided. The buildings, or rather walls, which frame in these large patios are used as burial places, being regularly divided into numerous pigeon-holes, into which the coffins are inserted. On the outside is a slab with the name of the family to which that section belongs, and in front of this is often a glass covering, the intervening space being filled up with evergreen wreaths, pictures of saints, or a crucifix. The patios themselves are marked with special divi- sions for adults and for children ; e.g., " Adultos, Seccion IA, Patio 3. " After examining a few of the numbered streets of this necropolis, I passed through the gate, but had not got very far when I noticed another funeral procession drawing near. This time it was an old woman, with a terribly emaciated face, who lay in the open coffin. About a dozen men and women accompanied the bearers, and twice as many GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 151 more were hurrying along behind, some of the women actually running, for fear of being too late. There was, indeed, very little delay after the grave was reached, although there was a little more ceremony than in case of the child. The mourners all stood around the open grave and prayed silently while the coffin was lowered, and one young woman broke into loud sobs. All the men had removed their hats except one, who was quietly admonished by the whispered word, " sombrero," to follow suit. After- ward I noticed that most of the men entered a venta near the cemetery, to drown their grief in aguardi- ente, after the fashion of Irishmen and Kussians. Augustus Hare relates that at the time when he visited Spain, twenty years ago, whenever an un- coffined funeral took place, the gypsies, by an an- cient custom, fell upon the body of the victim and tearing off its dress and decorations, fought and scrambled for it among themselves, "leaving the poor corpse to be tossed, naked and desecrated, into its grave among the docks and nettles." This may have been true then (although Hare did not see it with his own eyes), but it is not true to-day, and it is therefore absurd for the latest edition of Murray's guide to refer to this passage in Hare, and in consequence warn travellers not to follow proces- sions within the gate of the cemetery. No gypsies are to be seen there in the day-time, and at night a 152 SPAIN AND MOROCCO special sentry is stationed at the entrance. In speak- ing of this cemetery with some of the guests at the hotel, one of them, a young Englishman, told me of an amusing adventure he had there. On the evening of his arrival he left the hotel with a friend to go and see the Alhambra by moonlight. But they had for- gotten to enquire their way, and presently they ar- rived at a walled entrance which they supposed led to the castle. They were unpleasantly surprised to find themselves in a graveyard, and to add to their consternation, a man with a rifle suddenly arose before them and barred their way. All the stories of Spanish robbers they had ever heard flitted across their memories, but the sentinel allowed them to depart with their lives and purses intact, to seek for Moorish castles elsewhere. But if the gypsy custom described by Hare seems to have been abolished, there still survives a practice which makes this cemetery a disagreeable and dangerous place to visit. The same ground is used over and over again without allowing a sufficient number of years to elapse for all parts of the skeletons to decompose, and in consequence the place is strewn with small human bones. And over this ground the mourners walk in going to and from graves. A more ingen- ious method of importing the germs of typhoid fever, with the dust clinging to shoes, into the houses of the people, cannot be conceived. GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA 153 The city of Granada itself offers little to interest those who have seen other Spanish cities. It has for the most part the usual crooked, noisy streets, so narrow that, as an Italian comedian expressed himself " one can hardly pass through after a good dinner." Some of the modern streets and squares, however, are wide and airy, with good sidewalks and fountains ; but they are less interesting than the few remaining little streets which have preserved their Moorish characteristics, including pavements adorned with flowers and mosaic work. The Alameda is one of the finest promenades in Spain, on account of its glimpses of the Sierra Nevada from amid a tropical vegetation. The cathedral is also worth a visit, es- pecially on account of the capillo real, which con- tains some of the finest sculptures in Spain. Walking along the streets, a curious sight fre- quently meets the view. Granada being a summer resort, the natives seem to wish to make it appear as cool as possible, so they make their ice-cream on the sidewalk, placing their tin buckets in rows, and filling them with snow. This snow is secured in a rather primitive way by gypsies going up to the Sierra at night and bringing down a few donkey- loads. The mystery is where the Granadans get the money to buy ice cream. The city is the poor- est of its size in Spain, and the population has dwindled down to 65,000 from the half a million 154 SPAIN AND MOROCCO which it once contained. Beggars abound and, as elsewhere, their principal victims are the tourists. A good deal of nonsense is to be found in the guide books as to the way in which these beggars are treated by the Spaniards themselves and should be treated by foreigners. Spaniards, we are told, in refusing a beggar's request use the words, " Pardon me, brother, for God's sake." The fact is that dur- ing all the time I was in Spain I never heard a Span- iard say this or anything else like it to a beggar. They simply ignore them, which is the best way, or in case of boys who come into stores, tell them to " get out " " anda, nino" a phrase which I did hear more than once. And even if the Spaniards themselves did use such polite language toward the beggars, there is no reason why tourists should fol- low such a silly example. In most cases pity be- stowed on Spanish beggars is so much sympathy wasted. History shows how much Spanish soil will yield if properly cultivated. The soil is as rich as ever, but the Spaniard who haunts the cities is too lazy and too proud to work. He thinks he is " as good as any one," and that labor is beneath his dig- nity. It is an actual fact that these fellows consider it dishonorable to work but not so to beg. Rich Spaniards may sympathize with such a sentiment if they choose, and give their coppers, but foreigners had better keep them in their pocket, unless they GKANADA AND THE ALIIAMBRA 155 wish to encourage such views regarding the compar- ative dignity of labor and begging. The efforts that have been made now and then to suppress mendi- cancy have failed because the beggars do not wish to give up their "profession." In Cadiz, for exam- ple, as the American consul informed me, hospitals have been built where all beggars who present them- selves are well taken care of. But the majority re- fuse to stay because they can make more money by begging and because they are not allowed to drink in the hospitals. A great deal too much has been said, too, about the " picturesqueness " and " grace " and " dignity " of these beggars. I rarely saw any- thing picturesque or graceful about these impudent, lazy tramps, with their dirty, loathsome rags, vicious faces, and (generally self-inflicted) disgusting mutila- tions. In Granada the beggar nuisance is aggravated by the presence of a large number of gypsies, the most persistent and irrepressible of all mendicants men, women, and children. Nevertheless, the gypsy quar- ter, the Albaicin, must be visited by every tourist, at the risk of being almost crushed, or torn to pieces, by these beggars not only because their habitations are among the most curious things in Spain, but because the hillside where they live commands one of the finest views in granada. When Borrow wrote his book on the Gypsies of 156 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Spain he made Seville their headquarters, but to- day I believe there are more of them at Granada, and at any rate the Seville gypsies have nothing to show quite so unique as the habitations of their Granadan friends holes dug into the mountain side and excavated into the rocks, with wooden doors in front. They are real caves, some of them with an alcove or two for bedrooms, or for pigs or chickens. The ceiling is roughly hewn, and the fireplace consists of a simple hole and a few bricks. Whenever a tourist approaches, the women appear in the doors and invite him to come in and see their homes, in hopes, of course, of receiving a gra- tuity for the show. One of the women com- mended her den to me as being " muy fresca y lim- pia." It was " cool," no doubt, but not as obviously "clean," although these caves, being frequently on exhibition, are doubtless much more tidy than those in the more remote quarters of gypsy town, which I did not visit, not being in a " slumming " mood. It is estimated that there are still from three thou- sand to four thousand gypsies in Granada, but I be- lieve this estimate is excessive. A few days later, in travelling by diligence toward Lorca, I discovered where many of the gypsies who used to burrow in the Albaicin have gone to. But of this in the next chapter. A ROMANTIC EPISODE A Stage Ride. Off the Beaten Track. Third Class Best. The Mules and the Priest. A Suspicious Tavern. Saved by a Lie. A Spanish Thunder-storm. Fantastic Mud Architecture. Gypsy Cave Dwellings. Garlic and Raw Ham. Murcia. Street Music and Dancing. To go from New York to Boston by way of Buffalo would be a nice little detour, somewhat similar to that which a tourist has to make who wishes to go by rail from Granada east to Lorca and Murcia en route for Barcelona. By a direct railway the distance would be under 200 miles, but at present it is 535, as one has to go northward almost as far as Madrid before striking the south-bound train for Murcia. Two other routes are possible by diligence via Baza, or from Malaga by steamer, uncertain as to time and cleanliness. I chose the diligence, and though it involves a great strain on one's patience and bones, I would recommend every tourist of the stronger sex to follow my example, for this route will take him through one of the weirdest and wildest parts of Spain a prehistoric region of cave-dwell- 158 SPAIN AND MOROCCO ers, where the very word of railway seems to be un- known and undreamt of. The typical Andalusian stage leaves Granada daily at three or four o'clock, rattling through the narrow, deserted streets with a noise that must wake every sleeper within half a mile. The driver has no lines to connect him with the six mules, but steers them right or left with the whip, and with the assistance of a man and boy who alight anywhere, on the leaders or on the stage, like squirrels, and every minute or two are off again, and forward be- laboring the animals with blows and oaths. One of the brutes (I mean the mules) has a hideous sore on his side, which is irritated by the hard strap at every plunge and makes him jump and kick like one possessed. It would be easy to relieve his sufferings by simply hitching him on the other side, but his tormentors seem to have no idea that he does suffer, but look on his conduct as pure deviltry and there- fore follow up every kick with cruel blows. This comedy seems to greatly amuse a fellow more than half drunk, with a pistol in his belt, who occupies the other end of my seat on the top of the stage, be- hind the driver ; he laughs uproariously after every kick and blow. Between us sits a sleek, complacent priest, who, after his neighbor's outbursts of hilarity, tries to explain to him why the mule kicks so fran- tically, by pointing at the raw wound ; but he does A ROMANTIC EPISODE 159 not dream of remonstrating with the men for their cruelty. He seems to think that that is none of his business. Had it not been for this harrowing cruelty, the ride would have been a most enjoyable one, for the road is good, and on level ground, and down hill the mules are urged to go prestissimo, and even uphill only andante, never adagio, while the scenery is magnificent, disclosing constantly new snow-fields on the Sierra Nevada, which is only about three thou- sand feet lower than the Swiss Alpine summits, though it hardly seems so high, because it is an un- broken range, with no conspicuously isolated peaks. After some hours' ride the snowy summits disap- pear, and the near scenery becomes so remarkably odd as to monopolize the attention. Here, during the rainy season, the swollen rivers have washed out the yellow soil into canons and formations that strikingly resemble the scenic peculiarities in parts of Arizona and Colorado. The sides of these canons and gorges are adorned with the most realistic carv- ings, sculpture, and architectural effects complete houses, with doors and windows and picturesque castles. No fata morgana could be more perfect, and one would be inclined to believe in a human origin of these carvings were they not on too large a scale, and extending along miles of inaccessible precipices. The thought occurs that these odd for- 160 SPAIN AND MOROCCO mations may have suggested to the Gypsies their cave-dwellings, and as if to confirm this suspicion we soon come into a region which is densely covered with the mud-homes of the Gitanas. Many of these homes are mere caves dug into the hillsides, as at Granada, some being on a level with the ground, and some farther up the perpendicular hillside, where it is a curious sight to watch the women moving about in their glaringly colored half-dresses, and the chil- dren-as naked as in an African kraal. On all sides rise mounds and hillocks of various sizes, occasion- ally as large as castles, shaped like a mosque or a cone, and into these, too, the Gypsies and the poorest of the Spaniards have dug rooms, sometimes in two stories, and with a chimney on the top. And there is much to be said for this practice ; for in a region where there is no building material except this mud, why not utilize it just as nature, in an architectural mood, has built and the sun burnt it ? What could be cooler in summer and warmer in winter than such self-built adobe houses ? At Guadix mules and stages were changed, and as the new stage had no outside or* 'third class" seats, the agent informed me that I must pay ten reals extra and take a second-class inside seat. For, strange to say, the outside seats, the only decent ones on any stage, for which in Switzerland and other countries travellers gladly pay extra, are in A ROMANTIC EPISODE 161 Spain rated third-class, the interior being second- class, and the berlina, a sort of box under the driver's seat, first-class. Now the inside of a Spanish coach is, of course, intolerably warm and stuffy, and from the berlina the outlook on the scenery is limited. Hence, I protested that, according to written agree- ment, I had paid for an outside seat all the way to Baza. "Very well," the agent replied ; and with a half angry, half sarcastic air he arranged the baggage on the top of the stage, including a sack of oats, in such a way that I could sit on it, and brought a ladder for me to get up. I found the improvised seat more comfortable than my old one, and took possession of it complacently ; but I could not but observe that the by-standers, including the beggars, looked with a surprise mingled with contempt on the eccentric "Inglese," who, although well dressed, rode in the baggage quarters when the berlina was empty. To bring this amusing episode to a climax, after we had travelled a few hours, a violent rain- storm overtook us, and the driver, in order to keep the baggage covered, had to ask me to descend, and the interior being full, gave me a place in the berlina, so that I travelled for five hours " first-class" on a "third-class" ticket. The charges for the eighteen hours' ride to Baza were only $2.50. Before leaving the Washington Irving at Granada I had asked the landlord whether I could get any- 11 162 SPAIN AND MOROCCO thing to eat on the way, and he replied : " Nothing that you would care to eat." Perhaps he was right, for when we stopped at a miserable venta, the pas- sengers had to enter the dining-room through a stable inhabited by mules, half -naked children, and pigs. Among the passengers were four green Anda- lusian youths, looking like clerks, who occupied the interior, and who seemed to have much fun at the expense of the " Inglese " on top of the stage, and one of them appears to have understood a little Ger- man, which he imagined an " Inglese " must under- stand ; for several times they counted three, and shouted in unison "Englimder." When they came back from the venta they carried a leathern bag filled with wine and terminating in a horny mouth-piece. After helping themselves they handed it to the driver, but did not pass it to me, though the guide- books say that Spaniards in a public vehicle never eat or drink anything before inviting all their fellow passengers. Perhaps third-class travellers are ex- cepted. At Baza I had to spend a night in a passable fonda, and next day I was shown the tartana to which I was to confide my limbs for seventeen con- secutive hours. It was a " horrid " old cart without springs, on two huge wheels, and covered over with canvas like our emigrant wagons. In looking at it I fancied I could realize the feelings with which a A ROMANTIC EPISODE 163 culprit looks on his gallows. It was probably to give me time to recover my courage, after seeing the tartana, that the driver did not start till late in the afternoon. At first all went well, but toward nine o'clock a most violent thunder-storm broke over us. We were in a perfectly level region, in which our wagon and the mules' ears were the most conspicu- ous objects, and every few minutes the lightning seemed to strike within a few hundred yards of us, for the flash was instantaneously followed by a terrific thunder-clap. After the first clap the mules began to run like mad, but when the flash and crash came so near us they stood stark still after every ex- plosion, and gazed in trembling terror about them, while the driver crossed himself over and over again. Then the rain began to come down in such torrents that the driver concluded to put up at a village we happened to be passing and wait for the end of the storm. He drove into one of those posadas, half inn, half stable, which abound in rural Spain, unhitched the mules and left me alone to study my environment. On one side was the stable, and on the other, with- out any partition, the kitchen. An old woman fin- ished up her day's work by washing an old kettle, and then went upstairs. Four men were lying asleep on the ground around a pillar, simply wrapped in a blanket, and two other men were sit- 164 SPAIN AND MOROCCO ting on chairs near the table, engaged in loud con- versation. I took a seat on the bench by the table, and presently I noticed that the men talked in a lower tone and apparently about me, to judge by their glances. One of them got up, went out, and returned after ten minutes with his cloak on ; but instead of resuming his old place he sat down on the bench, within a foot of me, and every other moment looked at me with a semi-insulting, defiant turn of the head. Being unarmed, and remember- ing the instructions that " when a common Spaniard approaches you with his hand under his cloak, be on your guard," I deemed politeness the better part of valor and opened a conversation with him, addressing him as "senor" and " caballero," and telling him I was travelling to see the sights of the country, and how much I liked it and the people. After a while he asked if I intended to travel that night, and where I was going. My suspicions being aroused, I told him I was going to Baza (whence I had just come). A few minutes later he asked again, "So you are going to Baza to-night?" and when I had replied in the affirmative, he got up, said good night and went out into the street. Whether he went home to bed, or along the road to Baza to waylay, rob, and murder me, I cannot say ; but as the latter supposition is more romantic, and costs no more, let ua cling to that. His going out A ROMANTIC EPISODE 165 for his cloak (and dagger ? ), his sitting so near me, his insolent looks, and his twice repeated question as to my route were certainly excuse enough for my suspicions and my lies. The storm presently subsided, the driver returned, and we resumed our journey in broad moonlight. Everything was now so calm and quiet that the driver soon fell asleep and slept for two hours, while the mules patiently plodded along the road. Sud- denly, at midnight, they halted in front of a dilapi- dated solitary hut. They knew their regular stop- ping place, and after seven hours of steady pulling along a muddy road, were not likely to pass it by, even if the " driver " was asleep. The sudden stop of course, awoke him, and he jumped out and pound- ed on the door, whence presently a man emerged with a fresh team, and exchanged places with him. The new driver was wide awake, and we sped along merrily until at five o'clock we reached Velez Rubio, where I got another tartana and still another driver. This man was quite intelligent and talkative and told me a good deal about politics, the poverty of Spain, and the foreign capitalists who are absorbing what little wealth is left. At noon he took his lunch, com- posed of ten raw tomatoes, half a loaf of bread, a piece of raw ham, and a large bulb of garlic consist- ing of a score of bulblets, which he took one at a time to flavor his portions. It is doubtful if he ex- 166 SPAIN AND MOROCCO pected another meal that day, and in watching him a brilliant theory came to my mind perhaps the poorer classes in Spain are so fond of garlic for the reason that they have so little to eat ; for, as it takes several days to digest a bulb of garlic, they always feel as if they had something in their stomach. The driver's boy, the only fellow passenger I had all the way from Baza to Lorca, refused the offer of garlic," but took a piece of raw ham and bread. I had previously supposed that the Germans were the only extensive eaters of raw ham, but from what I saw in various parts of Spain I concluded that the Spaniards are addicted to this risky practice more even than the Germans. After we had traversed a horrible road, which for miles followed a river bed, and passed some more gypsy caves, we at last arrived at Lorca just in time for the afternoon train to Murcia. But though there was a railway here, one could hardly speak of railway accommodations, for the arrangements are not a bit accommodating. Here are two cities, one with 54,000 the other with 92,000 inhabitants, forty miles apart and connected by only two trains a day ; and what is worse, only the morning train goes as far as Murcia, while the afternoon train stops at a station five miles from the city, whence you are transferred by tartanas. There were several car- loads of people, all bound for Murcia, yet the train A ROMANTIC EPISODE 167 stopped at Alcantarilla and refused to budge another inch ! However, the indignation over this asininity soon gave place to admiration of the magnificent alleys of elm trees along which the coach passed, the elaborate and ingenious arrangements for irrigating, introduced by the old Moors, and the consequently most dazzling flower gardens, Murcia being famed as the mart whence the opulent classes of Madrid get their flowers during the winter months when the capital is shivering in the cold, while here, only two hundred and eighty-seven miles away, the tropical flora of Africa luxuriate on European soil. Murcia has a fine cathedral, a silk factory, and an interest- ing market-place, besides the usual alameda and an unusual proportion of pretty girls of the darkest brunette type. In the evening I came across an interesting per- formance in the street. A woman and a man were singing a duet, accompanying themselves with a guitar and a mandolin, making a peculiarly pleas- ing combination, infinitely superior to the perform- ances of the Italian bards who accompany themselves with hand-organs or cheap harps, not to speak of the horrible German beer-bands which infest our streets. It was indeed so agreeable that I followed the couple for several blocks. But with the excep- tion of a students' concert in Seville, it was almost the only good music I heard in Spain. Madrid and 168 SPAIN AND MOKOCCO Barcelona have ambitious operatic performances in winter, and the Barcelonese go so far as to claim that they sing and understand Wagner better than the Beiiiners ; but as the opera-houses were closed while I was there, I have no comments to offer on this boast. In a cafe chantant which I visited in Seville I heard, instead of national airs, vulgar French women singing a French version of " Cham- pagne Charley " and similar vulgar things ; no one, it is true, cared for these songs, whereas a rare bit of national melody in the programme was wildly applauded ; but fashion of course must have her sway. At another cafe the music was thoroughly Spanish, with guitar accompaniment ; but, according to the usual Spanish custom, there were a dozen persons on the stage who clapped their hands so loudly, to mark the rhythm, that the music degen- erated into a mere rhythmic noise accompanying the dancing. These dances interest the Spanish populace much more than any kind of music, and I was amused occasionally to see a group of working men looking on the grotesque amateur dancing of one or two of their number with an expression of supreme enjoyment, and clapping their hands in unison to keep time. XI MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN Palm Groves and Vineyards. Where " French" Wines are Raised. Alicante and Valencia Compared with Andalu- sian Cities, Ludicrous Tartanas. Old Roman Ruins. Barcelona. Local Pride versus Patriotism. Montser- rat. A Magnificent Mountain View. ON the way from Murcia to Alicante an entirely new sight meets the tourist's eyes : a profusion of Oriental date-palms, some scattered, others united into large picturesque groves. Like the orange groves of Andalusia, and the elm grove at the Al- hambra, they prove that Spain is a paradise where- ever trees are grown. The town of Elche is sur- rounded by a perfect forest of them, and those who are anxious to try the poetic experiment of unter Palmen wandeln get off here ; but to merely see the groves it is not necessary to leave the train, as it passes right through the densest part of the forest, very much as trains pass through the fir and pine forests in Oregon and Washington ; though it is not likely that a destructive " clearing " was made at Elche to secure a passage. The palms are of all 170 SPAIN AND MOROCCO sizes and ages. Some (the male trees) have only leaves, others clusters of fruit, and beautiful orange- colored stalks. Besides the fruit, which is smaller and less richly flavored than the best Oriental dates, the palms yield a large supply of leaves for the celebration of Palm Sunday in neighboring Span- ish cities, and from these two sources the Elcheans derive a good income, though they also cultivate oranges and other semi-tropical fruits. At Alicante the promenade along the wharves is lined with rows of palm trees, but owing to the undesirable neigh- borhood this promenade is less used than the one in the interior of the town. Among the promenaders are more women than elsewhere, since the propor- tion of the sexes could not but be affected by the presence, in a city of 36,000 inhabitants, of 6,000 female employees in the government cigar factory. But for some obscure reason the women of Alicante are inferior in beauty to those of Murcia on one side and of Valencia on the other. The new part of Alicante has regular, wide streets, whence one can see the fine castle of Santa Barbara, which towers over the city. The view from the top presents a striking contrast in the bleak, dark mountains on one side and the bright blue Mediterranean on the other. Alicante has one of the best hotels in Spain, the Bossio, where I had apartments on the first MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN 171 floor, consisting of a large parlor and two alcoves, with board, for $2 a day. The table d'hdte pre- sented a curious sight, the long table being lined on both sides by young men all speaking French, and generally on one topic wine. They are French commercial travellers, the extent of whose purchases may be estimated from the fact that from Alicante alone, according to Ford, "in 1886 wine to the value of one and one-quarter million sterling was exported, chiefly to France, for mixing with clarets.'* But Alicante is only one of the stations where these wine merchants do congregate. The whole Medi- terranean coast, from Alicante to Barcelona, is one vast vineyard, interrupted occasionally by grain fields, vegetable gardens, and gigantic olive and fig orchards. The number of vines is simply astound- ing; and as the Spaniards themselves drink very little, most of this wine goes to Burgundy and Bor- deaux, whence it is exported as French wine ; so that the French vintages get the credit for all that is good in Spanish wines, while the Spanish labels, for want of enterprise and advertising ingenuity, re- main unknown. Nothing surprised me more at the Barcelona exposition than the vast cones and pyra- mids of wine bottles, each bottle representing a different brand, and many of them no doubt as well entitled to fame as some renowned^ French labels. If wine-drinkers were wise they would insist on get- 172 SPAIN AND MOROCCO ting the pure article directly from Mediterranean Spain instead of at second band from Paris, mixed with sour claret and injurious chemicals. But the average wine drinker is an ignorant fellow who complacently orders his chemical " St. Julien " or " Chateau Margaux " at the grocer's, and turns up his nose at the Spanish and California wines, which are still made of the unfashionable grape-juice. At Malaga the tourist receives an impression, which is strengthened at Alicante, and still more at Valencia and Barcelona, that although from a ro- mantic and aesthetic point of view Andalusia is the jewel of Spain, in the bustle of activity and the ani- mation and prosperity of trade, Mediterranean Spain takes the lead. Cordova, Seville, Cadiz, Granada, in fact all the Andalusian cities excepting Malaga, have an air of genteel poverty, and remind one at every turn of a more glorious and opulent past, whereas in the Mediterranean cities the past is for- gotten in the active life of to-day. Valencia, for in- stance, is of about the same size as Seville, and its streets, clean and well-paved, are almost equally nar- row, and on warm afternoons similarly covered with awnings stretched across ; but there is more life in these streets than in Seville, and the people seem to live more in the present tense than in the dreamy past. Valencia is a university town and has some good art collections. At the market-place one can MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN 173 admire the curious costumes of the peasants, and the great variety of fruits and sea animals used for food ; and the Grao, or harbor, a mile or two from the centre of the city, may be visited in summer to see and join in the surf-bathing, which attracts all classes of the population. Promenading does not appear to be as fashionable as formerly, for on two evenings I found the beautiful alameda almost de- serted. In one respect Valencia is becoming mod- ernized. The wealthy classes in driving on the ala- meda are beginning to use regular open carriages, whereas until quite recently they clung to the ludi- crous tartanas, similar in construction to the one in which I rode from Baza to Lorca, though of course made of better material. For the general public, however, and for tourists, the tartana remains the only conveyance ; and if you wish to see the suburbs of Valencia you have to crawl into one of these two- wheeled canvas-covered vehicles and make the best of your opportunities for catching a glimpse of your surroundings through the open canvas arch by which you climbed into the cart from behind. The tar- tanas I saw in no other parts of Spain, and in Bar- celona they had disappeared. Between Valencia and Barcelona there is, of course, frequent communication by steamboat, but the land trip is too interesting, scenically and his- torically, to be neglected even for a ride on the 174 SPAIN AND MOROCCO Mediterranean. Here is to be seen the famous Sa- guntum, with its castle, theatre, and site of the Diana temple, besides Tortosa, Tarragona, and other old Roman places, so that one might fancy himself in Italy. In climate and scenery the region is en- chanting, sea-breezes are wafted into the car-win- dows from the Mediterranean, which is almost al- ways in sight, while on the ottier side is a mountain range, the intervening region being adorned with gardens and vineyards. Here and there are huge piles of stones, heaped up to gain arable soil and to serve as a warm reflecting surface for the vines. In reaching Barcelona we seem to have unsuspectingly left Spain and arrived in France ; for though Span- ish still is the only language heard, the streets, which are wide and clean, and the architecture are French, as are the hotels and cafes. Great is the difference between Barcelona and Seville, or even Valencia ; and though a tourist may find considerable local color in Barcelona if it is the first Spanish city he visits, he will find little to note if he makes it his point of exit ; unless perchance he happens to be present during the Carnival or one of the special local holidays. Barcelona disputes with Madrid the claim to hav- ing the largest population in Spain ; yet it did not prove quite large enough to make a success of its international exhibition in 1888. The local papers MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN 175 attributed this failure, so far as they admitted it, to the jealousy of the other Spanish provinces and cities, especially of Madrid ; and it is an undeniable fact that in a Spaniard's breast the pride at being a Castilian or an Andalusian continues to be a more vivid feeling than his general satisfaction in the con- sciousness of being a Spaniard. Spanish poverty, however, has perhaps as much to do with the failure of the exposition as provincial jealousy. A Sevillan would hesitate longer in deciding to make a trip to Barcelona than a New Yorker in going to London or San Francisco. One kind of exhibition which never fails to attract a crowd in Barcelona, as in other Spanish cities, is a display of fireworks. I attended one of these exhi- bitions, and could not but wonder at the patience of these people in looking for two hours at a pyrotech- nic show which would be voted extremely common- place and monotonous at the Crystal Palace in Lon- don, or at Coney Island or in a Japanese city. The favorite seemed to be an illumination of a high fountain with various colored lights ; but oddly enough these Spaniards, though proverbially fond of bright colors, reserved all their applause for the moments when the white light was turned on the fountain. Barcelona, being situated on the shore of the Mediterranean and not far from the mountains, has 176 SPAIN AND MOROCCO a delightful climate in winter, and is not so exces- sively warm in summer as some other Spanish cities. During the hottest season the Barcelonese have the choice of a number of refreshing excursions, of which the favorite one is to the summit of Mont- serrat, the view of which and from which is one of the grandest in Europe. It is reached by rail and coach, and when first descried does not seem any more remarkable than hundreds of rugged nameless mountain masses in Switzerland, except that its isolated position in the plain attracts attention to it. But the nearer you approach, the more vividly is its majestic grandeur realized ; and, as with the portals of a Gothic cathedral, its detailed sculptures and formations are so interesting that one cannot form a just estimate of it before reaching the mon- astery more than half way up ; or rather a point just below and opposite the chapel, a short distance from the monastery. From this point the upper parts look like groups of gigantic stalagmite formed in mid air, or, to use a more homely simile, like con- glomerates of some kind of tubers changed into stone, standing upright, squeezed together like dates, and garnished in its lower parts with green vegetation, wherever the Alpine trees and shrubs can possibly gain a foothold. These occasional patches of green distinguish it from other Spanish mountains, which are usually bleak and bare, like MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN 177 deserts turned on edge. Mostly the rocks are abso- lutely perpendicular, and over-topping all the rest are three cones, coquetting with the clouds. The summit may be reached on foot or by mule", on the same day, but it is better to spend the night in the monastery and get up at five, ascend the mountain and return in time for the nine o'clock stage back to the railway station. By applying at the office a monk assigns you a room and supplies the linen, for which you may pay as much as you please. A candle may be bought in a small shop adjoining and a tolerable dinner obtained in the restaurant, where you may also drink a fine Bene- dictine liqueur prepared by the gastronomic monks themselves ; but the wine, though seemingly pure, has a most ancient and boot-like flavor, probably from the pigskin it was stored in. An hour and a half's climbing, not very difficult and perfectly safe, brings you to the top, in the morning ; and were the climb ten times harder and as perilous as the Matterhorn the scene from the top would atone for it. All of Catalonia, with the snow-covered Pyrenees on one side and the Mediterranean on the other, lies below, and from the highest rocks, protected by iron railings, you look down into dizzy, frightful abysses. There is a shanty just below the summit where facilities exist for obtaining a breakfast, which shows that the summit is much visited at 12 178 SPAIN AND MOROCCO this early hour before the sun has climbed too high and rendered the ascent too irksome. There are a few stray sheep and lambs on the summit rocks, picking up the bread crumbs dropped by those who prefer to lunch in the open air. There are more women and girls than men among the pilgrims, and most of them seem to make it a point to find a speci- men of a certain kind of plant, probably from some superstitious motive. A shotgun fired by one of the men in a certain direction makes as much noise as several cannon in the plain, prolonged in an oft- repeated echo, which seems to roll away like thun- der to the distant snow-peaks. The situation forms a superb climax and finale to a tour of Spain, and the air is too exhilarating to allow us to be depressed by the melancholy thought that in a few hours the train will carry us across the Spanish boundary. INDEX AFRICAN appearance of Spanish cities, 35 Agriculture, primitive, 5 Alcazar, 52, 53 Alcohol, German, imported into Spain, 65 Alhambra, The, 140-148 American means South Ameri- can, 9 Andalusia, 33 BALLET in the Cathedral at Se- ville, 56 Barcelona, 174-176 Basques, 5 Baths at the Alhambra, 144 Baza, 162 Beer at Bordeaux, 3 Beggars, at Burgos, 7 ; Castil- lejos, 33 ; Tangier, 81 ; truth about, 154 Bell-ringing, 43 Birds sacred, 104 Bone exportation, 90 Bordeaux, 2 Bull-fighters, worship of, 34 Bull-fights, 22-26 Bull-ring, 19 Bulls, ignorant animals, 24; grazing, 59 Burgos, 6 CACTUS hedges, 60 Cadiz, 67-74, 76 Cafes at Madrid, 14 Canary birds, wild, 101 Cangrejos, 66 Castillejos, 33 Cathedral, at Burgos, 7 ; Toledo, 31 ; Seville, 41 ; Malaga, 134 Cave dwellings, 156, 160 Cemetery at Granada, 149 Cholera, 133 Cities, Andalusian, and Mediter- ranean, 172 Climate, of Madrid, 12 ; Seville, 43; Malaga, 135; Granada, 140; Murcia, 167; Barcelona, 176 Coffee, how made at Tetuan, 119 Convicts at Gibraltar, 129 Cookery (see also meals), 15, 17, 71 Cordova. 34-40 Corpus Christi procession, 55 Costume, Moorish, 83 Court of Lions, 145 Cow, raffled for, 47 Cruelty, in the bull-ring, 23, 24 ; to donkeys in Africa, 109 ; to mules in Spain, 158 DANCING, at a festival, 22 ; in the Seville Cathedral, 56, 57; working men, 168 Dancing girls, Moorish, 95 De Amicis, on Burgos, 8 ; Cor- dovan Mosque, 38 ; Guadal- quivir, 58 Democratic notions, 14 Donkeys, 60, 78, 105, 108-110 Don Quixote, 6 ENGLISH influences at Madrid, 9 180 INDEX FESTIVAL, of San Isidro, 21 ; at Cordova, 39 ; Seville, 55 Fireworks, 175 Flies in Tangier, 82 Flowers in Morocco, 101, 106 Fondak, 103 Forests, 62 French wine merchants, 171 Funeral processions, at Seville, 46 ; Granada, 149, 151 GARLIC, 166 Gautier, on Spanish influences at Bordeaux, 3 ; natural mum- mies, 4 ; bull-fights, 25 ; Cor- dova, 35 ; a marble forest, 37 ; Gibraltar, 124; Moorish wall tapestry, 143 Generalife, 149 Gibraltar, 123-131 Giralda, The, 44 Goafs-milk, 15 Granada, 28, 138-157 Guadalquivir, The, 58 Guides, 7, 79, 86, 126, 145 Gypsies, 151, 153, 155, 160 HALE, E. E., 38, 63 Ham, raw, 166 Hare, A., 35, 151 Hill-tribes, 106 Horses, Andalusian, 20 ; in the bull-ring, 24 ; in Morocco, 107, 110 Hotels, at Madrid, 15 ; charges at, IS; at Tangier, 78; Tet- uan, 111 ; Malaga, 132 ; Gran- ada, 139 ; Alicante, 170 INFIDEL city, 91 Inn, a suspicious, 163 JEREZ, 62 Jews, at Tangier, 78, 91, 92 ; at Tetuan, 112-116 Jewesses, at Tangier, 92 ; at Tetuan, 115 KADY, 89 LAWYER'S office in Tangier, 89 Lepers in Tangier, 81 Letters registered, 49 Levanter, The, 67 Lorca, 166 Lottery tickets, 47, 48 MADRID, 9-26, 28 Malaga, 131-136; raisins and wine, 136 Market place, in Tangier, 82 ; in Gibraltar, 126 Meals, 15, 16, 65, 165 Money, Moorish, 87 Monkeys, near Tetuan, 111; at Gibraltar, 128 Montefiore, Sir Moses, 114 Montserrat, 176-178 Moorish, language, 90 ; civiliza- tion, 91 ; costume, 83 ; love of children, 93; cafe's, 94, 119; dancing girls, 95; agri- culture, 103 ; lack of gallan- try, 105, 108; holiday, 122; architecture, 51,52, 141,143; sculpture, 146 ; baths, 144 Moors, 76 Morocco, 75-122 Mosque, at Cordova, 37 ; Tan- gier, 91 Mountains, Pyrenees, 5 ; near Madrid, 12 ; at Tetuan, 111 ; Gibraltar, 124 ; Granada, 137, 147, 159 Mud architecture, 159 Mules, 11, 20, 158, 163 Murcia, 166 Murillo, 70 Music, military, 6 ; at a festival, 22 ; at a funeral, 47 ; and Moor- ish architecture, 52, 53, 143 ; in Seville Cathedral, 56 ; Sal- amanca students, 56 ; snake charmer's, 85 ; in a Moorish cafe, 94 ; in the street, 167 J opera at Barcelona, 168 NEGRO girl at Tangier, 93 Negroes in Morocco, 120 Newspapers, 14 Night-life, 18 Noisy streets, 50, 75, 134 OLEANDER bushes, 101 INDEX 181 Olive-oil, 63 O'Shea, 22 PASSPORT, 125 Patios, 39, 51, 54 Patriotism and local pride, 175 Peasants, at Burgos, 8, 28; po- liteness of, 74 Post-office, in Seville, 48, 49; in Tangier, 89 Prado, The, at Madrid, 20 Priesthood, stronghold of, 32 Prison, at Tangier, 87 Promenades (see Prado) Pyrenees, 5, 177 RAILWAY station, a rural, 32 Railway travel, 18 Ramadan, 88, 104, 122 Religious indifference, 31, 32, 42 ; fanaticism in Morocco, 103 Riffians, 121 Roads in Morocco, 102, 107 Rooms, cooler on lower story, 52 Round trip of Spain, 27 SAGUNTUM, 174 Salamanca students, 56 Salt-pyramids, 66 San Fernando, 67 San Roque, 130 Scenery, in the Pyrenees, 5 ; at Madrid, 12, 13; near Seville, 60 ; near Jerez, 62 ; at Tangier, 78; on way to Tetuan, 105, 110 ; at Gibraltar, 128 ; Mala- ga, 136; between Malaga and Granada, 137; at Granada, 141, 147, 159; Montserrat, 176^ 178 Schack, Count, 141 Sculpture, Moorish, 146 Sereno, 54 Seville, 41-57 Shade, 19, 60 Sherry, bodegas, 62; adultera- tion of, 65 Shops, in Seville, 44; in Tan- gier, 80 ; Tetuan, 117 Sierra Nevada, 147, 159 Smugglers, 72, 132 Snake-charmer, 85 Soldiers, at Burgos, 6 ; return- ing home, 61 ; Moroccan, 99, 101, 107, 110, 116; pay of, 119 Spaniards, proud of Don Quix- ote, 6; democratic notions, 14 ; temperate habits, 17 ; turn night into day, 18 ; van- ity, 20 ; good-natured crowds, 22 ; cruelty in the bull-ring, 23 ; family affection, 61 ; plundering officials, 72; po- liteness, 73, 74 Spanish language used by Jews in Morocco, 113 Stage, Andalusian, 158, 160 Stamps sold only in cigar shops, 48 Steamers, Cadiz to Tangier, 75 : Gibraltar to Malaga, 131 Street criers, 134 Streets of Madrid, 11 ; Toledo, 29; Cordova, 35; Seville, 44 ; Tangier, 80-83, 100; Tet- uan, 112; Gibraltar, J26; Malaga, 133; Granada, 153; Valencia, 172 ; Barcelona, 174 TANGIER, 75-98, 122 Tartanas, 152, 173 Tax on food, 71 Temperance, 17 Tetuan, 107-120 Thackeray, 109, 124 Thunderstorm, 163 Toledo, 28-32 Tramways, at Madrid, 11 ; at Seville, 45 Tunnels, musical, 5 VALENCIA, 172 WATCHMEN, 54 Water-jugs, 40 Water supply, at Madrid, 11 ; at Tetuan, 115; at Malaga, 133 Wealth, how estimated, 110 Whitewashing, in Spain, 69 ; in Morocco, 117 Wine, free on the table, 17; sherry, 62-65 ; ordinary Span- 182 INDEX ish carelessly made, 63; at Malaga, 132, 136 ; in a leath- ern bag, 162; "French," raised in Spain, 171 Women, of Bordeaux, 3 ; of Madrid, 20, 28 ; at bull-fights, 26; of Seville, 52, 55; of Cadiz, 70; of Tangier, 83; Jewesses, 92 ; negroes, 93 ; Moorish dancing girls, 96 ; treatment of, in Morocco, 105, 108 ; Jewesses at Tetuan, 115 ; peasants, 116 ; in the Alham- bra, 144 ; how to get a hus- band, 146; at Murcia and Alicante, 167, 170 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW OCT 16 DEC OCT JUL 15 1927 1*1927 OCT & l928 DfiC!9 1977 Santa OCT 101928 OCT APR 3 1 19T8 1931 Rshjrnad by SOm-6/14 . - GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY 25739 BODOfl^BbO? ;