Seven Spanish cities, and the way to them

Southern Branch
of the

University of California

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Seven Spanish Cities,

AND THE WAY TO THEM.

BY

/ S ft

EDWARD E. HALE,

AUTHOR OF "THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY," "TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN,"

"IN HIS NAME," "THE INGHAM PAPERS," " HIS LEVEL BEST,"

"HOW TO DO IT," "WHAT CAREER," ETC

BOSTON:

ROBERTS BROTHERS.

1886.

94 14 \"5 38

Copyright, i88j,
By Edward E. Hale.

flTambrt&ge :

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
UNIVERSITY PRESS.

STATE NORMAL SGHUUL,

Los Angeles, Cal.

PREFACE.

Why should this man write a book about
Spain, when he was there so short a time?

That is a very fair question. The answer is
chiefly personal. In my very earliest days, an
uncle, aunt, and cousin of mine, all very dear to
me in my babyhood, went to Spain and remained
there many years. Their letters from Spain and
their Spanish curiosities were among the home
excitements of my childhood; and the great
red-letter day was the day of their return. Well
do I recollect the box of bon-bons they brought
me. There were some varieties in it, which I
have never seen again to this day.

This experience made Spain stand out from
the map of Europe to my boyish eyes, and I
felt a certain surprise that the geographies and
the newspapers had so little to tell of it.

In after days, there came to me a time when I
hoped, for a little while, to be Mr. Prescott's

iv PREFACE.

reader in his great historical work. That hope
was soon disappointed ; but it led me to the study
of the Spanish language, and it brought me his
kind. friendship while he lived.

Later yet, the duty next my hand proved to
be that of the " South American Editor" of the
Boston " Advertiser," and with it came the neces-
sity of tracing the histories of Spanish fortune in

America.

Beside this, I may say that the great pleasure
of my life has been the study of American his-
tory, which has, of course, constantly thrown me
back upon the long narratives of Spanish dis-
covery. All these personal experiences have
specially interested me in Spain.

Still, Spain is so much " out of the way," that
in two visits to Europe I had never thought it
possible even to hurry over it.

But, last summer, good luck aided me to make
the rapid tour which is described in these pages,
under circumstances very favorable. And in
the hope that other people, who may be as curi-
ous as I was, may be disposed to try the same
adventure, I print this little book of travel.

Still, it would never have been written, I fear,
but for the suggestion of my friend Mr. Guild
himself so entertaining a narrator of travel and

PRE FA CE. v

adventure. He said to me, what was very true,
after my return, that if I promised to write for
his "Bulletin" a sketch of Spain once a week, I
should do it; but that if I promised myself to
write a book, I should always mean to and never
do it. So I wrote the sketches for his paper,
which, with some additions, are here before the
reader. I hope they may start some other par-
ties on an expedition which shall prove as
charming as ours.

EDWARD E. HALE

St. Germain en Laye, France,
June 7, 1883.

CONTENTS.

Page
Preface iii

Introductory 5

Chapter

I. Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Roncesvalles 14

II. Bayonne to Madrid 28

III. Cordova 40

IV. Seville 56

V. Palos and Columbus 71

VI. Xeres, Cadiz, and Malaga 80

VII. Granada. The Alhambra .... 93

VIII. Worship in Spain 118

IX. Across the Sierra 134

X. Madrid 155

XI. Spanish Politics 166

XII. King and Administration 182

XIII. Perro Paco and the Bulls .... 198

XIV. Toledo 206

XV. Museums in Madrid 218

XVI. Out-Doors Life 228^

XVII. Zaragjoza 247

XVIII. Northward 263

XIX. Jaca 279

Index

325

\

SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

INTRODUCTORY.

I HAVE wanted to go to Spain ever since I
can remember.

In this last spring and summer I was able to
carry out this wish. My visit was very short,
but the circumstances were singularly favorable.
From a mass of mixed memoranda, and other
material, I am now tempted to select and print
these notes, in the hope that they may be of
some use to persons intending to travel, and
possibly of some amusement to friends of mine
who stay at home.

The party of which I was one was a party of
four, — my sister, my daughter, and a younger
friend, beside myself. The ladies are all enthu-
siastic in drawing and painting, and the treas-
ures of Spanish fine art were for them a great
attraction. For me — I have been for forty years
hoping to write " The History of the Pacific

6 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Ocean and its Shores." At one and another
favorable opportunity I have made collections
of material for that history. Last winter I
promised to furnish for the new " History of the
United States " the chapter on the Discovery of
California; in 1880 I had written the chapter on
that subject for Gay's " Pictorial History." Be-
fore I sent this chapter to the press I was desirous
to make some examinations in detail of the doc-
uments in Spanish archives relating to Cortez's
discovery of California and to the subsequent
explorations of different adventurers. * I had
thus an archaeological object; the ladies had an
artistic object ; and all of us were glad to be "off
soundings," and to have what the English of
Dryden's day would have called " a good time."
It is said that phrase is lost to the English of
to-day. So much the worse for them. New
Englanders will understand it.

It may as well be said in the outset that we
found all we sought in Spain, and very much
more.

Dear Michael Faraday said once, when he
was asked to examine something with a micro-
scope, " What am I expected to see?" It seems
but fair to the reader of these notes — doubt-
ful whether he will go on or whether he will
not explore another page — it seems but fair
to make such an explanation as I have now

INTRODUCTORY. 7

made as to what he is expected to find if he
perseveres.

All sorts of advice were lavished on me when
the little public of my friends fairly found out
that I was going. There was a party who were
eager that I should go in winter. Another,
headed by those who had read " A Summer in
Spain," were equally eager that I should go in
summer. Another set advised autumn ; and yet
a fourth, spring. Privately, in my own mind, I
determined that I would go when I could. This
plan brought upon me, however, a volley of re-
monstrances from those who were sure that
May and June were deadly months in Spain.
I had information laid before me tending to the
belief that annually, in those months, the whole
population of Spain died of typhoid fever, and
was buried by the survivors. To which infor-
mation I replied steadily, that when I came to
London I would take advice. " Mr. Lowell would
certainly know." It is always well to shield
one's self under the shelter of a great name.
The constituents were pacified ; they soon for-
got their own opinions, and I was left to form
my own. When I came to London I found that
my advisers thought I had better do much as I
chose, — as sound advisers are apt to think
when they talk to a man of sense. All ended,
therefore, in my leaving Paris for Spain on the

8 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

ioth of May. And the reader who doubts at
this point may be reassured when he learns that
I crossed the Pyrenees northward on my return
— and left Spain for France — on the 27th of
June. These notes, therefore, cover a period of
only seven weeks.

As this is a chapter of introductions, I will
here give a few suggestions as to language. I
had had to read Spanish more or less since
I was sixteen years old. I thought for a week,
at that time, that I was to be Mr. Prescott's
reader and amanuensis in the preparation of his
" History of the Conquest of Mexico." That
hope was dispelled at once ; but it did happen
that for six years I was the " South American edi-
tor " of the Boston " Daily Advertiser." Many a
time at midnight have I manufactured intelligible
news out of piles of unintelligible journals which
had just been captured by our enterprising
news-collectors. Of that life a little sketch was
once published by me — not very badly exagger-
ated — in the Boston " Miscellany." 1 In reading
American history, of course, I have been obliged
to read much Spanish. But I had never talked
in that language at all. By way of preparation,
then, I took on board the " Germanic " when I
sailed for Europe, Prendergast's " Mastery "

1 See page 79 in " The Man without a Country, and other
Tales," by E. E. Hale.

INTRODUCTORY. 9

hand-book of the Spanish language, and, with
the aid of a friend, I began on the voyage.
Before I left Spain I could make myself un-
derstood, and could follow conversation, and
public address more easily than conversation-
I spoke wretchedly, of course. But my expe-
rience gives me great confidence in the " Mas-
tery system." I had, long before, arrived at
great distrust of all the ordinary systems.

Of the " Mastery system," the principle is that
you learn the hardest idioms first.

It is thought that if you throw a boy into
twenty feet of water and he paddles ashore,
he will never after be afraid to go into the
water.

It is also thought that a man will not hesitate
to say, " Bring me a cup of tea," if he have
learned to say fluently, " However early a riser
you may be, I am sure you are not so much so
as this poor man, for whatever the season may
be, and whatever weather it is, he always rises
before the sun."

Mr. Prcndergast goes so far as to say that but
a little more than a hundred words are needed in
any language for all those phrases which express
the relation of things to each other. He gives a
list of these words in English. The list begins
with "unless, whether, although, yet; " and it
ends with " afterwards, always, well, ago, than."

10 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

He says — and I think truly — that in a new lan-
guage one's timidity comes from his fear about
using such words as these. It is not nouns or
verbs which trouble us. Now, courage, or the
willingness to speak, is far more important than
a large vocabulary of words. The " Mastery "
theory is, that if you learn absolutely well fifteen
sentences, which contain all these necessary
words of relation, you will plunge almost fear-
lessly into conversation. Of this theory I am a
living confirmation. For here am I, of nature
very timid and shamefaced, who, under Mr.
Prendergast's lead, boldly attacked, in three
weeks' time, porters, fellow-travellers, literati,
and table companions. Of course I made
mistakes, as when the apothecary thought I
wanted " little knives," *when I was seeking
" phial corks." This was because I did not roll
the R enough in corchillo, and he thought I
said cuchillo. But the confidence is what you
need.

I doubt whether most people recollect how
few words are necessary for the intelligent in-
terchange of opinion. The Book of Joshua con-
tains but six hundred and twelve different words,
exclusive of proper names. Learn every day
thirty words of any language, and keep up
your study for twenty-one days, and you have
learned words enough to express ideas and

INTRODUCTORY. II

narratives as varied as are those in the Book of
Joshua. You have learned enough for most
practical purposes. Now, a traveller in a new
country who keeps his eyes open, reads the
signs in the streets, and tries to read the daily
newspapers, learns much more than thirty words
a day.

For persons who want to learn Spanish I will
say one word more. Other persons may skip
this paragraph. To an Englishman or an Amer-
ican, Spanish is what school-boys call " hog
Latin ;" that is, it is made up of a Latin vocabu-
lary in the forms of a Teutonic or northern
grammar, and the idiom of this northern gram-
mar is very like the idiom of English. I sup-
pose the history of the thing to be this. The
Goths from the North of Europe conquered
Spain. They were far too proud to learn Latin
grammar. But the people they conquered vir-
tually spoke Latin. The Goths had to speak in
their words, but with the pride of conquerors
they kept to their own idiom. The result is the
Spanish language. Thus, a Spaniard says, Yo
he hablado, where an Englishman says, " I have
spoken ; " but where the Roman, if he used the
same root as the Spaniard, would have said
Fabulavi. Students of language will see that
the same original roots are used both in the
Roman and Spanish form. But the order is

12 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

exactly reversed. Fabitl-av-i reveals, in the
transfer, "I — 'av — fabled."

For this reason it is easier for an Englishman
or an American to learn Spanish than it is for a
Frenchman, because our language retains much
more Teutonic or German idiom than does the
French.

One more direction : if by any misfortune
you know any Italian when you go to Spain, for-
get it. It is only a snare and a delusion. The
Italian idiom is based closely on the Latin. The
Spanish, as has been said, is a northern idiom.
Then, for a thousand reasons, different roots
have been chosen in the two peninsulas, since
their governments were parted, for the expres-
sion of the same idea. Speaking in general, I
should say that you could guess quite as many
Spanish words from your knowledge of English
as from your knowledge of Italian. It may be
added that the Spaniards dislike the Italians,
and that the dislike is mutual. I fancy that the
use of an Italian word is as disagreeable to a
Spaniard as is the use of a German word to a
Hungarian.

I certainly would not advise any person to go
to Spain without an interpreter, unless he were
willing to take some pains to learn something of
the language. But the Spaniards are very cour-
teous and patient, willing to meet you much

INTRODUCTORY. 1 3

more than half-way; and for these and other
reasons, Spanish is by far the easiest language
to which a person speaking English can address
himself.

CHAPTER I.

BORDEAUX, BAYONNE, AND RONCESVALLES.

On the tenth day of April I left Paris with
my daughter to join the other members of my
party at Bordeaux. We broke the route by
spending the night at Orleans. We made the
whole journey by rail. Although flying over
the country at fifty kilometres an hour, I found
a special interest in it, because Franklin and
Adams, and our other revolutionary envoys, so
often had to jumble across this same country in
the rude vehicles of their time. Bordeaux was
a great port for our privateers and merchant-
men, and our commissioners generally got their
first notion of Europe in the four or five days
which they spent in this journey of five hundred
miles. John Adams first went to the theatre at
Bordeaux, for instance, when he was forty-three
years old, and he says in a note to his Diary
that our American theatres did not exist then
even in contemplation. Not to cumber notes
on Spain with full accounts of travelling in
France, I will say that the beauty of the French

BORDEAUX. 15

landscape at the end of April is curiously en-
hanced by the glory of their crimson clover.
This is an annual clover (Trifoliwn incarnatum) ,
which grows very thickly and rankly, with cylin-
drical heads of brilliant crimson flowers. I had
been looking for it for forty years, and have
often asked friends, who had forgotten the re-
quest, to bring me seeds of it. But I had never
seen it till now.

It is difficult to describe the glory of the long
fields of it blazing with crimson color. The
effect of it in bloom is as fine as a rich crimson
coleus bed would be, if you can imagine such a
bed of ten or fifteen acres. One feels all along
the meaning of the epigram that Napoleon
changed the landscape of France. I believe, in
fact, it was not Napoleon, but that the landscape
was changed by the enactments of the Conven-
tion. All the same it is true that the sub-
division of the land into small farms is perfectly
discernible even to a traveller by rail.

The change from Paris to Bordeaux was that
from spring in its freshness to full summer. In
the first place, the distance is more than that
from Boston to Washington. The trains do this
at forty miles an hour.

Bordeaux itself is a wide-awake, active, and
successful city. At the moment we were there
they were finishing, with great energy, a tern-

1 6 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

porary building for a Mechanics' Fair, as we
should call it, which was to be opened a few days
after. The exterior paintings of architecture on
canvas fronts were already up, for the joy of the
Sunday crowds. There is a very pretty park,
with ponds and paths for the delectation of
children, within easy walking distance; and a
very pleasant afternoon resort it is, much more
pleasant for the purpose than anything we have
close at hand at home. The guide-books call
the theatre the largest in France. Before the
new opera-house was built in Paris, I think this
may have been true. But we were not tempted
into the theatre. The days of our stay were hot,
and we spent our evenings on the tops of the
street-cars, which run along the river's edge, I
know not how far, either way, and give fascinat-
ing glimpses of French life to those who will
take seats, — much more to the point, I think,
than anything we should have found on the
other side of the foot-lights.

Some Roman ruins, in very good preserva-
tion, recall the time when Bordeaux was the
Burdigala of the Romans, and the artists of our
little party (which, as the reader will see, means
all of them, in a modified sense) worked loyally
on these first bits of the picturesque of eighteen
centuries ago. Here was our first experience
of sitting to draw in an open carriage, to the de-

BORDEAUX. 17

light of street-boys, — with the sympathy of the
cocker, — in utter disgust at one's own failure,
but with the half hope that months afterwards
the blotch might bring back some . pleasant
memories.

Of the cathedral — which has some interest-
ing memorials of the English occupation in the
days of the Black Prince — I had much to say
in my notes of the time. But I am conscious
that any one who follows these sketches will
find only too much of the effort to describe the
indescribable in the way of cathedrals. So I
spare him here and now.

At Bordeaux one comes into fairy-land, or
into the Romance-land, which is next door.
Huon of Bordeaux has left traces of his exploits
where he has not left traces of his name, per-
haps. The worthy Archbishop Turpin must
not be confounded with Dick Turpin of English
ballads. The Archbishop was Charlemagne's
archbishop, and in the famous retreat from
Spain did his share of the fighting. He was
killed in one story; but as he himself wrote
another, it may be that he was not killed for
certain. And now, every inch we go, we shall
be coming nearer and nearer to all the legend-
ary tales of that chivalry.

Huon of Bordeaux had killed an infamous
(imaginary) son of Charlemagne, whose name
2

1 8 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

was Chariot, who had attacked Huon's brother
when unarmed. Charlemagne had the matter
explained to him; but he still mourned over
his boy, whom Huon had cut into two pieces.
" I receive thy homage," he said, " and I grant
my pardon ; but it is on these conditions : You
shall go at once to the Sultan Gaudisso; you
shall present yourself before him as he sits at
meat; you shall cut off the head of his most
illustrious guest; you shall kiss three times on
the mouth the fair princess, his daughter; and
you shall demand of the Sultan, as a token of
tribute from me, a handful of the white hair of
his beard and four grinders from his jaws." All
of which, with the assistance of Oberon, Huon
eventually did ; and he brought home the Prin-
cess Clarimunda as his bride.

But, alas ! of Huon we found no monument
in Bordeaux. So ungrateful are cities to their
princes! It was only the 15th of May when
our pleasant stay here ended. The weather
was warm as summer. The birds were sing-
ing in the trees, and these were in full spring
beauty. We were eating strawberries at every
meal, and felt that we were in the South
indeed.

And here I am tempted to say, for the benefit
of American travellers, that the direct line from
New York to Bordeaux seems to be an admi-

BAYONNE. 19

rable line of steamers, well appointed and well
managed. The ladies of our party who joined
us here were more than satisfied with their ac-
commodations on the " Chateau Lafite." Trav-
ellers from America to the South of Europe, of
course, save a bad angle by taking this line, and
in winter or spring are in less danger of cold
weather. The passengers now are almost all
French or Spanish, so that you have a chance
to brush up your languages on the way. Let
the reader remember that the latitude of Bor-
deaux is 440 50' N., while that of New York is
400 42' N. I had heard the boats from New
York to Cadiz highly spoken of; but none of our
party tried these. The latitude of Cadiz is 360
31' N. The line from New York to Cadiz is,
therefore, about as much south of a direct east
course as that of Bordeaux is north.

I have long held to the theory that two hun-
dred miles a day on the outside is quite enough
for railway travel. If you compass sea and land
to see a country, you may as well see it. We
took the route into Spain, therefore, by staying
overnight at Bayonne, which is perhaps one
hundred and twenty miles from Bordeaux. On
the way there we saw pitcheries, for the manu-
facture of pitch and turpentine, in immense arti-
ficial forests, where the trees have been planted
in straight lines. In the midst of these planta-

20 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

tions are groves of cork-trees, lest the bottles of
the world should be unstopped. And finally
you come out on those beautiful stone-pines,
with their umbrella tops, into a lovely under-
growth of fern, heath, gorse, and broom in blos-
som; poppies and scarlet clover blazing; and
roses in the gardens in bloom. For fully sev-
enty-five miles the road passed between hedges
of hawthorn coming into bloom, which the
railroad people have planted for the protection
of their line. Till Bayonne, the strawberries we
ate had been brought from the south, as in
Boston we eat strawberries from Norfolk. But
in Bayonne, on the 15 th, we had green peas and
strawberries from their own garden. The grape-
vine over the trellis in my bedroom was in full
leaf.

At Dax the road " bifurcates," and the pas-
sengers for fashionable Pau turn east, while we
turn to the southwest. Dax, of course, reminds
one of no name in the world but Aix; and one's
philology comes to one's rescue, for Aix is
what is left of Aqitis, and Dax is what is left
of De Aquis, both these places having been
watering-places to the Romans, as they are to
their descendants.

In Bayonne we were reminded again, as we
had been at Bordeaux, by memories of the Eng-
lish occupation in those days when English

BAYONNE. 21

princes were indeed kings of half France, and,
for that matter, called themselves kings of Spain
as well. It is a strong fortress, — and one sees
the great Vauban's work still of use, — with old
castles. The two rivers, Nive and Adour, divide
the city into Great Bayonne, Little Bayonne,
and Saint-Esprit, a suburb. We mounted to a
church which had memorials of the Black Prince,
who, with his fair cousin, Joan of Kent, — who
was his second wife, — lived and reigned in these
parts, after his victories had established his fath-
er's farm here. Richard II. was born here. In-
deed, it was virtually by the route which the
Black Prince followed in his Spanish conquests
that we passed into Spain.

In my boyhood's days there were some boys
in Boston who were not afraid to buckle their
stilts to their legs, below the knee, and with
nothing in their hands but a short balancing-
pole, to walk forth high above the rest of the
human race. I see that in these more degener-
ate days boys are satisfied to make their stilts
into a sort of crutches, on which the foot perches,
and by which a round-shouldered lad stumbles
along more slowly than he can walk without.
The railroad, as we travel south, bears us
through the Landes, famous to stilt lovers, as
the region where men walk on stilts five feet
high. One of these human storks revealed

22 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

himself to a bright lookout as our train dashed
on. They march mile upon mile with them,
much faster than a man can walk without
them.1

From Bayonne to the frontier is not a long
ride, and you have charming views of the sea.
The famous watering-places of Biarritz and San
Sebastian are on this coast ; they come where
the Bay of Biscay cuts deepest into the land.
You pass the frontier at Irun, and all carriages
are changed. For when the railway system was
adopted in Spain, the Spaniards, very sensibly,
as I should say, insisted on having a gauge of
their own ; so that they need not be invaded
too easily by a French army with French en-
gines and carriages. From the station you act-
ually see the little watering-place of Fontarabia.
Biarritz and Fontarabia ! Think of mixing up
Napoleon and his Eugenie with Charlemagne
and his Roland ! Think of hearing a conductor
call " Fontarabia " ! Think of the shriek of the

1 How curious a thing is human testimony ! Fifty-eight years
ago, Mrs. Lucretia Everett, well remembered as a most charm-
ing and accomplished lady, passed over this route in a post
carriage. Writing from Bayonne, in a letter which lies before
me, she savs : " We expected to see the people walking on stilts,
as- it was said they did habitually. But we have not been fortu-
nate enough to have our curiosity gratified in this respect, and
on inquiring of the people, they said it had nci'er been the cus-
tom among them."

RONCESVALLES. 23

whistle of your engine, when you are listening
for

" that dread horn
On Fontarabian echoes borne " !

RONCESVALLES.

I remember that some Englishman growls
because he does not like to be told that a
branch line runs to Caradoc. I was brutal
enough to take down Bradshaw, when I saw
this plaint, and I found that, in fact, there is no
station near Caradoc. I pursued my researches
so far, indeed, as to find that there is no brook
which would float a birch canoe there, far less
any on which the beautiful barge could come
up under the castle window. But I never was
brute enough to tell that to any one before
now.

The guide-book explains that you are at some
distance from the famous pass at Roncesvalles.
All the same, you understand all about it. The
whole region suggests passes, — passes like Ther-
mopylae between the mountains and the sea,
and passes of which Roncesvalles was one, — as
you go through the mountains.

They do say, now, that the famous fight at
Roncesvalles was nothing but a foraging skir-
mish, in which the Spaniards cut off a small
rear-guard of Charlemagne's. But they did not

24 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

say so once. Here is Bishop Turpin's account
of it, — a good deal abridged by this copyist, —
if, indeed, the Bishop lived to write it, as above
questioned.

" Charles now began his march through the
pass of the mountains, giving the command of
the rear to his nephew Roland and to Oliver,
Count of Auvergne, ordering them to keep the
pass at Ronceval with thirty thousand men, while
he passed it with the rest of the army. . . .
When he had safely passed the narrow strait
between the mountains, with twenty thousand
of his warriors, with Turpin, the archbishop,
and Ganalon, and while the rear kept guard,
early in the morning Marsir and Beligard, rush-
ing down from the hills, where by Ganalon's
advice they had lain two days in ambush, form-
ing their troops into two great divisions, and
with the first of twenty thousand men attacked
our army, which, making a bold resistance,
fought from morning to the third hour, and
utterly destroyed the enemy. But a fresh corps
of thirty thousand Saracens now poured furi-
ously down upon the Christians, already faint
and exhausted with fighting so long, and smote
them from high to low, so that scarcely one
escaped. Some were transpierced with lances,
some killed with clubs ; others beheaded, burned,
flayed alive, or suspended upon trees. Only

RONCESVALLES. 2$

Roland, Baldwin, and Thcodoric were left ;
the last two gained the woods, and finally
escaped. . . .

" As Roland was returning after the battle to
view the Saracen army, ascending a lofty hill,
and seeing many Christians returning by the
Ronceval road, he blew his horn, and was joined
by about a hundred of them, with whom he
returned to a black Saracen, whom he had cap-
tured and bound, and promised to give him his
life if he would show him Marsir, which having
been done he set him at liberty. Roland was
soon again among the thickest of the enemy,
and finding one of huger stature than the rest
he hewed him and his horse in twain, so that
the halves fell different ways. Marsir and his
companions then fled; but Roland, trusting to
divine aid, rushed forward and slew Marsir
upon the spot. But by this time all his Chris-
tian companions were slain, and Roland sorely
wounded in five places by lances and grievously
battered with stones. Beligard, seeing Marsir
had fallen, retired from the field, whilst Thco-
doric and Baldwin and some few other Chris-
tians made their way through the pass, towards
which Roland came likewise, and, alighting from
his steed, stretched himself on the ground near
a block of marble.

" Here he drew his sword Durenda, which he

26 - SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

would sooner have lost his arm than parted with,
and addressed it in these words : —

" ' O sword of unparalleled brightness, ex-
cellent dimensions, admirable temper, and hilt
of the whitest ivory ; decorated with a splendid
cross of gold, topped by a berylline apple, en-
graved with the sacred name of God, endued
with keenness and every other virtue, — who now
shall wield thee in battle, who shall call thee
master?' and at the end of a long address he
said : ' Thus do I prevent thy falling into the
hands of the Saracens.' So saying he struck
the block of marble twice, and cleft it to the
midst and broke the sword in twain.

" He now blew a loud blast with his horn.
This horn was endued with such power that all
other horns were split by its sound ; and at
this time Roland blew with such force that he
burst the veins and nerves of his neck. Charle-
magne heard the sound eight miles away, but
the false traitor Ganalon persuaded him that
Roland had used it only in hunting. Roland,
meanwhile, grew very thirsty, and asked Bald-
win for water. But Baldwin could find none.
He mounted his horse, and galloped for aid to
the army. Roland offered this confession : —

" ' O Father, true, who canst not lie ;

Who didst Lazarus raise with life again,
And Daniel shield in the lion's den, —
Shield my soul from its peril due,
For the sins sinned my lifetime through ; ' —

JiONCESVALLES. 27

and then his soul winged its flight from his
body, and was borne by angels to Paradise,
where he reigns with transcendent glory, united
by his meritorious deeds to the blessed choir of
martyrs."

Thus far Bishop Turpin.

The Spanish ballads seldom give the same
names to any of the chiefs, but Roland docs ap-
pear as Roldan. They make the French leader,
Durandarte, whose name perhaps comes from
Roland's sword, say to Montesinos, as he dies:

" O my cousin Montesinos,

Foully has this battle sped;
On the field our hero Roldan,
Dona Alda's husband, 's dead."

Yet another Spanish ballad makes Bernardo
del Carpio to be the conqueror. Yes, Dick, the
same you used to speak about at the high school,
who

" In the dust sat down."

In Tom Hood's charming version of the
Chanson of Roland, the hero had just ceased to
breathe when Charlemagne arrived on the field.

Not till he had utterly destroyed the army
would he consent to dismount from his horse.
He tore his gray hair and long beard, and
ordered the bodies of Turpin, Oliver, Mirliton,
and the rest to be placed in coffins of black
marble, and bore them back to France with all
honor.

CHAPTER II.

BAYONNE TO MADRID.

THE journey to Burgos from Bayonne is
charming all the way. The whole detention at
Irun is, perhaps, half an hour. The ridge of the
Pyrenees holds westward along the northern
shore, but there are some fine glimpses of the
Bay of Biscay. You see the island, which was
neutral ground, in the river where French kings
and Spanish princes used to meet. Either it was
then larger, or they took very little room. The-
ophile Gautier, who wrote an amusing book of
travels here, says it is no bigger than a fried sole ;
nor is this very much out of the way.

The Basques look their character, — intelli-
gent, handsome, serious people, — the Yankees
of Spain. I was able at Bayonne to buy a book
of Basque songs, with music and translations,
but not somebody's archaeological studies there.
There are people who tell you that these fisher-
men knew of the Newfoundland coast before
Cabot, and likely enough the right explorer in
the old records could find out now.

BURGOS TO MADRID. 2$

The high land is not merely a line on the sea.
All the way from Irun to Burgos is a difficult
passage, by admirable engineering, through
mountain passes. It is wonderfully picturesque,
and wherever we could draw we were kept busy.
There is one pass which we descended, thorough-
ly Swiss in its sudden turns and bold huggings
of the stream. There are, alas ! only too many
tunnels for the picturesque. M. counted four-
teen in four miles, between two stations. The
people work bravely in their fields, and I think
grow wheat quite high up. It may not be wheat,
but looked like wheat in the blade. The news-
paper spoke of very severe heat in Madrid. But
we were glad of all our wraps as night came
on.

The cathedral at Burgos is wonderful. It is
300 feet long, with the addition, beside that of
the Constable's Chapel, built on east of the choir
proper. I have seen nothing like it. It is not
so large as Cologne. But the finish is perfect.
The glass was unfortunately broken in the ex-
plosion of a magazine when Wellington was
fighting here. But excepting that, there is very
little sign of the havoc of time. The marvel is'
that even little details of the past exist as they
might in the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
The full prospective of the nave is broken by a
large chapel for service, introduced first in the

30 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

middle of it. One end of this is a screen in bronze
or brass, which is very grand ; not more than two
hundred years old I fancy, certainly if the Renais-
sance, but singularly rich in the multitude and va-
riety of the figures. O'Shea's faithful guide-book
tells me that it was begun in 1577 and completed
in 1593. It is a series of absolutely complete re
lievos of scenes in the Old and New Testament
first separated by the architectural work, which is
arranged as if this were a sort of facade three
stories high.

Thanks to their maintaining, in a fashion, the
same faith which built the cathedral, the several
chapels are kept up sympathetically, and Mass
is said in each of them every day. In one they
show the wooden effigy of Christ on the cross,
which, the story says, was picked up floating at
sea wrapped in a buffalo skin. It is supposed to
be the work of Nicodemus himself. Whoever
made it, it is powerful, strong, and good sculpture.
The head falls heavily and sadly on the right
shoulder, and the color of the wood is not unfit
for the purpose. Eyelashes, beard and other
hair are real hair, but the effect is not bad.

In one of the chapels, above and around the
altar is a curious genealogical tree of Christ.
Either carved, or possibly in terra cotta, Abra-
ham lies in the middle above the altar asleep,
and this is his dream. From his head rises a

BURGOS TO MADRID. 3 1

tree, of which you see the roots surrounding him.
Of this tree the various fruits and leaves are im-
portant people in Christ's genealogy ; indeed, I
am not sure but all the fifty-one in Matthew are
there. They are painted quite brilliantly, and
the tout ensemble is very gorgeous.

But the general effect of the cathedral is not
showy, but severe. Oddly enough, I saw none of
the May adoration of the Virgin which we have
seen everywhere in France, there being no spe-
cial altar adorned with white flowers in her honor.
While we were there, a procession started with
the hat to go round the city, and the guide told
us this was a solemn act, repeated every year at
this time. This may be one of the Marian so-
lemnities. But I saw no published statement to
this effect.

Now, the contrast between this absolutely lav-
ish expenditure of past ages in the cathedral, and
the abject poverty of the present time, is amaz-
ing. The shops, of which there are legions, are
the drollest rattle-traps of second and tenth
hand ware.

The beggars are dressed in cloaks which, seri-
ously, may have paraded in processions with
Columbus. There is something amazing in the
rags. The city is one side of a little brook,
which is called a river, and by the sides of which
there are pretty promenades. The railway sta-

32 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

tion is the other, and the segregation of Burgos
from modern life is perfectly typified by the
gulf between. There is no effort, as at Worces-
ter or other such places, to connect the new
monster with the old dignity. You would say
they never heard of the railways, and, if they
could help it, never meant to.

If our ballad-writing really referred to the af-
fairs of our own day, — as the severest critics
say it should, — I should thus describe the be-
ginning of our journey to Madrid : —

" My heart was happy when I turned from Burgos to Valla-
dolid,
So happy, that I tell you all the stupid actions that I did.
I met a porter on my way, he stopped me at the station,
And the way he marked my baides gave me days of con-
sternation;
Indeed, you might remark that he brought me news of pain,
So long a time it was before I saw my trunks again."

But I know that this reader would follow with
more interest Mr. Lockhart's version of the Span-
ish ballad : —

VALLADOLID.

" My heart was happy when I turned from Burgos to Vallado-
lid;
My heart that day was light and gay, it bounded like a kid.
I met a Palmer on the way, my horse he bade me rein, —
'I left Valladolid to-day, I bring thee news of pain !
The lady-love whom thou dost seek in gladness and in cheer,
Closed is her eye and cold her cheek, I saw her on her bier.' "

BURGOS TO MADRID. 33

In the secrecy of these pages, I will confess
that I think this version very poor, and that
many others of Mr. Lockhart's are in the same
category. I venture to say that the rhyme to
"Valladolid" is poor. The lines should have
been something like this : —

" My heart was happy when I turned from Burgos to Valla-
dolid ;
My heart was gay and light that day through Prado and
through alley led."

An absolute rhyme seems to require a refer-
ence to the Fire Brigade of that time, thus : —

" My heart was happy when I turned from Burgos to Vallado-
lid—
Happy as those who take the hose when by the Hook and
Ladder led."

I met in Madrid with the very bright papers
in " Harper's Monthly " in which Mr. Lathrop and
Mr. Reinhart described their experiences with
much spirit and fun. Their drawings in Burgos,
in many instances, represented the very points
where we had tried to bring away our remem-
brances on paper.

But I cannot even now understand the way in
which they speak of coming, as if it were a wild
adventure. As I have said, the railway is admi-
rable, and of confessedly the very highest grade
of engineering. The arrangements of adminis-
3

34 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

tration are perfect. The people are gentle, sim-
ple, and singularly courteous and obliging. They
remind me of the quiet dignity of those nice
New Englanders you may see at Block Island.
I can only imagine that Englishmen, bully-
ing round and expecting to use every man as a
servant, may have received in return the rude-
ness they gave. But for us, who speak as we
should speak in America to a man in a shop, or
a person of whom we asked the way, — which, I.
need not say, we often have to do, — there has
been nothing but a courteous civility. Perhaps I
ought to except one railroad man, who thought
I wanted four sleeping-cars to take me fifty miles
in the evening. But that was perhaps the fault
of my Spanish as much as of his temper.

Perhaps it is the business of a guide-book to
grumble, as it is for an art critic to find fault.
But I do not think so. I think that the art
critic generally shows that he is a fool ; and, in
the case of Spain, I am sure that the men who
made Murray's first volume and O'Shea's book
do not appreciate the fine features of the country
or the fine qualities of the people.

Murray's second volume, by Mr. Ford, is quite
a different book, but seems to me overrated ;
I hope, before this book passes the press, that
Madame Riano's new edition of it may be before
the public.

BURGOS TO MADRID. 35

This is sure, that a man must have travelled
in America very little, if he finds much fault
with the external arrangements for travellers in
Spain. A friend at Madrid asked how I found
the inn at Burgos. I said we were perfectly
comfortable, — that the people were very oblig-
ing and the beds neat and clean.

"And the food?"

"Why," I said, "it was Spanish, and very
nice; served perfectly, neatly, warm, and well."

" Oh," she said, " it is easy to see that you are
easily pleased."

Perhaps I am. But I could have gone on to
say to her that outside the Tremont or the
Parker House, or half a dozen of such American
hotels, I could have nowhere in America been
as attentively or practically as well served. The
service has the element of personal attention and
desire to please, of which hotel service with us is
fatally destitute.

When it comes to the railways, it is true that
I did find that the time-tables did not look as if
they were adjusted for me, or their plans did
not suit me. It is, therefore, just possible that
the administration had not heard that I was com-
ing. For I like to travel in the daytime, as I
have said. If I had my own way, I would travel
from nine till one. I would then rest in a neat,
quiet country hotel until the hour before dark.

2>6 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

For two hours then I would resume my journey,
but for no longer time. And possibly travel
may be so arranged in Arcadia, when Arcadia
shall grow large enough for such railway lines.

But, unfortunately, the mercantile public do
not travel to see the country. They want to
pass through the country by night, as far as pos-
sible, so that they may have as much daylight as
possible for their business in large towns. -That
is to say, the artist, loafer, student, poet, or man
of leisure has one wish in travelling, and the
men of business have another, which is diametri-
cally opposite. The first class writes the guide-
books, the sketches of travel, and describes the
railway. The second class builds the railways
and pays for them. If one who belongs to the
first class, as I do, will squarely remind himself
that he and his never could and never would
have created the railway system, he may find it
easier to accept the inevitable, and adapt himself,
without grumbling, to the arrangements made
by and for the people who do build them.

The newspapers had been warning us all
through the early days of May that the heat of
Madrid was intolerable. But I arrived there on
a day which was comfortable enough, and for
the next three days it rained a considerable part
of the time.

If I wrote in the ordinary traveller style, I

BURGOS TO MADRID. 37

should say it always rained in Madrid. But had
I spent a week there a fortnight before, I should
have said that it was always as hot as — a glass
furnace. So unreliable are first impressions.
The Festa of Ascencion was going on, my first
day. It was interrupted by a shower of rain
and hail. As we rode (in a tram-car} to the
gallery, when we came to the Prado it was
raining and hailing so like fury that the streets
were running rivers, and we were glad to pay
three cents each to go on in the car to the end of
its route, and come back again.

But at once we were told that this is purely
exceptional. There had been no rain before in
Madrid for a month, and all Madrid may be
supposed to bless us for bringing it. If we
should stay a month more, no such thing might
happen again. I am sorry to say that, as in
most countries I have ever lived in, farmers are
dying for rain, and that this year's harvest, what-
ever that may be on these barren hills three thou-
sand feet above the sea, is supposed to be lost
irremediably. Oddly enough, in the midst of
this destitution we ate, strawberries, asparagus,
string-beans, and new potatoes, not brought from
afar. I cannot quite understand this ; nor have
I met any one who explains it.

The English guide-books, and other authori-
ties as superficial, can make nothing of Madrid,

38 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and occupy themselves very much by telling
you what it is not. I had the notion that it was
a sort of manufactured city like Munich. So it
is in a sense ; but when one thinks, one sees why
it is manufactured, and the place becomes inter-
esting, because intelligible. Whoever built it
wanted to do what Victoria did in founding Ot-
tawa, and our fathers in making Washington ;
viz., to break up the local jealousies of the pro-
vincial cities. In that regard it is very like
Washington. But it is as large as Boston.
There is a very large garrison, all the life of a
court and of a parliament, and the government
spends money like water.

Now you will observe, in a moment, that I
might say many of these things of the city of
Washington. But in my first and second stay
in Madrid I was noticing resemblances between
the two cities. Thus there are splendid public
buildings and some very wretched private ones.
Some very great projects have been admirably
carried through, and some have been begun
upon and never finished. Just now they change
their kings as often as we change our presidents,
and their administrations as often as we change
our cabinets. I fancy, therefore, that there is
with pretty much anybody you meet that sense
of uncertainty, almost of lottery, which is so
amusing at Washington. It is this which makes

BURGOS TO MADRID. 39

everybody there so eager to get what he can out
of to-day. Everybody is willing to condone yes-
terday's faults ; and though everybody is schem-
ing, nobody expects much from to-morrow, or
relies much upon it. Perhaps this is a fancy,
but it seems to me that you see the same thing
in Madrid. The books call it a mock Paris; but
it did not seem in the least to me like Paris, and
I did not think it pretended to. There is a cer-
tain gravity in the demeanor of the men, — just
what we should call " Spanish gravity " at home.
Of every gentleman you meet in the street you
would say in Boston, " That man is certainly a
Spanish teacher of languages." And you would
be sorry for him, because he looked so grave.
You would say, " Poor fellow ! I am so sorry
for him, because he is an exile."

I reserve to myself the right in the order of
these sketches to describe the museums and
other galleries of Madrid at some little length
by and by. We shall all have comfortably re-
turned to Madrid then, " to inhabit there," and
we can then " dilate with the right emotions."

But, as I say, we will discuss all this at more
length by and by.

We have merely come to Madrid, at this time,
on our way to the southern cities ; and we hurry
to them because we are afraid of the heat.

CHAPTER III.

CORDOVA.

We all leave Madrid in an evening train bound
for Cordova. The Spaniards told Mr. Reinhart
that the sleeping-car was one of the compensa-
tions which America had given them in return
for what America owed to Christopher Colum-
bus. For my part, I never succeeded in enter-
ing a sleeping-car in Spain, — they call them
zvag07is-lits. I do not know why my luck was so
bad ; but I suppose I was as modest and shy as
some English friends of mine who travelled a
thousand or two miles in America last autumn
on first-class trains, before they discovered the
existence even of the parlor-cars, which were on
every one of those trains. Shrinking people
like me sometimes suffer from their modesty.
But because we were dressed and sitting upright
at midnight, or a little later, we had an adven-
ture at Alcazar. This adventure is described by
all Spanish travellers ; and no wonder. Some-
where between twelve and one the train stopped
to pass the night train for the northward, all

CORDOVA. 41

these roads being of a single track. You have
half an hour to stop when you have finished
your first nap, and when you are told there is
refreshment at the Fonda, you naturally tumble
out.

Note that Fonda is the wreck of the Latin
word Fundus, a farm, though it now always
means a tavern or a restaurant. Note the his-
tory in civilization implied in this change in the
meaning of the word. One can easily enough
see that in Texas to-day, or in the Indian Ter-
ritory, a man riding about after his cattle or
sheep, if he wanted cooked food, would go to
the first farm-house. So it is that, in the loner
run in such a country, farm-house stands for
"eating-house." Into the Fonda we went. Two
or three long tables were set all ready. At each
seat was a bowl of hot chocolate paste. Paste
it should be called, though you could pour it,
if you chose, from bowl to bowl. They say a
spoon will stand in Spanish chocolate. This is
not quite true ; but a crust of bread or a long
slice of cake will stand erect in it and not fall
to the side of the cup. By the side of each
bowl of chocolate was a large fresh sponge-
cake, still on the sheet of white paper on which
it had been baked. It was just what we call a
" Naples biscuit," only a great deal nicer than
our confectioners generally choose to make,

42 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and a great deal larger. You break up this
sponge-cake in bits, dip the chocolate with it,
and eat. So nicely are the two adjusted to each
other, that when you have done the cake you
have also finished the chocolate. You are now
ready to go to sleep again ; and for one, I wish
that any other form of civilization known to me
would give me such a repast in the middle of
every night just after my first nap.

Just then it is, as you leave the table and pay
your modest scot, that a brigand-looking man,
with a sash a foot wide around his waist stuck
full of knives and daggers, cries out " Cuchillos
para matar, Cuchillos para matar." This means
" knives for murder." In fact, all his things
could be used for this purpose, if, as old Charles
Pinkney says, your principles did not stand in
the way. Ours did ; but all the same we bought
a good many of the knives, and at this moment
one lies in its purple sheath by this writing-desk
ready to do the modest work of a paper-cutter.

Alcazar means the Ccesar, originally. So it
came around to mean the Palace, and I fancy
it is as frequent a word in Spain as Kingston
might be in America. At any rate, I find three
" Alcazars " as the names of towns in a some-
what limited index in Murray. They still keep
up at this Alcazar some little iron-works, of
which the fruits were thus sold to us. I am

CORDOVA. 43

told that the Spaniards can still make as good
cutlery as they could in the days of the best
Toledo blades. As I have or have not said
already, its distinction as a metallurgic country
was what first interested eastern or civilized
Europe in Spain. The quality of the specular
iron-ore was very good, and this ore is not yet
exhausted. To the great grief of the English
free-traders, they insist upon keeping up a stiff
protective tariff; and so we bought our little
knives cheaply enough, as it seemed to me,
very likely from the man that made them. But
I believe that on theory he ought to have been
doing nothing eleven months in the year, while
the crop of Esparto grass was growing wild ;
that he should then have sent this to England
for sale, and should have been paid for it in
some knives made at Sheffield, which he should
then have offered to me at Alcazar. But, in
point of fact, I should not then have bought the
knife.

Sure that we could defend ourselves now if
we were attacked by train wreckers, as we were
not, we slept tranquilly enough until morn-
ing. I am sorry and ashamed to say that in
this unromantic way we passed all through
La Mancha,1 the country of Don Quixote and
dear Sancho Panza, and I am sorry to add that

1 Which means, they say, "a spot ; " that is, a blot.

44 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

I did the same thing on my return northward
some weeks after. It would have been so much
better every way to have jumbled along on four
little jackasses, with our baggage in alforcas
and our rations in haversacks and canteens.
By the way, canteen is a Spanish word from
cantina. A great many of our maritime and
our military words have, like this, a Spanish
origin.

But I am sorry to say that I did not find any-
where any popular traces or reminiscences of
dear Don Quixote or Sancho. And I should
think that other recent travellers have had the
same experience. I found a fairly intelligent
courier, who had been for twenty years taking
travelling parties all over Spain, who did not
know what I meant when I talked of La Mancha
and of its two great heroes.

Don Quixote was for sale in every book-
store, and in good modern editions. But, in
nearly two months, it did not happen to me to
hear any person allude to the Don or to the squire,
unless I led the conversation that way. And I
do not think that in the very piquant rattle of
the daily newspapers with which Spain is flooded
I ever saw any reference to either of them.
Nor, indeed, should I think the Spanish espe-
cially fond of proverbs. I know perfectly well
that a traveller might spend six weeks in the

CORDOVA. 45

United States without hearing any one speak of
George Washington or Benjamin Franklin. But
I do not mean to compare these heroes with the
Don and with Sancho.

The reader of Don Quixote, if he choose to
follow us, will see that we crossed the Don's
path once and again in Andalusia and in other
parts of Spain. It is simply of La Mancha that
I " confess ignorance."

With the morning light, it was clear enough
that we had made one of those charming con-
trasts which are the special gifts of modern con-
veyance. I left New England once, when there
was good sleighing, took a steamer for Charles-
ton, and landed there to find the girls bringing
in great baskets full of roses from the gardens.
I left a hard-coal fire at Louisville once, to come
out for my next stay at New Orleans, with the
oranges of one year still on the trees side by
side with the orange blossoms of the next.
Such are among the minor comforts of steam.
We were now in the valley of the Guadal-
quivir, the Baetis. Guadalquivir is a corrup-
tion from the Arabic Wada-1-Kebir, or " the Great
River." Old Latin-school boys will sympathize
with me when I say that I have always had a
grudge against this river, because it chose to
have its accusative in im and its ablative in i.
This idiosyncrasy of the river gave me much care

46 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and trouble in my day, not to speak of thousands
of my fellow-pupils and of my masters. For it-
self, the poor river was perhaps unconscious of its
accusative; and a very charming river it is. It
waters a very charming valley, for in southern
Spain, when you say " water," you mean oranges
and lemons and figs and olives and oil and
grapes and raisins and wine and apricots and
strawberries and roses and lilies and heliotropes
and wheat and barley and oats and grass and
clover and alfalfa, and everything else which
will delight the heart of man or make his face to
shine. You begin to see bayonet palms, possi-
bly bananas, Mexican agaves, prickly pears, with
pecan-trees and other trees which remind you
of Mexico and Louisiana.

All this is the result of irrigation. It is to
irrigation, and to irrigation only, that you owe it
that Spain is spoken of as a country so fertile.
At the same time, as most readers will remem-
ber, you never read of Spain but people call it
" arid." The truth is, that you may have almost
everything in the way of water supply in one
part of Spain or in another. The annual rain-
fall in Madrid is but twelve inches, and the rain-
fall for six months of summer is but five. But
the annual rainfall in Seville is twenty-three
inches, while the summer rainfall is hardly
larger than that of Madrid. In parts of Spain,

CORDOVA. 47

as in La Mancha, there have been periods of five
years without a drop of rain. On the other
hand, in Granada, where they have the advan-
tage of the high Sierra Nevada, the average rain-
fall is thirty-two inches. Their problem, then, is
to spread their water " where it will do the most
good." It must not rush through torrents to
the sea, but must be caught at every corner, and
made to distil gently over fertile lowlands, which
would else be dry. This they do by their very
simple irrigation works. In all Spain there are
374,000 acres irrigated in this way. It seems
very little ; it is only eighteen old Maine town-
ships of six miles square. But if you put it in
wheat only, at fifty bushels an acre, you would
have nearly two millions of bushels, which is the
annual bread supply of four hundred thousand
men. In point of fact, you do not put it in
wheat very largely. You put it in wine, oil,
raisins, .figs, and other such fancy crops, if you
may call them so, which will sell for a great deal
more than fifty bushels of wheat for an acre.

I had seen in Colorado their irrigation works,
where they are introducing the same system.
Oddly enough, they learn how to do it from
Spaniards, whose ancestors learned in this very
Andalusia, or in many cases from my friends the
Pueblo Indians, who irrigated, I believe, before
the Spaniards taught them how. I should like

48 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

to see some township in Berkshire or Hampden
try the experiment along six or eight miles of
that brawling Westfield River. You would dam
it from point to point, so that the head should
be nowhere dangerously high, and then you
would lead a zigzag ditch for irrigation, falling
perhaps a foot in a mile, or even less, wherever
the slope of the hill might lead you. There
would have to be some common law regulating
the water-rights of the several meadow proprie-
tors. You see that the original investment is
not severe. And when you compare the results
of steady, even moisture against the results
given by the average of one of our fitful sum-
mers, the gain of the crop is enormous.

Anybody who will read Amicis's amusing ac-
count of his visit to Cordova, or Theophile Gau-
tier's, will have reason to expect, even from
people as unromantic as we are, something en-
tirely out of the range of the nineteenth century
now we come into Cordova. But I will not
abuse this reader by inventing black-eyed Moor-
ish houris, as I am afraid both these writers do.
There ought to be enough in the square truth,
if one could only get on paper the impression
which the first Moorish city he has ever seen
makes upon him.

Cordova had been an important city in Caesar's
time. There were people enough in it then for

CORDOVA. 49

Caesar to kill twenty-eight thousand of them by
way of punishment for their adherence to Pom-
pcy. Of this Roman occupation you see signs
to this hour. But, as the city stands, it dates
from the Moorish times ; it declared its inde-
pendence in 756, and became the capital of the
Moorish empire of Spain. In the tenth century
three hundred thousand people lived here.
They had fifty hospitals, which is, I suppose,
twenty-five more than the three hundred and
fifty thousand people of Boston have, and in
one library they had six hundred thousand, vol-
umes, which is twice as many as the three hun-
dred and fifty thousand people of Boston have
in their Public Library to-day.

What interests me more than these figures —
which could probably be stretched backward or
forward to mean much what you choose — is the
suggestion one gets as to the wise Moorish ad-
ministration, especially in public education and
in the relief of the poor. One of these Moorish
kings, I forget his name, did on a large scale
what Rumford did on a small scale in Bavaria.
That is to say, this Paynim hound, this unbap-
tized Saracen, set on foot a bureau of industry
which was also an industrial school, at which he
compelled the attendance of all his tramps,
" wayside-lodge people," and other gentry who
had no " visible means of support." He had
4

50 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

none of the nonsense of Monsieur Marie's national
workshops. He did not dream of competing
with the regular labor market. But he kept on
hand a series of public works which need not be
done, but which it was well to do ; and, year by
year, these things dragged along and eventually
got themselves done by the assistance of these
tramps, who were no longer kept alive by Mos-
lem good-nature at the expense of Moslem grit
and muscle, without showing anything for their
work. Our system is to give soup for nothing
to anybody who will ask for it, if only he be
clear, sheer beggar enough to look forlorn, and
have lost his manliness enough to make applica-
tion. But we take care not to make him work
when he comes for it. And if anybody pro-
poses to teach the tramps ' how to work at the
public charge, or to make them work in the
public works, the city solicitor says that the first
is against the law, and the park commissioners
say that the other would be sentimental and not
business-like.

In the tenth century, Cordova was a far finer
city than Rome or Constantinople or any other
city in Europe. The Saracen power was so
vast, that the Caliph and other princes sent to
Abdu-r-rhaman (the slave of consolation) mar-
bles, and especially marble columns, from all
parts of the world which they had conquered.

CORDOVA. 51

This gave him eighteen hundred marble pillars,
and he seems to have founded the idea, any-
way he carried it out, of building a sort of
palm-grove, by using them, so to speak, for the
trunks of the trees. As all the pillars were
not of the same height, they sometimes had
more and sometimes less work and height to
the capitals. Some are of one color, and some
of another. Then he had at each end eighteen
doors, and he had the whole a good deal open
to the sky. So in every direction there were
lovely vistas, which looked like the vistas in the
tall palm-groves that he was used to in some
other land.

This is, at least, the way which all travellers
choose to describe the Great Mosque of Cor-
dova. So I think there must be something in
the story of his intending an imitation of a
grove. The mosque, now a cathedral, is not
very high. But it is high enough to give you
the sense and sentiment of a forest, and the
vastness in each direction carries out that feel-
ing. After the Conquest, some wretched local
authorities — bishop and chapter, I guess — put
their heads together, as if they had had a wood-
paving job on their conscience, and proposed to
build one of the Spanish 'choirs' just in the
middle of this marble forest. Of course it
would, by so much as its space covered, break

52 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

the magnificent vistas. Somebody had the sense
to protest. And the question was referred to
Charles the Fifth, whose duties in ruining civili-
zation elsewhere kept him away from Spain a
good deal. He did as such gentry do, — sus-
tained the constituted authorities. And so this
great choir was built, as you might cut down
sixty or eighty trees in the middle of a forest
on Mattawamkeag to build a meeting-house in
the approved architecture of Maine in the nine-
teenth century. When Charles came to Cor-
dova, at last, and the admiring choir-builders
showed to him their work, their emperor said to
them : " What you have built could have been
built anywhere. But you have destroyed what
was more grand than anything left on earth."
I am sorry to say that it did not occur to him
that it was he who did the destroying.

Around the mosque of Cordova is a dead
white wall. It might be a prison. You go in by
a little gate, and you are in a green orchard of
orange-trees. Then by another doorway you
enter the mosque, and the forest of marble
which I have tried to describe is before you. In
the endless variety, in the change which every
inch of movement makes in the perspective and
the vistas, it is not hard to persuade yourself
that you hear the wind, as you might do in a
forest at home.

CORDOVA. 53

Our guide was a Moresco, who was, I think,
the lineal descendant of Haroun himself, and he
vvas much pleased with our acquaintance, derived
from the Arabian Nights, with the customs and
faith of his ancestry. We made him read the
Arabic words over the magnificent pulpit built by
the Slave of Consolation. And he read : " Allah
alone is great. Blessed be the name of Allah.
There is no strength or power but in Allah."
It was exactly like our dear Lane.

It may assist the reader, as he follows us into
the Moorish part of Spain, to know that the
writer brings up his own family on a regular
course of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment.
Their household not only contains the original in
the text of Cairo, for any wandering fakir to
read aloud from, but copies of every well-re-
puted version. And when better times come,
and a competitive examination in the Arabian
Nights is prescribed for candidates in the art of
living well, the members of this household hope
they shall not be found wanting.1

After we had seen the mosque, they took us
to the garden of the Alcazar, the old Moorish
sachem. It is just like the Arabian Nights,

1 Not to boast, but to state a fact of literature, I believe that
the version of the first story of the Arabian Nights, pub-
lished by me in "Crusoe in New York," p. 595, is the fullest
version in English ever printed of any of those stories.

54 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

with carp-ponds and streams of water ; roses in
full bloom, and pomegranates, palm-trees, and
so on; figs not quite ripe, and ucspolas, which
were. Thence we all went into one of the Alca-
zar's towers by the river-side, and made a draw-
ing of a bridge of which Augustus Caesar made
the piers, we sitting under the grape-blossoms of
a vine.

Another garden, not on the guide-books, had
another charm. At the hotel, at dinner, a gen-
tleman who was at table d'hote with his wife
had been instructing me in the art of eating
strawberries. I had thought this came of nature.
But this was my mistake. When you are in
Spain, where oranges and strawberries are ripe
together, you avail yourself of what the astrono-
mers would call the synchronous period, and eat
them together. You fill a plate with what we
should call a quarter-box of berries. You cover
them with white sugar. You cut a perfectly ripe
orange, and squeeze the juice all over berries and
sugar. You then take a spoon and eat. This
gentleman, in the courtesy of the country, ex-
plained to us the process, but said we should eat
the fruit fresh from the vines and the trees, and,
that we might do so, asked us all to his garden
when our sight-seeing might be over. Thither,
accordingly, we repaired, and he kindly showed
to me all the dainty irrigation processes of

CORDOVA. 55

gardening; he and his pleasant wife loaded
the ladies with flowers, and we ate strawberries
as one might do in Waterville in New Hamp-
shire, if only its hemlock forests were orange
groves.

CHAPTER IV.

SEVILLE.

I After being a week in Spain, I wrote in Se-
ville that " I am yet to see the first flea. I do not
know the taste of garlic ; and for oil, I only-
know it in the sweetest form on the most ex-
quisite lettuce. I am living in a hotel here,
equal to the best we saw in Europe, where I pay
two dollars a day for everything. What the
inconveniences are of Spanish travel we have
yet to discover. On the other hand, everything
is curious and entertaining.

" The people are charming. When we are >i
ready to come here, we will hire for a trifle some
old palace, built around a court, with lions and
fountains and orange-trees, with a fig-tree or two
growing up by accident. We will spend our
days in the gardens of the Alcazar. That at
Cordova was but ill maintained by a gardener
who turned an honest penny by selling lettuce
and cabbages. This is maintained by the State.
They show you the orange-tree that Peter the
Cruel planted; you are tempted to try the Sul-

SEVILLE. 57

tana's bath, and you vote Charles the Fifth's
summer house to be the one successful summer
home in the world. It is in as perfect condition
as when he left it. The walls, inside and out, are
carved with beautiful enamelled tiles. Griffins,
lions, satyrs, unicorns, pillars of Hercules, castles
of Castile, appear mixed up in quaint confusion ;
the tile-makers not working by a stencil pat-
tern, but as their fancy dictated, and the tiles,
for the most part, as fresh as if you bought the
best Minton tiles yesterday, and far brighter in
color. The ceiling is of carved mahogany, which
I suppose the virgin forests of San Domingo
furnished."

People talk of the old Italian style of garden-
ing; and the reader perhaps remembers the
gardening of the Borromean Islands. But this
is more to my taste. In the first place, there is
absolute seclusion. The palace shields it on
one or two sides ; on the others a wall, like the
State-prison wall at Charlestown. You see at
once how a lover imprisoned in such a garden
could not escape if his courage cooled. Then
this space is cut up more or less by high and
thick walls, on both sides of which orange-trees
are trained, en espalier. But the main object is
shade, so desirable in a hot climate.

As we plant on the south side of a wall, they
would often plant on the east, or even the north.

53 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

All these walks, however, are completely masked
by oranges or other hedges ; and so large are
the arches, and so crafty the other vistas, that
you have no feeling of being shut up in court-
yards. Your paths, however, are not gravel, but
tiles, evidently enamelled in the Moors' days,
for pieces of the enamelled work still appear;
indeed, some of the old walks are well pre-
served. The beds are perhaps a foot lower than
the walks, always bordered with box, laurustinus,
oranges, lemons, or some such evergreen, care-
fully trimmed, and perhaps eighteen inches high
and thick. The object of all this arrangement
is irrigation ; for all the tiles are underlaid with
pipes, and there are frequent holes. When,
therefore, the gardener needs, water is turned on
the pipes, the tiles are suffused with it, it runs
off upon the beds, and your flowers have the
comfort of moisture without watering pot or en-
gine. Meanwhile, judging from to-day, you can
command shade or draught much as you choose ;
and one understands the love of the Moors for
gardens, and the part they play so often in the
Arabian Nights.

I think a man who should live in Seville a
month would understand better than Walter
Scott did how men went and came in Europe in
the times of Richard and Philip, and how they
lived in Lyons in the days of Peter Waldo.

SEVILLE. 59

Streets narrow as Tom Kelly's alley, in which
a donkey may only go in a certain fixed di-
rection, because he could not pass another
donkey, are the very streets from which you
enter a court-yard blazing with exotic flowers
from all the modern world, from which court-
yard open the rooms of a palace, with all the
splendors of a palace. Our hotel fronted on the
principal street of the town. There is not left
at the North End of Boston a street so narrow.
Large curtains hang across it at the top, to
screen the upper rooms from the sun. It is
crowded with little shops not bigger than your
china closet. And in one of those shops you
shall find Renan's books side by side with
The Imitation of Christ; in the next shall be
Singer's sewing-machine ; and in the next a
cobbler making a sandal like that worn by the
Romans. You step into one of these shops to
avoid a J hden with bales of hay brought

in from the country to feed the horse's who
dragged you from the railroad.

This is what I mean when I say every step is a
romance. Travel has not spoiled it, nor begun
to spoil it. The people are as simple as they
were in the days of Columbus.

I wanted, if I could, to buy some old books
one day, and was told that there was a certain
fair held every Thursday where I could perhaps

6o SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

pick up what I needed. So I went to this fair,
which is of second-hand articles wholly, and it
was precisely like the Arabian Nights. The
streets in that precinct are wholly given up to it
on Thursday, and no carriages are permitted on
that day. So the dealers lay out their articles
on the street itself, which is well paved, without
sidewalks, in granite blocks. A path some six
feet wide is left for passing, and, as the street is
wider or narrower, the salesmen have more or
less space. Where the streets are wide, the
crockery-men establish themselves ; so you see
plates, mugs, cups, &c, all nominally second-
hand, arrayed on the street.

You see readily how, if a jackass strays in by
any accident, just one of those tragedies takes
place, with the crockery, that occur more than
once in the Arabian Nights. As many of the
people are Moors, as all are in the costume of
people in operas, as the articles sold are the
most ramshackled old bits that have been left
since the Ark, you can imagine that the whole
is sufficiently oriental.

We were taken to see a palace which has been
kept in perfect order since the days of the
Moors, and is now just as it might be if Haroun
Alraschid lived in it. I really never conceived
anything so beautiful. I have tried to describe
the system of inner court-yards. We came to

SEVILLE. 6 1

this house through a narrow whitewashed street,
which promised nothing. But the court-yard,
or entrance to it, was white marble, and was
screened at the inner end by a gate.

The attendant admitted us, however, and here
was a lovely square garden of oriental and trop-
ical plants, palms, bananas, and brilliant flower-
ing shrubs. Around this the house is built, a
corridor of exquisite white marble arches wholly
surrounding the square. All these arches are
adorned with that delicate carving which we
associate with the Alhambra, and which looks
like ivory-work. It is finely cut in stucco.
Each story above has one of these corridors.
We were not permitted to go upstairs ; but the
stairway was of elegant white marble also, rising
up to a lofty dome, carved and highly orna-
mented. In another garden without was the
invariable fish-tank, which is the water supply of
the whole.

To go back to my analysis of the charm of
Seville, you are in the midst of people who
seem, at least, to know how to enjoy themselves.
At night the principal streets and squares are
filled with men and women, straying here and
there, absolutely with no purpose but to enjoy
starlight, moonlight, and open air. Enormous
cafes, of a size which would astonish Boston and
New York, even were they devoted to whiskey

62 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

or billiards, are filled with men and women sip-
ping lemonade or sugared water, and talking
with animation, like a great evening party, pro-
vided for every one at the cost of the half-cent
for his sugar.

I had always held to Miss Ferrier's bright rule
in travelling, that a visit should be three days
long, — " the rest day, the dressed day, and the
pressed day." I have told hundreds of young
travellers that it is better to spend three days in
one place, than one day each in three. And cer-
tainly, in my plans, I had no thought of spending
more than three days in Seville. We wanted to
see Murillo's pictures in his home, and I wanted
to see some papers in the archives. I supposed
three days would be enough, and, as I have said
in the preface to these notes, I had been ex-
horted by all the prudent tribes not to linger in
the south of Spain in May or June. But when
you are once established in Seville, things im-
press you very differently.

True to the theory of taking a Spanish .hotel,
if I could find one, rather than one which af-
fected to be French, I went to the Europa. The
place, or a part of it, was once a convent, and at
the back of the beautiful patio a magnificent
staircase of the convent times — excellent to sit
on in the shade of the afternoon — takes you up
to the second floor, where the bedrooms are.

SEVILLE. 6$

All this stairway is hung with sacred pictures,
which may or may not have been there in con-
vent days ; certainly they make the place seem
very different from a-hotel, as we think of one.
You can, if you choose, — and you are apt to
choose, — have your coffee or chocolate served
under the shade of a banana-tree, in the sound
of the fountain, at the side of the patio.

Once installed in such a place, dropping into
the habit of a siesta in the hour which would be
hot out of doors ; with palaces, gardens, galleries,
churches, at hand, such as your best dreams
never painted ; with excursions possible in any
direction of curious interest; with daily life a
queer reminder of the Arabian Nights literally
at every step, you no longer think of going
away in three days. You only inquire why you
should go away at all. What are you for? Why
are you in Spain? Did. you come to Spain to
enjoy some pleasant weeks? Well! what can
you find more charming than this? Have you
exhausted it? With every day you feel that you
are only beginning to take it in.

The local proverb says, " See Seville and die."
One would not wish to die merely because he
had seen it. A better proverb would be, " See
Seville and live there." There is just this strong
infusion of Eastern habit which makes it so
attractive to us crude Westerns: there is a cli-

64 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

mate well nigh perfect; there is the activity,

agreeable, after all, of a business town in full and
easy relations with the rest of the world; and,
last of all, Seville has an advantage, which many
of us, of what I call the literary class, appreciate,
living is very, very cheap. I heard of some in-
telligent people living there very much as I live
at home, I fancy, whose full daily charge aver-
aged forty-two cents a day for each of them.
This was life in a palace, where the family kept
house comfortably. They had American tastes,
and seemed to enjoy them. I tell this with terror,
lest I send half unoccupied America to Seville.
For I am old enough to remember when we
could live at the same charge in North Conway
in summer. I have sometimes feared that I,
and my friend who made this discovery, an-
nounced it too freely to an eager world.
.. " Happy is the country whose history is un-
written." If we feel that in America, day by
day, when one's newspapers come to us " without
a word in them," what shall we say in Seville,
where the newspapers are so much smaller?
But they make up in number. Spain is just in
that first phase of liberty when everybody wants
to write in a newspaper, and every one thinks
he can publish one. They have very many
comic papers. Every considerable city seems
to have its own ; and these, with their brilliant

SEVILLE. 65

colored cartoons, circulate in all the other cities.
They are generally published weekly ; but there
are so many of these papers, that with almost
every day a new one is exhibited. Some of
them are very funny; some, to a foreigner, quite
unintelligible. There is at least one literary
journal here, and I saw a good many recent
books by Sevillian authors. One of the folk-lore
societies is represented which have been estab-
lished in many parts of Europe for preserving
local traditions and a knowledge of local litera-
ture. The centre of these societies is in London.
Near the doorway of our hotel, among the other
caricatures, there hung one of the Saviour, which
would not have been tolerated an hour at any
shop-door in Boston. So much for the working
of the Inquisition, in the long run, for the sup-
pression of blasphemy or heresy.

Americans would be apt to go to the Colum-^
bian Library, founded by the son of Christopher
Columbus. A magnificent building enshrines it,
and one does not see any collection more elegant
in the outward appurtenance of a library. But
you are disappointed if you expect to find me-
morials of the discoverer. They do show, under
glass, a copy of Ptolemy, I think, with notes by
him, and an old map with three caravels drawn
near islands, which you try to think are the
three vessels of discovery. Let me, as I pass,
S

66 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

warn other travellers not to expect to see the
documents in the archives without a permit from
Madrid. I found a gentleman from Guatemala
at work there, and was not surprised to find it
supposed that his business and mine were the
same, as, in a certain sense, they were.

The exterior view of the cathedral gives no
idea of its grandeur or beauty. As in all the
Spanish cathedrals which I saw, the choir is built
in the middle, almost as a separate church.
And, as at Burgos, this hurts the vista of the
nave. But you cannot spoil so magnificent a
building. I do not know, and do not care to
look to see, how long the aisles are or how
high ; they are long enough and high enough to
create and to preserve that sense of wonder, awe,
and satisfied rest for which cathedrals were built
and stand. Looking over these notes, now far
away from Seville, I find that the curiosities
which the eager guide showed there, as in all
such places, do not come back to me as having
any connection with the cathedral itself. They
are so many side shows, to use a very happy
expression of the vernacular. They are a nui-
sance at the time ; but afterwards they do not
annoy you.

One p!oes not count among them the admira-
ble pictures. Among these is the Vision of St.
Anthony, which is one of the finest of the Mu-

SEVILLE. 67

-
rillos. It was from this painting that the kneel-
ing figure of the saint was cut a few years since
and sent to New York for sale. The New York
police proved quick enough for the occasion, and
the New York law strong enough. The thieves
were caught and the picture restored. They
show you, in the fit light, the seams which indi-
cate the patch of the restored canvas.

Seville is now a centre of literature and art,
and must be a very agreeable home. It is saicP
that the social circles are accomplished and
agreeable. The museum is not large, but very
rich, particularly in pictures by Murillo, and here
we saw for the first time the work of Alonzo
Cano. The art school calls together quite a
large number of young artists. It was to the
enthusiasm of some of them that the riots were
due, if indeed they deserve that name,, .which
gave one subject to the newspapers aside from
the eternal discussion of Madrid politics, while
we were there. On one of the last days of May
was celebrated the second centennial anniversary
of the death of Murillo. In point of fact he died
on the 3d of April, 1682; but they took some
festival in May, I now forget what, for the cele-
bration. Now, in honor of Murillo's exquisite
pictures of the Virgin, it seems that somebody
had called him " The Painter of the Immaculate
Conception." The dogma of the immaculate

68 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

conception — for it has been a dogma now for a
quarter of a century — is, or has been, the passion
of the Roman Catholic Church in our time. Se-
ville having been the birthplace of Murillo, some
enthusiastic priests thought this would be a good
opportunity for a solemnity at once in his honor
and that of the Virgin. They certainly gave fair
notice of what they were going to do. I saw, some
weeks before, in France, a public notice that they
had invited some churches, even so far off, to lend
their banners to be used in the procession. This
is not a bad way to invoke general sympathy.
As the Queen, if she cannot go to a funeral, sends
her carriage, so if a church cannot send a priest to
a procession, it can send a banner, if it has one
to send. But this ecclesiastical view of the occa-
sion did not please the art students, and it would
seem that they rallied to their side the other
students of the university. They said that they
were as ready to celebrate Murillo's birthday as
anybody, but they were not going to have it
mixed up with the Roman Catholic Church or
its dogmas. As soon, therefore, as the proces-
sion appeared in the street, the priests, who seem
to have made the greater part of it, were hooted
and hustled, not to say stoned. And they, with
their banners, were obliged to take rapid flight,
and finally to seek refuge in a church. I do not
know, and I could not find anybody who thought

SEVILLE. 69

he knew, whether the people at large showed
more sympathy with the attack or the defence.
Extreme clerical papers were very angry, and
extreme radical papers were very angry, each
from their own point of view. Between the ex-
tremes, most of the journals were undertaking to
show that it was a matter of no great conse-
quence, and I rather think they were right. But
I believe it is true that the troops were ordered
out to preserve order. All this happened a day
or two before I came to Seville.

For two or three days after, however, every
morning's paper announced that the disturbances
had been renewed, the night before, by bands of
students passing through the city, singing and
shouting and in conflict with the police. Indeed,
if you had read the Madrid papers, you would
have thought we were in a state of siege. But
I tell this whole story to illustrate exaggera-
tion in a country wild for newspapers, where
there is very little news. It was then May, and
the weather lovely. I was in the streets and
squares every evening, in the very streets where
these things were said to take place, and yet I
never saw myself or heard any of the incidents
of the affair. I said so one day to an intelligent
man, who replied rather vehemently, " You
should have been in the Plaza del Duque at nine
o'clock last night." I asked if he were there.

•JO SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

No, he was not there, but there was a collision
between the students and the troops, and a large
number of students were carried to the guard-
house. Now, in fact, I was sitting with a party
of ladies on a seat in that Plaza, from half-past
eight to quarter-past nine, and we spent all the
rest of the evening at the theatre hard by. We
heard no noise, and saw no collision. It is my
belief that there was none. But there was a
good deal of newspaper excitement, and the de-
termination in each office to make the most of
whatever did occur. The bishop of the diocese
made a semi-official statement that the Murillo
demonstration was none of his business. It was
even said that he transferred the priests who
were implicated to other fields of duty, in such
a way that it was supposed that the transfer
was a reprimand. On the other hand, when, a
few weeks after, the Commencement Day, or
whatever corresponds to it, came round, the
government refused to give degrees to the stu-
dents who were engaged in the riot. Thus a
certain Gallio-like indifference was maintained
by the authorities in regard to the battle itself.
It is not the first time in my life that I have
been in the midst of a conflict which attracted
much more attention at a distance than it gained
from the lookers-on.

CHAPTER V.

PALOS AND COLUMBUS.

MOST American school-boys and school-girls
know that Columbus sailed from " Palos in
Spain " to discover America. Some of them
know that he sailed on the 3d of August, 1492.

When they grow to be men and women, if
they look for Palos on a good enough map
they will not find it. It will be on some purely
American-manufacture maps. But it will not
be on the average map. I was in the cabinet of
one of the first geographers in the world, and he
took down an excellent map of Spain, on a large
scale, authenticated by an official board, and
there was no Palos there.

I had determined to see Palos. And Seville
is the point of departure for this excursion.
On a lovely May day we started, — my daughter
and I. There is a railway, sufficiently good,
built chiefly or wholly by a mining company,
which comes from the valley of the Guadal-
quivir to that of the Tinto, and takes you there.
It is a pleasant ride of sixty-five miles or there-
abouts.

72 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The ride seems tropical to us who have never
been in the tropics. Orange-trees, fig-trees,
olive-trees, and vineyards just pushing out
their fresh green leaves, fill the fertile grounds
of these valleys. And how hard the people
do work ! I have never seen anywhere a set
of farmers who seemed to stick so to their
business.

We fell into talk with a courteous Spanish
gentleman, who was most eager to explain what
we did not understand.

The western sun, low in the horizon, is stream-
ing through the windows of the carriage. Our
friend is on the eastern side ; he is looking watch-
fully across the marshes and the river ; and so,
as some mound of sand is passed by the train
and opens a full view to the other side of the
wide estuary, he raises his hand, points across
the marshes and says, " Palo ! "

We were all silent for a moment. I think he
knew something of my feeling. And I — I
found I cared for Palos more than I had sup-
posed possible. I had crossed Spain with the
intention of seeing the place. But I had not at
any time pictured to myself the gulf between
1492 and 1882; nor even asked myself to im-
agine Columbus and Martin Pinzon at work on
the equipment of the ships. Of a sudden all
the features of the contrast presented them-

PALOS AND COLUMBUS. 73

selves. Enough, perhaps, that, as we dashed
on in the comfort of the railway train, we were
looking across the desolate marshes to the for-
saken village, where hardly a few white houses
could be made out, and told ourselves that from
the enterprise and courage of that place the
discovery of America became possible.

The seaport of Palos in the time of Columbus
was a place so important, that the crew and
vessels of the first expedition were all gathered
there, in face of the difficulties which the super-
stition of the time and the terms of the voyage
presented.

I do not suppose it to have been a seaport
of the first class, but it was a considerable and
active town. It was on the eastern side of the
estuary of the Tinto River, a considerable
stream, known to navigators as far back as the
first history of navigation. It takes its name
Tinto from the color which it brings from the
copper and iron mines above, which are the
very mines which gave to Spain its interest for
Phoenician navigators. In nearly four centuries
since Columbus's time the current of the river
has been depositing silt in what was then the
port of Palos, and this port is now entirely filled
up. With the destruction of the harbor the
town has gone to ruin. The few white specks
which my Spanish friend pointed out to me, in

74 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

the light of the evening sun, marked the place
of the few houses in which a hundred or two
poor people are living, where were once the
dock-yards and warehouses of the active town.
The rival town, Huelva, which was, even in
Columbus's time, a place of considerable im-
portance, takes all the commerce of the estuary.
I think not even a fishing-boat sails from Palos
itself.

Huelva is a port where large steamers can lie
at the pier, and is now a place of active and
apparently successful trade.

An English company, which is developing
the mines, has built a good system of railroads
which unite Huelva with its mining establish-
ments, as it built this we had travelled upon
from Seville.

There is a new hotel at Huelva, where we
were comfortably accommodated. I was inter-
ested to see that all the furniture, which was
new, was of American manufacture, coming very
likely from Worcester County, Massachusetts.
Thus far, at least, we have been able to pay our
debt to Columbus and to Palos.

I was wakened the next morning, before five
o'clock, to hear the singing of birds in a lofty
orange-tree in the front of my window, that we
might embark at once on our visit to the con-
vent of Rabida, and, if possible, to the ruins of

PA LOS AND COLUMBUS. 75

Palos. A fine half-decked boat, such as we
might have hired in Marblehcad for a like pur-
pose, with a skipper who looked precisely like
his Marblehcad congener, but with the lateen
sail which is so curiously characteristic of South-
ern Europe, was ready for our little voyage.
We passed heavy steamers which suggested
little enough of Columbus, but there were fine-
looking fishing-boats which suggested the plucky
little Nina of his voyage; and their seamen arc
probably dressed to-day much as the men who
landed with him at San Salvador.

A run of an hour brought us to the fine head-
land on which the convent of Rabida, or Sta.
Maria de Rabida, stands, scarcely changed, if
changed at all, from the aspect it bore on the
day when Columbus " asked of the porter a
little bread and water for his child." 1 Lord
Houghton, following Freiligrath, has sung to us

how

"The palm-tre,e dreameth of the pine,
The pine-tree of the palm ; "

and in his delicate imaginings the dream is of
two continents, ocean-parted, each of whom
longs for the other. Strange enough, as one
pushes along the steep ascent from the landing
at Rabida up the high bluff on which the con-

1 This is Mr. Everett's language, in a speech which old
school-boys will remember.

76 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

vent stands, the palm-tree and the pine grow
together, as if in token of the dream of the great
discoverer who was to unite the continents.

In this convent Columbus made his home
while the expedition was fitting out; Palos hard
by, and quite accessible. Hither the Pinzons
and the learned physician, Garcia Fernandez,
were summoned by the good friar Marchena,
Columbus's steady friend, for the great consul-
tations from which the discovery grew.

The convent is a large rambling building, of
Moorish lines and aspect, built around several
patios, or gardens. Hardly any windows open
through the outer walls ; but the life of the
building engages itself in and around the patios
within. Here cloisters, made by columns with
arches, surround the pretty enclosures, and in
these one dines, writes, takes his siesta, or does
nothing.

Columbus's room, as a fine chamber upstairs
is called, has a large table in the middle, on
which is Columbus's inkstand. All around the
room there now hang pictures : some of him,
one of Isabella, one of the good old friar, and
some by modern painters of different scenes in
the first great voyage and of his experiences
after his return.

The old chapel of the convent is below. It
is neat and pretty, and worship could be re-

PALOS AND COLUMBUS. 77

newed there at any time. The Duke of Mont-
pensier, who married a sister of Isabella II.
the late Queen of Spain, arranged to have it all
put in proper order. The nation maintains the
place, and a charming family of Spaniards,
grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter, and
three nice boys, Christopher, Immanuel, and
Joseph, keep it in order.

The Spanish historians now think that Colum-
bus came to Rabida with the very purpose of
interesting Marchena, the good friar. Marchena
was interested, and recommended him to the
Bishop of Talavera. But, alas ! he thought Co-
lumbus was a madman. King and queen alike
were occupied in fighting the Moors. The
council of wise men at Salamanca, to whom
Columbus's plans were referred, decided un-
favorably. Columbus did receive some favor-
able messages from France. Wholly discouraged
in Spain, six years after his first visit here he
came again, — from Cordoba this time, where
were the relations of his wife and of his son Diego.
He came to say that, as Spain had given him up,
he should give Spain up, and see if the King of
France would not fit out the expedition.

The good friar Marchena was dismayed at
this. He could not bear to have the glory lost
to Spain. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a
doctor in Palos, who had been interested when

78 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Columbus was here before. He sent for Pinzon,
a rich merchant of Palos. They all talked it
over again, and the friar wrote to the Queen this
time, not to any bishop. The Queen sent back
word that Columbus was to come himself and
explain his plan; and the sadness of the con-
vent was changed to joy.

Columbus's mule was saddled at once. He
started that night for Santa Fe, and had an au-
dience from Isabella. She heard and believed.
She promised her support, and Columbus wrote
this letter to the brother here at the convent: —

" Our Lord God has heard the prayers of his
servants. The wise and virtuous Isabel, touched
by the grace of Heaven, has kindly listened to
this poor man's words. All has turned out well.
I have read to them our plan ; it has been ac-
cepted, and I have been called to the court to
state the proper means for carrying out the de-
signs of Providence. My courage swims in a
sea of consolation, and my spirit rises in praise
to God. Come as soon as you can ; the Queen
looks for you, and I much more than she. I
commend myself to the prayers of my dear sons,
and to you.

" The grace of God be with you, and may our
Lady of Rabida bless you."

After a visit full of interest to Rabida, we re-
turned to our boat, and I directed my seamen to

PA LOS AND COLUMBUS. 79

take me to some landing whence I could go into
the very streets of Palos, or what was left of it.
To my surprise I was told that this was impossi-
ble. No such landing remains, even for a fish-
ing-boat of five tons. If the senor wished, it
would be necessary for the boat to come to an-
chor, and the senor must be carried on the back
of the skipper for three-quarters of a mile or
more, over the flat under water, formed where
proud ships once rode. The senor declined this
proposal, and bade the boatman take him to the
bar of Saltes, the little island in front of Palos
and Huelva, where Columbus's vessels lay, and
from which he sailed at eight o'clock on the
morning of Friday, August 3, 1492.

The run from Rabida, tacking back and forth
with a brisk breeze, was perhaps an hour, or a
little more. The island, which was the last of
Europe for the great navigator, can be scarcely
changed. It is a narrow bar high enough to
break the force of the south and southwest
winds as they sweep in from the Atlantic, and
thus make the admirable harbor of Huelva.

We discharged the grateful duty of collecting
some memorials of a place so interesting, and
then, by a rapid run before the wind, returned to
the pier at Huelva, which is some six miles up
the river.

CHAPTER VI.

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA.

THERE is easy steam navigation from Seville
to Cadiz, and, according to all accounts, nothing
is pleasanter than the voyage by steamboat
down the river. One of Amicis's most amusing
chapters describes this voyage, and we tried to
take it. All which I say for the benefit of other
travellers, for the boats are not advertised ; in-
deed, you must not, anywhere in Spain, rely upon
advertising as you would in America. As it
happened, there was no boat that fitted with our
plans, and we were obliged to take the rail. The
ride is of six or seven hours, which we took in
the afternoon and evening. You pass through
a highly cultivated valley with such attractions
as I have tried to describe in speaking of my
journey to Huelva.

One of the principal stopping-places is Xeres,
of which I suppose the geographers would say
that it is famous for sherry and the Jaleo de
Xeres. For me, I am no connoisseur in sherry,

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 8 1

but I am old enough to remember Fanny Elssler
and the Jaleo de Xeres.

" How sweet when by moonlight the sunbeams retire,
When with bright burnished silver the waves seem on fire;
As the shadows of evening begin to advance,
How sweet 't is to join in the song and the dance !
Not the light-footed naiads that trip o'er the sea
Are lighter, swifter, gayer than we."

All such scraps of Spanish song came up to-
gether from the surges of old memories as we
saw the sun go down upon the sparkling Guadal-
quivir, and knew that we need only stop over a
train to see the Jaleo danced in Xeres itself.
What we should call the river-bottom was cov-
ered with rows of young vines, perhaps four feet
high, in the fresh greenness of leaves which had
attained half their size. It was like riding in the
train of the Connecticut River Railroad through
a growth of young broom-corn. This may be a
good place to say that I was told by a connois-
seur, in whose skill I have full confidence, that
on the spot no man can give more than fifty
cents a bottle for the best possible pure sherry.
Whatever we choose to give in addition is what
we pay for additions, — whether sugar, brandy, or
other coloring matter.

As for coloring matter, there is a good deal
of it ; for the sherry served at the table at Cadiz
and Malaga is a very light-colored wine. If the
6

82 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

length of the passage to America £ver made it
necessary to adulterate pure wine, there can
hardly be any such necessity now, when the pas-
sage from Cadiz to New York is made in twelve
days. But a taste is a taste ; and if connoisseurs
are used to a mixture of burned sugar, brandy,
Xeres wine, and water, I suppose they will prefer
it. So I once found that the average attendant
on a Boston eating-house preferred to pure milk
a mixture of milk, water, burned sugar, and salt.
The keeper of the eating-house likes it better,
too ; for such a mixture, if there be salt enough,
can be kept for six days.

Nobody has ever taken the trouble to tell me
that Xeres is the modern spelling of Asta regia,
which was the name of the town in the Roman
geographies.

Does the reader remember

"He stormed the gates of Cadiz,
And this that gallant Spaniard did
For me and for the ladies."

I always had an inward fear that whoever it
was stormed those gates because " Cadiz "
rhymes so well with " ladies," and that if it
had been in another language he might have
been of another country, say a Frenchman or
an Italian, to fit the rhyme. But as you pass a
long salt-marsh, not unlike the Dorchester flats,
and sweep by long bastions of stone-work, you

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 83

feci that somebody, at some ' time, has had a
good deal to do in storming of the gates of Ca-
diz. And in Irving's "Conquest of Granada"
there are places enough where this gallant Span-
iard can be fitted in. According to Pliny, the
place was an island in his day, and now this salt-
marsh parts it from the upland. Our stay in
Cadiz was of the shortest. We were to leave at
six the morning after we arrived, and we were
not at our hotel much before eleven o'clock.

In the morning we breakfasted at five, and
then, in a great boat, with bag and baggage,
were rowed out to the steamer, — a good sea-boat
of perhaps four hundred tons. At six we sailed.

I wrote from Malaga the next morning this
account of the voyage : —

"Malaga, May 30.

" It is now six o'clock, and this pretty city of
Malaga is rousing itself to its duties. We are no
longer in the East. This place might be Norfolk
or Savannah, but that four thousand years have
finished it and given to it elegancies and pretti-
nesses to those cities unknown. I am on the
balcony of a palace, and my room is palatial.
I do not remember that in the much-praised
American hotel I ever found, at six in the
morning, fresh carnations on the dressing-table
of my chamber. But I am afraid this is excep-
tional, for the senora who takes care of the camas

84 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

(no gallantry will pretend that she is a seiiorita)
herself laughed as she called attention to them,
as if it were by some happy accident that they
were there.

" If my geography were shaky in any partic-
ular, it was as to the difference between Cadiz
and Malaga. This I knew, that from Malaga
came raisins, while Pnever heard of Cadiz raisins.
Also I went to school with a boy from Malaga,
and never went to school with any boy from Ca-
diz. But these doubts are now forever solved
in my mind (and I hope will be, for this reader).
Cadiz is outside the pillars of Hercules as far as
Malaga is inside ; so that our pretty coasting
voyage of yesterday, in an admirable steamer,
brought us through the Straits of Gibraltar.

" I had my first look of Africa, and we spent
four hours at anchor at Algeciras, in full sight of
the great fortress itself.

" I could have gone across and landed. But I
thought I should dilate with the right emotions
if I only beheld it from afar. Indeed, it is diffi-
cult not to dilate, and that with many emotions,
on this voyage. The African coast is often bold.
We saw it under great advantages of mist and
cloud on the mountains, quite symbolizing the
mysterious place of Africa in the trinity of the
Eastern continents. Gibraltar is simply magnifi-
cent. I have ruined my pocket sketch-book by

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 85

the number of outlines which I have dashed in
at various points of view. The ladies worked
with enthusiasm from the deck of the steamer
after she came to anchor. The sea was perfectly
smooth. You know how fond I am of steam-
boat travelling, and by this ddtour we enabled
ourselves to travel by day instead of night.

" Algcciras, where I landed, is a town more
Moorish in population, I suppose, than any town
I have seen. I saw some very handsome faces
among the boys. It seems very funny to see
these picturesque boys, perhaps with a red sash
round the waist, coming home from school with
a cracked slate and what might be a worn-out
Emerson's Arithmetic in a strap over the shoul-
der, just as he might do in Dartmouth or Dud-
ley Street. One of them had thrown another's
cap into a tree on \Wz plaza, just as he might do
in Blackstone Square. The boy had coaxed a
friend to lift him, while with a long stick he tried
to shake it from the tree. The other boy was
neither tall enough nor strong enough, and they,
could not reach it; so I offered. Boy number
one was afraid of the Frances e ; but another hand-
some boy volunteered to try the great adven-
ture, and I lifted him in triumph, so that he
' regained the felt, and felt what he regained.'

" They were making preparations in their pretty
public garden for a great fair which they are to

86 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

have next week, in which two bull-fights, among
other things, are provided. I walked in the
Paseo, and had the luck to hear my first nightin-
gale. It is rather difficult to dilate with the right
emotions for the nightingale. The song is a
good honest song, animated enough, rather
plucky. ' Jug, jug, jug,' expresses it well
enough. I am almost afraid I should not have
noticed it, unless, indeed, as a sort of contralto
among the sopranos of the other birds. We re-
freshed ourselves with lemonade and other light
drinks (sugar and water being the most popu-
lar), gathered some shells on the beach, and went
back to the ship to dinner. We weighed anchor
again at six, and by sunset passed the rock of
Gibraltar, as above, with the most lurid effects
of red light behind the bold black of the head-
land. It is virtually an island, like a gigantic
Nahant, connected by a spit of sand only with
the main, somewhat as Cadiz is.

" They say that in the midst of the straits is a
reef, with very deep surroundings, on all sides.
Berini, an intelligent valet de place whom I
brought round with me from Seville, asked me
if it might not be that, in the days of the an-
cients, on this reef there were veritably an-
other pillar of Hercules. He is not satisfied
with the Abyla of the African coast of to-day.
Also he, who is a Gibraltar boy by birth, says

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 87

that the cave of St. Michael's there has a myste-
rious passage disappearing no one knows where.
1 May not this have been a submarine tunnel
through which the monkeys — the only monkeys
in Europe — came from Africa to the rock of
Gibraltar?' This suggests weird considerations
worthy of Sindbad. The present number of
monkeys on the rock of Gibraltar is about thir-
ty-five. The English government cares for them
more assiduously than for Spanish refugees.
The number seen by the sentries is reported
daily by the officer in charge of the outposts.

" We had a lovely moonlight on the sea ; but
one cannot enjoy even moonlight forever, and
at 8.30 we went to bed. In my dreams, all night
I have been officiating with untold difficulties in
certain obsequies in honor of Mr. Emerson, and
certain others in Greece in memory of Socrates.
At 12.30 we arrived here, but have only just now
landed and passed the custom-house ; it is the
fourth time that these trunks have been exam-
ined in Spain since we passed the Spanish fron-
tier. We are now awaiting our coffee, breakfast
No. 1."

The ancients had no coffee ; whether they ate
anything when they got out of bed I do not
know. But all boys arc rather ground because
they are taught to translate prandium, breakfast,

88 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and ccena, supper, leaving no space for dinner,
and no word for it. But I am tempted to think
they had the customs these people have now.
The two meals are, one at ten or eleven, some-
times later, the other at five or six. also some-
times late, as late as nine, of which the first
is called almuerzo or dejeuner, and the second
comida or diner. They resemble each other
almost precisely, much more than the Eng-
lish lunch and dinner do. You have five or six
courses at both, warm meats, vegetables, wine if
you choose, and, in short, I know no scientific
distinction. These were, according to me, the
prandium and cccna of the ancients. I believe
they did not have prandium till twelve ; no mere
do the French have their dejeuner till twelve.

I learned in France an old proverb, originating
with the Church, that liquids do not break fast,
and they got a formal decree that coffee did not
break fast. Accordingly a priest may take cof-
fee before he administers the Mass. Alas, too
many take wine ! I think it possible that the
universal habit of early coffee in these parts may
have come from the ecclesiastical influence.

FROM MALAGA TO GRANADA.

Washington Irving's charming book on the
Conquest of Granada would be the true guide-

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 89

book for the journey from Malaga to Granada,
which the reader is now to take with us. It is
one of those journeys which such a party as
ours would gladly take on horseback, and I
fancy that, at another season of the year, that
would be a good way to do it. But I would not
undertake this with ladies, at the beginning of
June ; and, as the reader will see, we were
obliged, all through our Spanish tour, to save
time where we could.

Whoever will run through Irving's book will
read of the latest bit of genuine chivalry that is
left in history. If anybody cares for the truth,
and some people do, here is a truer picture
of what chivalry was and is than is in the Ama-
dis of Gaul or Esplandian. And I should like
to say, in passing, to any young friend of mine
interested at once in literature and in the truth,
that I think none of the writers on chivalry
have, as yet, dissected out the lies of the ro-
mancers from the truth of history. I think it
would be a nice literary enterprise for some
young fellow to do that thing. Let somebody
tell us where and when " the knight-errant " of
romance really existed in the world ; and let
him tell us how much this six-footed tramp was
respected or honored by the people of his own
time. And, to come back to Granada, anybody
who wants to understand the Spanish conquests

90 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

in Mexico and Peru, and to know how there
came to be in the world such men as the Spanish
conquerors, needs to acquaint himself well with
this history of desperate fight, so well described
by Irving. It was really the last appearance of
plate armor to any purpose in Europe. In
America, as against arrows, clubs, and stones,
plate armor held its own for half a century
more.

We took a train at one o'clock in the after-
noon at Malaga to run nearly north. That is
the general direction of the road. But we have
to pass the Sierra, and this we do by the most
wonderful series of zigzags and tunnels, cling-
ing to the edges of mountain gorges, and creat-
ing a road where a goat might be glad to find
his way. All this is the scene of that running
battle, which lasted nearly a week, which Irving
describes so picturesquely, where the knights of
Antiquera set out to take Malaga by surprise,
and were themselves surprised in these very
passes by El Zagal and the Moorish cavaliers.
These men understood the country better and
were better dressed for their business than the
Spaniards.

Indeed, it seems like the difficult creeping
which one sometimes experiences in a dream,
when one thinks of those heavy-mailed Spanish
knights, after they had lost their horses, crawl-

XERES, CADIZ, AND MALAGA. 9 1

ing, like lobsters, up and down the rocks of
these ravines. On the other hand, you are sur-
prised, as always, when you find how many of
them came out of the enterprise alive. If they
could keep their plate armor on their backs, it
seems to have served a certain purpose.

A few hours only of this railway riding bring
you out at a sort of Ayer Junction, high up in
the hills, of which one ought to say, in passing,
that it is a much more picturesque place and has
a much better fouda than ever Ayer Junction
had. At this place, the name of which is Loja,
I had my first experience of their gracious way
of collecting your scot for dinner. Grave-look-
ing men in black came round with plates which
looked like silver, which they passed solemnly
over your left shoulder. I had seen some women
about in the dress of Sisters of Charity, and as
these contribution plates went down the side of
the table opposite me, I had no thought but
that this was a collection made for the benefit
of some hospital. In my own secret mind I
praised the liberality of the travellers for giving
as much as they did, always three or four francs,
and this, as I observed, with a certain regularity.
But it was not till the very moment before the
man, whom I thought a sub-priest, came to me,
that I perceived that it was thus that we were
paying for our dinners, and that the poor who

92 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

were befriended were the wayfarers, of whom
we were four.

Leaving Loja, we took another train, this time
eastward, with the higher mountains of the
Sierra now to the south of us. We were thus
again on the line of rail by which we might
have come more directly from Seville, but for
our detour by sea to see Africa and the rock of
Gibraltar.

Thus, through a lovely afternoon, we followed
up that wonderful valley which is called the
Vega, the spoil of which was the prize of the
fourteen years of battle which preceded the fall
of Granada. Ronda, Alhama ("woe is me, Al-
hama!"), Lucena, and Lopera, I think, Za-
hara, Sante Fe, and other cities, too many for
me to name, are in sight one side or the other
as the train winds along on the edge of the
valley in the latter hours, constantly ascending.
For us there was the glory of a June sunset
behind the spurs of the Sierra, which we had
left at Loja. Then a long twilight, as the train
still sped on through what has been for a thou-
sand years perhaps the most fertile valley in the
world. At last, all the wishing in the world
would not keep it light for us an hour after the
sun had gone down, so that our last hour's ride
was in darkness, and in darkness we arrived at
the station at Granada.

CHAPTER VII.

GRANADA. THE ALHAMBRA.

If this reader has ever had the pleasure of
riding up to Cornell University from the city of
Ithaca, he will have what my evangelical friends
call a realizing sense of what it is to ride in
a rather shaky omnibus up to the Washington
Irving Hotel, high in the Alhambra gardens,
from the low level of the railway in the valley.
The effect is enhanced if the ride be taken in
crass darkness, in an omnibus which may have
been that old " Governor Brooks " which ran
hourly between Boston and the Norfolk House
in 1833. It seemed to me to have been trans-
ferred, without repairs or new paint, to serve the
Granada line after forty-nine years.

The ascent is so nearly vertical, that you have
a feeling that if you lose your headway, only for
an instant, the mules will fall backward over
your head, the whole rattle-trap pivoting on
the hind axle, and that you will all go down
into the valley again, mules first, on their backs,
omnibus on top, and passengers on their heads.

94 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

But we were fortunately spared this adventure,
as I have, up to this time, been spared the ex-
perience of it at Ithaca, — else the reader would
not be following these notes now.

After a little, zigzag roads up through a dense
grove, in which nightingales were singing and
brooks babbling, took the place of the perpen-
dicular ascent, the omnibus stopped, and the
cheerful and cordial host of the "Washington
Irving " welcomed us at his door. Thus began
a fortnight of life, more like life in the Arabian
Nights than any of us are likely to know until
we go to the Alhambra again.

To confess ignorance is a capital rule, and it
has been of the greatest service to me in a long
and varied life. To quote Lewis's excellent
joke at Bellombre, I have had a great deal to
confess sooner or later, and whenever I have
obeyed the rule I have profited. On this occa-
sion I will confess that I never knew what the
Alhambra was, — whether it were a palace or a
district. The truth is, it is either or both, as
you choose to call it.

To begin at the beginning, this projecting
shelf of land, running out from a spur of the
Sierra, must have been, from the moment when
it was made, one of the most beautiful places in
the world. You are three thousand feet or
more above the level of the sea. We had

STATE HI

GRANADA. Lw Angeles, v 95

ascended so far, more than half a mile, verti-
cally in our afternoon's ride from Malaga. Let
the reader recollect that the Crawford House,
at the head of the White Mountain Notch, is
but nineteen hundred feet above the sea. The
plateau occupied by the Alhambra is really
more like what five and twenty acres of table-
land on the top of Mount Webster would be. I
remember looking down in the valley of George-
town in Colorado, from a height above that
town, much as one looks down upon Granada
from the Alhambra.

Well, when the Moors came into possession of
Southern Spain, having the whole country to
choose from, they did as Uncle 'Zeke bids us do,
and " took the best." That is to say, they se-
lected this plateau, high embanked by nature
above the valley, which commands, on the west,
a view of the Vega, fifty-seven square miles of
matchless fertility, running away from the eye
into the purple of the distance; and commands,
on the other side, the majestic view of the range
of the Sierras, showing in its gorges streaks of
perennial snow at every season of the year.
Practically, these Moorish sovereigns had all the
artistic skill there was afloat in the world, and,
to use this skill, they had all the money they
needed. Having resolved to live here in this
midway climate, which is never too cold, never

96 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

too warm, where you can always see winter by
looking to the east, and always see summer by
looking to the west, they bade their architects
build the most beautiful palace they could build,
and the most comfortable, and bade their gar-
deners make the most beautiful gardens. In
these gardens, observe, pine trees dream of palms
and palms of pine, to their hearts' content. The
gardeners and the architects took them at their
word, and did their best. In 1492 they and theirs
were turned out. It is now many generations
since any king has really lived in those beautiful
palaces, though a mattress is sometimes laid in
one of the chambers for the King of Spain, if he
come that way, and I think the same thing was
done for the Prince of Wales. But the palace
has never been permitted to fall into ruin. For
the last generation it has been attended to with
the wisest and most reverent care. The gov-
ernor of the whole place is now Senor Contreras,
an antiquarian, who is also an artist, with both
conscience and taste. With great wisdom and
delicacy, he uses the funds which are intrusted
to him in keeping up the gardens and in restor-
ing, wonderfully well, such decoration as time
or carelessness had destroyed. I am by no
means sure that the glamour, which time has
thrown over the palace in four centuries, does
not more than make up for any splendor of oc-

GRANADA. 97

cupation, which it lost when the Moors were
driven away.

But I see that, like every one else, I hang
round the outside, without describing the Al-
hambra. I suppose a Moor would have said to
you that it was a fortress, and such was the cen-
tral part of what we now call the Alhambra. The
name, according to the received etymology, is a
corruption of the Arabic kal-at al hamra, the
red castle. Red alludes to the color of the rock.
On the spot they say there are three colors to
the Alhambra, — red, blue, and green ; and in the
fortnight that I was there the rocks were always
red, the sky was of the deepest blue, and the
trees of the greenest green. I do not know what
the committee of the Boston Art Club would
say to Alhambra pictures. It is said that when
Miss Forbes sent them her clever sketches from
Colorado they would not admit them, because
they had never seen rocks that were so red. At
the same time she sent some decorous Milton
Hill sketches, which were accepted with en-
thusiasm. If my readers share this prejudice
against positive color, they must not go to the
Alhambra.

The walls and towers of the old Moorish de-
fence still stand. On one side they needed no
wall, for a cat or a lizard would find it hard to
work up the cliff from the valley far below.
7

98 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Just outside these walls, surrounded still by
beautiful gardens, are the two hotels of " Wash-
ington Irving," generally spelled with a Y for its
first letter, and the Siete Suelos, parted only
from edch other by a roadway. " Siete Suelos "
means seven stories, that having been the name
of one of the towers on the wall, close by. Be-
side these hotels, there is a group of other
houses with their gardens, extending, I know
not how far, upon different plateaux of the
mountains. Some of them are handsome villas,
some of them are modest boarding-houses, and
in this region, intersected by rambling roads, a
great many people, who have the same tastes
which the Moorish sovereigns had, come to
spend now winter and now summer. It is the
only place known to me to which people go
purely for recreation, where the hotels are kept
open all the year round, and where the attrac-
tions seem as great at one season as at another.
Strictly speaking, I suppose the region within
the walls of the fortress, perhaps twenty-five
acres in all, is the Alhambra. But I am quite
sure that in conversation the name " Alhambra "
would apply to all the gardens and villas on the
hillside.

Among these villas, at some little distance
from the castle itself, is one presented by the
Spanish government to that distinguished lady,

THE ALII AM BR A. 99

the Countess Calderon, who was for so many
years our townswoman. If, as I believe, to this
lady was intrusted the early education of the
present King of Spain, Spain cannot be too
eager to express its gratitude to her; for every-
thing seems to show that this young man is ad-
mirably fitted for his very delicate position. He
certainly must be spoken of as one of the most
interesting and remarkable men in Europe at
the present time.

Any one who has his route to lay out will see
that there is a certain moral advantage, if I may
so call it, in taking Cordova before Seville, and
Seville before Granada. If we had taken this in
reverse, we never should have enjoyed Seville and
Granada in the way we did. As we came, we
took our alphabet of orientalism, then our words
of two syllables, and now our literature. Thanks
to Queen Isabella II., if she did nothing else
good, the place is in perfect order. With this
introduction I may trust the reader to some
notes taken from day to day upon the spot.

The walks and avenues are like those of a
modern palace in neatness and beauty. The
restorations in the palace of the Alhambra it-
self are so perfect, that they need a trained eye

IOO SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

to tell- where they begin. The patio of orange-
trees is in perfect cultivation, the lions are all
on their feet, and even those whose ears were
broken off have new ones. Last night we went
up to see the moonlight effects. Exigcants
connoisseurs were disappointed, as the moon
would not rise quite high enough for them.
But for me, who am not used to valley views
seventy miles long, under the light of a full
moon, the prospect, with the heavy shadows of
our cliff over Granada, was sufficiently wonder-
ful. You can imagine to a degree what witch-
work the moonlight would make on one of
these walls of ivory carving, as it shines through
the queer, varied Saracenic arches. We were
taught in our childhood some stuff about four
orders, more or less, of architecture. For clear,
sheer beauty, this Saracenic arch, left out from
that list, is the leader of them all. I rather
think it is the best of all to adapt to popular
and practical use.

The city of Granada is a lively town of seventy-
five thousand people, improving itself, opening
new streets, having a fine bull-fight to-day, and
preparing for Corpus Christi on Wednesday,
Up a steep street like Bowdoin Street you
climb, and come to an arch, which is the arch
of the Alhambra. You pass it, and enter a
heavily shaded grove, laid out with parks and

THE ALHAMDRA. IOI

roads, in very careful order, the roads still as-
cending a steep hill. This is the beginning of
the gardens of the Alhambra. This is the
ascent which late at night reminded me of the
roads at Cornell University. You continue as-
cending, and in five minutes, on the right and
left, lo, two hotels, like rival White Mountain
houses. One is the Siete Suclos, and one the
Washington Irving. These are crowded into
corners left by the fortifications of the Alham-
bra; for the Alhambra, being a royal palace,
was fortified, on one side, inaccessible on a high
cliff, on the other side, by walls, like those at
Ticonderoga or Quebec or Chester,

So, then, when we have breakfasted we can
take a short walk through the grove to this
great wall ; and as no Moors defend it, we pass
through the Puerta del Justicia, or the Puerta de
Vino, or some sally-port without a name, and
we are in the great fortress, which the Moors
garrisoned, and which commanded the town.
Remember that cannons, large and small, were
well in use before 1492, when the fortress fell.
In this enceinte are now many houses, built
from old ones. Here lives, for example, Con-
trcras, the skilful restorer, and governor of the
whole ; here is the ruin of an unfinished palace
of Charles the Fifth ; here are great box-gar-
dens, laid out to occupy old parade grounds ;

102 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and here, at last, largest and most important,
is the beautiful palace of the Alhambra, the
nucleus and queen of the whole. You see in it
what I suppose you might see in Ispahan or
Damascus or Cairo, only that you are not per-
mitted to do so. But as you are not permitted
to do so there, it is a very good thing for pure
Westerners like us, as it were so many Visi-
goths at the court of one of Cleopatra's de-
scendants, to see how comfortably these people
lived.

Perhaps it adds to the interest to see the
blood-stain where thirty-six Abencerrages chiefs
were killed by one of these Moorish kings not
long before Granada fell. To say truly, though
we have a natural sympathy for these poor
Moors, who builded so much better than their
successors knew, that as to desert, they can be
said to have deserved but little. Good archi-
tecture is hardly a moral merit. If it were, I
think it is a merit which belonged more to the
ancestors of Boabdil and those who were turned
out, than to themselves. And for themselves,
after dipping a little into their history, I am dis-
posed to say that if any persons ever deserved
the vengeance of the Almighty it was these
same Moorish chiefs. As for their people, I
know nothing, and say nothing.

To return to the Alhambra from this digres-

TIIE ALU AMUR A. 103

sion. Once within the palace there are still
many courts. One of these is the lovely patio,
blazing with pomegranates, orange-trees, lemons,
roses, and bananas, which might properly be
called the garden of the Alhambra. This, or
the Court of Lions, is perhaps the central
almond meat of the stone of the fruit, from the
outside of which we have removed so many
shreds and shells, all which more or less re-
ceive the name of the Alhambra.

You can conceive what endless walks, ex-
plorations, chances to sketch, chances to get
lost, all these gardens and lines of fortress and
ruined towers, now accessible and now inacces-
sible, afford. From the " Gate of Justice," in
a painting of the time, the Moors are repre-
sented as pouring out to be destroyed by their
conquerors.

The foliage has the green of the very earliest
spring, and the flowers the richness of tropical
summer at the same moment.

As you sketch, a little stream is babbling
at your side. And if one were living at the
Alhambra, such a stream might be running
through the midst of what would seem as our
front entry.

The palace itself is perhaps the most charm-
ing place of all. I read aloud there, as the la-
dies drew, the speeches at the Historical Society

104 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

in memory of dear Mr. Emerson. You know I
have always been at ease in palaces, and have
a feeling that I was born to live in one. And
these domestic occupations give one " a realiz-
ing sense" of what good times1 they might have
had there were their daily cares anything but
cutting off each other's heads. As, in fact, they
lived here seven hundred years, and as there are
not more than seven crimes in the books in
that period, it may be that to them the Alham-
bra was as peaceful a place as Washington seems
to us, despite Guiteau and Booth and the Eng-
lish occupation of 1814. Any way, we had
many lovely afternoons there. It is rather the
central point of all our ramblings, and we had
permits to draw there, for all the party.

We went down into the city of Granada to
see the opening of the Festa of Corpus Christi,
which lasts several days, and obstructs a good
deal the regular business, such as it is, of the
place. The nucleus of the affair was the giving
up by the Ayuntamiento to the governor of the
province of the public square, that it might be

3 Let no New Englander fear that this phrase is provincial.
Pepys says, " We had a glorious time ! " and Dryden sang,
" The sons of Belial had a glorious time ! "

THE ALHAMBRA. 105

open, I suppose, to all the province for their
festivities. Whether this actual ceremony, which
is, as you see, a sort of Artillery Election, ever
in fact took place, I do not know. What we
saw was very much like Fourth of July on our
Common, — great crowds of country people
swaying to and fro with whatever motive or with
none. I think our two artists, making hasty
studies of heads and costumes, interested los
kombres and las mugeres and los ninos and las
niuas as much as did the fountains or the bands
of music.

In the middle of the square is erected a great
canvas temple, for any functions that may need
a lofty platform. Around this little fountains
play, some from the muskets of small soldiers,
some propelling the swords of other soldiers,
and others making cavalrymen to rock. Quite
on the outside of the square, on a high staging,
run a series of twenty-two well-painted satiri-
cal pictures, hitting off the follies of the time.
One is a school of men and women learning the
decimal system of mensuration, in fear that, if
they do not, the Alcalde will refuse them certifi-
cates of marriage. One is a philosopher aban-
doning his globes and books, and practising for
bull-fighting, because it pays better. Between
the pictures, painted in large letters, are doggerel
rhymes, illustrating them. At one end of the

106 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

square is a long poem, painted in large letters,
an ode, a hymn on the Incarnation, and another
glorifying Granada and its history. In another
park are regular booths, to sell candy and other
fairings, just like ours in general plan, but ar-
ranged with one plan, and a simple (canvas)
architectural effect, so as to give unity to the
whole. There was to be an illumination. But
the Ayuntamiento owes the Gas Company
twenty thousand dollars already ; so on Monday
night the Gas Company shut off the gas from
the town, and people had to come and go in
darkness.

The palace itself is an endless satisfaction.
Every time you walk there, you discover some-
thing new. Yesterday I indulged myself in a
book of the Arabian inscriptions on the walls..
With the notes, it makes a reasonable volume.
There were days when I could read a little Ara-
bic. I have now forgotten the few words I
knew. But I found gradually that I could make
out the characters. The ladies each make two
pictures a day, one in the morning light, one in
the afternoon light, with endless adjunct studies
from the bedroom balconies and from terraces
or other lookouts ; for, with every new day,
some one has discovered that there is a tower
or garden which has not been visited before, and
from which there is a new view or in which there
are new effects.

THE ALU AM BRA. 107

Fortuny and Regnault really made their homes
here. On the Siete Suelos wall are inscriptions
which tell when they lived there. A gypsy is
in attendance to pose for artists as he did for
them. In this land of color one is always
tempted to paint. I have said that green, red,
and blue are the colors of Granada. Add to
this, that excepting one day there has not been
a cloud as big as a man's hand on this blue sky,
which is a defiance to the deepest ultramarine,
— for all which blue sky in June we are so high
that the air is even bracing. We had no expe-
rience in a fortnight of June of what we should
call a hot day in Boston.

As we came home from the exquisite Gene-
ralife gardens, we were listening to nightingales
singing in June, and looking on the snow of the
Sierra Nevada.

" Have I dilated on nightingales since Algeci-
ras? You know I never heard any before. I
have veered to and fro in my views about them.
At one time I said that if a single frog, neither
of the shrill chirping kind of the spring, nor the
deep, bass onderdonk kind of the autumn, could
be set at his lonely " tunk," " tunk," " tunk," at
midnight, he might be mistaken for a nightin-

108 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

gale. But since that I have had better luck. I
think I was fairly waked by one, one night, in
the very dead of night. The n of the " tunk "
ameliorated itself almost to /, so liquid was it.
The tone* is so deep as to suggest that the bird
sings contralto, and not soprano, and the tout
ensemble is a sort of richness which certainly
few notes have. Sometimes a mocking-bird
gives you the same sound. This midnight song
is more interesting, though more monotonous,
than the twitter of the same bird at sunset. Do
you know, that the song is the conjugal duty of
the husband? He sings to his mate (not to the
rose) while she sits on the eggs. If he fails to
sing, she dies ! Poor fellow, what do you sup-
pose his rights to be, if she should go to sleep
for half an hour?

NOTES ON THE CARTHUJA.

" Friday. We took our drive at nine o'clock
to the convent still called the Carthuja, because
it was a convent of the Carthusians, before such
things were suppressed. Thirty old monks had
the benefit of it, of whom, now, all but two are
dead, and nobody has any benefit from it ex-
cept sight-seers. But I suppose the funds which
sustained such magnificence now go to govern-
ment, or some dependant on government.

THE ALHAMBRA. 1 09

" The show-rooms are magnificent ; on the
whole, I think the most complete and lavish
decoration which I have ever seen. There are
several pictures and several statues by Alonzo
Cano, this more than Raffaelle and more than
Murillo, of Spanish art, of whom those critics
with whom we are most familiar know absolutely
nothing. As in most of the Spanish religious
buildings, the pictures seem painted for the
places they are in, parts of the decoration, and
not stuck on, as an afterthought. There are
other good pictures and statues. But, after all,
the glory of the place is architectural and in the
richness of every detail. I never dreamed of
such mosaic, of wood and ivory, as in the doors
and cabinets of the vestry, which is, perhaps, the
finest room in Europe."

There are woods all about Granada, and rivers
running through it, and you can see the hills
around all covered by gardens. About half a
mile from the city begin the Sierra Morena, with
their tops covered with snow. The Moors
founded Granada, and in their time it was much
more splendid than it is now. While they were
there, there were four hundred thousand of them.
The city was nine miles round, and there were
more than a thousand towers guarding it. Even
now it has several fine buildings, two large
squares, sixteen smaller ones, many public foun-

110 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

tains, seven colleges, eleven hospitals, a fine thea-
tre built by the French, and sixty churches.

On the left bank of the Genii is the city of
Santa Fe. It was founded by Isabella. During
the siege of Granada the Queen made a vow not
to change her linen until the city was taken.
To frighten the enemy, her camp was changed
into a fortified town, and was called Santa Fe.
Unfortunately for the Queen, the Moors held out
so well that it was long before the town was
taken, and by that time the Queen's linen had
turned to a yellow color. But as the Queen wore
it the shade became quite fashionable, and is
known to this day as " Isabella." It was in
Santa Fe that Ferdinand and Isabella approved
of the first expedition undertaken by Columbus.
In 1807 the city was almost, destroyed by an
earthquake.

I try to spare this reader, my unknown but
loyal friend, the description of our daily meals.
It cannot interest him much to know that the
apricots of Ronda were riper than those of Cor-
dova, or the figs larger. But as the guide-books
have a great deal to say about Spanish food, and
as I write these notes rather for people who are
doubting about routes for future travel, I am
tempted to say something here about the table,
which has and ought to have a good deal to do
with the plans of people who are looking for-
ward to a holiday.

THE ALII AM BR A. Ill

Garlic is always spoken of as a terror in Spain.
Let me then say, once for all, that, till the last
day I was in Spain, I did not know what the
taste of garlic was. On that day my sister asked
me if I liked the flavor of the mutton. When I
said I did, she told me that its peculiar flavor
was that of the much-dreaded garlic. I have
suffered much more annoyance in Philadelphia
in a week of springtime from the flavor in
milk of what they call " wild garlic," than I did
in six weeks of Spain from all foreign odors or
flavors put together. And this, as Philadel-
phians know, is saying very little.

Everywhere we found clean and neat tables,
ready service at table, and abundance of fruit
at every meal. The cooking resembles that of
New England in some things more than that of
France.

As far as I understand, the famous olla po-
drida is the same thing now known as zpuchero,
though in this authorities differ. It is simply,
as I think, the " biled dish " of washing-day in
the country. It is corned beef served in slices,
but sliced after boiling, served on a dish with
abundant gravy, while at one end of the dish
there is a heap of onions, at another one of
string-beans ; on one side, perhaps, cabbage, al-
ways a heavy layer in some place of baked beans
(or pease), and, for garnishes, bits of sausage

112 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

cut in slices, and perhaps of other such meats,
maybe sliced tongue. These things are not,
however, boiled in the same pot, as in the " biled
dish" they would have been, I think. Perhaps
what I call baked beans may have been boiled
with the corned beef; probably they were. The
other things are cooked separately, but served
together. The effect is exactly as if a hungry
man came in, when his wife had prepared an
abundant dinner, and on this large plate he ar-
ranged the different things all ready to begin.
The dish is handed to you thus prepared, and
you take from it what you like. I would not go
into such detail, but that olla podrida has now a
name in literature.

Really the most striking thing in the table is
the abundance of fruit, of which I spoke, served
always at breakfast and dinner. We had apri-
cots and oranges at every meal ; cherries almost
always. With us at home the season of cherries
is very short. In Spain they know how to pro-
long it, and they bring them to the market in
much better condition than we do. Strawberries
are the small, old-fashioned garden variety.
They are very good, and must be very cheap. We
always have them at dinner, sometimes at lunch
or breakfast. For us, after we left Seville, figs
appeared. Per contra, I did not see a hot bis-
cuit, a slice of toast in any form, nor anything in

THE ALHAMBRA. 1 13

the shape of buckwheats or flapjacks. Cro-
quettes they have as we do, and give them the
same name. Dinner is served as at a table d'hote
in Switzerland, but that the fish comes later.
The object is to break the substantial dishes,
always three, with entremets of less importance.
Strange to say, chocolate seems no more an ar-
ticle of general national use than with us. You
find it when you least expect it ; but at hotels it
is just as much a nuisance as with us, and as
likely to be badly made. Coffee is pretty good.
It seems from Don Quixote that they used chic-
ory long before they heard of coffee, though I
cannot see why they did not get it from the
Moors as early as the tenth century. Tea is
never heard of in common use at the good
hotels ; you can order it, of course, but you have
hot water brought you.

In this hasty review I have said nothing of the
charms of cooking in oil. It seems to me that
we might do well to try it. The result is deli-
cious ; nothing seems to get soaked, as one finds
at a bad hotel where they have lard enough.
I have fancied that perhaps you have to use less,
for some unknown reason. Any way, the crisp-
ness and sweetness of fried things is very ob-
servable.

I sent for the steward at the Washington Yr-
ving hotel and made him give me the direction
8

114 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

for serving gaspacho, which is a sort of summer
soup, if it deserves that name, served cold. As
I read his directions now in the midst of winter,
the recipe seems to me a little like that for stone
soup, which made a favorite story of my boyhood.
Such as it is, however, some of your house-
keeping readers may like to try it when the ther-
mometer is ninety-eight in the shade. You will
observe that he has left us free to vary the pro-
portion of the ingredients to suit our taste.

Gaspacho. Cut onions, tomatoes, and cucum-
bers in very small solid pieces. Serve in water,
of which there should be plenty, stirring in oil
and vinegar, with pepper and salt as you please.

He also gave us his formula, such as it is, for
Arroz a la Valenciana, a very nice preparation
of rice, not unlike in effect to the Eastern pilau :
Rice, chicken, ham, fish, pease, tomatoes, arti-
chokes, pepper, salt, oil. Baked like escalloped
oysters.

One of the earliest associations which most Eng-
lish readers have with the Alhambra is in their
memory of Irving's " Tales of the Alhambra."
And those who are such sturdy fiction readers
that they have never followed up that charming
book with " The Conquest of Granada," have a
great pleasure yet in store. He is, to this hour,
the received historian of the region. And the
landlord at the Washington Irving hotel put into

THE ALII AM BRA. 1 1 5

my hands a French translation of "The Conquest
of Granada " as soon as I arrived.

Irving was led to these literary undertakings
"as he worked upon the Life of Columbus. To
this subject his attention was called in the winter
of 1825-26 by Mr. Al^cander Everett, who had
then just been appointed by John Quincy Adams
as our Minister to Spain. Irving was at Bordeaux
when he received a letter from Mr: Everett, tell-
ing him that Navarrete was on the great work of
publishing, with proper notes, the original docu-
ments of the voyages of Columbus, and suggest-
ing that here was a subject worthy of his pen.
Mr. Everett proposed a translation of the book.
Irving at once joined him in Madrid, and there
Mr. Everett gave him the advantages of an at-
tach^ of the legation. As soon as Navarette's
book appeared, Irving perceived, with that sound
good sense which characterized all his life, that
the form of it was not such as would be attrac-
tive to readers not themselves historians. He
saw, also, that most such readers would want, not
these documents only, but a connected narrative
of Columbus's life and discoveries. In Madrid he
had every advantage for such work. He was liv-
ing in the house of Mr. Rich, the American con-
sul, who had an admirable library of books and
papers bearing on Spanish colonial history. The
royal library, of which I shall have occasion to

Il6 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

speak again, and, indeed, all the Spanish collec-
tions, were open to him. And so, fortunately for
us, he fell to work on the Life of Columbus, which
he wrought out so admirably well.

He originally inserted, in the early part of this
book, as so many amusingwDr interesting episodes,
some of the narratives which are now to be found
in the " Tales of the Alhambra" and some of those
in " The Conquest of Granada." The reader must
remember that our Columbus was present in the
flesh when the Moors surrendered the fortress of
the Alhambra, and, with the eyes that saw the
Bahamas a few months after, saw the procession
file out from the gateway for the act of capitula-
tion. To make himself intimate with the geog-
raphy and local colonies of the Moorish war, and
to study documents in Seville also, Irving resided
in that city for some months. He also made vari-
ous excursions up and down this lonely Vega, so
that he might see for himself the fortress and
cities which were the scenes so often of attack
and repulse. The longest stay which he made
anywhere was, very naturally, in the Alhambra
itself. In those days matters were easily admin-
istered here, and, as the reader will remember,
Irving was permitted actually to live in the pal-
ace. I have seen many other persons who had
enjoyed this privilege. Many more have I seen
who had lived in one or another lodging-house

THE ALII AM BRA. 117

within the old walls of the Alhambra, and so are
in the habit of saying that they had lived in the
Alhambra. But Irving actually slept, ate and
drank, and wrote his letters and read his news-
papers, in one or the other of the rooms of the
palace.

As the work of the Life of Columbus went on,
he was afraid that he was interweaving too many
threads of romance into the web of history, and
eventually, before he published the book, he sep-
arated from it what did not belong strictly to the
personality of Columbus, and made from the more
historical portions the " Conquest of Granada,"
which is veritable history, although Fra Aga-
pida appears in it as an interpreter, somewhat
as in Carlyle's histories Mr. Dryasdust appears.
From the more romantic studies Irving made up
the charming "Tales of the Alhambra."

One of our most distinguished officers has con-
tributed to that great History of Discovery, in
this past summer, a very valuable and instructive
study. Admiral Fox, who administered the prac-
tical work of the Navy Department in the Civil
War, has published his admirable study of the
Landfall of Columbus, which leaves little or any
doubt as to the spot which they first lighted on
after the tedious voyage.

CHAPTER VIII.

WORSHIP IN SPAIN.

In Seville I had found with the greatest diffi-
culty a Protestant church. It belongs to what
calls itself the National Church of Spain, which,
in the whole peninsula, collects, I think, some-
where between ten and twenty congregations.
In all, the branches of Protestant communicants
count up sixty or seventy congregations only
throughout the country. Under the present
constitution all forms of worship are permitted,
but only the Catholic Church may make its wor-
ship public. The interpretation of this last sav-
ing clause varies with the mood of the time and
with the administration of government. Just
now it is strictly construed, so that persons not
Catholics do not consider themselves permitted
to announce their public services in the news-
papers.

It was perfectly well known at our hotel in
Seville that there was a Protestant church some-
where. But where it was, was doubtful ; and as
of the time of service all parties were as ignorant

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 1 19

and indifferent as a gentlemanly clerk at a hotel
in Atlanta or New Orleans would be apt to be
when asked the hour of service at the Unitarian
church there, we finally went, at a venture, at
what seemed the average time, to the square
indicated. Arriving there, we found a certain
agreement among the loafers in attendance as to
the place of worship. Clearly enough, it had
been built for a church. At the door an old
woman was found, who announced that the morn-
ing service was just over, but that service would
be renewed in the evening, at nine o'clock.

I am disposed to believe that these somewhat
abnormal hours, giving a service early in the
morning and late in the evening, were selected
intentionally, that the church might not interfere
with the hours of Catholic worship ; or to state
the same thing in another way, that worshippers
might come to the Protestant service without
losing a chance at the Catholic service. Mr.
Moody, as may be remembered, ordered his
Sunday services with similar deference to exist-
ing institutions.

At nine in the evening, accordingly, I repaired
again to the place, and found sixty or eighty
people assembled, and a clergyman dressed in
a white surplice carrying on a liturgical service.
The assembly was silent and devout in manner,
and joined reverently in the parts of the liturgy

120 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

which belonged to them. They sang with great
spirit Spanish hymns.

The liturgy was formed throughout, as I
learned afterwards from the bishop whom I vis-
ited in Madrid, on the old Mozarabic or National
Rite of Spain. This service, based on what is
known to theologians as the liturgy of St. James,
was the original national service first known in
Spain, and in universal use there until the Moor-
ish conquests. The Moors, tolerant enough to
worshippers who did not assail their institutions,
permitted the Christians who chose to meet
even in conquered cities, and to retain this na-
tional worship. When, therefore, after centuries,
the forces of Christian kings took possession of
such cities as Toledo and Seville, which had
been under Moorish domination, they found
churches of Christians who had been true to the
cross in all these ages of darkness, and were
still worshipping in the old forms. Meanwhile,
however, under the predominant power, moral
and physical, of the learned court of Charle-
magne, the " Rite," as it is called in the older
theologians, of Italy had worked its way into the
Northern churches. Among a people to whom
the forms of religion meant pretty much the
whole of it, there were therefore in contrast, not
to say conflict, two rival " Rites " or forms.

By hook and by crook, literally, the Mozara-

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 121

bic form has now been driven out of all the Cath-
olic churches of Spain excepting one little chapel
in Toledo. It takes the name " Mozarabic," or
" Muzarabic," from its having been used under
the Arabic dynasties. But, loyally enough, when
the Spanish Protestants organized themselves for
a worship independent of Rome, they drew upon
the admirable resources of this ancient device for
the prayers and forms of their national liturgy.

The congregation around me at Seville seemed
a body of devout people, men, women, and chil-
dren, in much the same proportions which one
would have found in New England, seriously en-
gaged in what they had in hand. Strange to say,
there was in the church and in the service none
of the aspect of revolt or self-assertion which I,
for one, have often seen in an assembly of Come-
outers, and which I certainly expected in a Prot-
estant church in Seville. I was led to think
that they hardly knew that they were making
any protest against the ecclesiastical power of
the place, but rather that they came together for
the pleasure of singing hymns in their own lan-
guage, and the satisfaction of prayer in union, —
a satisfaction which is practically almost denied
to worshippers in Catholic churches, who only
hear a prayer in a language which they do not
understand and in which they unite with diffi-
culty even in form, particularly when they cannot

122 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

read, as is the case with most Spaniards. In
short, it seemed to me that they were religious
people, who were, very likely, adding to the some-
what stereotyped formalities of the Catholic
Church the pleasure and profit of closer com-
munion with each other and with God which
they found in worship in their own language.

I stopped to speak with the priest after he had
dismissed the congregation. He told me that on
Sunday he never permitted himself to enter into
discussion or controversy ; that he reserved all
attacks on the Roman Church, or all justifica-
tion of Protestantism, for his services on week-
days. With a certain pride, which I am afraid
I must call professional, he explained that on
these week-day gatherings I should find a larger
assembly than I had seen on Sunday. Alas ! I
knew only too well that the chances are that
more men will come to a fight than will meet to
pray. But, all the same, I was more glad to have
joined with his colony of glad and reverent wor-
shippers than I should have been to hear his
best knock-down confutation of the Pope or his
satellites.

In Granada, rightly or not, I came to the con-
clusion that there was no effort at worship ex-
cepting in the forms of the Roman Catholic
Church. When Sunday came, therefore, we re-
paired to the cathedral. I had taken the pre-

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 123

caution to inquire, the day before, what might
be the hour for service ; and to say truly, I do
not think any one in our hotel, excepting us,
knew or cared much when the time came. But
it was spread abroad that a specially distin-
guished preacher, Rev. Dr. Somebody, was to
preach the sermon, while the cardinal-archbishop
and his retinue were to administer High Mass.
So we seemed likely to follow the direction of
the dictionary people, and to " get the best" there
was in that region by going there.

Now, in what I have to say of this service I
have no wish to offend Catholic susceptibilities.
I have only the wish to say how such worship af-
fects a person not trained to it, as it might affect
a visitor from the planet Mars. With the Roman
Catholic service in America I am, I believe, quite
well acquainted. I have worshipped in some of
the principal Roman cathedrals in Europe, and
in I know not how many other churches of that
faith. In Spain there are certain peculiarities
which force themselves upon attention. I fancy
they spring partly from the present attitude of
the people to religion, and partly from the past
power of the ecclesiastics. They force them-
selves upon a stranger's attention as perhaps they
do not upon officiating priests, who have seen
the same thing since they were old enough to
remember anything.

124 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The architectural peculiarity of the Spanish
cathedrals, as the reader should remember, is the
presence of the Coro, or church within a church,
such as I have spoken of at Burgos, at Cordova,
at Seville, and such as is here at Granada again.

o

We saw the same thing at Malaga and Cadiz.
You have the large cathedral with its front of
high pillars, and its lofty arches above. Within
that you build a Coro in the middle. The walls
do not quite reach the roof: they are high enough
to seclude the people in it wholly from the sight
of those outside, and what passes within cannot
be well heard outside; nor indeed is it meant
to be.

But it may be — as here at Granada — that
one end of the Coro is parted from the other end,
as in old ships the forecastle was parted from
the stern, so that the layman on the floor of the
cathedral may pass across the Coro from one
side to the other. In this case there will be a
rail, to prevent his straying either way within
these sacred precincts.

Inside the Coro are the high desks and prayer-
books, the ranges of seats for priests, the altar,
and the cabinet which contains the pyx, and,
in short, everything which makes the church a
church. Inside the Coro, accordingly, at Gra-
nada, the company of the clergy assembled.
From one end where they sat to the other end

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 12$

where they kneeled at the altar, they moved from
time to time in procession. Once this proces-
sion passed out into the larger cathedral, and all
around the church in the aisles. This was indeed
the most interesting ceremonial to me, because
in fact the people — what there were of them
— were there; and this was the only part of the
ritual which recognized their existence or showed
that anybody was interested in them.

I will not discuss the ritual of the Church
of Rome, or of its fitness for its purpose.
But no person can compare a Catholic cathe-
dral in America with a Catholic cathedral in
Spain without a feeling that the Church of
Rome has learned a lesson here which it needs
to learn there ; or perhaps it would be better to
say that The People is sovereign here, and that
there is another Sovereign there. I suppose that
if King Alfonso went to worship in the Cathe-
dral of Granada, the magic gates of the Coro
would fly open to him, and that he would find
he was made as welcome as the priests. I
am sure that in Boston, whoever went into the
Catholic cathedral would be welcomed as if he
were a worshipper, and would be made as wel-
come as the priest. I am equally sure that the
hundred people not priests who did attend the
worship in Granada the day I was there were
given to understand quite distinctly that they had

126 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

no business there. While the great Coro was
virtually empty, those people stood outside, un-
less a mendicant offered a stool for their hire.
Standing outside, they would be bidden to get
out of the way of the procession when it came.
One was reminded, indeed, of General Magru-
der's phrase a few years after he left West Point.
Worried by the necessities of an officer's duty,
but not disliking either the compensation or the
social attractions connected with it, Magruder
said, " The army would be a very decent place if
there were no privates." It seemed clear enough
that the ecclesiastics at Granada felt that their
position would be much more tolerable if there
were no people !

A considerable number of the clergy joined
in the service, but I think it was only in this
number that it differed greatly from the service
to which we were accustomed. The day was
Trinity Sunday. The preacher took the baptis-
mal formula in Matthew for his text, as I have
observed Trinitarian preachers often do when
they preach this sermon ; for the sermon was
the same in substance which I have often heard
on such occasions. The misfortune of the text
for their purpose is that it omits the essential
words, " These three are one."

This sermon is, of course, no argument for
the doctrine of the Trinity. On the other hand,

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 1 27

it concedes the point that the mystery is no
matter of argument. And no man could have
made this concession more frankly than our
friend on Sunday. He began with a lamentable
picture of the desperate state in which the world
finds itself at this time. For this ruined condi-
tion, more faith is the only cure, he said ; and,
naturally, as the Trinity is the central doctrine
of the Catholic Church, more faith in this was
the recommendation of the sermon. There are
men in Spain, however, as he knew, who draw
the inference backwards. Since the Gothic Ari-
ans were suppressed by fire and sword, the
Roman Catholic Church has, without let or hin-
drance, proclaimed this doctrine of the Trinity
in Spain. If, after a thousand years, the result
is such hostility to religion, such a failure in
faith, such gross and beastly scepticism as he
well described in the outset, may it not be that
the Church has made a mistake in its central
doctrine? By making a mystery of the Son, if
he is the only means of revealing the Father, by
making him the most unreal and incomprehensi-
ble of beings, may not the Church have created
precisely the irreligion which it deplores? To
this question, of course, this sermon, wherever
it is preached, never attempts any answer. But
it certainly occurred to me that, in the country
with which I am best acquainted, there is more

128 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

real faith and more practical religion than there
ever was ; that the fruit of religion is to be found
riper and more abundant than in any period of
past history; and that that country is precisely
the region of Christendom where the least is
said about the mystery of the Trinity, and where,
with the most success, Jesus Christ has been
presented as a real being in history, made in all
points as we are made who try to follow him.

It is, alas ! the fault of all but the very best
preaching that, just when the hearer longs for a
square statement of truth, or, failing this, a bit
of stiff logic, the speaker gives him, instead, an
outburst of brilliant or lively rhetoric. My ad-
mirable friend the canon, on this occasion, was
not above the failing. But, granting this, let
me hasten to add that the rhetoric was inspiring
and well founded ; and I well understood how
he had won his laurels as a preacher. Best of
all, the noblest passage of it was one with which,
had he been wiser, he would have brought the
sermon to an end. After all this playing up and
down the scales, — after the explaining that the
Trinity could not be explained, and that he would
not explain it, and why he would not, which is
the substance of this sermon wherever deliv-
ered,— he said he had detained us long; and
yet he begged for two words more. With an ad-
mirable good sense, in a practice which belonged,

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 1 29

I think, to Chrysostom's time, but has, alas !
died out from the American pulpit, he then gave
us the refreshment of a pause before these two
important words. He sat down. He took off
his hat. He wiped his forehead. Those of us
who were kneeling changed the knee. Those
who were sitting on the floor changed their atti-
tudes. Those who stood sat down. When all
were thus prepared, he came forward again, and
to my delight — as to that of any of the Ten-
Times-One Club — it proved that the fruit of
the two words was caridad, — "charity." Of
what use all this dogmatic theology, which had
occupied us this morning, as it had occupied
the Church for centuries, without charity? Of
what use this gorgeous ceremonial — nay, the
most gorgeous ceremonial which man could con-
ceive— without charity? In such a strain, we
had at last the reality of religion, pure and un-
defined ; as simply and sweetly stated here under
the arches of the cathedral as it could have been
in a Friends' meeting in Narragansett. No ser-
mon could have closed more grandly or fitly
than this, had it closed there.

So it shall close there for the present reader.
After the second of his two words, he really
finished ; and with some more adoration of the
wafer, the several orders of priests filed out, and
the service was ended. Of all this gorgeous
9

130 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

ritual, the grandest moment came then. It was
when some sacristan, a hundred yards away,
pushed open the great doors of the cathedral.
Even from that distance a breath of fresh air
swept up the naves and blew away the incense.
The light of the sun itself, reflected from pure
white walls, dimmed the candles. Every one of
the remaining worshippers drew a long breath of
the vital oxygen. And as thus the breeze and
light and joy of heaven swept in upon us, the
present Father revealed himself to us, his glad
children, how certain, in such a blaze of his
glory as waits on us when we leave the smoke
and words and echoes of antiquity, — how cer-
tain, as we stand under the open heavens, that
he is, and is at hand !

The enormous wealth of the religious estab-
lishments, of which the pomp and splendor of
these cathedrals is the outward manifestation,
has long attracted the jealousy of government,
even when most willing to protect the rights and
privileges of the Church. Any innovation would
be regarded with distrust ; and, in fact, I suppose
Spain has not yet recovered from the shock of
a change made half a century ago, when the real
estate of the clergy was sold. The amount was
so great, that a sale all at once proved impossible.
In 1827 their annual income was calculated at
a thousand million reals, or fifty million dollars.

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 131

The revenue of the kingdom was estimated
at four hundred million reals, or twenty million
dollars, of which it was said almost fifteen mil-
lions were realized. Of this sum the clergy
themselves paid directly, it is supposed, not less
than a third, besides their own share in the in-
direct taxes, such as customs, excise, &c, so
that they may fairly be considered as having
paid half of the whole amount collected. The
remainder, or about seven and a half millions of
dollars, was obtained from the laity; and sup-
posing the taxes to have equalled only a third of
the revenue (a moderate calculation here), would
have given a result of somewhere about twenty
million dollars for the whole lay revenues of this
kingdom, while those of the clergy amounted to
fifty.

We are apt to think the clergy of the Church
of England comfortably endowed. But in some
calculations of that time I find it is shown that
the income of the Spanish clergy was three times
that of the laity, on a basis of calculation which
showed that the English laity had an income of
thirty times that of the clergy. A desire to
break up all those great properties played its
part in all the Spanish revolutions. In 1835
the landed possessions of the Church were at
last confiscated, and in a very few years eighty
million dollars worth were sold for the benefit of

132 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

the State. Most of the convents were sup-
pressed, and there are now fewer convents in
Spain, in proportion to the population, than in
most countries in Europe.

In one of the chapels of the cathedral are
the magnificent tombs of Ferdinand and of Isa-
bella. Indeed, the chapel is almost a museum,
so many curious articles are there which actu-
ally belonged to these monarchs, and which have
been preserved in memory of them. It is a com-
fort to see and know the homage still paid to
Isabella. Not in vain, indeed, that a woman is
good and that she has the courage of her con-
victions. I am fempted to compare her with
Elizabeth in England, who had the courage of
her convictions and was not good. Elizabeth's
reign exalted England to her highest reputation,
as Isabella's exalted Spain. Yet I do not think
that any traveller in England ever stumbles on
anything which indicates any popular memory
of Elizabeth to-day. There are old ballads
about good Queen Bess ; but I do think that
nobody sings them or remembers them now,
because she was not good. She was clever and
bright and strong and hateful, and now no-
body loves her. But Isabella was clever and
bright and strong and good, and everybody in
Spain loves her and remembers her.

Now, all through or over this desert of wick-

WORSHIP IN SPAIN. 133

edness and stupidity, running back for three
centuries, men look at Isabella I., who tried to
do good, wanted to do good, and on the whole
succeeded.

I do not remember at this moment any other
instance of a crowned husband and wife, both
named as one ruler, except that of William
and Mary. In that case, poor Mary, I believe,
always did what her warrior husband bade her
do. Ferdinand was much more apt to do what
Isabella thought best She had the clearer head
and much the better heart of the two

CHAPTER IX.

ACROSS THE SIERRA.

From Granada to Madrid, which was to be
our next home, a bird would fly almost exactly
north. He would cross Andalusia, La Mancha,
and New Castile. But the railroads, to avoid
the Sierra Rallo, follow the valleys of the Xenil
and the Guadalquivir, so as to make, in fact, for
a traveller going north, three sides of a square
each sixty or seventy miles long.

We preferred to take the diligence ride from
Granada directly north to Jaen, which makes the
fourth side of this square, and is perhaps sev-
enty miles. To this determination I owed one
of the pleasantest days of my life, — one of those
golden expeditions upon which you afterwards
always look back with delight ; a day in which
everything seems to fit in with everything, and
nothing goes wrong. Once for all, I may say
that when, at half-past one, this charming ride
was over, I left the driver's seat of the diligence
with profound respect for Spanish administra-
tion. We Yankees like to improve on things,

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 1 35

but I had seen no detail in which I thought that
business could be better done.

The diligence leaves Granada at five in the
morning, that as much work as possible may be
done in the cool of the day. The amiable prac-
tice of our stage-coaches of driving round to
pick up passengers is wholly unknown. You
start from a hotel, just as in Dickens's earlier
stories you started from the cellar of the White
Horse Inn. We had to breakfast at four at the
Washington Yrving, that we might drive down
in the old jumble-cart with our luggage. We
had taken our seats a day or two before. I sat
with the driver, called in Spain the mayoral, of
course the best seat, which I obtained by feeing
the " chief mate," called the zagal, who, strictly,
is entitled to it. I will try to show, as we go on,
what became of him. Every other seat within
and without was occupied, and we started with
eight mules, handsome creatures, and full of
spirk. We started with perfect punctuality, with
the good wishes and admiration of a consider-
able crowd of early loafers. The sun was just
up, the air was fresh and exhilarating, and the
day, of course, perfectly clear; so we said fare-
well, I am afraid forever, to our dear Granada
and the lovely Alhambra. We were yet in the
thickly built part of the town, as if, say, on
Washington Street between Franklin and Black-

136 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

stone Squares, when I noticed on the side of the
street a little wigwam made of tall plants of
Indian corn. While I was wondering, the watch-
man came out, in a sort of military costume ; in
this simple fashion did he provide himself with
a not inconvenient guard-room. He was the
first of a series ^of guards, who, from this point
to Jaen, appeared every five kilometres, and
saluted in military fashion, two at a station.

At all the railway stations you see such peo-
ple; they have cocked hats, and are in mili-
tary dress. In Mr. Lathrop's series of letters in
Harper, describing his tour through Spain, he
gives, with thorough humor, the impression,
which you cannot shake off, that it is always the
same pair whom you see ; that they have run
on in advance, as the cat did before the King's
carriage in Puss in Boots, and that they salute
you as old friends, or, perhaps, as skilled detec-
tives, who, like an eyer-present conscience, dog
you behind and keep on watch before, wherever
you go or are. When I intimated to a Spanish
friend that such people must cost the treasury a
good deal, and asked if they did not make one
reason why accounts did not balance better than
they do, he asked whether I thought it better to
have them looking round, or to have a company
of brigands poking in their heads and pistols at
the windows of the diligence. As, in point of fact,

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 1 37

travel is so safe in Spain now that even English
critics allow that a woman may go alone, where-
evcr she pleases, without danger though with-
out escort, it must be admitted that this gens
d'anncs system has its advantages. I suppose
the same gentlemen who would have been brig-
ands sixty years ago may now enlist in this
rural police, whose duties must be easy even if
somewhat uneventful.

For an hour or two our ride was across the
level Vega; like riding through the bottom-
lands of the Connecticut Valley. And here I
obtained my practical knowledge of the details
of irrigation, of which I have before spoken.
The land is very fertile, the cultivation very
high. A good deal of land is given to grapes,
and I think it was in this valley that I saw some
tobacco. But the culture of tobacco is frowned
on by government, because they make money
on the Cuban tobacco, which, I think, is a mo-
nopoly in their hands. The night dews had
laid the dust, and we bowled along perfectly
steadily at the even rate of nine miles an hour,
the mules always on a sharp, vigorous trot.
About once an hour we took a new team of
mules, stopping generally at what our West-
ern friends would call " the most ramshackled
hole that you ever did see." No one of these
post-houses was like another; but, generally, a

138 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

long stone building ran along close by the road-
way. Mules came out of one door, and loafers,
children, and women out of another. Every-
body was delighted that the diligence had come.
Everybody assisted in the preparations for its
speedy departure. If you wanted a mug of
water for the ladies, everybody was glad to fur-
nish it; yet you were left with the impression
that nobody ever drank water before or would
again ; that you had introduced a queer Yankee
notion into the place, and had broken the ripple
of Andalusian life. I took it into my head that
I would have a lanyard to my hat to keep it
from blowing off. The general and frank inter-
est of all parties was delightful. The messages
sent, the hurried interlocutions, which resulted
in the discovery of a bit of string two feet long,
were most good-natured. Still, I clambered up
to my seat, with the uneasy feeling that I had
acted the part of. a blustering Englishman, in
insisting in introducing such foreign airs on an
innocent rural population, till now quite igno-
rant of the innovation.

The harness is all rope, strong and well fit-
ted for its use. The mules are generally har-
nessed two abreast, though once or twice we
had three in the first rank, with two poles. The
leaders are directed by a postilion. He does
not mount till they are at full speed. It is a

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 1 39

point of pride to run at their side, and to spring
up when the mule is in full motion. The "chief
mate," as I called him above, sat on the thor-
ough-brace, beneath my seat, which was prop-
erly his, at the side of the driver. But he was
not there a great deal. He varied his some-
what cramped attitude by running by the side
of the carriage and of the mules. He had a
long whip, with which he touched anyone whom
he or the driver thought negligent. The driv-
ing, indeed, was conducted in a sort of caucus,
in which my admirable friend on the right, the
driver proper, this chief mate, whose official
name I did not know, and the postilion, held
equal parts, although the rank of each was
firmly maintained. I mean that there was a
running conversation, all the way, as to the suc-
cess and prospects of the journey, and as to the
condition and performance of the mules. On
our seat we kept a store of Macadam stones,
with which from time to time the driver hit head
or haunch, as he chose, of a mule who needed
reminding. One driver preferred stones as big
as a peach, another had little ones not bigger
than a nut.

The whole staff smoked all the time that they
could spare. So soon as we started from a
post-house, the driver handed me the ribbons,
and I drove for a (ew minutes. This was to

140 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

give him a chance to make his cigarette. He
had the tobacco, all ready, in one pocket and
the paper in another. When the cigarette was
made, I would furnish my match-box, he would
take off his hat, and, with an ingenuity which
I have never seen rivalled anywhere else, he
would light the. cigarette while we were in full
motion. The chief mate would then climb up
from his lair below, where he had been making
his cigarette, and take a light for it. The pas-
sengers on the seat above us did likewise, and
we were thus ready for the rest of the stage,
having occupied perhaps half a quarter of the
time in preparation. When our end of the
team was all well smoking, the postilion would
jump off the leader, run back and get a light,
run forward and mount again while the mules
were at their regular pace; not but I have
seen a postilion strike a match and light a cigar
under the cover of his hat while he was in the
saddle and in full motion. Indeed, one delight
of this charming day was the feeling that at
last in my life I saw two daily duties perfectly
done, that of the postilion and that of the coach-
man.

The amount of conversation necessary would
stagger the belief of taciturn readers like those
who follow these lines. I do not remember that
the mules had separate names, but we addressed

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 141

to them a running fire of pleas, requests, sug-
gestions, explanations, exhortations, encourage-
ments, warnings, and possible adjurations, —
though of this last I am not sure, — both in
Andalusian and, oddly enough, in Arabic. Any
language that they would understand would
answer, so it kept them to their work. To say
the truth, I never saw creatures who needed
'such prodding less. They kept on, pressed
hard on the collar, at a relentless pace, as eager
to be at the post-house as we were to have
them. But on the part of our caucus, as I
called it, of three, although they all did this thing
every day of their lives, there was that sort of
eagerness which you see in children going to a
circus for the first time, — as if on that particu-
lar day the doors would be closed earlier than
usual ; as if we might find the bridge down at
Jaen ; or as if we were all bridegrooms going
to be married. And this was accompanied by
good nature almost ludicrous. I do not remem-
ber to have heard an angry word spoken all that
day. There was one occasion almost critical, in
which a vicious mare was brought out as one of
the leaders. The creature refused to start so
obstinately that the whole team was once and
again in confusion, — one mule was overthrown,
— and I confess I thought another horse would
have to be substituted for her. But the whole

142 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

council, which included the grooms and the
keeper of the post-house, maybe a dozen per-
sons, managed the mad creature without the
slightest show of hot temper. You might have
thought she was a trout who would not bite, so
quiet were they in their treatment of her, yet so
determined. When she did start, the postilion
ran by her side a mile before the wild creature
would give him any chance to get on ; all
which he took more quietly than a boatman
would take a breeze of wind. It helped the
carriage along, and that was enough for him.
When he was ready and she was ready, he took
his place on her back, and we all went on as if
nothing had happened.

We are so determined to associate with Spain
the ideas of bandits, contrabandists, guerillas,
and pronunciamentos, and with Andalusia the
memories of Gitanos and Gitanas, of Moors and
sarabands and jaleos, that I, for one, was wholly
unprepared to find these simple, rather grave
people, in the management of mules and horses
and diligences. The postilions had a little more
of the air of the opera than these quiet Yankee-
like men who held the places of captain and
mate. But the whole enterprise gave to me a
good deal the idea of a well-conducted cruise
for fish, in which, under their auspices, we were
going on shares.

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 143

I have not yet mentioned the duties of the
chief mate, and I find it difficult to describe
them. But it is quite certain that there were
duties, and that we should not have pulled
through to Jaen had he not been there to dis-
charge them. Where a driver of a street-car
stops the car and goes forward to adjust the
harness, the chief mate did it without stopping,
while all parties were on the trot or the run.
In any exigency where whipping was thought
necessary by the caucus which directed, he ran
to the guilty mule, and inflicted the chastise-
ment, all still rushing on at this preordained
pace of nine miles an hour. It is difficult for
me, in writing of this afterwards, to imagine that
a man can smoke while running a mile at that
pace ; but the impression is strong on me that
everybody smoked all the time. It was nothing
to have him disappear. It was not that the
wheel had passed over him, so that he was left a
lifeless trunk on the road ; it was only that he
had let the coach pass him, that he might run
forward on the other side outside the off-leader,
and give to him a bit of his mind. When the
necessary chastisement had been inflicted, then
he would again let the coach pass him, and re-
appear on his nest on the thorough-brace.

The strip of what I called bottom-land lasted
for about one hour. Then we began to rise the

144 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

sharp ascent of the Sierra Rallo, as I find it
named on the maps. Nobody called it so on the
spot, whom I heard. Perhaps this is as a con-
ductor on Tom Scott's railroad might not speak
of the Appalachian mountains.

Here was another sight of that admirable en-
gineering for which the Spanish officers have
won deserved reputation, as applied to the build-
ing of common (or uncommon) roads. Switzer-
land has given to the world what are called
models in bold zigzag roads, crossing high
mountains at an even and low grade. But there
is nothing in Switzerland which I have ever seen
which exceeds the skill of the lines of this road,
or which is kept in better order. So we steadily
kept our relentless trot, though we were pulling
up a mountain range, where we left far behind
us the agriculture of the Vegas and found our-
selves, at last, among small cedars and a kind of
stunted wild olive-trees. At every five kilome-
tres or so, one or two soldiers stepped out from
their little house and saluted us. We touched
our hats and hurried on. The population be-
came very sparse, and there were post-houses,
where it was clear enough that no one would
have lived but to keep the mules and be ready
for the diligence and other travellers.

After we had crossed the ridge by a descent,
which seemed to me as sharp, we followed down

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 145

the valley of the river which passes Jaen. It is
studded full with memorials of the raids of the
old Moorish wars. A castle here, a broken
bridge there, or a name familiar from Irving's
Granada, came in from point to point, to re-
mind us of the past, in sharp contrast with
the admirable road over which we bowled
along, where, perhaps, those old marauders
worked their way painfully on their hands and
knees.

One picture stands out in my memory of a
little hamlet with church and post-house and a
single narrow street of houses, built as close to
each other as if they had been in Salutation
Street at the North End of Boston. I stepped
into a shop of general trade and seized some lit-
tle loaves of bread, offering almost at random
such copper coins as I supposed might answer
in payment. The dealer picked out what he
liked, and I carried my prize in triumph to the
ladies, to serve as their almucrzo No. 2. Then I
was to find something to drink. We were pro-
vided with admirable little travelling jars for such
purposes, made nowhere but in Spain and Mex-
ico, I think. I ran to the picturesque fountain,
and the matrons standing there at their daily
gossip and work readily filled for me again and
again. When I returned for the last time and
gave them "a thousand thanks" in the pretty

146 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Spanish phrase, I also gave a half-cent to the
lady who had been most active. Really, she was
as much amused as any leader of the fashion in
Boston would have been had I offered her a half-
cent on bidding good-by at the end of an evening
party. She showed it to the others, and they all
laughed merrily, and I was fain to laugh as well
as I could as I retired. It was not my first nor
my last lesson to teach me that I was not in a
land of castes and vassals, where any man was
willing to debase himself for a fee, but that
we were, socially and politically, equals among
equals in a land where everybody was willing to
bear his brother's burdens.

This matchless road over which we sped is
an addition made within the last half-century to
the resources of the country and the comfort of
travellers. At every fine bridge, or at the open-
ing of every tunnel, an inscription tells the trav-
eller that it is the work of Her Majesty Queen
Isabella II. I wish I thought that she in person
had any more to do with it than I had. But it
does mark, and many other things do, that in
her reign, poor creature though she be, the
regeneration of Spain began. Somebody drove
these grand roads through, and, as is the habit
of monarchies, she bears away the honors.

As we approached Jaen the country opened
out from the narrow mountain pass into another

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 147

bit of what I have called "bottom-land," in a
convenient Western phrase. They showed the
marks of tremendous inundations, as men
would do if you were crossing the Hartford
meadows. The sun was high by this time, and
the dust was plenty, and we were glad when the
towers and spires of Jaen, a most picturesque
city, appeared, rising on a sort of ledge which
surmounts and once commanded the valley.

There is a feeling of surprise which an Ameri-
can never gets over in the sudden transition
from open country into what is or has been a
walled town. You are prepared for Boston,
when you co"me into it from whatever direction,
by miles upon miles of suburbs, and so of almost
any American city ; but in these historical cit-
ies the walls meant defence and safety, while to
live outside the walls meant almost as certainly
insult and injury. At this day, therefore, the
Spanish government attempts to persuade peo-
ple to live at a distance from towns by reducing
their taxes by a sliding scale, in proportion to
such distance. If you live five kilometres from
a town, a third of your land tax is taken off; at
eight kilometres, two-thirds ; and at ten kilome-
tres, the whole. Such, I think, are the propor-
tions, writing from memory. I am certain that
such is the principle of the provision.

Jaen is a capital of a province of the same

148 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

name of three or four hundred thousand people.
In the Moorish times it was a rich and indepen-
dent kingdom. I learn from Malte-Brun that it
is divided into five districts. When seen from a
distance, it looks like a town of forty thousand in-
habitants, though the population^ hardly reaches
half that number. This illusion is due to the
sight of several large buildings, a magnificent
cathedral, built in the form of a Latin cross, on
the site of an ancient mosque, fourteen con-
vents, twelve parish churches, and several hos-
pitals.

The streets are wider and more direct than
we were used to in these southern cities, and the
whole aspect of the place is pleasant, though
very quiet.

Some other cities, of which Ave saw a part
of one in the distance, are Ubeda, Baeza, and
Martos. Of these, here are some guide-book
narratives : —

Ubeda, an Arabic town between the Guadal-
quivir and the Guadalimar, stands on a decliv-
ity surrounded by mountains and mountain
passes; it has its woollen manufactures, and
carries on a considerable trade in horses, which
are much valued throughout Spain. Baeza, the
ancient Beatia, rises on a height ; the surround-
ing country is said to be very healthy.

Martos, supposed to be Tucci Colo7iia,\s com-

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 1 49

manded by a very high rock. From this rock
Ferdinand the Fourth threw two brothers named
Carvagal, who were accused, although without
any justice, of having murdered a knight of the
family of Benarides. The brothers in vain de-
clared their innocence, and, according to the
local tradition, while they were rolling from
stone to stone, a voice was heard calling to Fer-
dinand to appear on a certain day at the judg-
ment seat of God. On that day Ferdinand died,
at Jaen.

These sketches are not written to tell what we
had for dinner. But one would be a brute to
say nothing of the pretty welcome at the post-
house at Jaen, where we landed from the dili-
gence after our ride. And if I can give a
notion of the readiness to oblige which every
one showed, it will, in a fashion, explain to the
reader why we look back on Spain so happily.

I am disposed to think, from the guide-books
and other authorities, that there are larger and
grander hotels in Jaen than the post-house.
But the people who helped us down from our
airy perches and explained about the trains
seemed cheerful and hospitable. We were dusty
and hot; the house was neat and cool. Who

150 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

were we, to go hunting for Delmonico's or the
Vendome of Jaen, if indeed any such place there
be? Following that suggestive scripture which
directs us not to go from house to house, we
e'en stayed where we were. The traps were
brought from the street and placed in the cool
patio, if, by good luck, the loyal reader remem-
bers what that is. A room was found for the
ladies and another for me. A pitcher of water
and a bowl and a towel were brought to mine, a
little as if they were unusual luxuries, I confess ;
and then we found ourselves assembled in a
dark cool room on the ground floor, a room
without windows which we should call windows,
but opening upon the patio by large open doors,
or what I think our Saxon ancestors would have
called " wind-doors. " Little wind, however, I
fancy, ever crosses that secluded patio or tries
the passage of those doorways.

The whole thing throws you back eighteen
hundred years ; or if you choose to stop on the
green settees in the old Latin school, with dear
Mr. Dillaway explaining to you his own book of
Roman Antiquities, it throws you back about
fifty years. For, simply, you are in what the Ro-
mans called a triclinium, and outside is what they
called an atrium ; and the whole business of the
atrium and the impluvium is here as clear as in
most school-books it is unintelligible. And if the

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 15 1

Beckers and Mansfields, who write the books,
had condescended to come to Spain, when they
did go to Pompeii, they could see people living
very much as the woman lived who made the
salad in Virgil's Culex, if, as I believe, it were
Virgil's. Instead of that they go to Pompeii,
where the wooden parts of the buildings are
very much charred, and the people who lived in
them are not now able to explain their methods
of living. Why Roman architecture should be
better preserved in Spain than in Italy, this
deponent sayeth not, because he does not know.

Let the loyal reader understand, then, that a
triclinium is a dining-room, and that we were in
one.

Neat napkins and cloth, neat glass and plates,
cool fruit, fresh celery and the rest, and such
willing, cheerful attendance ! One could dis-
pense with a printed menu, and could be satis-
fied with only five courses. For one, I do not
know whether the meal were a late almnerzo or
an early comida. I was hungry, and ate; anci
that was the principal affair.

As for the cathedral of Jaen, we took it on
trust. I have no doubt it is all that Malte-Brun
says it is, and very possibly more.

Another jumble-cart to the station, and then a
short ride northward, by a somewhat broken-
winded railway, to the great Northern Line,

152 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

where we were to be picked up by an express
train late in the afternoon. The adjective broken-
winded does not apply in any sort to the loco-
motive, which did its work very well, and was,
I dare say, of good English build ; but it at-
tempts to convey that quality of uncertainty and
general indifference to the object possible, which
belongs to any enterprise which succeeds only
partially in its objects, and certainly does not
make frequent dividends. A first-class car is
always the same thing, as far as my experience
in Europe goes ; and I always find it easy to
make my travel fast enough, by the simple plan
of imagining the kilometres to be miles. In
point of brute fact, as this reader ought to know,
a kilometre is about 394-5 28ths of a mile. But
who cares for the mere fact, when he can fill in
the short mile with the stores of Spanish fancy.
Arrived at the trunk line, we had an hour or
two to spend at the station, as so many other
passengers had. The unfailing sketch-books
appeared, and there was no lack of resources.
There were hens to feed with bits of biscuit, shy
children to tempt with preserved ginger, sugared
water at a half-cent a glass to sip for refresh-
ment, and groups wildly picturesque to be pre-
served for after compositions, if only the flying
pencil could preserve them before they dissolved
themselves away.

ACROSS THE SIERRA. 1 53

A stone's-throw from the road was what would
have been a shanty here, or in France, I suppose,
a chient/, if, as I have always suspected, our
Irish word " shanty" meant, originally, a " ken-
nel," or hut for the canaille. In Spain the hut
was made of corn-stalks. Whether no one lived
in it in winter, or whether in winter it is not
cold there, I do not know. Nor do I know what
clothes its inmates wear in winter ; but in June,
when the weather is warm in the edge of Anda-
lusia, there appeared from it first a young gen-
tleman in the costume he was born in, then
another in a picturesque shirt, both as indiffer-
ent to their lack of apparel as were the hens
and the dogs with which they were playing.
It was the costume which the climate suggested,
and this was enough. When, after an hour,
the mother returned from some out-door work,
which, like most Spanish women, she had been
engaged in, — so far are Mrs. Howe's and Mrs.
Blackwell's views carried out in this happy coun-
try,— she drove the naked children before her
into the house, and we saw them no more.

Such freedom was, I suppose, Roman, and it
accounts for the simplicity of costume in the
classical gems and statues.

At last the train comes sweeping along. Ho !
for Madrid. A sunset which one will always
remember, but of course can never describe !

154 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

So we swept through La Mancha, looking vainly
after dark for Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
At Alcazar they waked us after midnight, and,
just as we had done three weeks before, we ate
or drank our chocolate, and bought our knives
of the man who sells them for murderers. The
sun rises early in June, and by daylight, a lit-
tle after four, we could see Madrid on our
horizon.

CHAPTER X.

MADRID.

We passed not far from a little church which
is said to have been built at the geographical
centre of Spain. It is three or four miles from
the city. How they find the geographical centre
I do not know. It is one of the most delicate of
geometric problems.

Between five and six we arrived at the station,
which is quite out of town, and were carried,
bag and baggage, through silent streets on a
Sunday morning to the Hotel Russia. Here I
had seen the landlord when I was in Madrid be-
fore, and from Seville and Granada I had writ-
ten engaging rooms, which he had assured me
should be ready when I wrote. At the hotel,
alas ! this morning, no one was stirring. With
great difficulty a porter was found who found
the landlord, and it then proved that he had re-
ceived no letter and that he had made no provi-
sion for us. It is not what we call a hotel, but
virtually an apartment house, where we had
promised ourselves something like home life
while we stayed.

156 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Everybody apologized; but all were quite
sure that we should be well pleased with the
apartments at the Hotel Something Else, to
which accordingly we jumbled in the omnibus,
which is one of a class which has been suffi-
ciently described.

But here they were no more awake than at the
other house. The apartments were entirely un-
satisfactory, and I was now in despair. I was
about to go to the great Hotel de la Paz, where
we had been before, to spend Sunday, and thence
begin the hunt for lodgings, when, as if he had
been an angel from heaven, appeared on the
sidewalk the excellent Ricci.

" Was the senor in search of lodgings?"

That was exactly what the sefior was in search
of.

" Did the senor wish the meals for his party
provided with the lodgings?"

That also was the wish of the senor's heart,
and expressed itself in indifferent Castilian.

If, then, the sefior would direct the driver of
the jumble-cart to carry the ladies only a limited
stone's-throw, really a distance so small that
the ladies might walk, were not the jumble-cart
there with the luggage, friend Ricci was sure that
his lodgings, which were all ready for travellers,
would meet the exact wishes of the senor and the
ladies.

MADRID. 157

Well, — the whole suggestion was so absurd, —
it was so unlikely that this particular man, who
in a desolate street, before the town was alive,
had seen us drive up to a desolate hotel, should
be anything but a sharper ; it was so grossly im-
probable that the quarters he had to show should
be other than noisome, if, indeed, the whole
were not a den of thieves, that I was at first
disposed to dismiss him and his, with any Cas-
tilian expression which might mean that he had
best tell so preposterous a story to any marines
of his acquaintance. But, on the other hand, it
seemed idle not to " try the adventure," as we
were in search of adventures. The grumbling
coachman, the porter, even the people at the
Hotel Something Else joined in eulogies of
Ricci's character and position, which, as it after-
wards proved, he wholly deserved. I entered
the omnibus once more. A minute brought us
to the excellent Ricci's. Five minutes more
showed that the apartments, though not palatial,
were sufficient, and, before half an hour was
over, we were comfortably at home in the rooms
which we occupied all through our stay in
Madrid.

Whether it is the custom in Madrid for lodg-
ing-house keepers to stand at the corners of
the street looking for lodgers, as a man might
stand at a pool in Mad River, looking for a

158 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

trout below a shady bank, and whether they
usually obtain their customers by these personal
interviews, I do not know. Maybe such is their
custom. Maybe it is the custom in other cities.
Possibly it is the custom in Boston, where I
never have had to engage lodgings for myself.
There is a certain convenience about the plan,
when it works as well as it did in our case, par-
ticularly in a country where the postal arrange-
ments fail as often as they do in Spain. I came
to have a thorough respect for Ricci, — whom I
have called " the excellent," — as a man who
was honest, not above his business, and under-
stood it very well.

From this moment our expedition involved
regular hours and work. For me, the archives ;
for the ladies, the galleries. These public offi-
ces — that is what they all are — are opened
with great liberality ; of course at certain speci-
fied hours, with which one has to comply. I do
not know what are the Spanish Civil Service
regulations. I do know that they have very
civil men on duty, and very intelligent ones
withal. The ladies must give their own results
of work in the galleries ; and, in some other
form, I must give the result of mine in various

MADRID. 159

archive rooms. It may be of use to some-
body else if I tell here what collections there
are.

The government has made two or three ef-
forts, from time to time, to collect its treasures
for American history, and to arrange them.
Every scholar knows what are the dangers of
such efforts. Lacon says of newly converted
saints, that they are like newly made roads ;
that the eventual result may be an improve-
ment, but that, at the moment of transition, the
new result is not more agreeable to the traveller
or the bystander than the state of things exist-
ing before. I have had a similar impression
when I was in a public library, where the new
librarian had destroyed the old arrangement and
had not yet ordered his books in a new one ;
and to say truth, in a changing world, this is
often the condition of a public library.

The American papers in Spain have been
moved about a good deal in this way, and there
is some confusion in consequence. But there
are scholars of the first rank who have acquaint-
ed themselves with the Law of the Instrument,
and I found no jealousy among these ge.ntle-
men, but the most eager willingness to facilitate
research.

The great collection at Simancas, not a
great way from Valladolid, was begun in 1566,

160 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

when they had begun to find out the priceless
value of everything relating to America. As
one feature of Napoleon's conquest of Spain,
this great collection, or a large part of it, was
carried to Paris. Even when other spoils were
returned, a part of it remained there, and it was
only with difficulty that it was obtained again.

From this collection and others a considera-
ble part has been transferred to Seville, where
the department of the Indies for a long time
held its seat.

Meanwhile, each department at Madrid (as
those of War and of Marine especially) has its
share of documents, belonging to its own ser-
vice, which have never been transferred to either
of these great collections ; or, having been trans-
ferred there, have found their way back again.
I was not able to work at the Library of the
War Department. But in the Hydrographical
Bureau I found admirable catalogues and the
most courteous and intelligent assistance.

The Royal Library occupies I know not how
many elegant rooms on the first floor of the pal-
ace. I think it must be the most elegant large
library in the world. It contains between one
and two hundred thousand books, which I
shall best describe if I ask the reader to imag-
ine that for two hundred years an intelligent
librarian has been buying and binding hand-

MADRID. l6l

somcly, year by year, for an intelligent king, an
average of seven hundred books a year, of the
most interesting publications of Europe, and, in
these latter years, of America. In the admirable
Bibliographical Room I was well pleased, when,
to answer a question of mine, the accomplished
chief turned, as if to the most handy authority,
to the well-known Boston Library Catalogue of
the Ticknor collection.

The National Library is much larger than the
Royal Library, "which is, in fact, the private
library of the palace. Of its value as a collec-
tion I cannot speak, but they had many more
manuscripts in my line than I could even ask
for or look at cursorily.

I have left to the last the singularly conven-
ient work-rooms of the Academy of History.
For practical purposes, strange to say, the
American workman will best begin here. It is
somewhat as an intelligent student of Massachu-
setts history in Boston would establish himself,
if he might, in the Historical Library, particu-
larly if he had Mr. Deane and Dr. Greene at
hand to coach him minute by minute, and then
would make forays when he wanted to consult
originals, say to the State House or to Cam-
bridge or to the Antiquarian Library.

At the Academy they have, in nearly one hun-
dred volumes, the manuscript collections made
ii

1 62 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

by Munoz in the last century for his History of
America. Of this history, only the first volume
was published ; but Munoz had been engaged
for some forty years in collecting his materials.
He had full access to the Simancas and to the
Seville collections. He must have had at his
orders a considerable staff of copyists. He
began his work by copying, in full, in most
cases, the most important documents. These
made up the collection in the Academy. Now,
of course, whatever luck the American traveller
might have, whether at Simancas or at Seville,
in overhauling papers, he could not expect in
his vacation to have as good a chance at the
best plums as Munoz had in his forty years. So
a man will be wise to look through the Munoz
volumes, early in his work, and see what there
is there which he has not seen before.

Buckingham Smith has been before him.
Many, if not most, of the curious papers in his
volume of collections are in the Munoz collec-
tion. Lately the Spanish government has pub-
lished two collections of " Documentos Ineditos,"
— documents which till then had been uned-
ited, — one of general history and one of the his-
tory of the Indies. This last has special interest
for Americans, and all our larger public libra-
ries should have it; there are thirty-four vol-
umes. Many of these papers also are in Mufioz.

MADRID. 163

But I found a good deal there which was quite
new to me. In particular, there is a running di-
gest of those documents which Mufioz did not
copy, which is a sort of index to papers, and
gives one a hint of what is yet to be searched
for.

The congress of " Americanists," all men in-
terested in American history, met last year in
Madrid. The mere catalogue of the documents
brought together for their inspection, and the
museum of curiosities contributed by individuals
and by departments, makes the mouth water.
" Have you seen Ferdinand and Isabella's auto-
graphs?" said a gentleman to me one day, as
he was turning over a volume of letters and
lighted on one accidentally. And another sug-
gested that in such a place I should find Cor-
tes's letters in the original. You become used
to such " finds " or nuggets. But when you
read on one single page such a string of titles
as the catalogue of the Americanista Museum
gives, you wish you had been in Spain a year be-
fore. It was what we call a loan exhibition, and
it will be, I suppose, a long time before such
rarities are brought together under one roof
again.

The catalogue begins with illustrations of
primitive American civilization, — seventy uten-
sils of stone, fifty-one of copper or brass, several

1 64 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

paintings, and more than one hundred sculp-
tured busts, statues, and idols.

There were more than two hundred articles
of clothing and nearly two hundred weapons.
There were more than six hundred vases and
other ceramics.

Of other articles grouped together under the
general head of Mobiliario were nearly four
hundred objects, such as instruments of music
or pieces of furniture, or other manufactures of
American ingenuity.

M. del Valle, the accomplished librarian of
the Royal Library, showed to me the most beau-
tiful and costly book I ever saw, which has,
however, an interest far beyond any worth of
jewels or gold. The casket itself showed that
something precious was within. The book, as
large as the small quarto Bible known as
" Cheyne's edition," blazes with gold and jew-
els, between which the rich leather of the cover
appears, just enough to show that the traditions
of leather binding are preserved. Within is a
missal, elegantly printed by hand on vellum,
richly gilt and decorated. Where a king or
queen is represented in the picture, a portrait
of Isabella I., or of Ferdinand, or of some other
sovereign of their time, appears. The wise
men at Bethlehem are, I think, in like manner,
portraits.

MADRID. 165

But the value of the beautiful book turns on
the inscription, which tells its history in letters
of gold on what was once a blank fly-leaf.

FERDINANDUS et ELISABET, piisimi Reges,

Sacrum hunc librum

Indi9 gazae primitiis ornarunt.

"Ferdinand and Isabella, those most devout sovereigns,
adorned this sacred book with the first fruits of the Indies."

The book was made for their grandson,
Charles the Fifth, and the very first gold which
Columbus brought from the islands is that
which you see to-day in its decoration. From
Charles the book descended to Philip IV., who
gave it as a present to a favorite cardinal, and
from him or his it returned to the Royal Li-
brary.

Charles the Fifth has, on the whole, done the
world as much harm as any man who has lived
in it for a thousand years. Yet such a grand-
mother hoped for him and gave to him his
prayer-book ! If only he himself had cared to
pray, or had known for himself and his duty
in the world what prayer is!

CHAPTER XI.

SPANISH POLITICS.

I HAVE said nothing, so far, of Spanish poli-
tics, partly for the excellent reason which Cousin
gave for neglecting Buddhism in his lectures on
philosophy.

" At this point in these lectures I should
speak on Buddhism," he said. " But I do not,
because I know nothing about it."

You cannot help being interested in politics,
though you be a wayfaring man in the condition
in which a wayfaring man is apt to find himself;
for all the Spaniards are, or seem to be, wild
about their political condition. They are in that
early stage of constitutional development which
we have happily passed, when even sensible peo-
ple think that almost everything depends on the
central administration. To that stage belongs a
love of discussion which becomes even absurd.
And in these days of cheap ink and paper and
steam-press work, there results to such a nation
a flood of newspapers. All of these are small,
almost all poor ; all are violent in their attacks

SPANISH POLITICS. 167

on other journals and on the people whom the
editors do not like ; and the streams of satire,
invective, and strained wit would have seemed
absurd, even in Little Peddlington or in Eatan-
swill. Every day, as I may have said before, at
least one large colored cartoon is printed by one
or another of the comic papers. These make
quite a little picture-gallery at the news-shops
for those who cannot read. These are, alas !
four-fifths of the population.

How three million readers can support so
many newspapers I cannot understand. I have,
somewhere, a memorandum of the number of
dailies printed in Madrid, and their daily circula-
tion. There are, I think, at least ten different
papers, and the aggregate circulation must come
nearly up to that of our eight Boston dailies.
They are very small, poorly printed on poor
paper. The price is one cent for the smallest,
two cents for the larger and better, and three
cents for those which have a colored cartoon.
These colored pictures are very well printed,
quite as well as " Puck's." Sometimes they are
very funny, sometimes to a traveller wholly
unintelligible, and sometimes, as I said in
speaking of Seville, fairly blasphemous. It had
never before occurred to me that there would
be a better sale for such pictures in a country
which cannot read, than in one that can.

1 68 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The reader must remember that the popula-
tion of Madrid and that of Boston are nearly the
same, when I ask him to compare thus the
newspaper circulation of the two cities. The
population is the same; but while in Boston
almost everybody can read, as we know even
from the Governor's message, only one-fifth of
the Spaniards can, on the average of the king-
dom. And I am afraid that of those who do
read, most read very little and very ill.

The key to the convictions of readers and non-
readers was given to me by a cynical neighbor
at the hotel in Seville. His epigram was this : —

" There are in Spain fifteen million people,
and they hold fifteen million and one opinions
in politics."

I am disposed to think that this is substan-
tially true. The real population is sixteen mil-
lion eight hundred thousand. There are quite
as many opinions. If, as I fear, most of them
are still in that mood which gives any attention
to the constant shriek and howl and sneer of the
short-paragraph makers of the dailies, — even
more foolish and worthless than the perpetual
snarl of our third-rate Washington correspon-
dent at home, — you can see that the chances
are poor for anything like a calm consideration
of the position.

This is one side of the problem of Spanish

SPANISH POLITICS. 169

politics, as it strikes an ignorant traveller, look-
ing wholly from the outside.

Please to remember, however, how the prob-
lems of American politics would strike a trav-
eller here, who could talk little English, and
who steadily bought half a dozen papers a day
of all sorts, with no original knowledge of the
distinction between the "New York Herald"
and the " Bird of Freedom Screecher," and who
read them all conscientiously as he travelled
from city to city. All I can say is, that if I am
as ignorant of Spanish politics and the Spanish
press as the last distinguished English poet whom
I talked with in America was of ours, this loyal
reader had better skip to the beginning of the
next chapter. From the nature of the case, the
traveller feels the mosquito bites, is annoyed
by the flies, and hears the screeching of the
crickets and frogs in a new country. From the
nature of the case, also, he is not admitted for
very long conferences with the real leaders of
opinion and life, who are probably much too
busy to talk with him, and are probably much
too wise and reticent to be talking a great deal
with anybody. Let the intelligent reader re-
member this, and let him ask himself, if he be
really intelligent, exactly how much stock he
takes in the snarling or the pessimism of third-
rate newspapers at home.

170 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

If you trusted the newspapers, you would say
that there was only one man in Spain, or possi-
bly two, who wanted Sagasta, the present Prime
Minister, to stay in, and that this one was Sa-
gasta himself; that the other was possibly his
confidential private secretary. You would say
that everybody else was wild to have such an
absurd pretender pushed from his throne, and
every morning you would be sure that he would
have fallen the next day, and that he would be
at once forgotten.

In point of fact, " as it seems to me " (as dear
old Nestor used to say), Sagasta is one of the
ablest men in Europe, — the sort of man who will
be spoken of, by and by, by the side of Cavour.
I had no opportunity of talking politics with the
King. He was very much engaged while I was
in Madrid, and so was I. But I think that he
has as high an opinion of Sagasta as any of us
can form. And I think the King is a remarkable
young man, and that if he can hold on for five
years longer, as he has for the last eight, he will
be counted, not only as one of the wisest sover-
eigns in Europe, but as one of the wisest of the
nineteenth century.

When Sir Robert Peel was speaking of Louis
Philippe after his death, he said, " He was the
most distinguished ruler who has filled the
throne of France " — and there he paused. The

SPANISH POLITICS. 171

House listened expectant, and Sir Robert closed
the sentence by saying, " since the fall of Napo-
leon." It was not much to say that poor Louis
Philippe was more distinguished than those fag-
end Bourbons whom he followed. Alas ! it is less
to say that this young man has already, in eight
years, shown more wisdom than all his ancestors
together have shown in three centuries and a
half since Isabella died ; for, simply, they have
shown none. I do not know if his head rests
uneasy ; but I should think he might feel that
Spain has had, since he was on the throne, the
best eight years which she has had in a century,
or, indeed, in two.

As I have intimated, the King seems disposed
to stand by Sagasta, and to give him and his
the best chance possible. Of the King, the first
story which every one tells you is this, that
when he was asked to take the crown, being
indeed the heir to his abdicating or abdicated
mother, Isabella the Bad, his answer was, " Yes,
I will come if you wish. Only, when you
want me to go, tell me so, and I will go. Re-
member, all along, that I am the first republican
in Europe." It seemed to me, all along, that I
saw the signs of a people pleased that they had
for a king a man whom they were not obliged to
have, and yet who had not canvassed for the
place. It is the difference between having a

172 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

mayor like Josiah Ouincy, who you know never
asked to be mayor, and does not want to be if
people do not want him, and having somebody
who has been pulling wires and packing caucuses
for the nomination. In my theory of the situa-
tion, the King sees Sagasta's wisdom, and knows
that absolutely all they require is peace among
themselves, and that then the good climate, good
soil, good blood, and good race, which at San
Diego's request the good God gave to Spain,
will pull Spain through.

What would you do, if you could? I have
always found this a good question to put .to my-
self in any exigency, or in any new situation.
It clears the sky a good deal if you can answer
it. To find out what is the ideal best thing is a
great help. Sitting in the gallery of the cham-
ber, and reading the newspapers in that conven-
ient club-house commonly called a street-car, I
often turned over this question in Spain, — what
would I-do, if, by accident, the King put me in
Sagasta's place. You have this enormous debt
saddled on your nation. It is stated in the
Gotha Almanac as $2,583,000,000, and in Cham-
bers's Cyclopaedia as $1,875,000,000. The two
estimates are only $708,000,000 apart; and I
am afraid that it is not of very much conse-
quence which account the reader takes, if he
only takes in the idea that the debt is enormous,

SPANISH POLITICS. 173

"anyway." The poor fellows managed to pay
upon it, in 1880, $57,897,225 by way of interest.
It may instruct the American reader to compare
this payment with that which the United States
made on its interest account last year. We paid
$71,077,206, and we thought that to be a good
deal. Remember that Spain has but 16,800,000
people and that we have 50,000,000.

Their army expenses in 1 880 were $22,000,000,
and their naval expenses $6,000,000. Our army
last year cost us $43,000,000, — but this in-
cluded harbor improvements, — and our navy
$15,000,000. Their " public works" cost them
$1 5,000,000. These added to the army expenses
would make up $37,000,000, — still not up to our
figures, for three times as many people. I do
not see, therefore, that an American has any
right to say that in these things their govern-
ment charges are excessive.

If their army expenses seem high, it must be
remembered that they have Cuba and the Phil-
ippine Islands to take care of, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer.

When Mr. Alexander Everett was our minis-
ter to Spain, rather more than fifty years ago,
he proposed that they borrow $100,000,000,
without interest, from the United States, paya-
ble at their pleasure (not at ours), and to give as
pledge or mortgage for it the island of Cuba.

174 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

In his letter to Mr. Clay explaining this pro-
posal, he said that they would never sell Cuba, —
Spain was quite too proud. On the other hand,
if we held it in pledge, we should have the over-
sight of the government, which is all we should
want, under our system. We should also have
the customs revenue under our tariff, whatever
that tariff might be.

He did not say, but I say, that we should have
free sugar. Some people would like that, how-
ever it might affect my Louisiana friends.

It would also be a good while before Spain
would ask to have Cuba returned, or would care
to pay off the mortgage. Any way, it would
relieve both sides of the Spanish budget.

I was present at one of the great field-days
in the Cortes, or Chamber of Deputies. The
debate was upon the subject of a re-arrange-
ment of the judicial system, but the occasion
had been seized upon by the opposition for an
attempt to split the government, and the result
was looked for with great interest by everybody.
Trial by jury has never, for any long time, been
part of the judicial arrangement in Spain. The
present ministry, or at least a portion of them,
had at the time of their election given promise
to the people of a new attempt to incorporate
the jury among the other institutions. The ex-
periment has been tried several times before,

SPANISH POLITICS. 1 75

but each time, through unfortunate circum-
stances, the system has had no chance to live.
To carry out their promise, then, the ministry
introduced a re-arrangement of the whole judicial
system, a part of the scheme being the introduc-
tion of the jury. Through some disagreement
on the government side, real or supposed, the
opposition had seized upon the question as a
test point, and the occasion was taken by nearly
everybody to speak, to define his position in
matters of importance generally. The govern-
ment, as a matter of fact, held together firmly,
and the opposition was not wholly united against
it, so that the occasion, being such an over-
whelming victory for Sagasta and the ministry,
was really little more than a very brilliant de-
bate, in which I had the opportunity of hearing
almost all the speakers of note in the Chamber
of Deputies.

It is a very orderly assembly indeed, more so
than any of the sort that I ever saw before, ex-
cept, perhaps, our own Massachusetts House of
Representatives. They transact business quickly
and without unnecessary disturbance, pay careful
attention to what is going on, and generally try
to get through the work in hand as well as they
possibly can. The whole scene had a dignity
and decorum quite in keeping with Spanish
character. The speeches were, as a rule, cour-

176 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

teously made, and were heard attentively. The
whole Chamber listened carefully, and applauded
the parts of the speech which seemed good.
The speaker, Herrera, a man of experience, held
the House well in hand, and maintained the
most admirable order.

The Cortes is a young-looking assembly, far
younger than the legislative bodies of England,
France, or of our own country. The members
speak with perfect ease. I observed no notes
used at all. They claim the floor in advance, so
that the president calls up the speakers from a
list which he has by him, thus avoiding much
disturbance.

It would be hard to persuade me that the dif-
ficulty in the new birth of Spain is to be found
in any fundamental deficiency in the Spanish
people. It will probably prove true that they
must work through the fatal passion for talk,
which, as I have said, seems to be upon them
now. They must work out their salvation, and
not talk it out. If it is true, however, that sixty
per cent of the whole surface of the kingdom is
under cultivation, — and these figures are given
with authority, — they are certainly on the right
track in the development of their agriculture.
Their exports are wine, dried fruit, flour, grain,
fresh vegetables, seeds, pork, and salt, besides
metals, bullion, and ores. Of these, as I under-

SPANISH POLITICS. 1 77

stand, the average valuation is about $75,000,000.
I have placed these in the order of their value,
giving those of most pecuniary importance first.
You cannot but observe that they are things
which bring a high price, when they are well
made, — things in which sunshine, and a good
deal of it, generally makes an important part of
the value. This is certainly encouraging in the
Spanish problem, — if, as I suppose, the real
questions are industrial and agricultural, — how
to make Spain yield more oil, more wine, more
grain, and more fruit.

I was well pleased in London in August to see
Spanish melons fresh and good. One of the im-
mense advantages which Northern Europe can
derive from the railroad and steamboat system
is the supply of fresh fruit from Southern Eu-
rope. But I do not think that they yet utilize
their facilities in this way nearly as freely as we
do ours. Say what you please of the advantages
of Florida, and I think few people have said
more of them than I have, it does not surpass
Spain in the production of fresh fruits, and it
does not even approach her in the production
of oil and wine.

I say I do not think that the real difficulty is
with the Spanish people. I have very little
hope for pure Celtic races. But these people
have a very large infusion of Gothic blood, and

178 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

it is by no means certain that those whom the
Goths found there were of Celtic origin. They
are justly proud of many of their local institu-
tions, which are certainly often admirable. You
have to arrange that forty persons shall learn to
read where ten can do so now.

I ought to add, that far beneath this instruc-
tion it may be necessary to teach them how to
tell the truth.

Literally, every foreigner whom I talked with
told me that the Spaniards are all liars ; but of
this I myself saw absolutely nothing. I found
a very civil, friendly, self-respecting, and thought-
ful people, ready to oblige, and not seeking the
usual European pence or shilling. They seem
to me a good deal like our simple Block Isl-
anders, or unsophisticated people of the best
type in New England. I do not like to think
that I might be undeceived if I had stayed there
longer ; but I know that I had little chance to
learn.

I really had flattered myself, as you may
imagine Tityrus saying, that my residence of a
few weeks in Madrid had put me a little on my
guard as to foreign accounts of Spanish politics.
But when, after six months absence, I had been
steadily looking through the colored spectacles
of London editors, and the very oblique trans-
mission by submarine cable of the very crooked

SPANISH POLITICS. 1 79

rays which pass through those spectacles, I was
quite as easily deceived as the wisest of us.

We were all told, thrice a day perhaps this
winter, that the Marshal Serrano had, in the re-
cess of the Cortes, created a coalition of the ex-
treme of one side of the spectrum with the
extreme of the other, — a sort of violet-red or,
red-violet party, which was wholly to overwhelm
poor Sagasta, and any parties of yellow or green
which there might be in the middle. Being told
so all the time, I gradually gave way, yielded
from my optimistic hope that all would come
out right, and supposed poor Sagasta must take
the back seat as soon as the Cortes met again.

The Cortes met, a test vote was reached at
once, and lo, Sagasta had an overwhelming
majority ! So much for newspaper news from
Spain. When I was in Madrid, I knew that
ninety-nine out of a hundred words in the tele-
grams from London were wrong.

I will not undertake to go into any solution of
the names of parties. You might as well under-
take in America to tell what a party is doing by
the etymology of its name, " democrat, barn-
burner, republican, or loco-foco," as analyze the
etymology of one of the Spanish names. If they
make a fusion, they unite the names of the
fused parties ; as if our coalition in Massachu-
setts which sent Charles Sumner to the Senate

180 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

had been called the " Democratic Free-Soil
party." And "Democratic Dynastic" would not
seem queer to a trained Spanish politician.

Castelar is still, I think, highly respected.
I found his books everywhere on sale. The
papers which he has published in American and
English journals have been collected in volumes
and published in the Spanish language. He is
the responsible editor of a daily evening journal
-called " El Dia," which I foumd rather the most
readable of any of the Spanish papers. I am
sorry to say it has but a small circulation, — about
eight thousand copies daily, I believe. While I
was in Madrid, Garibaldi died, and Castelar pub-
lished quite at length a notice of him, which
included a long account of his own personal in-
terviews with Garibaldi, one at the time when
he was serving in France with the Italian legion.

I was a believer in the Spanish Republic, as
long as any man not quite a fool could believe
in it, — a perfectly ignorant believer, but on gen-
eral grounds. Now it is all over, I ought to
say that they appear to have made " a very poof
show." Whether the people did not like a re-
public I can hardly say ; but I think they did
not. I fancy the men at the fore knew next
to nothing about administration, and made a
sad business of the mere detail of government
itself. Abraham Lincoln said, that in any one

SPANISH POLITICS. l8l

of his first regiments in the war there were men
enough to have taken all the departments of ad-
ministration and to carry them decently through.
This was probably true. Just that thing, I sup-
pose, was not true, when, by a happy chance,
Castelar and his friends came into power in
Spain. I think that they did not know how
to Post-Office, to Interior, to War Department,
to Navy, or to Finance, if I may invent some
convenient verbs. Anyhow, it happened that
they were all turned out, and I think nobody
regretted it.

CHAPTER XII.

KING AND ADMINISTRATION.

The excellent Ricci, who had the care of our
physical welfare while we lived in Madrid, said
one day, with a loyal sigh, as he . praised the
water with which Madrid is blessed, that they
" owed that at least to Queen Isabella." The
Bad Queen thus had the merit of the great
aqueduct given to her, as in the Sierra I had
found that she had the credit of the admirable
road. So much virtue is there in a name. The
name of Isabella is attached both to road and to
aqueduct, and her memory will be as likely to
be connected with them in the minds of the peo-
ple as with any less deserving transaction of her
reign. So much is there in any name, with all
deference to the Signorina Giuletta, and so true
is it that people " throw on the King " all the
good they can, as well as all the evil.

In the fulness of time Isabella had to be
turned out for clear, sheer bad behavior, so bad
that I suppose nobody chooses to say that she
might, could, or should have been kept in,

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 1 83

though perhaps she would have been could she
have had her own way. Her title at Spanish
law was none of the best. Women had not suc-
ceeded since Isabella the Good, and it was not
until it was clear that she was to have no broth-
er, that the edict was made just before she was
born, in 1830, reversing all old laws of succes-
sion, by which she became Queen when she was
really an infant three years old. Don Carlos,
her uncle, never assented to this decree which
deprived him of the throne, and there followed
the Carlist intrigues and rebellions of half a cen-
tury. As Don Carlos mixed himself up as a
Bourbon fanatic with the bigoted Romanism of
the northern provinces, Isabella's party became,
rather from necessity, the supposed representa-
tive of Liberalism after one fashion or another,
though of course within itself were all shades.
So they fought and caballed while this child
grew up to womanhood. And she, as soon as
she was old enough to do wrong, managed to
do it, in one wretched way or another, until in
the reactions of the revolutionary wars of 1848
and later years even Spain could not stand her
and her debaucheries longer, and she was com-
pelled to abdicate.

So it is that at the Hippodrome at Paris I saw
what pretended to be her state carriage, and so
it is that she makes one of the coterie of exiled

1 84 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

princes who are hanging round one or another
European capital. For a while the Spanish
government let her live in retirement in the
beautiful palace called the Alcazar, in Seville.
But she behaved so badly there, that they had
to send her out of the country.

Spain tried one and another experiment after
she had done with the Bad Queen, and finally in
1874 returned to the type, as Dr. Darwin would
say, and offered her crown to Isabella's son,
who had grown up in the advantages of exile.
The boy had had the advantage in earlier life,
as I am fond of telling my young friends, of
being trained by a Boston governess. Remem-
ber that, young gentlemen, who sit under Miss
Simonds's mild empire at the Rice School. It
is a training which the sons of queens might
envy. As I have already said, the distinguished
lady to whose care was intrusted the education
of the children of Isabella was Madame Calde-
ron. She was wife and afterwards widow of
Seiior Calderon, who for many years represented
his government at Washington, and was then
appointed its first Minister in Mexico on the
pacification which followed the separation of a
generation between old Spain and new Spain. I
remember an anecdote which I believe I heard
from his own lips, of the braggart General Santa
Ana, President of Mexico. Senor Calderon, in

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 1 85

a conference with Santa Ana, then President,
referred to Revillagigedo, as one of the most
successful of the old Mexican viceroys, a man
who had understood Mexico, and whose rule
had been a benefit to her. Santa Ana cor-
dially indorsed Senor Calderon's opinion, and
said : " I always imitate him when I can ; he
used to drive out with eight horses, and I always
do the same."

Madame Calderon visited Mexico with her
husband, and her account of that visit, " Life in
Mexico," is one of the most agreeable books of
modern travel.

But it is not so much as Madame Calderon
that she is remembered among the older people
of the best circles in Boston, but as Miss Fanny
Inglis. When Mrs. Macleod opened a school
in Boston, which many of the matrons of Boston
remember, her sister, Miss Inglis, her principal
assistant, with brilliancy and success well re-
membered, gave her invaluable services in this
school for six years. During that time she was
a great favorite in Boston society ; and to many
a bright anonymous paragraph, and sometimes
to a bright anonymous pamphlet, her name
was, rightly or wrongly, given. I learn from
the American Cyclopaedia that she was the
great-granddaughter of Colonel Gardiner, who,
as readers of " Waverley " will recollect, fell

1 86 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

at Prestonpans, and who enjoyed Whitefield's
sermons.

This is the lady to whose admirable intelli-
gence the education of the children of Queen
Isabella was fortunately intrusted. It is said
that her relations with the ladies, the sisters of
the King, have always remained tender and
intimate. These ladies are the Infanta Isabelle,
who is now the widow of the Prince Gaetan, the
Infanta Marie della Paz, and the Infanta Eulalie.
Two of the princesses reside at the palace, and
we frequently met them driving. The Gotha
Almanach reveals the fact that they are twenty
and eighteen years old. The King, their brother,
was born in 1857.

Almost every afternoon the clatter of out-
riders beneath the windows called to the bal-
cony people so unphilosophical as take a per-
sonal interest in royalty, that they might see
the carriage-and-four dash by in which the In-
fanta Maria de las Mercedes took her daily air-
ing. She was always in the arms of her nurse,
being at that time twenty-two months old. The
little thing bears the name, not of her mother,
but of the first wife of the King, a lady very
much beloved in Spain by her husband and
people, who died June 26, 1878. The present
Queen is a daughter of the Archduke Charles
of Austria.

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 1 87

The King was a good deal occupied while I
was in Madrid, and so was I, as I have said, and
nothing transpired of that importance which
made it necessary for him to send for me. Ex-
cept as I passed him in his carriage, therefore,
I had but one opportunity to see him. This
was at the annual meeting of the Agricultural
Society. The meeting was held in the Agricul-
tural or Horticultural Gardens, which are on or
near the Prado, not far from the great picture-
gallery. The grounds are very beautiful, with
abundance of rare trees, shrubs, and flowers.
In a convenient place a pavilion had been erect-
ed, under which were two or three chairs, one
of which is, I suppose, to be called a throne.
In front, at the right and left of a wide gravel-
path, and under the shade of trees, were ar-
ranged seats for the assembly, enough perhaps
for three hundred people. The company was
admitted by tickets, and I should think fully
one-half were ladies. If I understand rightly,
this was rather unusual, and it was thought to
be rather an advance that ladies should have at-
tended such a meeting as this. Punctually, the
King, and perhaps half the Cabinet, came up the
broad walk from the entrance to the garden.
He is well-made, a handsome, manly looking
fellow, modest and pleasing in his bearing. He
removed his hat and bowed to the right and

1 88 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

left, as he walked to the seat prepared for him.
Then Seilor Don Diego Martinez made the
address, with which the meeting opened. He
spoke very well for perhaps twenty minutes ; it
was much such an address as we should expect
at a farmers' club or a cattle-show, on the im-
portance of science to agriculture, on the pos-
sible improvement of the agriculture of Spain,
and on the superiority of agriculture to politics
as a cure for the evils of the country. The es-
pecial point which interested me most, in which
he burst outside these commonplaces, was the
urgency with which he proposed some sort of
farmers' banks, which he thought necessary
for the proper development of the agricultural
interest.

Everybody listened with attention to the ad-
dress, and it was cordially applauded. When it
was finished, the King stepped forward and
shook hands cordially with Sefior Don Diego,
and seemed to compliment him. Several mem-
bers of the society were presented to the King,
and he and his suite then withdrew, followed by
four-fifths of the assembly. The others, who I
suppose were the regular members of the soci-
ety, remained for other papers or a discussion.
This, if he had known it, was the King's best
chance to consult me as to the administration of
Spain, for, as I have said, we met on no other

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 189

oc:asion. But, as I must add, he was getting on
very well, and he said nothing to me, and I
said nothing to him. We slowly passed out of
the beautiful garden with other spectators of the
ceremony, and were just in time at the gate to
see the King step lightly into his carriage, a
sort of dog-cart, take the reins and drive rapidly
off, with a gentleman at his side. A groom
scrambled up behind, and the King drove off so
rapidly that the dragoons, if they are dragoons,
had to spur up and go in rapid pursuit. For us,
the humblest of his subjects, we went along the
Prado, to Calle Alcala, and there took a horse-
car, at a cent apiece, to our homes. It is the
cheapest country for horse-cars. I said to an
Englishman that the fare was cheap, and he
happily replied that it could not be cheaper,
which is true, considering the coinage.

I lost my way in the Horticultural Garden,
and a nice little fellow from among the workmen
took ten minutes to set me right and take me
to the place of assembly. I was really grateful
to him, and offered him a trifle of money, though
with some hesitation ; but he refused very pleas-
antly, and said he was very glad to oblige. This
could not have happened in England. But the
truth is, that neither this boy nor his ancestors
had ever been vassals in a feudal system, and
neither at law nor by custom was he my in-
ferior in rank.

190 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

ADMINISTRATION.

It is usual to say that the Spanish administra-
tion is bad, that the officers are corrupt, and
that a great deal of money paid in taxes does
not find its way into the Treasury. Of the truth
of such charges I cannot speak. But I do not
give full credence to them, because I know that
in my own country there is a chronic fashion of
speaking of our administration as being worthless
and profligate, while I know that in fact, how-
ever it might be improved, it is the best admin-
istration that has ever been attained in the world,
and the most economical.

The public stocks sell at thirty-three or thirty-
four per cent, which certainly shows bad finance.
I think I have said that the roads are perfectly
secure, which shows that somebody has broken
down the brigandage. As for public works,
Spanish engineering has always ranked high,
and I think it still deserves that distinction.
You see at every point the drawback of having
a people who are puzzled by the simplest arith-
metical problems, and of whom four-fifths can
neither read nor write. But I found a good
many matters of detail, in which it seemed to
me that their desire to oblige and universal
courtesy had taught them some things which
we might learn. For instance, although they

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 191

have very few travellers from abroad, I found a
public interpreter at the railroad station, whose
business it was to help travellers who did not
understand Spanish. We have of German trav-
ellers here a hundred times the number of for-
eigners who pass through Madrid; but I never
saw or heard of an official interpreter at one of
our stations. I have been insulted at the New
York ticket-office of the New Haven Railroad
because I offered English coin at the window.

Many of the police arrangements of Madrid
seem to me very clever. The system of water-
ing the streets is a great deal better than ours.
The protection of foot-passengers, where build-
ing is going on, is more complete than anything
we know. I am disposed to think that men's
eagerness to take even the humblest lines of
government work is tenfold greater than even
Mayor Palmer ever dreamed of among the loaf-
ers who storm City Hall. But, as I have said
before, they certainly seem to get good men
into the important places somehow.

The water-carriers have always been an im-
portant element in Madrid politics. Truly or
not, they have the reputation of turning out more
than one government. You would have sup-
posed that the aqueduct would have put an end
to them and their duty. On the other hand, it
seems rather as if it had been built for their

192 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

convenience; for there is no distribution by-
pipes through most of the houses. The aque-
duct delivers the water at public fountains and
hydrants, and at such places the water-carriers
provide themselves, and carry the water, just as
formerly, to the several houses and fiats.

A NATIONAL BISHOP.

I had the pleasure of calling upon the Rever-
end Senor Don Jose Cabrera, the Bishop of the
National Church, as it calls itself, of Spain. I
have already described one of the services of
this church at Seville. The Bishop is an agree-
able and intelligent gentleman, and he gave me
an interesting account of the movement of which
he is the nominal head. Under the present Span-
ish constitution all religions are tolerated, but the
Roman Catholic religion is the only communion
which may " publish " its ceremonies, or may
conduct " public " services. Just how much or
how little " public " and " publish " mean is, of
course, a question. Under very radical govern-
ments the Protestants, of whatever name, would
not hesitate to announce their religious services
in the newspapers ; under governments, sup-
posed to be reactionary, they would not make
such publications. The present fact is, that in
all Spain there are between sixty and seventy

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 1 93

Protestant congregations of all sorts and kinds,
of which only eight congregations make up the
so-called National Church, of which Scnor Don
Jose Cabrera is the head.

In making up their liturgy, they have drawn
almost exclusively from that old national lit-
urgy of Spain which I spoke of in describing
the church in Seville. It is the same in sub-
stance which is known to scholars as " the lit-
urgy of St. James." As I have said, in Spain it
takes the name of the " Mozarabic liturgy." I
can hardly expect general readers to be well
acquainted with it; but I have a feeling that in
some of Miss Yonge's more High-Church sto-
ries there is a reference to it. The Gothic Church
used this liturgy always, so long as it existed.
When the Moors conquered Southern Spain,
they permitted the Christians still to hold their
religious services in their several cities. They
maintained them, of course, by the old forms,
and it is thus that the queer name "Mozarabic"
has come to be given to the liturgy of the
Goths, or of " St. James." As has been already
said, when the Moors were swept out, the forms
of the encroaching Church of Rome had taken
possession of France, and so of Northern Spain.
So here were two liturgies in presence of each
other. The legend says that the King decided
the question by the result of a tournament, in
13

194 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

which one knight was the champion of either
party; the Mozarabic knight unhorsed hfs op-
ponent, and so the two services were permitted
to exist side by side, in the cities where the
Mozarabic churches still continued.

But I am afraid that in presence of the In-
quisition-defended Roman ritual the Mozara-
bic form, like so many other national forms,
would have gone to the wall but for the loyal
interest of Ximenes, Bishop of Toledo in 1500,
and the practical determination of an archbishop
of Mexico, who had been educated in Toledo,
the last city of the Mozarabic Rite. He left a
fund for the maintenance of priests whose duty
it still is to chant and to pray in the Mozarabic
forms. One of these gentlemen sold to me my
copy of the Ritual Book.

I saw no sign whatever of any vital or eager
interest in this or any Protestant organization.
I saw signs, indeed, of scepticism, not to say
sheer infidelity and atheism. I attended closely
at Catholic services in Madrid and elsewhere,
and never saw what we should call a large con-
gregation ; but I did see many congregations of
people heartily and profoundly interested.

" The language lends itself to eloquence," as
a Spanish statesman said to me. At several
different occasions I heard preachers- of great
spirit and earnestness. They never had even a

KING AND ADMINISTRATION. 1 95

scrap of paper for a brief. They spoke with
great fluency, and they kept well to the point
in hand. They held the close attention of their
hearers.

It may have been by an accident, but the
special church services which I saw which were
most largely attended and seemed most to in-
terest people were afternoon services in Madrid,
held at the direction of ladies' societies, which
I should think corresponded to the charity so-
cieties in our Protestant churches. When the
anniversary of such a society comes round, it
holds, if I understand rightly, a meeting or a series
of meetings, not simply for an " annual report,"
indeed, not at all for that, but rather to quicken
the spirit of devotion or sacrifice on which all
charity must depend. The assemblies, not per-
haps very large, seemed like gatherings of people
with a common cause. Some series of preach-
ers, perhaps of special eloquence, had been ap-
pointed ; and on one occasion the particular
young man whom I heard preached particularly
well. Then, as you went out, you found a table
in the church by the door, at which sat two
ladies of the society, who perhaps gave you a
report or received your contribution.

The impression is that Spain has been over-
ridden by mistaken charities. I am afraid this
is true. Before the suppression of the monas-

196 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

teries in 1836, about one-fifth of the whole nation
was engaged in the service of the Church.

Agriculturists, laborers, miners, artisans, shep-
herds, and sailors constitute two-thirds of the
population ; one-seventh is composed of mer-
chants and tradesmen, another seventh of offi-
cials, the army, the nobility, the clergy, nuns,
beggars, and pensioners. The nobility is very
numerous; the lower nobility mostly quite poor,
counting near one million hidalgos. Beggars are
almost as numerous, owing partly to the large
number of benevolent institutions. In i860
nearly five hundred thousand persons were main-
tained in ten hundred and twenty-eight charita-
ble institutions.

As we reduce the payment of our national
debt by $100,000,000 a year, or say one-six-
teenth part of it, of course we ought to dismiss
one-sixteenth part of the clerks in the Treasury
every year. And possibly we do so. Perhaps
this loyal reader knows. I do not. Of course
there is a certain friction as these dismissed
clerks rise to other and better work than treas-
ury work. The stove, the carpet, the chairs in
Washington must be sold. The family, on the-
ory, moves West, and a cabin is built, a piano
and another carpet are bought, and an open fire
substituted for the stove.

Now, let the reader look at the tables above,

KING AND ADMINISTRATION 1 97

and imagine the social change in Spain, when
not one-sixteenth of the clerks in the Treasury,
but two million of the whole population, were
reformed out of the Church offices. If he will
imagine two millions of sextons, and sextons'
wives, and almoners, and sub-almoners, and
clerks to sub-almoners, and copyists to sub-
almoners, and book-keepers to copyists to sub-
almoners, and errand-boys to book-keepers to
copyists to sub-almoners, and finally mothers,
grandmothers, and mothers-in-law dependent
on the weekly wages of the errand-boys to the
book-keepers to the copyists of the sub-almon-
ers, he will be able to begin to conceive the
practical difficulties which have flowed in on
poor Spain as she attempts to absorb into
square honest industry, — such industry as puts
one grain of corn into the ground, and shows for
it in autumn a hundred seeds as big and as good,
— as she thus absorbs the industry which had
been engaged in the external forms of charity or
of religion.

CHAPTER XIII.

PERRO PACO AND THE BULLS.

Next to the King and to Senor Sagasta, in
public notoriety or talk, in the weeks that we
were in Madrid, was Perro Paco.

Perro means dog, and Paco is a proper name,
which, for some reason not known to me, cor-
responds with Francis or Frances. " Perro
Paco " means, therefore, " Dog Paco."

Of Perro Paco there were pictures in the win-
dows of every music-shop of note. There were
waltzes and galops written in his honor. The
finest confectioner's shop had its windows abso-
lutely filled with hundreds of representations of
him in sugar.

Two rival journals were issued wholly in his
interest, of which all the contents were devoted
to supposed anecdotes of Perro Paco, or other
dog news. The first number of one of them
had simulated telegrams from the dog of Mont-
argis, the dogs of the Simplon, and other famous
dogs.

The local editor of any journal would have
been thought very negligent, in the last week of

PERRO PACO AND THE BULLS. 1 99

my residence in Madrid, had he not inserted at
least one note with regard to Perro Paco.

Who, then, was Perro Paco? Alas ! the ques-
tion has to be cast in the past tense.

Perro Paco was a dog, apparently not of noble
race. It was said that he was not of any pure
blood which has a name, but that he was what
is commonly called a cur. I am ashamed to
gay that, with these eyes, I never saw him;
but I can speak in concurrence with the opinion
expressed above, if I am qualified to do so by
seeing several thousand representations of him.

One day last spring Perro Paco appeared for
the first time in the Puerta del Sol, which is, as
I should have said, a sort of glorified Scollay
Square. It is, perhaps, twenty times as large in
surface as is that liberal breathing-place, and it
has a large basin for a fountain in the middle.
Its resemblance to Scollay Square consists in
this, that it is the central ganglion of the circu-
lation of street-cars and omnibuses, and that it
is the highest point of the service of the street
railway. The finest hotels are near it, gener-
ally indeed fronting it

In the Puerta del Sol one day appeared Perro
Paco.

How he came there I do not know. The
newspapers were rather fond of telling. I fancy
any bright fellow on the press who wanted to

200 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

do his share for his " funny column " invented a
new Gil Bias story of the wanderings of Perro
Paco before he arrived at the Puerta del Sol.
But these stories are all mythical. Perro Paco
first emerges into the clear Brush-light of his-
tory on the day when he first appears in the
Puerta del Sol.

Time came for lunch, or almuerzo, and Perro
Paco was hungry. He trotted to the Cafe de
Suiza, the Swiss coffee-house, which has the
reputation of being the most fashionable of the
immense coffee-houses which make up so large
a part of Madrilenan life. At the Cafe de
Suiza hundreds of persons were at their lunch,
and here the fame of Paco begins. It is said
that when some one of the guests threw him a
bone, Paco refused to take it. Another threw
him a bone, which also he refused. It was not
till a young gentleman of noble family threw
him a piece of mutton chop that Paco conde-
scended to eat. From that moment his fame
was established. Here was an aristocratic dog,
who would take no food except at the Suiza,
and even then would only take it from the
hands of noblemen.

This is the only one of a thousand anecdotes
of Paco which any one pretended was true.
For the rest, every journal had one or more of
his invented good things. The theatres had

PERRO PACO AND THE BULLS. 201

plays, in which he was introduced as a charac-
ter, and it was sometimes announced that he
would be present in the audience. I found he
was talked about in joke, as you might ask
about a celebrated matador. " Have you seen
Perro Paco?" But I am not sure that person-
ally I ever saw with the eye of the flesh any one
who, with the eye of the flesh, had looked upon
him.

The one occasion when the public was sure of
him was Sunday afternoon, when all the Madrid
beau monde goes to the bull-fight. Perro Paco
always knew the day, and went with the rest.
To the delight of the throng, he would be seen
trotting down the Calle Alcala to the Prado,
and so to the Arena, and here he was always
admitted. I do not think other dogs were per-
mitted there, but neither door-keeper nor mana-
ger would have cared to resist the public feeling
of a Madrid audience, determined that Perro
Paco should see the show. On Monday morn-
ing his presence would be announced in the
journal as regularly as the King's, if not with the
same dignity. And the audience would have
felt that an important part of the show was omit-
ted, had they not seen Perro Paco as well as the
bulls.

Alas ! poor Paco went once too often. On
Sunday, June 18th, he trotted down as usual to

202 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

the Arena, and, as usual, was admitted. He was
always admitted within the sacred circles, where
the actual battle goes on between bulls, horses,
and men. On this occasion, at the very crisis
of one of the encounters, Perro Paco dashed at
the bull in a way which annoyed, and probably
endangered, the matador himself. The man
struck back with his sword-hilt to give Paco a
notion that he was in the way, and struck in
such fashion that the handle entered his open
mouth and wounded him severely. He was
withdrawn by attendants, evidently in pain.
I detail these accidents from the daily bulletins
in the papers. He was at once sent to a hos-
pital; the best medical attendance did not
avail, and after some days his death was an-
nounced.

I left Madrid while he was languishing, and I
do not know who replaced him in the affections
and interest of the local reporters.

BULL-FIGHTS.

This little incident is really the most impor-
tant contribution I can make to the contempo-
rary history of bull-fights. Even a traveller
has to " draw the line somewhere," and I drew
it at the bull-fights. The ladies of my party
shared my prejudices, and I found the same

PERRO PACO AND THE BULLS. 203

feeling and habit in the Minister of the United
States, our delightful friend, Mr. Hamlin, and
his charming and popular lady. I am afraid
that the estimable Ricci went on Sunday after-
noons, but he was always home and at dinner,
and he was afraid to tell me that he had gone.
So I can tell nothing of what these eyes saw,
though I could recount the criticisms of the
Clapps and Clements of the Madrid press.
But this court would reject such testimony as
hearsay.

I went one Saturday to Toledo, and as an
omnibus took us from the station into the town
I saw at once that we were attended by a throng
of admirers. Far too modest to think they were
admiring me, it was easy to see that there was
a modest-looking man opposite me, in a short
blue or purple jacket, adorned with many frogs,
with a small cap on his head, which did not
conceal a handsome braid of black hair, done
up in a large knot behind, as any lady, who had
as much handsome black hair, might be glad to
arrange it. This was a famous matador, who
was to be the star of the next day's entertain-
ment at Toledo. It was upon him that the
crowd was attending. The matadors of dis-
tinction make the circuit of Spain, much as Mr.
Denman Thompson and his company make the
circuit of America; for a matador carries with

204 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

him his whole staff. Naturally a man does not
like to trust his own life to the chance of skill
or blundering on the part of local talent sup-
plying picadores or banderilleros .

As many of these travelling troupes have
their headquarters in Madrid, the Madrid public
is interested in their success ; and on Monday
morning an important feature in " El Liberal," or
any other morning paper which supplies news of
this sort, will be the short telegram from Cadiz
or Seville or some other city, which announces
briefly, " 6 bulls, 3 horses killed, no men."

I never heard of a man being killed in the
ring while I was in Spain, and I was in the
habit of speaking of the sport as cowardly and
unfair on this account. But since I left Spain
I have seen many gentlemen who had seen
matadors killed or wounded.

There is a good story told of the Society for
Preventing Cruelty to Animals. They needed
money for their humane purposes, and accord-
ingly accepted a benefit from the managers of
the bull-fights.

If you say anything about cruelty in conver-
sation, you are generally met with the remark,
that the horses are mere skin and bone, not
worth five dollars, and would have to be killed
the next day, anyway. I heard this said so
often that I am sure it must be in print in some

PERRO PACO AND THE BULLS. 20$

familiar hand-book, but I have never found the
public authority.

It was said that the Prince of Wales did
not go to a bull-fight, because public opinion in
England would not let him. Once, and only
once, did I hear the amusement reprobated in
Spanish circles. The King and Court attend
regularly. I think their absence would be un-
favorably remarked upon.

CHAPTER XIV.

TOLEDO.

The queer old city of Toledo is so near to
Madrid, perhaps fifty miles away, that you are
tempted to regard it as a sort of suburb, and
visit it on an excursion. Nothing would make
the handful of people who are left there, of
whom there are, I find, fourteen thousand, more
angry than any such suggestion. The Arch-
bishop of Toledo is the Archbishop of Spain.
It is, indeed, one of four or five capitals which
Philip ruined, when he transferred the Court to
Madrid. So I fancy Toledo does not much love
Madrid, and would not like to be called a sub-
urb.

I must once more beg the loyal reader to
hunt up his " Harper's" of last summer and read
Mr. Lothrop's charming account of Toledo, and
look at the capital illustrations which accompany
it. Really, if I drew the illustrations myself, and
Mr. Wilson ran them off from a double-cylinder
lightning press at the rate of four million an
hour, they would not be better. And, really, if

TOLEDO. 207

all the artistic and aesthetic people in the world
composed or invented a dear old city of the age
of Noah, or of Meshech, of Madai, or of Tiras (if
by good fortune this loyal reader, well trained
in early history, know who they may be), if, I
say, the aesthetic or artistic Aladdin of most
skill tried to make for you a queer old museum
of a city, with all the quaint and strange things
of old times, and if, when he had done, he set it
up opposite to Toledo, Toledo would laugh it to
scorn from the window of every shop. Every
corner, tile, and brick-bat of Toledo is dead with
antiquity. You apologize to people for speak-
ing to them in Low Latin, the dear old tangle of
a place is so old-fashioned.

It stands on the banks of the Tagus. Near
the junction of the Tagus and Alberche is Tala-
vera de la Reina, a burgh or small town. The
streets are poorly built and crooked. This
place may have been the ancient Libora. A
celebrated battle was fought under its walls be-
tween the French and Anglo-Portuguese armies
in 1809. This action is what is known in his-
tory as the Battle of Talavera, and to this hour
old English soldiers may be found who have
inherited badges with the word " Talavera " on
them. Loyal readers will observe that we are
now on the Tagus, the river which flows west
to Lisbon.

2o8 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The English general formed the plan of march-
ing into Andalusia and uniting the British forces
with those of Cuesta; Napoleon's departure to
the Austrian campaign giving him a favorable
opportunity. By this movement he hoped to
check the progress of the invaders to the south,
and endanger their occupation of Madrid. But,
unfortunately, Cuesta was jealous and obstinate,
and gave no help or assent to this plan ; when a
favorable chance arrived for attacking Victor,
Cuesta said he would not give battle on Sunday.
This opportunity having thus been lost, the allies
were obliged to receive battle instead of giving
it. But even under these unfavorable circum-
stances the French were defeated. The British
forces had to defend themselves against double
their own number, and Wellesley finally retreated
to Portugal as the only way to save his army.
For want of transport, which the Spanish gen-
eral should have furnished, many of the wounded
were left in the hands of the French. They were
treated courteously, but this gave the French an
opportunity to claim the victory in their de-
spatches, which they had really resigned on the
spot, by flying from the field.

Sylva, a Spanish historian, supposes that To-
ledo was founded five hundred years before the
Christian era by a Jewish colony who called the
town Toledoth, or the mother of nations.

TOLEDO. 209

The most interesting of buildings are the ca-
thedral, an ancient mosque, and the Alcazar.
The royal residence of Aranjuez, nearly seven
leagues above Toledo, is surrounded with exten-
sive and beautiful gardens. Near the palace is
a small tower, built with great precision after a
plan by one of the court architects. There is a
lovely tradition of a secret way from the Alca-
zar to one of the outlying palaces, miles away,
which, I need not say, is now lost at both ends.

The old city is like a robber-fastness on the
cliffs above the fast-rolling river. Note that the
Tagus supplies the water-power for the manu-
facture, still famous, of Toledo blades, which can
be made as well now as they ever were, if only
Toledo blades were as necessary to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness as they once were.
The railroad does not attempt the cliff, and you
ride up in an omnibus ; in our case, as I said,
we were accompanied by a modest but famous
matador.

He and his sword-boxes and other parapher-
nalia were dropped at some hotel. But the
guide-books condemn all the hotels, of which, in
a town of fourteen thousand people, there cannot
be many. On the other hand, all travellers praise
the Casa de Huespedes, which means " board-
ing-house," kept by two charming old ladies,
whom I will not name. For aught I know, they
14

2IO SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

may have flirted with Galba or Martial or Perti-
nax. But all the same, they are tolerant to the
people of this time. Some ancestors of this
generation have condescended to put glass win-
dows into the casements. But, as they stand
open all the time, that does not much matter;
for the rest, locks, latches, floors, doors, shut-
ters, plan of the house, patio, and all the other
arrangements are exactly like the rooms and
fixtures described in Horace, or, as I say, in
Terence or Martial. I am more and more a
believer in the theory, that schools should be
taken to these places for the scholars to see
with their own eyes. No boy would ever mis-
construe those most difficult words cubiculum,
atrium, and the rest, who had slept in a cubi-
culum and looked out upon an atrium. The
word " hall," with which I was taught to remem-
ber atrium, is all wrong; patio is the real ren-
dering.

My entertaining old friend Malte-Brun, the
geographer, says, in his condescending French
way, that when you have entered Toledo the
only considerable buildings are the cathedral,
the old mosque, and the Alcazar. This is as
little as if you said that, after the traveller had
crossed the Nile at Cairo, the only considerable
buildings were the Sphinx and the Pyramids.
There are people enough who will tell you that

TOLEDO. 2 1 1

the cathedral at Toledo is a building better
worth your study and remembrance than St.
Peter's at Rome. Such comparisons are, from
the nature of the case, absurd ; but it is as absurd
for the French geographer to sit so hard on
poor Toledo, because it has within its walls
only three, as he counts them, of the finest
buildings in the world. In truth, many are to
be added to his visit ; but this reader, safely re-
ferred to Mr. Lathrop and to Amicis, will be
spared my description.

The cathedral has some points of interest
which none of the other cathedrals of the world
have. I need not say that the guide-books, in
the usual vein of criticism, condemn this, having
a feeling that there exists, in earth or heaven,
some one type of an absolute cathedral, and
that any divergence from it is sin. For my part,
I had rather they should not be alike. It was
reason enough for Philip II. to keep the capital
at Toledo, that he had perhaps the richest ca-
thedral in the world there. To this hour there
has been none at Madrid.

By the way, they show you altars of which
they say, "The gold here was the first gold
brought home by Columbus." Generally speak-
ing, the French in 1808 carried off the gold
they found anywhere. The reader may remem-
ber that I saw the absolute first gold in Charles

212 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

V.'s missal. But there is no reason, by that, to
dispute the statement made here. Columbus
brought more gold than is in that book.

By one of the principal doors, as in many
other cathedrals, is a gigantic St. Christopher
painted in fresco. The guides tell Americans
in the Spanish cathedrals that these figures, far
larger than any other pictures in the churches,
are painted in honor of Columbus. But I doubt,
for I found the same custom in Southern
France — I think in Toulouse, where there was
no tradition of Columbus.

A CORO.

As I have already said, a peculiarity of every
large Spanish church is the separation, almost
complete, of the coro from the rest of the church.
You see something of the same thing in West-
minster Abbey, where, it will be remembered, a
small part of the building is screened off from
the nave and aisles. In Spain, what would
have been screens anywhere else, become solid
walls rising perhaps half-way to the ceiling of
the cathedral. Practically, it is a church in the
cathedral. Observe that this is not in the place
which we call the choir in an English cathedral ;
that is to say, it is not at the extreme eastern end
of the building. You will find at the end of the

TOLEDO. 213

building an altar, and very possibly a chapel.
But the coro is in the very middle of the build-
ing. At the eastern end of it, it has its own
altar, and behind this altar, in all the cathedrals
which I saw, a very high wall, which is, I suppose,
architecturally called a screen. This screen is
very richly decorated with gold, and especially
with carving. Here, more than anywhere else,
perhaps, do you see the interesting and often
very beautiful painted statuary which makes the
distinctive part of Spanish art.

At the other end of the coro, also screened in
by high walls, are the seats for the deans, can-
ons, and other clergy or ecclesiastics. They are
ranges of scats, such as one sees in an English
cathedral, and often all the resources of art are
lavished on their adornment. I hope I may be
forgiven, but my mind always goes back to the
type, and I always like to imagine these elegant
carvings as in very fact executed by the knives
of the worthy men whose duty it has been to sit
in these seats. Of course they were really exe-
cuted by them on the principle of " Qui facit per
alium, facit per se" ("Who works by another,
works by himself").

But I like to imagine the worthy priest, fond of
fine art, who determines that his chair shall bear
the emblem of a pelican for sacrifice, or a cluster
of wheat for bounty, or a dove for purity, and

214 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

then with his own hand executes the same. One
even thinks of Fra Angelico and the canon
Alonso at Granada. Nay, my mind goes back
to an old Puritan church, which shall be name-
less, where, in the side of a certain pillar, well
known to me, there lingered from a former gen-
eration the letters N. and O., as they had been
cut by some worshipper of the eighteenth cen-
tury. In such use of his hands he may have
been able to keep his eyes open, and his ears,
to attend the better to the pleading of the elder
Cooper, on some drowsy afternoon.

Whether, in fact, in any period of church his-
tory, customs have permitted deans and can-
ons, with their own- knives, to carve upon the
posts of their chairs, I do not know ; but if they
have not done it by their own hands, they have
done it by others at Toledo. And the result is
one of the most beautiful exhibitions of wood-
carving in the world, worthy not simply of the
hurried research of half an hour, but of the care-
ful study of weeks by the artist with drawing-
book in hand.

We were at Toledo on Sunday, and I took
care to be present at the Mozarabic chapel, in the
cathedral, that I might see and hear the curious
Mozarabic liturgy which I have described, the
last survival of the service of the original or
national church of Spain, for the maintenance

TOLEDO. 215

of which the great Cardinal Ximenes left a
fund. But for his zeal I am afraid it would
have died out. It is different from the Roman
service at almost every point ; the most striking
peculiarity which can be described, perhaps,
being, if I understand rightly, that there is a
separate collect and other selections for every
separate day of the year. At the period when
we attended the Mozarabic service we were the
only persons present, excepting the priests and
acolytes. There were several churches in Toledo
which maintained this rite in Ximenes's day;
but this chapel is now the only one.

The patron saint of the cathedral is Saint Ilde-
fonso, and this is the spot where he received
the chasuble from the Virgin. That legend is
well known from the print, not unfamiliar, of
Murillo's beautiful picture of the subject. The
Virgin and two angels are about to invest the
archbishop, who kneels reverently, with the
chasuble. Behind him is a nun, an old woman
with a lighted taper; Murillo is fond of good
old women, as what true man is not? There is
apt to be one, if possible, in his larger compo-
sitions. The Virgin sits in Ildefonso's ivory
chair, the bishop kneeling in front. Since that
time, the legend says, no one has ventured to sit
in that chair but the Archbishop Sisibcrt. Him
indignant angels hurled from it, and he died mis-

2l6 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

erably. The Moors carried away the body of
Ildefonso and the chasuble. But it is said that
the chasuble is now in Oviedo, although invisible
to mortal eyes.

Ildefonso lived in the seventh century, holding
this see from the year 657 to 667. He wrote a
treatise on the perpetual virginity of the Holy
Mother, and it was this which won him her
favor.

There is in Toledo a world of antiquarian
wealth illustrating the Moorish period, and
there are some curious relics of the Jews.

As we left our hospitable friends of the Casa
de Huespedes, I asked the major-domo how old
the house was.

"Ah! quien sabe, senor?" ("Who knows,
sir?")

I said, No, no one knew, but they could make
a guess within a century or so.

Oh, yes ! they could guess within a century.
Yonder was the coat-of-arms of the old owner,
or his symbolic crest. He was a Goth, and the
Goths were driven out in the seventh century.
The house was .built a hundred or two years
before that time.

The house was in all probability thirteen or
fourteen hundred years old. I should have
guessed as much from the patches and darns in
the velarium, or awning, which our dear old hos-

TOLEDO. 217

tesses, with loving care, were repairing, that it
might for its fourteen hundredth summer keep
off the nearly vertical sun from their plants,
almost tropical, which they had in large pots in
the patio or atrium below.

Blessings on them for their lovely hospitality !
We bade them good-by; we hoped we should
come again to stay longer ; and we returned to
Madrid.

CHAPTER XV.

MUSEUMS IN MADRID.

The armoury of Madrid has the reputation of
being in some regards the finest in Europe, and
I should think it deserved it. It was closed for
extensive cleaning, polishing, and rearrangement.
But the uniform Spanish courtesy admitted us,
when I sent in to the administration a note say-
ing that I was a stranger, who must soon leave
town ; and, to tell the truth, we had some advan-
tages in seeing things as they were taken to
pieces, and in the explanations which a set of
intelligent workmen and connoisseurs kindly
gave, who would not have been there but for
the repairs.

The arms are all kept in exquisite order, as
a man might keep a few pet weapons of his own.
The collection is historical, and runs back as far
at least as my house at Toledo. After reading
Irving's Granada, and basking in those hot ac-
counts of fight between Saracen and Christian
knight, it was very interesting to see the actual
coats-of-arms of Boabdil and of his victors.

MUSEUMS IN MADRID. 219

The Cid's sword is here, and every style of
Moorish weapon and Moorish defensive armor,
from the days of the first invasion down to the
battle of Lepanto, of which there are many
relics.

Among more modern weapons are curious
specimens of the early breech-loaders. I re-
membered with interest some recent discussion
as to the origin of the flint-lock, which has been,
erroneously, ascribed to New England inge-
nuity. Here is an exquisite flint-lock firearm,
inlaid with great beauty, which was a present
to Philip IV., somewhere in the middle of the
seventeenth century, or perhaps a little earlier.
It is, I think, a little curious that the ordinary
books of reference do not condescend to tell at
what time flint-locks were invented or came into
general use.

This museum is in a sort of wing of the great
Royal Palace, which deserves, I suppose, its rep-
utation of being the finest palace in Europe.
When Napoleon left his brother there, he is said
to have told him that he would be better lodged
than he was himself.

There must have been some sort of royal edi-
fice in Madrid from a very early period. King
Ramiro in the year 939 took from the Arabs the
town of Magerit, which was on the site of Ma-
drid. At that early period the original Alcazar

220 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

stood on the site of the present palace. A suc-
cession of buildings followed each other, on the
same spot, of which the last was burned in 1734.
The present palace was then begun, and after
half a century or more it took its present form.
The successive architects were Jubarra and Sa-
chetti.

The proper front faces the city, and with two
wings running forward encloses a fine square on
three sides. The basement is largely occupied
by the library, which I have already described.
It also gives rooms for the offices of the royal
domain.

The State apartments are upstairs. I will
not attempt the difficult task of describing vast
and magnificent saloons ; but there is one small
cabinet which I commend to the attention of
lovers of ceramics.

The whole wall of this beautiful chamber is
porcelain. The groundwork of the whole is of
dead gold color. From this rises a porcelain
decoration or framework, shall I say, which is
also of porcelain, of white, of green, and of dead
gold. Framed by these decorations are differ-
ent subjects, all treated in white porcelain of a
creamy color, of what connoisseurs will know as
pate tcndre. This exquisite piece of work was
made at the royal manufactory at the Buen
Retire It is ascribed to Joseph Grice, who was

MUSEUMS IN MADRID. 221

at the head of this factory one hundred and
twenty years ago.

I may say, in passing, that, judging from what
I saw in public and private collections, and from
what you stumble upon in out-of-the-way shops
and villages, Spain would be a very tempting
field for a fanciful collector of pottery. The
glazed tiles of Seville are so large, so handsome,
and so cheap, that I should think that any archi-
tect who had occasion to use many tiles would
do well to make inquiries in Seville before he
provided himself in England or in America.

THE MUSEUM OF ART.

I had often heard the gallery of Madrid also
spoken of as perhaps the finest in Europe ; but
I had not before understood that it is not only
this, but one of the largest: The collection, as
it now stands, was brought together by Isabella
and her father within the present century. Fer-
dinand took possession of a building designed by
the architect Villanueva, in 1735, for a natural
history museum, and did what he could to fit it
for a gallery, and collected here the finest paint-
ings in the different royal residences, as well, I
believe, as those which had been recovered from
France after Napoleon had captured them in his
Spanish campaign. The gallery, as we now see

222 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

it, was opened in 1819. It has been steadily im-
proving ever since under the intelligent manage-
ment of the two Madrazos, father and son, and
of Don Pedro de Madrazo, to whom we owe the
admirable catalogue, and to whose personal
courtesies we were indebted every day.

I will follow the example of a more distin-
guished traveller in leaving it to learned fingers
and wise hands to describe the indescribable.

Without entering into detail, it is enough to
say that the Spanish monarchs had the right of
sovereigns with regard to all the best of the fine
arts of the Low Countries, from the time when
oil painting was invented there ; and so you
have here the most admirable examples of the
very earliest Dutch and Flemish painters, and
of Vandyke and Rubens. Then in their own
country they had Alonso Cano, Velasquez, and
Murillo. They did not despise them, but knew
their worth to the very full. At the time of
Leonardo, Raphael, and the rest in Italy, when
Italian art was at its very best, Spain was at her
very grandest, and her sovereigns, fond of art,
were able to buy anything they chose. Thus, in
a collection where the masterpieces have been
brought together from all the palaces 'in Spain
and from many of her churches, this gallery can
boast of more examples of the very first order,
if you count two great European schools, than
is possible anywhere else.

MUSEUMS IN MADRID. 223

As for Velasquez, whom Philip IV. called
" his only painter," he cannot be thoroughly
studied anywhere else. This very summer, one
picture of his was sold at auction in London to
the National Gallery for £ 10,000. I do not
know how many there are in Madrid, but of
large pictures of his there are certainly more
than fifty kings, queens, infants, dwarfs, court
fools, ruffians, every-day people of every rank,
every costume, and every occupation, the most
vulgar or the most princely, Velasquez transfers
them all to his canvas, and gives to each that in-
tensity, that tremor of life itself, which in each of
his works makes a masterpiece absolutely unique
in the domain of painting. I follow the lan-
guage of Roswag's spirited guide-book. The
same writer says, and so far as I have any right
I like to indorse the remark, " You may com-
pare all these surprising creations of his pencil
with the most perfect work in portraiture of the
greatest artists and those most esteemed in the
Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools, and the
contrast will simply show the astonishing superi-
ority of Velasquez. In the midst of all these
men of illustrious genius, if you take the point of
view of reality, of life, and of truth, he is the
only one who knows how to express himself
without convention, without apparent fiction,
and, to say everything in one word, without
artifice."

224 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

As late as 1830 no separate head was given to
Velasquez's name in the " Encyclopaedia Ameri-
cana." In most works of artistic criticism in
that time and earlier he will be found neglected
in like wise. I think such neglect is due wholly
to his popularity in Spain and to the seclusion
of this peninsula. They would not let his pic-
tures go away. There are, therefore, very few
in foreign collections, and through the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries there were so
few travellers in Spain from the rest of Europe
who dared to express an opinion on painting,
that the reputation which he had at home did
not extend farther than Spain. It is a good
instance of the " prophet honored in his own
country," before he is heard of elsewhere.

But why does not the same rule hold for
Murillo? Murillo was certainly known outside
of Spain. You can find admirable pictures of
his in Italy, in Bavaria, in France, in England,
one at least in Boston. This is a hard question.
Oddly enough, like most hard questions, it re-
ceives two answers quite opposite to each other.
One set of critics say that he painted the Virgin
in a way so admirably in accordance with
church traditions, that he had the whole machin-
ery of the Roman Church on his side to carry
his renown anywhere. Another authority says,
" He seems to have possessed the power of adapt-

V

MUSEUMS IN MADRID. 22$

ing the higher subjects of art to the common
understanding, and succeeded in at once capti-
vating the learned and unlearned. Hence the
universal popularity of his works throughout
Europe, notwithstanding Ruskin places him
among the base artists." I suppose that just
what Ruskin meant was that Murillo worked for
a reputation, and that only those people are on
the highest grade who " make themselves of no
reputation." It is to be observed, in this con-
nection, that when Murillo wanted money for
travel he " executed a number of pictures for
the colonial market, which were distributed by
traders through the Spanish American posses-
sions." Moral : If you want a wide reputation
in the world, scatter your work through America.
Pardon this digression, loyal reader. What
you and I have to observe of him, in the muse-
um of the Prado, is that here are twenty-nine of
Murillo's noblest pictures. Here among others
are the Virgin presenting the chasuble to Ilde-
fonso, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Divine
Shepherd, St. John Baptist as a child, Jesus and
John as children, and the Education of the Vir-
gin, which you and I have had hung before our
eyes in the hard but accurate Spanish prints
since 1829; nay, on copies of which we have
exercised our infant pencils, and, later yet, our
manly cameras. As in the case of Velasquez,

226 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

most of the Murillos hang together in a hall
given to the Spanish school, and there is a sort
of satisfaction in seeing them illustrated and ex-
plained by each other, just as there is in seeing
Velasquez thus illustrated and explained.

I say nothing of Goya, of whom the books
say much, because I do not believe in him at all.

Everybody who owns even five framed photo-
graphs knows that there is a certain pleasure in
taking them down from time to time, and' hang-
ing them in new places. It is analogous to the
profound satisfaction of putting your bed where
the wardrobe was, the wardrobe where the bu-
reau was, and the bureau where the bed was. It
makes a great row, and it saves ever so much
room.

I need not say that such change of pictures
goes on from time to time in the Royal Gallery,
because such is the law of galleries and public
libraries. You never visit one but they " are
making a change in the arrangement, which will
be a great improvement when it is done."

So is it that sometimes the Isabella salon con-
tains one set of pictures and sometimes another.
But it always means to contain the best. It is a
sort of tribune, only much larger. It is com-
fortable, well lighted ; and here you bask in the
light and blessedness of a hundred, more or less,
of the most exquisite pictures in the world.

MUSEUMS IN MADRID. 22J

And, to bring up with a very short turn what
there is to say of this marvellous gallery, — not
to be tempted forward or backward into raving
about the pictures, and so breaking a firm reso-
lution not to rave, — to speak of those carnal
matters which in fact affect Thomas, Richard,
Henry, and their congeners in this world, all the
people who carry on the externals of the gallery
are nice to you. They like to have you come,
and they are sorry to have you go away. From
the man at the door who takes your umbrella,
all the way up to Senor Don Jose Madrazo, the
accomplished artist who oversees the collection,
every one is good to you. It is not as in the
Louvre, or in galleries I have seen nearer home,
where they wish there were no visitors to the
gallery, or as sacristans of churches sometimes
wish no one would come to church. On the
other hand, everybody is pleased that more vis-
itors have come. And the worse the Spanish of
those visitors the more they seem to be pleased.

They are not overrun with visitors. They do
not think that you are a wretched tourist "doing
the gallery." They receive you as Mr. Barton
would receive a stranger who comes to Worces-
ter to the Antiquarian Society, and wants to
draw the Michael Angelo's Moses, or to consult
an old volume of the " News-Lctter." They
seem to know that you are decent people, and
are really interested in their treasures.

CHAPTER XVI.

OUT-DOORS LIFE.

As has been already said, perhaps, no one
goes into the streets between twelve and three
unless he be a Franccse or a perro, — a for-
eigner or a dog. Those sacred hours are re-
served for the siesta. Siesta means the sixth
hour, and if you count from average sunrise,
the sixth hour will be at noon. At noon every
sensible man and woman will retire for his daily
doze.

This reader may not be old enough to remem-
ber the battle of San Jacinto in Texas, in which
the independence of Texas from Mexico was
assured. It depended on the siesta.

At twelve o'clock, noon, the Mexican army
retired for this necessary repose. At one P. M.,
or thereabout, when they were in the best of it,
General Houston with his rabble rout of Texans
and of Kentuckians, half horse and half alligator,
attacked them, and in a very few moments the
battle was over, to the disadvantage of the sleep-
ing party.

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 229

After three o'clock, the streets of Madrid look
a little more lively; after four, a good many-
people are in motion ; after five, carriages be-
gin to drive to the Prado.

Prado originally meant Pratus, which means
a meadow. The little stream on which Madrid
stands meandered through it, I suppose, though
I cannot say I remember that I have seen it
there. Prado now means a broad street, not un-
like Commonwealth Avenue, running straight
for several miles. It has lately been lengthened,
and the resemblance to Commonwealth Avenue
holds, in the new buildings, some of them pal-
aces, which you may see going up at the sides
in the newer points. For the rest, there are
gardens or fine houses or palaces on each side.
Some of the government offices are there. The
great museum of pictures is generally called the
Musco del Prado. The garden of the Horticul-
tural Society is there.

The Prado differs from Commonwealth Ave-
nue in this: inside the roadways are lines of
little chairs, wire-seated and painted yellow,
lines which are miles long, for the people like
you and me to sit in, who have no carriages,
unless a friend invites us to drive.

These chairs are superintended and adminis-
tered by the men and women who have charge
of the drinking-booths, if I may so call them.

230 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

They are movable counters, from which is dis-
pensed the sugared water and lemonade and
ordiata necessary for so large a throng as
assembles in the Prado.

I have sometimes seen behind the counter or
bar of the smallest country tavern a cupboard in
which all the bottles, decanters, glasses, and
other paraphernalia of potations could be locked
up at night together. Imagine such a cupboard,
just big enough for two men to handle, perhaps
six feet high and five feet wide. Imagine it
standing on a table or counter, and so arranged
that its doors shall enlarge this table when they
fall, and it is opened. Hundreds of such stands,
thousands perhaps, occupy the long spaces
between the lines of chairs, which, as I have
said, are reserved for the loafers and pedestrians
on the Prado. Through the day, most of the
cupboards are locked. As evening approaches
they are all open, and one or two brisk attend-
ants at each are ready to dispense the needed
refreshments.

Several very fine fountains are among the
ornaments of the Prado, and the water-carriers
pass up and down from fountain to booth, so
that the supply shall never fail.

Looking back on all this, after six or eight
months, it seems to me queer that I cannot say
whether wine or spirit is never sold here ; for the

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 23 1

question of perpendicular drinking is the cen-
tral question of the civilization of modern cities,
and interests me deeply. It seems impossible,
writing in Boston, that neither wine nor spirit
should be sold in so many of these stalls. But
I think it is not. I certainly never saw any one
ask for any or take any.

The drink of nineteen out of twenty of those
who refresh themselves is sugared water. For
this the sugar has been blown up into an aerated
puff, like the sugar in the crust of a meringue.
It is given you with the tumbler of water and
with a spoon. It is so light that it dissolves
almost instantly, and you use as much or as lit-
tle as your taste demands.

If you are more exacting, you ask for lemon-
ade, or you may have orange juice for your
water.

If you are very hot, and need food as well as
liquid, you order an orchata. An orchata is a
very mild ice-cream, — I should say without
much cream. The basis is some sort of creamy
seed rubbed together into a paste, and mingled
with the water, milk, or cream, which are frozen
into a mass precisely resembling ice-cream.

This you eat by suction, as I am told the
» thoughtless sons of Belial absorb sherry cob-
blers ; only they, if I am rightly informed, use
straws, or, in abodes of luxury, glass tubes. In

232 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Madrid you are served with the orchata in a tall
glass, and with a dozen little rolls of very thin
paste, precisely like what we eat with ice-cream,
but rolled into rolls as small as a cigar, and so
tight that you can readily suck through them.
You put one of these into the bottom of the
tumbler and irhbibe the mixture as it slowly
melts so as to arrive at the point of fluidity.

The extreme temperance of the people of
Madrid is very noteworthy. For those who are
not on the Prado there are open enormous cafes,
where this same imbibing of sugared water, of
lemonade, and of orcJiata is going on. We have
no public rooms in Boston which approach the
size of the largest of these coffee-houses, except-
ing the great halls of the two Institutes. I do
not say that men could not order spirit in these
halls. I have no doubt they can. But they do
not seem to, as our charming New England
expression has it. They smoke, they sip sug-
ared water, or they sip cool milk and water, and
talk politics, by the hour. But they do not
drink spirit or wine or beer.

This excursus of mine on the physical refresh-
ments of the Prado has kept us so long from the
matter which took us there, the daily drive, or
procession, extending far into the evening, in
which the Madrilenos and Madrilefias take the
air, and see each other.

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 233

In the broad driveway of the Prado are two
lines of carriages moving in each direction,
under a law of the road exactly like that on the
Brighton road in winter. Only the inner lines,
at the Prado, are not the carriages of the fast
trotters ; they are the carriages of the King and
Court and of the Diplomatic Corps. These and
these only may ride there. Their footmen are
distinguished by cockades which reveal the privi-
lege. Indeed, I suppose the crests on the car-
riages would show it.

On the outside are two compact lines of car-
riages moving along at an even pace, almost
always open, and containing ladies and gentle-
men in full dress.

Gentlemen on horseback are scudding in and
out, precisely as you may see them at Hyde
Park in London. But the Prado is much longer
than the largest drive in the Park, and the at-
tendance of carriages is larger every day than I
ever saw there, excepting on some special fes-
tival.

In fact, as I suppose, the Prado takes, to a
large degree, the place of other social machin-
ery. For three or four hours of every day you
see your friends there. True, you only talk with
those who are in your own carriage, or, if you are
on horseback, you may engage in conversation,
after a fashion, with those by whom you ride.

234 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

I was in Madrid at the end of June. The days,
of course, were at their longest, and the evening
air was invariably soft and agreeable. Ladies
rode in light summer costume, and wore hats,
which they would not have worn in the morning
in going to church. For a lady to have a hat
on in church would be, I think, a certain jBign
that she was a foreigner.

Somebody told me that a Spanish family
whose fortunes were declining would endure any
other pressure of poverty rather than the loss of
carriage and horses. I was told that gentlemen
or ladies would live in great penury, and even
obscurity, if they could only keep up the daily
ride in the Prado, and so retain the joy of seeing
and being seen. This may be a mere guide-
book story. I know very well how deceptive
such sweeping statements are. But the number
of carriages fitted simply for this purpose —
open barouches, fit for those seeing and being
seen — is certainly remarkable. I do not think
that we approach it in Boston, which is a city of
about the same population as Madrid, and, as I
suppose, of much greater wealth.

Shall we perhaps drop into a similar fashion
here when the new Park begins to be attractive?
Will the people who have handsome turnouts
drive out on one side of Commonwealth Avenue,
take a little turn in the Park, drive back on the

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 235

other side, and repeat the same thing half a
dozen times in the long summer afternoons and
evenings of June? Shall we bow to Miss Cham-
pernoun and touch our hats to the adorable
Miss Krossandkrown? Shall we smile sweetly
on Mr. Holworthy as he rises in his stirrups, and
lifts his hat wholly from his curls, or shall we
make Mr. Fortinbras perfectly happy by invit-
ing him to take the fourth seat in the carriage,
because Papa's gout keeps him at home ? Quien
sabe ?

There would be more chance of our going into
this Prado life in Boston if June were a hundred
and fifty days long, or if May were a little
warmer. And, as things are, we hurry away
before June is well over or even before May
begins, to hide ourselves in Swampscott, the
Shoals, or at Mt. Desert. It must be con-
fessed, also, that we are very much afraid of
each other, and distrust any approach to what
the rest of the world call society.

We were most kindly welcomed in one or two
charming homes. Beyond this, so short a visit
gives me no right to speak personally of do-
mestic life. The habits of daily life, as they
appear to a stranger, show the effect of cli-
mate and religion ; but I suppose nice people
are nice people everywhere, and the best so-
cial life in Spain is probably much like the best

236 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

social life anywhere else. The churches are open
every day, and I think that women go to church
almost daily. You meet in the streets, every
morning, many with their maids, the mistress
with prayer-book in hand, each wearing a man-
tilla and not a hat or bonnet, which, as I have
said, is not according to rule in church.

The bookstores are well filled with good books
and bad ; and there is a good deal of activity
in publication. The printing is good, the whole
style of a book being quite up to that of the
Paris workshops.

I was inquiring for an impression of an old
engraving of Murillo, very dear to me from
early associations, when I was told to go for it
to the establishment where it was engraved, the
government engraving office, where they still
had the plate, and still sold impressions.

As the engraving was not much more than a
hundred years old, it showed what an American
I was, that I had not thought of this before.

Accordingly I soon found myself there. The
engraving offices occupy one flat in the Acad-
emy of Fine Arts, on the street of Alcala, and
here I found courteous and intelligent workmen,
keeping up the traditions of the office admirably
well, and ready and glad to sell the impressions
of any of their plates at prices perfectly fair,
which seemed to me very low.

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 237

The establishment must have been founded, I
think, as early as the days of Charles IV., the
onlv king between Ferdinand and the present
king who seems to have even attempted any-
thing good. Collectors of prints will remember
the series which represents the paintings in the
Royal Gallery. Scmla, among others, was a
professor in the Academy here, and the plates
of his work are in this collection. The office
goes on its quiet way. They offered me proofs
of the admirable print which they had just
issued, from an engraving executed there of a
great historical picture, now on exhibition at the
palace.

So in the midst of wars and rumors of wars —
Napoleon, Joseph, Ferdinand — the office has
worked on! "What matters it, — mob in Ma-
drid, constitution or absolutism, — is the sun
any less clear or is the graver any more blunt
because the government has changed? Let us
strike a clean proof; that seems to be our busi-
ness." As I talked with these assiduous and
courteous gentlemen, as I saw a workman pull a
proof from a press which might have been there
in 1782, I could not but remember what things
abide and what things change.

Of course the popular subjects have been
often reproduced, and the popular prints are
sadly worn. Such is the Madonna of the Fish,

238 'SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

one of Semla's prints, and the price is accord-
ingly. One or two francs will buy one of the
badly worn impressions, which are but ghosts of
what they were.

But of subjects which are not specially agree-
able, — I recollect, for instance, the Dwarfs of
Velasquez, where there has been no pressing de-
mand for impressions, — you find in their port-
folios examples in good condition.

They recognize entirely the competition of
Laurent, the photographer, and the attractions
of his admirable collection ; and they have put
the prices of their large collection of calcogra-
fia into rivalry with the prices of photographs.

Laurent's gallery of photographs, for such
it really is, is one of the most interesting col-
lections in the world. It contains two or three
admirable photographs, many of very large size,
and a visit there serves as an admirable refresh-
ment to your memory of what you have seen, as
well as a foretaste or suggestion of what you
would like to see. All the subjects are land-
scapes, buildings, people, or paintings in Spain
or Portugal.

Laurent has been more than twenty years in
taking the negatives which are the foundations
of this admirable collection. The catalogue of
the pictures, a book of nearly two hundred
pages, is in itself an index to the noblest monu-

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 239

mcnts of Spanish art and Spanish antiquity.
One of the indexes is an index by historical
characters. If you wish to learn of Boabdil, you
ask for ten pictures in this collection ; if it is
Charles V., you ask for eighty-seven; and so on,
so rich is it in the illustration of literature and
history as well as of art.

The photographs of paintings are, I think
in all cases, taken from the paintings themselves,
for better for worse. In Germany and in Italy
the photographs are frequently taken from draw-
ings in neutral tint, which have been accurately
made for the purpose of being copied. But if
you have one of Laurent's photographs, you
have the picture itself, as far as the camera can
give it. It seemed to me that Velasquez stood
this severe test in most cases particularly well.
Of course, as we all know, some colors confuse
the photograph hopelessly. Velasquez's picture
of Apollo and Vulcan comes out wretchedly.
The blond Apollo is as black as the swarthy
Vulcan. The print has been so popular, alas,
that the swarthy Vulcan is now as white on the
worn plate as the blond Apollo. For all this,
I should be very grateful to any one who would
present to me, or to the Fellowes Athenaeum, a
complete set of Laurent's copies from the pic-
tures of the Museo der Prado. There are only
five hundred and eighty-six of them.

240 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The artists who have been sent as travellers
on the several routes have made capital selec-
tions. Every now and then they catch a group
of peasants at work. Now it is a bit of a ruined
arch or bridge; now it is a mass of prickly
Indian fig, a bas-relief in an old church, a
wonderfully wrought iron door, a railway tunnel,
or a Roman statue. There is an admirable va-
riety. You are all along reminded of Punch's
admirable aphorism, that you can buy much
better pictures than you can draw for yourself.

Right under the lee of Madrid are certain
excursions which I would commend to any other
traveller, though, by misfortune, I did not take
them myself.

I should have been so glad to go to Alcala de
Henares, which is only one hour and a half from
Madrid. Ah me ! Ilium fait. Alcala was the
great university city of Spain. Yes, my dear
George and my dear William, it was from the
MSS. of this library that your beloved Complu-
tensian Polyglot was made by this same Cardi-
nal Ximenes, who, among other things, did his
best to discover America, made permanent the
Mozarabic Rite, gave his personal attention' to
Charles V.'s missal, and has that lovely portrait
in Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella. Ah me !
if you knew what I know of this dreamy, schol-
arly, drowsy old place, you would want as much

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 24 1

as I do to go there and spend a week in

dozing.

They moved the university long ago to Ma-
drid. They used up the precious MSS. of the
Complutensian Polyglot to send home butchers'
meat, as the curators of the Harvard Law School
used up Lord Brougham's wig to fill up Holmes's
Field with. And now Alcala, in perfect preser-
vation, is an empty shell, from which even its
lobster has removed.

If any one cares, Complutum was the Roman
city on the site of Alcala. And we will remark,
in passing, that there are those who think that
the " Doctor of Alcantara " should have been
the "Doctor of Alcala," for "Alcantara" means
"abridge."

The old university building stands, in perfect
condition, though it is now only a memory of
the university.

The university, rival of Salamanca, was found-
ed in 1498 by Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros.
The front is beautifully ornamented with sculp-
tures. A medallion in the principal court repre-
sents the Cardinal himself. He has a marshal's
baton in one hand and the crucifix in the other.
At the end of one of the courts is the Paranmfo,
or hall where the degrees were conferred. This
hall has lately been restored.

The archicpiscopal palace of Alcala is a vast
16

242 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

building of wonderful workmanship. The sec-
ond court is especially remarkable. The gallery,
the columns which support it, and the stairway,
are all wonderfully decorated. The door under
the stairway is really a wonder of decoration.
This building has within the last few years been
carefully restored. Its vast halls, of which the
old panelled ceilings are in a perfect state of
preservation, now serve as a place of deposit for
the royal archives.

It is rather as a hint to other travellers that I
say that Jthe Magistrale Church is a beautiful
specimen of Gothic architecture. Here is the
tomb of the Cardinal Cisneros, which was for-
merly in the chapel at the side of the university
which he founded. This tomb, made of marble
from Carrara, is the work of Dominico, the Flor-
entine, and is one of the finest works of the kind
to be seen in Spain. This church also possesses
some tapestries and some pictures by Alonso
del Arco, Juan de Sevilla, and Vincent Carducci.

But the real charm of a visit to Alcala would
be that one would see the framework of the pic-
tures which Cervantes and Lope de Vega and
the other playwrights and novelists construct, in
which Spanish students play so large a part.^
The university of Madrid and that of Seville
naturally take on the form of other European
universities, but Alcala and its courts and clois-

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 243

tcrs arc all unchanged. The old mediaeval wall,
flanked with towers of defence, may still be

seen.

They say that the printing of the polyglot
Bible cost fifty-two thousand ducats. It was in
six volumes, folio, and contained the Hebrew,
the Septuagint, and the Vulgate of the Old
Testament, with a Chaldaic paraphrase and the
Greek and Latin of the New Testament.

From Alcala, if I could, I would go half an
hour further to Guadalajara.

This old city is worth a visit, were it only to
see the palace of the Dukes of l'lnfantado or of
Osuna. This is a noble edifice, which has pre-
served almost entirely its original splendor. It
was built in 1461. The outside appearance is
singular. The decoration of the front is perhaps
a little heavy, but it fails neither in character
nor originality. The patio, which has a double
gallery supported by two rows of columns, is
covered with a wonderful number of lions, whose
tails are flying all abroad, eagles with outspread
wings, fanciful creatures with griffins' bodies, and
designs of all sorts in relief. This decoration
extends to the roof of the second gallery, and
has a marvellous effect.

Inside the palace are large halls with panelled
ceilings of the most curious work, which recall
the Alhambra. The grand salon of Linajes, or

244 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

of the descendants of the Mendozas, is specially-
remarkable.

A vaulted wooden ceiling, formed in arches
and gilded, gives the effect of stalactites. All
around this hall was a frieze adorned with
painted statues. These statues represent the
ancestors of the family of the Duke of l'lnfan-
tado. This is a curiosity of decoration such as
can be seen nowhere else.

On the side of the palace opening on the gar-
den are also double galleries, supported by two
rows of columns. There are simple arabesque
designs wrought in the azidejos, or brilliant por-
celain, of the Moors. These designs, though
simple, are surprisingly effective. The upper
gallery is ornamented with faiences from Tala-
vera.

But one cannot stay even among cordial
friends, even in a charming climate, even in
a city of museums, forever. Some of us were
to be in London early in July. So far had the
general statement, that Spain was a land of fevers
and all sickness, affected our plans at the begin-
ning of the summer. Others were to be in Swit-
zerland in the summer months. And, indeed, in
any event, we could not remain in Spain forever.
But we should have almost to do this, were
we to carry out the objects into which we went ;
were we to learn what the Spanish galleries of

OUT-DOORS LIFE. 245

art were to teach us, and extort the secrets as
to the history of America yet written in their

archives.

So we hurried up the last purchases. For me,
I bought only seventeen fans, Yor presents to
friends who would like a Spanish fan. I wish I
had bought seventy. I hardly dare tell the se-
cret even to this silent page, that the day after
my largest purchase the man who kept the fan-
shop announced that he had received an admi-
rable assortment from Switzerland and North
America! Had I been buying fans which had
been shipped from New York in the vessel I
sailed in?

We looked wildly for the lost umbrellas. We
went to the Zinns and Sages of Madrid for
trunks large enough to carry away the plunder
of a peninsula. {Plunder is used in the Ken-
tuckian sense, to denote the private property of
a traveller, honestly acquired.) I had a long
and sacred interview with an express agent, to
whom I intrusted these trunks. " No, they need
not go by grandc vitesse, they might go by any
vitesse which would bring them to London in
three weeks."

Memorandum to the unwary: Seven weeks
from that day the trunks in question appeared
in London. For Spain is the land of the manana ;
that means, the to-morrow.

246 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

" Blessed, kind to-morrow,
He were a heathen not to worship thee."

Certainly they do worship him there.

And at last even the roll from the calcografia
went into its trunk, and the copies from Velas-
quez into theirs, and the last recalcitrant fan and
Botelin de Documentos Ineditos went into theirs,
and sturdy men bore them downstairs. And
we tumbled into bed, to sleep till early daybreak,
when we were to leave dear Madrid, perhaps
FOREVER.

CHAPTER XVII.

ZARAGOZA.

So we were up bright and early on the 22d of
June! Madrid is on the parallel of 400 25', so
that the 22d of June gives one an early chance
to rise, even if he only rise with the sun.

As we drove to the station, I noticed that
bricklayers and other builders were as early as
we. At six o'clock they were climbing their
ladders and building their walls, and had been
at it, I think, since five o'clock. At twelve they
would stop work for three hours. I should think
that, in the hot days of midsummer, our work-
ingmen at home would like to do the same
thing. From five to eleven and from three to
seven seem to me better working hours than from
seven to six, dropping an hour for dinner, when
you talk of June and August. I knew a school-
master once who let his boys come to him
at four in the morning, so that school for the
day was out at nine in summer. But this ec-
centric man went " to the bad." I wonder if
they did.

248 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

We were bound through to Zaragoza (the
same thing as the Saragossa of Lord Byron,
my aged friend) by what is called a " mixed
line." A mixed line is the slowest thing there
is, the derivation being that freight and passen-
gers are taken in the same train. The loyal
reader who has a long enough memory to recall
any words which this author may have dropped
early in our united journey, will remember that
it has been already explained, that if you want
to travel fast in Spain you must go at night.
Now we wanted, first of all, to see the country
we went to see. We therefore went by day,
though slowly. As to the heat of a midday ride,
we must make the best of it. And I ought to
say, writing nine months after, that I have no
recollection of suffering from heat. It was noth-
ing to the heat of days in which I have trav-
elled here at home. As for the speed, we made
three hundred and forty-one kilograms in thir-
teen hours and a quarter, including all stops.
This is an average of about sixteen miles an
hour.

On such a train as this at home the real incon-
venience would probably be that you would
have an indifferent car. But here you have the
universal first-class carriage, of the English pat-
tern. You almost persuade yourself that it is
the private car in which you left Paris, which

ZARAGOZA. 249

has been in waiting for you at every station.
But, in fact, the monogram of the special road is
woven into the coach-lace of the upholstery.

The courtesies of Spanish travelling are very
pretty. If a Spanish gentleman in the compart-
ment open his travelling-basket to take his al-
muerzo or his comida, he passes it round to all
the passengers, to invite them to share. You
break off a bit of biscuit, or take a strip of gin-
ger, to show that you appreciate the compliment.
So with a paper of bon-bons. It would be
thought a little greedy to open the paper and
devour them in your own party, without offering
them to all the strangers in the compartment.

Madrid itself is in the midst of a high plain,
sandy and barren, and the public gardens and
parks which make the few pleasure drives are
maintained, I fancy, by a good deal of labor.
The poor little river Manzanares is made to fur-
nish water for the whole. Around the city, on
almost every side, are gray, rocky hills, gener-
ally quite as bare as the tops of the White
Mountains, and nearly half as high above the
sea. It is two thousand four hundred and fifty
feet above the sea level. As I first entered Ma-
drid, on a drizzly morning, from the north, I re-
membered so well Morton's repeated ejaculation,
as in a pelting rain we rode to the top of Mount
Washington, which he had never seen before : —

250 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

" When, therefore, ye shall see the abomina-
tion of desolation, let him that readeth under-
stand."

" Abomination of desolation " is none too
strong for these Castilian hills.

Through these hills the railroad winds its
way, in a general northeast direction, till you
have passed Alcala and Guadalajara, of which I
have already spoken. After these you soon be-
gin on a down grade, to run, still northeast, by a
somewhat winding route, and enter Aragon.

The Castilian peasantry have the reputation
of laziness equal to their pride. As soon as you
are in Aragon you see the result of faithful,
hard work. I do not know. What I do not
know is this : whether the Castilians are lazy
because their country is barren, or whether their
country is barren because the Castilians are lazy.
One of Dr. Holmes's best stories, for which the
diligent reader will perhaps search vainly, is
of a fellow who sold hair-oil on the steps of the
medical college in Paris, and displayed, as a test
of its excellence, the most magnificent head of
hair. " What I do not know," Dr. Holmes says,
" is whether the man sold the hair-oil because he
had that fine head of hair, or whether he had the
fine head of hair because he used the hair-oil."

The passage from Castile to Aragon is from
Isabella's kingdom to Ferdinand's. " From arid

ZARAGOZA. 251

Castile to fertile Aragon " is the guide-book
slang. What this means seems to be, from Cas-
tile, where a set of stupid bigots lived, to Ara-
gon, where a set of ingenious and industrious
Moors had introduced irrigation, agriculture, and
their consequences. This may be unjust in me.
But we love our dear Moors, and could weep
for Boabdil and his ejection. There is but one
God, and Spain does not seem to have flour-
ished much since she turned out a people who
put this statement in the front rank of such
knowledge as they had.

It was tantalizing to hurry by Alcala and
Guadalajara, and to have to satisfy ourselves
with such sketches as we could make, while this
and that part of our " mixed train " was shunted
off, and we left, now in sight of a cathedral,
now in the shelter and shade of a water-tank.

Some fifty miles northeast of Guadalajara
you come to Siguenza, another place which has
a picturesque look, tempting you to stay over.
But we must content ourselves with Laurent's
general view. Perhaps our learned and in-
telligent friend Mr. Richardson, close on our
tracks, and knowing how to study the Roman-
esque in northern Spain, will bring home some-
thing from this quaint old Roman church. The
guide-book speaks of two seminaries in Siguenza,
whatever they may be.

252 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

No one had taken the trouble, when I studied
geography, to tell me that there was any such
place in the world as Calatayud. Or, perhaps,
did I never study the geography of Spain?

Did it perhaps happen, in those dreamy days
of the Latin School, when we were ordered
down into the basement, once in four months, to
" study English " under Mr. Benjamin or some
other unfortunate, — did it perhaps happen that,
in the determination by the class, as to where
we left off four months before, we squarely
omitted " Spain " among us ? Is this possibly
the reason why all Spain seems so much like the
planet Mars to me?

If studying geography amounted to much, I
ought to be most at home in Greenland and
Labrador; for the custom of new teachers is
to order a new book and bid the boys begin
again. I can remember, therefore, beginning
many, many times on North America, which,
with true loyalty, stands at the beginning of all
American geographies. More time, therefore,
has been spent on my information as to Green-
land and Labrador, so far as school-work went,
than anybody chose to give to London or Paris.

As virtually nothing is known about either
country, I have a right to say I know about all
there is known. So much for the jargon of the
geographical text-books.

ZARAGOZA. 253

Forgive this excursiis, dear reader, and let us
return to Calatayud.

At this point I send over to the Fellowes
Athenaeum for Poitou's journey through Spain.
Perhaps he saw more of Calatayud than I did.

Alas ! what a corrective is one traveller for
another. He went by rail to Madrid from Zara-
goza, just the reverse of our route. This Ara-
gon, which we found so interesting, seemed to
him just the reverse. " The road from Sara-
gossa to Madrid is uninteresting, but the country
is not without character." I should think not.
All he saw of Calatayud was " its semi-oriental
silhouette on the bluish background of its double
mountains."

Then he came to Alhama, — and here its
translator expatiates on Byron's ballad, " Wo is
me, Alhama ! " — and bids us read the details
of the siege in Prescott. Let us hope that this
reader has done so. But, alas ! that Alhama is,
as the bird flies, rather more than three hundred
miles from this Alhama, and this reader of ours
has already dilated with the right emotion re-
garding Byron's ballad. Alhama means " the
baths," and there are a dozen Alhamas.

Such are the dangers, dear reader, of dilating
with the wrong emotion, regarding which your
faithful Mentor has warned you, before now. I
remember a friend who, by misfortune, dilated

254 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

on Barbara Frietchie's window at Fredericks-
burg, when he should have dilated at Fredericks
Town. Against such danger the Mentor and
the intelligent reader will guard with care.

Very well. Nobody, I say, had taken the
pains to tell me that there was any such place
as the quaint Moorish town Calatayud. The
Moorish quarter still exists in the defiles of the
hills. The tower of San Andres is bright with
azulejos. A fine castle domineers over the rest.

If anybody cares, the name should be Cala-
tayub, with a b at the end, which means the
castle of Job, one Ayub or Job having built
it. But this is not the Job of the boils, camels,
wife, and friends. It is the nephew of Musa, if
intelligent readers happen to remember him.
This Job, being sent by Musa to build a frontier
post here, built this " castle o' Job," around
which grows this city. He built it from the
stone of Bilbilis, where, as the reader may or may
not remember, the poet Martial was born. It is
from this place that Martial growls to Juvenal
that he wishes he could live and die in Rome.
" Bilbilis, proud of her gold and her iron, makes
me a rustic here," — a rustic in a place where a
toga was unknown.

The arms of the city are a Celtiberian, riding
without stirrups and with a lance. The pride of
Aragon begins to appear.

ZARAGOZA. 255

The Dominican convent has a fine three-story
patio, in which some Moorish work may still be
seen.

I think I could dream away a day or two at
the Fonda del Issuro, even if there were no togas
in Calatayud.

But perhaps the charm to us is that we stop
as the sun begins to go down, and the shadows
grow long. All nature is so much more lovely
with long shadows !

And all the Spanish stations are so pictu-
resque. Was it here, perhaps, that we tempted
the children down with their fresh apricots from
the orchard, when they were a little afraid to
come lest the Fonda people might not be
pleased? Remember, dear reader, that every
child of them all is a picture, which, for mere
oddity of costume, you would stand gazing at
for five minutes if you found it at a loan exhibi-
tion of the Art Club.

The country is very picturesque. " Not with-
out character," indeed. In thirteen miles after
you pass toward Calatayud from Medinaceli
(which has nothing to do with heaven), you go
through twenty tunnels, so broken is the whole
region. The Duke of Medinaceli, you know,
is a very high nobleman, " rightful heir to the
throne of Spain, " as those say who know what
are the rights in that business. Medinaceli

256 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

meant originally City of Selim, or Province of
Selim, — Medina meaning a jurisdiction, or prov-
ince, or city, if you are up in your Arabic, dear
reader.

But Medinaceli was the other side of Cala-
tayud, and we must not stop to talk; we must
forge on to Zaragoza.

And we arrive, after another of these wonder-
ful sunsets, just as the darkness creeps on. The
gentry of the town are still driving round and
round the public park.

Aragon was the kingdom of Ferdinand. His
marriage with Isabella united it to Castile. It
was a set of thoroughly independent people, and
the local independence still subsists. When a
king visits them, they make a point of showing,
somehow, that they do not forget their old priv-
ileges. It is here that belongs the famous old
formula of coronation, so often cited : —
. "We, every one of whom is as good as you,
and who all together are much better than
you, swear to obey you as our king so long as
you respect our rights and privileges. If not,
NO."

This superb oath was submitted to by the
Spanish kings, when they came into Aragon,
until the middle of the seventeenth century.
The traces of that feeling are to be seen every-
where in Aragon to this hour.

ZARAGOZA. 257

Aragon consists of three provinces, Huesca,
Zaragoza, and Teruel. The kingdom is divided
by the Ebro into equal parts, and consists of the
southern slope of the Pyrenees and the northern
slope of the Idabeda Mountains. There is talk
of a direct line from Madrid to Paris, over a
route just now opened to the diligence.

Ours was the first party which went from Ma-
drid to Paris on this completed diligence road.
Whenever the railroad shall be pushed through,
Zaragoza, now a thriving town of say 70,000 peo-
ple, will be a place of even more importance.

We went at once to an inn which, with some
pretence at Italian customs, was virtually Span-
ish, and here we spent thirty hours or more
very pleasantly. For certain annoyances, in the
absence of arrangements which the nineteenth
century has invented, one must make up his
mind once for all in Spain ; but as for the eter-
nities of neatness, obligiiigness, deference, and a
knowledge of his place by every man concerned
in the inn, and of her place by every woman, I
found these central necessities in every fonda
I visited. For my part, I prefer to try the dis-
tinctively Spanish inns, and not those which are
called English, French, or Italian.

Every inch of Zaragoza is curious. I remem-
ber a walk among good-natured people, selling
their fruits and vegetables in the market-place,
17

258 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

as being quite as interesting to me as any
Madonna of the Pillar. Here was I, with three
ladies, of all four of whom the costume was al-
most as remarkable to the Zaragozans as that of
four Chippewa Indians would be in the market
of Detroit. And these nice people were not
obtrusive in their curiosity, were good-natured
to our execrable Spanish, and at every point,
without knowing it, showed us curiosities which
we had never seen before. Why, I went into
a twine-shop, and bought some red pack-
thread, of which I have some to-day. (Thanks
to a high protective tariff, it was the cheapest
packthread and the best I ever saw.) The
shop, if it were in Tremont Street, would be
visited as a curiosity; or, if I could put it into
the Old South Church, the fee for admission to
see it would make up the annual income needed
by the custodians of that monument.

The four regulation lions of Zaragoza are,
however, not twine-shops nor market-places, but
the cathedral, the church of El Pilar, the leaning
tower, and the bridge and fortifications.

Does the intelligent reader perhaps remember
the puppet-show at which Don Quixote assisted,
in which the famous Don Gayferos came to the
assistance of the Princess Melisendra?

Well, the Princess Melisendra was imprisoned
in a tower in Zaragoza, of which the other name

ZARAGOZA. 259

was Sansuenna. Zaragoza, if anybody cares, is
a modern corruption from Caesarea-Augusta. If
the reader remembers, the Princess lowered her-
self down from the tower and caught on the
balcony by her brocade dress. Don Gayferos
found her hanging, and, regardless of the injury
to the brocade, the book says, he pulled her
down from the iron rail, put her astride on the
crupper of his saddle, and took her in triumph
to Paris, across the mountains. By that very
route to Paris you are to accompany us, gentle
reader, and I will not swear that the tower in
which she was imprisoned was not the veritable
leaning tower of Zaragoza of to-day. Let us
rather say this stands on the place of that, as
this is called the new tower, and was, in fact,
built in 1504. Melisendra, on her part, was the
daughter of Charlemagne, so far as she had any
real existence.

The guide-books say that the foundation of
the tower settled on one side, and that the lean-
ing is, therefore, accidental. I do not believe
this. I think it was built to lean. The artists
of our party wanted to go up, and I accompa-
nied them to the place, meaning to sit at the
bottom. But the ascensus proved so facilis that
I went on and on, till we were at the top. It is
about as high as Bunker Hill Monument.

It was very curious to look straight down the

260 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

sloping side, and see the tops of dogs and men
and horses. A few years ago the architects got
frightened about it; so they built a new wall
about the bottom, where it would not show out-
side, and shaved off the projections which once
were at the top. But I do not think this made
much difference. Anyway, our two hundred
kilograms, more or less, of weight did not
make it tremble.

There are practically two cathedrals in Zara-
goza, for this reason: — there is the cathedral of
La Seo, which means the cathedral of the See, a
fine and ancient building, in which Ferdinand
the Catholic was baptized in 1456. Parts of the
building are very much older. This cathedral
would answer every purpose. But very early in
the history of the religion the Virgin Mary
descended visibly upon a certain pillar, still
extant, and gave word that the place was under
her direction. She did her worship here for
some time daily. Naturally, a church built
itself around this pillar, and it became a place
of devotion, even pilgrimage, of special interest.
At some time in the sixteenth century, I believe,
some royal person — but I think I never knew
who — took interest enough to pull down the
old church, which was, perhaps, burned, and
build a bigger in its place, and to give word that
this also should be a cathedral.

ZARAGOZA. 26l

So you have a chance to see how badly the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did this
sort of thing, in comparison with the admirable
success of the earlier centuries, when they had
the same thing to do. The pillar itself is the
central point of an altar, in a beautiful chapel
of its own. It is of reddish marble, and has a
sort of extinguisher over it, made of I know not
what. A priest was at his devotions before it
and some fifty of the people, while in the larger
coro hard by the choir of priests, and I sup-
pose the bishop, were carrying on High Mass.
For the first time in Spain I heard here at
Mass a single boy's clear soprano voice in some
part of the service. We could see from where
we were none of those in the coro. But this
clear treble, alternating with the heavy bass of
the chorus, had a musical effect very interesting,
and I need not say that I did my best to trans-
late it into devotion.

Something similar was going on in the other
cathedral, which is truly noble; and here in
Zaragoza there are a considerable number of
people who pass in and out to their daily
prayers in these churches. You do not have
that grewsome feeling that these are only a set
of drummers at work, keeping up the daily
drumbeat round the world, so that some one
may be able to say that there is a continuous

262 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

drumbeat. You really feel that somebody here
takes some vital interest in the service.

I saw no monument of the Maid of Zaragoza
or of Palafox, who conducted the defence with
so much spirit against the French in 1808.

But the old wall still exists on the river-side,
and marks of the attack and defence are every-
where shown.

I shall remember Zaragoza for a sort of wide-
awake freshness, which would seem to show that
the wind of the Pyrenees often blows through
the street. The wide-awake independence of
what was virtually a republic still lives in these
people, who seem energetic and prosperous.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NORTHWARD.

And how does this reader know that he has
not been lured thus far to his ruin? Has he not,
indeed, arrived at Zaragoza, with no sure pros-
pect that he will ever leave th*it city? Are not
these guides of his, four wild madcaps, led by
a tall round-shouldered man, with a civil tongue
in his head, who speaks very bad Spanish, and
who knows of no route by which the reader
shall come home? For, of course, no one in his
senses ever returns by the route by which he

went.

To confess the whole truth to this loyal reader,
all this excursion to Zaragoza was based on a
perhaps.

It might be that there was some road across
the Pyrenees by which the party of four, and
the reader faithfully following, could come to
Pau, without going round by Marseilles, and
without returning by Biarritz, by which route,
as the reader may possibly remember, we all
entered Spain.

264 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

With regard to this possible route across the
Pyrenees the authorities were few, inconsistent,
and not recent.

First, and best authenticated, was that cele-
brated march of Charlemagne in the year 779,
or thereabouts, when his rear guard was cut off
at Roncesvalles, and Roland killed, as the reader
may remember.

Second, not quite so well authenticated, was
this flight of the Princess Melisendra on the
crupper of Don Gayferos's saddle, as seen by
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the puppet-
show.

With regard to both of these expeditions, it
was to be observed that they were made in the
saddle, and there was no evidence that the trav-
ellers had each a trunk or trunk-mail, weighing
just up to the regulations of the Spanish luggage-
vans, which also must cross the Pyrenees.

Whether the passage of one thousand one
hundred and three years had expanded the road
across the Pyrenees so far that one could go in
any sort of jumble-cart with these trunks on
board? This was question No. 1.

Or whether, outside of ballads, Charlemagne
and Melisendra did not carry boxes of plunder
as big as these regulation trunks, and whether
such trunks could not be attached to the backs
of mules, in like wise, in 1882? This was ques-
tion No. 2.

NORTHWARD.

265

But why did they not look in Murray or
O'Shea? says the captious reader, with his feet
on a leg-rest, removing his cigar from his mouth
that he may interrupt.

Idiot' Of course they did. And of course,
be it said with reverence, both the guide-books
failed them. Vague intimations there were that
« this route must be made on horseback ; " " the
route hence must be ridden? which means the
same thing. But who should say whether thirty-
five miles of such riding were to be practicable
for women, or whether the trunks would or
would not drop off behind, as the mules clam-
bered vertically.

For myself, I went to the Madrid office of the
Panticosa baths. Now the Panticosa baths are
a sort of miniature Saratoga, up in the Pyrenees,
advertised as widely as Spain knows how.

« Did the senor (at the office) know whether
the routes to and from Panticosa were practica-
ble to wheel carriages? "

The senor knew nothing about it, and won-
dered that any other senor cared. But as the
senor extranjero did care, he would certainly
learn at the bureau of the railway which led to
Huesca. To this bureau the foreign senor hied ;
and he asked the same question: "Did the
senor," &c.

It could not be that there were any wheel car-

266 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

riages. It was probably impossible. Still there
were certainly diligences which went somewhere
from Huesca. But what was most certain was
that it could make no possible difference to
anybody whether there were any or whether
there were not. Why should the foreign senor
disturb himself on such a merely abstract
question?

Indeed, were we not all in Madrid; and why
should we not stay there?

It was at this juncture that the foreign senor,
who is this writer, finding himself on the tail of
a street rail-car in Madrid with an English gen-
tleman whom he never saw before and never has
seen since, asked him if he supposed there was a
practicable road for wheels between Jaca in the
mountains and the French valleys north of them.
The Englishman thought there must be. " There
was none when I was there," he said ; " but that
was in the Carlist war, when I was an officer
there. They must have pushed something
through since then."

I said I had three ladies with me, and four
trunks.

" If I were you," said the cordial Englishman,
to whom at this distance of time I present my
thanks again, " I should go."

And we went. Let me say, in advance, that
the plan was not developed by my prudence, but

NORTHWARD. 267

by the ingenuity and audacity of my compan-
ions. And, as the reader sees, but for this plan,
however it turns out, none of us would have seen
Zaragoza, this wide-awake, lively Worcester-sort
of a place, which runs back to Augustus Caesar,
and yet is quite up to any of the ingenuities or
enterprises of to-day.

Be it observed, however, that in leaving Zara-
goza, on the morning of St. John's Day, we knew
no more whether there were a practicable route
across the Pyrenees than we knew when we left
Boston. And I think no one in Zaragoza was
any wiser than we.

St. John's Day was probably once the longest
da>- in the year. If anybody ask you why it is
not now, say, " Precession of the equinoxes," and
that will shut him up. That is an excellent spell
when there is any question about the calendar.
If he gasp out any other inquiry, say, " Council
of Nice," and he will succumb.

Because it is the longest day in the year, or
was, various rites more or less Ethnic — or, with
a Cockney aspirate, Heathen-ic — still hang
around St. John's Day. One of these rites, I
know not what, required several score of the
old women of Zaragoza to sit all night on the
curb-stones of the sidewalks, in front of our
hotel, looking upon the public park. When I
went to bed they were there, when I woke in the

268 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

night I heard them chattering there, and when
the sun rose in the morning they were there.

Let me hope they had vervain.

Why they were there I do not know, but that
it was the eve of St. John's Day.

And for us, we took the train toward Barce-
lona, to which, alas ! we could not go. At a
junction not many miles out of town we left this
train and confided ourselves to the hotter and
slower mercies of a mixed train, which was to
take us to Huesca.

Is it not curious, dear reader, that I should feel
so sorry for you, that you do not know where
Huesca is, that you do not even care, and that
you never heard of it before? I cannot say I
am ashamed for you. No, I certainly am not.
There is nothing disgraceful in ignorance of
Huesca. But now it seems to me, of course,
that people should be well acquainted with
Huesca. I am like the middy who used to say,
"You have been at Port-au-Prince, I suppose? "
because it was the only place he had touched at
in his only cruise. How strange it is that, on the
1st of April. 1882, I who write these lines was
in that gross ignorance of utter darkness about
Huesca, and was not ashamed, more than if I
had been in Paradise.

"Don't you know daddy?" said the school-
boy; "why, it is as easy as nothing to know
daddy."

NORTHWARD. 269

Huesca, my dear and ignorant friend, — more
dear to me because of my own ignorance and
yours, — was once, it seems, the capital of a
kingdom, if in those days the word " king " ex-
isted, or anything corresponding to it. As long
ago as Sertorius, whom you may remember in
Viri Romas, — that is to say, seventy-five years
before the Christian era, — that same Sertorius
had an establishment here, where he kept noble
youths, and educated them, they being, in fact,
hostages for their fathers' good behavior. In
memory of this boarding-school of his, the uni-
versity at this hour is called the University
Sertorio.

As in other countries, the literary atmosphere
of the university does not percolate through the
windows of the hotel. I am quite sure that the
only book in that hotel was a translation into
Spanish of the letters of Napoleon the First,
which letters I read, through my siesta hours,
not for the first time. Excellent reading they
are. There was also a Spanish pamphlet, per-
haps on sewing-machines, which some drum-
mer had left. And so clear was it to all parties
that no such thing belonged there, that, when
we left, at the last moment, a maid rushed down-
stairs, stopped the diligence, and passed the
tract into the hands of one of the ladies. For
all that, it was a decent hotel, and we fared well

270 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

there during the heated term of mid-day. It was
the hottest day I spent in Spain.

Strange to say, no one knew about crossing
into France. We could go to Jaca; we could
go to Panticosa, — to either place by diligence.
Beyond, the mountain wall was like the moun-
tain wall of a fairy tale. Had any one ever
crossed? Quien sabe ? Or how did they cross?
Qiticn sabe ? This is certain, that, if they did
cross, they never returned. Why should the
senor and the senoras inquire? Why should
they care?

Well, they did not care much. But, anyway,
they could, would, and did go as far as Jaca.

" But, surely, dear Mr. Hale, you are not
going to make us start without telling us some-
thing about Huesca?"

Not much. What good? If I told you about
the alabaster retablo, would you remember it
three days ? It is not as if you saw it with your
eyes. How queer it is that my afternoon walk in
Huesca should bring up the memories of a drive
in Ipswich, in Essex County. Few places can
be less alike ! I will compromise with you, loyal
reader, I will tell you a little story about Huesca.
And then, just before sunset, we will climb to
the coupe" of the diligence, and will all be
gone.

NORTHWARD. 27 1

DON RAMIRO, THE MONK-KING.

" Please do not go, papa," said the pretty
Inez. " You promised me that we might have
the birds out to-day. And I have kept this a
secret, papa, but I will tell you now. Every
day for a week I have started a flight of herons,
when I forded the brook by Sancho's. I have
saved them for you, papa."

Her father kissed the pretty girl. " You know
how glad I should be to take out the hawks, and
how glad I always am to ride with my pet. But
we must put it off again. The old fool has sum-
moned us to council. And it is so long since he
has done us this honor, that we must go. He
does not ask us to council when he wants to tax
our cattle ; but now that he is going to cast a
bell, his faithful lords are summoned. Good-
by, sweetheart." And he kissed her, and
jumped into his saddle.

" But, papa, you are not armed ! "

" Armed ! I should think not, for a five-mile
ride. Why, darling, I shall be back before sun-
set."

" But, papa," said the girl in tears, drawing
her last arrow, " I had such a bad dream last
night."

" I will kiss it away," said the laughing horse-

272 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

man ; and he bent and kissed the girl, and with
his attendants rode off to the city.

As he entered the council-hall an hour after,
a Celtiberian giant, hid behind the door, swung
his heavy double-handed sword with a skilful
curve through the air, and the head of the
Count Manresa fell upon the marble.

"Is not this a sudden call?" said the Mar-
chioness of Barbastro to her husband, the same
morning, as he pulled to pieces the fowl before
him, while his horse neighed at the door.

"Sudden? Yes — or no. It is sudden now,
because we are called at daybreak to be at the
palace at noon. But he should have summoned
his council two years ago. So he has been long
waiting."

" I wish I were not so nervous," said the
Marchioness. " If you went to court oftener I
should be more used to it. You have no gorget."

" No, the thing scratched me, and I took it off.
This is only a bit of ceremony, — something
about the cathedral. I wish you would tell Juan
to take all the lining out from that Lerida gorget
and put in something clean and soft. Good-by.
You need not sit up for me."

So the Marquis joined the Count of Lerida,
and they rode to Huesca, saying ugly things
about their monk-king, but glad that even cere-

NORTHWARD. 273

mony brought together the council again. Their
attendants chaffed each other and chattered, as
a staff will.

Arrived at the palace, they found Manresa's
attendants in waiting. Excepting him, they
were first.

Together they entered the patio. Lerida was
in full armor, and he was detained a moment
by a question from the chamberlain. Barbastro
passed on into the council-chamber; the Celti-
berian swung his sword again, and another head
fell on the floor.

For Lerida, a stout son of the soil tripped
him from behind. The instant he was on the
ground a heavy axe fell, and his head was
thrown into the council-room.

Three gallant Knights ride down the Road,

They use nor Spur nor Rein ;
In Laugh and Jest they little bode
That, on this Way their Steeds have trod,

They turn not back again.

They laugh and chat along the Way,

These noble Lords of Spam ;
No haste to go, no care to stay,
A dusty Road, a sunny Way,
And little heed the Three that they

Will ne'er go back again.

" Groom, take this Horse ; Boy, feed him well," —

Ah me ! a Caution vain !
Yet not one warning Voice to tell
18

274 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

How ends this Council of the Bell,
How each man falls beneath the Spell,
And goes not back again !

A flashing Axe, a headsman's Sword,

Three falling Trunks, and then,
With never Prayer or shriving Word,
Lies stark in Death each laughing Lord,

And none goes back again.

And so you may go on, gentle reader, accord-
ing to your skill in telling short stories, if by
any good luck this be your profession. The
time is the year 1136. The King of Huesca is
the monk-king, as he was called, Ramiro. He
has conceived a dislike for the nobles of his
kingdom, and he has summoned sixteen of them
to a council, that they may determine how to
make a bell of which the sound may be heard
through Aragon. By the ingenious device of
grouping the noblemen, which you have followed
in my three little stories, I have told you what
befell the first six who appeared at the council.

But I had rather not tell, in equal detail, the
fate of the next nine. You can do that for your-
self, according to your own method. Only,
when they arrive at the palace, the head of each
man must be cut off, and you must so manage
this that the reader shall be quite surprised. In-
deed, it should not be done twice in the same
way, if you can help it.

NORTHWARD. 275

You might have one party of four and one of
five. Or you might have the first party five,
and the second four. Or some writers would
have three parties of three each ; in that case
I should have one approach by the road from
Monte-Aragon, and another from the Ermita de
San Miguel, and another from the distant Tardi-
enta. I would have these late ; and I would
have Tardienta named from that lateness of
theirs.

I would have a ferryman caution the first party
that there will be a storm before long, and that
they had better go back without crossing. Then
Don Baltazar can curse him by his gods, and
Don Melchior can bid him stick to his last,
and Don Clement can slip an angel into his
hand. And he can put a hole through this
angel, and his daughter's daughter's daughter
can wear it to this day. Perhaps the second
party can see a flight of ravens, if you can
manage their croakings so as to be quite differ-
ent from the ferryman's. And the third party
can be hindered all along the road ; but the
Marquis of Tardienta shall cry that Satan him-
self is not strong enough to stop him nor cun-
ning enough.

Settle these details as you will ; but have all
the fifteen heads cut off before noon of that
bloody day. Now I will finish the story.

276 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

" Drag away the carrion," said the bad abbot
Frotardo, who had committed all this wickedness.
And the brutes dragged away the still bodies to
a field behind the castle. And they brought
forth sawdust and scattered it on the stones of
the patio. And the bad abbot sent out oats for
the horses, and water and cups of wine and
loaves of bread for the squires and grooms who
were sitting in the shade of the palace in front.
And he sent them word that the council would
be long, and that their masters would eat their
comida together.

But the bad abbot said to the monk-king,
" Has the devil taken Tizon before his time?
Why does not he come?"

Ah me ! there was no hope for Tizon. He
was late because his groom was late and his
squire was late, and when he came to the ferry
the ferryman was on the other side ; for, as
you have been told, he had crossed over with
Don Clement and Don Melchior and Don Balta-
zar. Then Tizon had tried a short cut through
the meadow, and his horse had been stalled, and
his squire had scarcely dragged him out again;
and they had been fain to return to the trav-
elled road again. But at last they had arrived
at the palace.

And, lo ! the grooms were feasting in the shade
and drinking from the wine-skins. And the

NORTHWARD. 277

horses had their bits slipped from their mouths,
and were eating the oats from nose-bags.

" The council still sits, my Lord," said Sebas-
tian, whom Tizon knew well. He was the squire
of Cervera, his nearest neighbor.

" So much the better for me if they are dis-
cussing such matters as their squires have in
hand," said the nobleman, laughing.

" Pshaw, I am stiff with riding. To say truth,
I am not in the habit of coming to councils."
And with this jest he pushed aside the curtain,
and stepped forward alone to the />atio.

The King himself, in a robe of ceremony, met
him.

" Welcome, my Lord," said the false monarch.
" You are late, but welcome."

Don Pedro hated the King; but he loved
ceremony, and was easily flattered. " Your
Majesty does me too much honor."

" Diego, Jeronimo, take off my cousin's ar-
mor. Your Grace will not relish our simple fare
if you are stiff with iron. Or would you wish
for water? "

But Monteagudo — that was his barony —
declined, and followed the King into the coun-
cil-chamber. The King pointed to the ceiling,
where in a horrid circle were arranged the fif-
teen bloody heads which had first fallen.

" This is the bell which we have been found-

278 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

ing, my Lord," said the King, " and your head
shall hang in the centre. With such a bell and
such a tongue I think all Aragon will hear. "

From that day to this, this vault has been
called " The Bell," and the traveller may see it
to-day.

No, dear reader, I would not have told that
horrid story in this jesting way had I believed
one word of it.

The room is there ; and it is called " The
Bell." That is quite foundation enough for a
Spanish legend, if you have only eight hundred
and fifty years to spin it out.

If you ask me, I think the name of the
vault has given rise to the story. And I do not
think that the story has given rise to the name
of the vault.

But if you ask me again why the vault was
called " La Campana," or " The Bell," there you
are too much for me. Quien sabef

CHAPTER XIX.

JACA.

And you must not stay here chattering on the
public square. Here are all the diligences ready,
and half Huesca is here to see us start. The
nice girl, as above, runs down with the sewing-
machine book, if indeed it were not a Pathfinder
guide. The host and the hostess wish us a pleas-
ant journey, and we wish them happy lives.
Another of those charming diligence rides be-
gins, such as I have tried to describe before.
Yes, it is the very road which Melisendra trotted
over, fearing the Moors behind ; but now it is a
perfect highway. In Huesca all the people come
out in admiration to witness our departure, and
well they may. The eight mules run like fury,
though the course is all uphill. Then comes
such a sunset as no man ever described, or will ;
and then, in the northeast, the moon, not full,
but large enough for us. Why will no one tell
us what are those wonderful lines in Schiller's
Robbers, how the moon rises when the sun goes
down ?

280 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

" Because we are in Spain. You must not
quote Schiller's Robbers in Spain."

Might you quote Don Carlos?

"Perhaps" — "Why not" — " Are you going
to sleep?" "Asleep in this moonlight — moon-
light — moonlight."

Somebody is asleep. They have all stopped
chattering. I believe they are all asleep.

They certainly are.

Whether we sleep or wake, the eight mules
forge on and the soft moon shines. And at last
the morning. The " mist of dawning gray" be-
gins to " dapple into day," and you know that
the miracle of life is to be renewed. The road
passes along by a strange battlemented wall, —
yes, Charlemagne passed that same wall, and
other princes near a thousand years before him.
Marcus Porcius Cato, your old friend of the
Latin Reader and of Viri Romae, built it some
two hundred years before the Christian era.

A few guards at the gate of the little city, to
ask the proper questions about luggage, and
then down the ladder we all climbed, with our
wealth of hand-bags and of umbrellas and
paint-boxes and drawing-blocks, and began to
intercede with the Fonda people of Jaca for
lodgings.

Perfectly civil were these people, but perfectly
inflexible. Lodgings ! The thing was out of

J AC A. 28l

the question. Lodgings for four? Utterly out
of the question it would be, were there but one
in the party.

This was satisfactory for four tired and hun-
gry people, three or four thousand miles from
their base, and very sleepy, in the gray of a
Sunday morning.

Was there perhaps any other Fonda?

"Another Fonda?" Clearly it was a miracle
that there was one.

" But evidently," said this writer, in that in-
different dialect which has been before alluded
to, " in a town as large as this there must be
some comfortable lodgings for ladies who are
tired. What matter if there be no other
Fonda? "

"What matter, indeed?" A brisk little man
in a blue blouse, whom I shall long remember,
had, in an instant, my carpet-bag, umbrella,
shawls, great-coat, and rug, and I dare not say
how many painting-blocks and travellers' easels,
in his arms, and said that, if we would only go
with him a few steps, the matter would be per-
fectly easy.

So we went, in the dead still of the narrow
streets, perhaps a quarter of a mile !

How grewsome it all seemed ! Never a crow-
ing cock was stirring.

When we arrived at the friend's whose house

282 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

he selected, with the greatest difficulty s*ome
one was waked. Blue-blouse disappears, we
all standing in the narrow street. After five
minutes blue-blouse returns, dejected. No lodg-
ings !

But there is another house where they will
certainly receive the senor and the senoras.

Here a second act, — same scenery and same
drop-scene. Similar denouement. But there
was yet another house known to blue-blouse,
and we should certainly succeed there.

While blue-blouse goes in a third time, and
wakes and pleads, and while we wait, the still-
ness of the dawn is broken by a fife, and then by
singing. In a moment more, five grave young
men, dressed in white from head to foot, but
with their clothes trimmed with black braid and
other ornaments, came solemnly dancing, now
backwards now forwards, swinging their casta-
nets high above their heads, and keeping careful
measure with the tune.

As we saw afterwards, this was a religious
ceremony.

Blue-blouse reappears. He has wholly failed
again. The excellent friends will not receive the
travellers. At which this writer waxes indig-
nant, and beats a retreat to the diligence, which,
fortunately, has not gone.

" What, ho there ! put these trunks on again.

J AC A. 283

If there is no room for travellers in Jaca, we will
go on to Panticosa."

Now we did not want to go to Panticosa. In-
deed, that was exactly what we had determined
not to do. A vile, stuck-up watering-place, half
French, half Spanish, for diseased people. This
was our imagined picture of it. Was that what
we had compassed sea and land to see, we who
had no diseases? And we, who had so cleverly
managed it that our diligence ride should be
only eight hours, were we now to have six more
rudely glued upon the end of the nine into which
the eight were lengthened ? It was sad to think
of! But, on the other hand, we could not sit on
the stones at Jaca as if we had all been Murillo's
beggars.

Thus was it, that, in accents of fine rage, the
chief said, " We will go to Panticosa."

At this moment another blue-blouse stepped
forward. I remember him, and shall, as if he
were the angel Uriel.

" They shall not go to Panticosa. They shall
stay here, if they stay in my mother's house."
This to the populace. Then to the porters,
" Leave those trunks where they are." Then to
me : " Senor, you will observe that every one is
very much engaged. This must be so, for all
the passengers ask for their chocolate, and they
must have it, as you see. But immediately the

284 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

diligences will be away again, and the passen-
gers. Do you and the ladies wait confidently.
I assure you that some rooms shall be found for
you, even if you stay at my own mother's."

Was not that hospitality? Of course we did
as we were bidden. We joined the chocolate
party. We even saw them take their places on
the diligence complacently and retire. At once
the forces of Jaca were directed to the accom-
modation of the four wayfarers ; and before
forty-eight hours were over, I think we had all
voted Jaca to be the most hospitable place in the
world.

Gradually that appeared to our crass hebetude
of northern dulness, which every one had sup-
posed that we knew before ; viz., that this was
the feast-day of Santa Osoria, and that half the
province was already assembled in little Jaca, to
assist in the grand ceremonies of the celebration.
These young men whom we had seen dancing
with castanets were to precede the silver casket
which contains the relics of the saint. Jaca was
crowded to its last corridor with friends and
neighbors, visitors who had come to the festival.
And upon that crowd we four innocents had
sauntered in, and had asked for lodgings as if it
were any common day.

So soon as we came to our bearings, all things
seemed simple, cordial, and easy.

J AC A. 285

Curious it is, I have no recollection that
blue-blouse No. 1 ever accosted me again, or
that I ever heard of him again. In England
certainly, and in America if he had been an
Irishman, he would not have left me till he had
secured a quarter-dollar for his good intentions.
But though I should gladly have paid him in
Jaca, I do not think that it occurred to him as a
part of the transaction. Certainly blue-blouse
No. 2, that brisk little man of affairs, never re-
ceived any fee, and would not have permitted
me to offer it. We were among self-respecting
people, who, as we had come to Jaca, wanted us
to think well of Jaca. Before I had done with
Jaca, I surmised that its inhabitants did not
think their home any less central than the in-
habitants of the Hub of the Universe think
theirs.

Long sweet naps, a nice almuerzo, and the
courteous Gregorio Mur, keeper of the Fonda,
gives us notice that the religious service at the
church is nearly over, and that the procession
will soon move. If we would like to see it, a
place will be ready for us on a balcony, where
we can see it well. Accordingly he leads us
through the dense crowd to the very best place
in the city, where the residents most kindly
place our party, in the very best seats, at the
best balcony to witness the whole pageant. Gre-

286 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

gorio Mur, be it observed, our kindly host and
guide, reminds you in his aspect of Robert
Collyer.

We are directly opposite the quaint old cathe-
dral ; the very oldest, I suppose, that we have
seen. It was founded by Ramiro in 814, and
is called by our dear Santa Osoria's name. The
cathedral of three thousand people, capital of a
province of perhaps thirty thousand, is not large.
But this is very solemn, of grave, Romanesque
architecture, and you walk through it with the
satisfaction of feeling that it meets the wants
and wishes to-day of the people who are here
to-day.

Already the chiefs of villages, bearing the
banners of their churches, were filing out from
the church, and taking their places in the little
square; for each church in the diocese is rep-
resented here, perhaps forty in all. Perhaps
some priest is present. Perhaps they have sent
down a silver ark, which contains some sacred
relic. Certainly there are two or four or more
stalwart men, chosen from among the better
farmers, or men of most mark in each village,
and honored with the charge of the standard
of the church. This standard is a handsome
banner of silk, red, white, green, orange, or blue,
embroidered with gold, and borne on a tall
stout staff, at least twelve feet high. It is no

J AC A. 287

sinecure, the bearing such a standard. The
bearers wear a uniform, which, seeing it there,
you call a white surplice. If you saw it in Fan-
euil Hall market, you would call it a butcher's
frock. They are well aware of the dignity of
their office, but stand talking and laughing while
they wait for the bishop and other officials to
appear. As I understood it, each banner was
separately blessed within the cathedral, where,
before this, a discourse had been pronounced
commemorative of Santa Osoria. So they did
not throng out tumultuously, but came out vil-
lage by village. At last, all was over in the ca-
thedral, and a large military band, with the garri-
son in full uniform, moved as the escort to the
ecclesiastical procession. The banner-bearers
took up the line of march, and the people
thronged along by their sides.

June the 25th, time high noon, latitude about
430. Readers in this neighborhood may im-
agine how nearly vertical was the sun, and how
little shade the houses, not high, gave, when
the streets ran nearly north or south. It was
pretty, therefore, once and again, when a trunk
of relics was borne along, supported by two
stout staves on the shoulders of four stout men,
to see how little children from the throng were
permitted to walk in the sacred shade below.
Indeed, there was, all along, a grateful recogni-

288 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

tion of the family relation, and wives and daugh-
ters joined the standard-bearers, and walked in
the procession as well as they.

At last came the great centre of attraction.
Reverently, and with dignity, our dancing friends
of the morning appeared, with their own musi-
cians. And as David danced before the ark,
when it was brought up in triumph from Philistia,
so these five young Aragonese danced in tri-
umph before the ark of Santa Osoria. Gener-
ally they danced backward, by way of showing
more honor to the saint. Their castanets beat
time, and the brave fellows never seemed to flag
in the hot hours of that long ceremonial. The
ark itself was, I think, the largest and most ele-
gant of all the arks. Eight men, I believe, bore
it — four before, four behind — on two staves
which ran through silver rings on the sides. It
was of silver, of the shape of a very old-fashioned
leather travelling-trunk.

Santa Osoria, R. V. Y. M., was a Christian
lady, a nun, I think, who fell into the hands of the
Moors, and was beheaded by them, I believe ;
but not until she had done many and great kind-
nesses to the poor people of these valleys, who
still hold her memory sacred. R. V. Y. M., as
you may have guessed, means Real Virgen y
Martir.

Around the casket of the saint the crowd was

J AC A. 289

denser than ever. Whoever could come near
enough threw a scarf or handkerchief upon the
silver, for a blessing. We had seen this done
when the other arks had passed ; but this was
the most sacred of all.

The bishop and other ecclesiastical dignita-
ries, in full costume, and the political governor
with his military staff, in full uniform, made part
of the gay and brilliant procession. At dif-
ferent places in it there were three large and
good military bands.

So we saw it form and file off from the plaza,
and when all had gone by, it was suggested that
we should cross to another point and see it again
on its return. Here we were again made wel-
come at the convenient rooms of the club. For
Jaca, though a city of only three thousand
people, maintains its club, which maintains its
reading-room. Here again, as foreigners, we
had the best place given us at the best window,
and again saw the pretty procession, and what
every one considered the most interesting feat-
ure, the solemn dance, as it passed by.

From the club we crossed to the open space,
which on another occasion would be the
ground for a bull-fight, and here again were
made welcome in the best balcony at the best
point of view for the close of the ceremony.

Directly in front of us, overlooking the great
19

290 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

square, was a lofty staging or platform, covered
with a canopy or awning, and beautifully deco-
rated. There were already assembled the bishop
and a few of the principal clergy, still in their
rich robes of ceremony. To the front of this
open platform was brought the precious cas-
ket which contained the relics of Santa Osoria.
The procession arranged itself in groups around
the square, and the dancing troop repeated, for the
last time, their sacred performance before the
casket. The people still pressed up, eager
to have their scarfs and handkerchiefs conse-
crated. The standard-bearers would drop the
long poles of their banners and hold them low
for a moment, so that the people might fix their
handkerchiefs to them, and then they would lift
up the staff so as to touch the casket, and, after
the consecration, would restore the prizes to
their owners. Meanwhile active priests, on the
right and left hand of the casket, lowered little
buckets with cords, and drew them up filled with
handkerchiefs and scarfs, touched these to the
caskets, and sent them down again.

But all this ceased for the moment, when, after
all the groups were in place, the bishop advanced
to the casket and opened it. An officiating
priest lifted out one of the elegant covers which
protected the relics, a beautifully embroidered
cloth of velvet or satin. This was displayed,

J AC A. 291

and laid on one side. Then another and an-
other were displayed, until thirty or forty of
these beautiful coverings had been taken out
and hung, one after another, upon the rail.
Then came a moment of hushed silence ; every
one in the great assembly fell on his knees and
crossed himself, and the relic of the saint was
lifted up and exhibited. What it was I do not
know; it was far too small to be discerned from
the place where we were.

At once there was a new rush forward with
articles to be consecrated. I saw an enterpris-
ing priest who touched to the relics two large
bunches of printed sheets, which were, I suppose,
lives of the saint, and were intended for circula-
tion. When this was all done, a new silken
covering was laid upon the relics, the others
were placed in the casket again, and it was
closed for another year. The procession took
up its march on its return, and the solemnity
was over.

It was most interesting that through the whole
day there was not one sign of discontent, dis-
satisfaction, or faithlessness. No one laughed
at the tossing of handkerchiefs, no one said an
unkind word, or showed any impatience. These
were a perfect two hours from the age of faith.

We retired to a lunch and a siesta. As the
afternoon closed, we walked out again. In the

292 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

shady space on the side of the cathedral young
men and women were waltzing, or dancing some
sort of saraband, to the music of a modest
little band. The streets and squares were alive
with a spontaneous fair which had organized
itself on the sidewalk. As the day passed away,
we could see groups of peasants gathering, with
the standard-poles fastened to their mules, and
the women and children clustering together in
their pretty costumes, to walk or to ride home.
The holiday was over.

We all agreed to make an early start the next
morning, that the artists might work while the
shadows were long and the air cool. We went
out from the quaint old archway, where the sen-
tinels now knew us to be peaceful townspeople,
and a pretty sight it was to see the people strag-
gling off for their day's work. The harvest of
wheat in the fields round the barn was nearly
ready to be cut. The picturesqueness of the
quaint old town, built for its three thousand peo-
ple, walled in by a wall, almost circular, — oh,
so exactly like Jericho or Ai on the old picture-
map of Palestine, — is something hard to describe
to an American who has not travelled. Outside
the walls the green, fresh country comes up,
as the ocean comes to the sides of a ship ; and
the town and the country mix as little as do the
ship and the ocean. Close to the walls on the

J AC A. 293

outside is a promenade, and the walk round
takes perhaps fifty minutes. Three or four gates
give ingress and egress, and apparently at only
one of these was the form of a sentry main-
tained. But perhaps when I passed he was
hidden.

There is a fort and garrison just outside, where
Spain maintains a small force, to watch this road
to France.

In this quaint old city of Jaca we were already
high in the Pyrenees. South of us, flanking the
very road by which we had come, was the bold
and beautiful mountain of Oruel, around which
cluster all sorts of legends and ballads. North-
ward the range of the Pyrenees, with tempting
gorges, piercing it here and there, makes a
magnificent horizon. Around you is what
appears to be a rich valley; certainly it is
productive under this diligent Aragonese agri-
culture.

Jaca boasts the establishment of the first Par-
liament in the world. To make good this claim,
you must of course say that a Roman Senate
was not a Parliament, and that a Saxon Witc-
nagemote was not one. These people boast that
the oldest Spanish fucro was theirs. Kfucro is
a bill of rights ; a sort of Magna Charta was this
fuero. I think the original parchment was pre-
served until the French invasion of 1809. The

294 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

French destroyed it, as they did thousands of
other monuments of Spanish pride and history.

This is hardly the place to enter into any
statement of what these fueros were. For prac-
tical purposes it is enough to say that in the his-
tory of Aragon they played a part not dissimilar
from that of the charters of the Dutch cities and
provinces in the earlier history of Holland. So
important were the fueros and similar constitu-
tional provisions in different parts of Spain, that
the Spanish monarchy before Charles V. must
be regarded as a limited monarchy, in which the
sovereigns were held in check by the provincial
assemblies, generally called the Cortes. In Ara-
gon there had grown out of this constitutional
system one very curious result. There existed,
quite independent of the king, another officer,
called the justicia, whose business it was to
determine whether the king did or did not over-
step the barriers imposed on him by the fueros.
It is to the authority of this justicia that allusion
is made in that proud oath, taken by the old
kings at Zaragoza, which I have quoted. So
soon as the Inquisition was established it came
into direct conflict with the fueros, and their
abolition is directly due more to the bad offices
of the Inquisition than to the personal efforts of
Charles V. and his successors.

In the days of King Ramiro, or of somebody

J AC A. 295

who reigned before him, there was a palace
here, of which some of the splendors still re-
main. How queer is the mix-up of this strange
country everywhere. We went to an apothe-
cary's shop, very much such a looking shop as
I might find in the business street, say of Cran-
berry Centre. We asked the " gentlemanly pro-
prietor" if we could see the celebrated fireplace
of the palace. He was all courtesy and atten-
tion, led us into the back of his shop, where
were stored the boxes and demijohns from which
the retail trade was supplied, then through a
storeroom for hay and oats, and then into the
half sitting-room, half kitchen, where his wife sat
knitting and a little girl was playing with a cat.
A fine large room, with a rough stone floor.
There is not in New England a floor in a dwell-
ing-house so uncomfortable. There is not in
America a fireplace as magnificent as the carved-
oak fireplace which we had come to see, nor a
ceiling as grand as the oaken ceiling above us.
The room, in short, was one of the state apart-
ments of some Gothic king who reigned here
perhaps twelve hundred years ago. The proud
Aragonese, who keeps the apothecary's shop,
had been, he said, approached by agents from
the Cluny Museum in Paris, who wanted to buy
his treasure for that collection. But Aragon
will not sell its wonders to France.

296 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The room is shorn of part of its former size.
Under a ceiling, just as magnificent, is now a
storehouse for oats and straw.

As the cant of criticism sometimes teaches us
that the Goths had nothing to do with Gothic
architecture, the Gothic ornamentation of this
remarkable fireplace is worth noting in passing.
I did not measure it. But on the right and left,
inside the space for the fire, eight or ten men
would have sat easily. The whole structure
occupied almost all of one side of a room thirty
or forty feet square.

He is a bold man who advises any one else
where to spend a holiday. One man's fish is
another man's poisson, and what pleased you
most is the very thing which will distress Richard
or Fanny. There is therefore a risk in saying
that a hotel is good or a prospect fine, if be-
cause you say so Richard goes there, and is put
in a room you never saw at the hotel, and has to
look out upon a pigpen. I will not therefore
advise any one else to go to my dear Jaca, of
which I feel as if I were the discoverer, or the
re-discoverer, after Marcus Porcius Cato as afore-
said. But I will say that we were all sorry that,
instead of two days there, we could not stay two
weeks. I do not believe that these would ex-
haust the possible excursions and lines of his-
torical study.

J AC A. 297

Does the reader perhaps remember that there
was some doubt how we might leave Jaca?
whether, indeed, we might not have to return
rather than have the trunks slide off the mules'
backs?

Let such doubts vanish, reader. At the table
cVJiote we met four French officers who had
come over from the French garrison, some
twenty or thirty miles away. They had come to
try the new road, and it was perfect. Perhaps
they implied that the Spanish part was not as
good as the French, but it was all as good as
need be. Sure enough, some spirit of prophecy
had goaded us hither. The National Road,
begun under Napoleon I.'s order in 1808, and
keeping along by slow manoeuvres ever since,
had been finished ten days before we came.
A new carriage for travellers was waiting for
us, and we were to be the first northward-bound
tourists.

I have often travelled in America with friends
who wanted to start at five o'clock in the morn-
ing. I cannot say that I ever wanted to. The
result, unless indeed a railway were concerned,
has been invariably the same. I have been on
the spot, ready to start, at five. Sooner or later
the other members of the party appeared.. Last
of all came the person who had proposed we
should move early. Then the horses came to

298 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

the door. Then the early starter discovered
that his trunk needed a key or his boot a lacing.
All parties stopped till this difficulty could be
remedied. And finally, about seven or later, we
got under way, with the feeling, which had bet-
ter never be expressed, that we might all have
stayed happily in bed.

But in Spain five o'clock means five o'clock.
Deeply ingrained into the habits of men's lives
is the great truth that a siesta of three hours or
more in the middle of the day will make good
any loss of sleep in the morning. So, even in the
land of postponement, men still rise early and
promptly. And on the day of our farewell to
Spain, breakfast was well finished, and the last
hand-bag or alforca well in the little travelling-
carriage, before half-past five, the hour fixed for
departure in a caucus held for considering that
subject the night before.

This travelling-carriage deserves a word. Sim-
ply, it was a little omnibus, big enough for
four persons, to which you attached as many
mules as occasion required. For our purposes
we carried a driver and a postilion. The car-
riage was wholly new, built for this service. I
think it had crossed the pass but once each way
before. In a dim way, the good woman who
owned it and the post-house at Jaca seemed to
know that considerable travel would cross the

J AC A. 299

mountains by this new road. As it is, in fact,
the only available road for wheel carriages from
one end of the range of Pyrenees to the other,
as Pau, with all its lazy tourist population, is
just north of Jaca, and not sixty miles away as
the bird flies, I cannot doubt that a large mass
of travel will pour down over the new road, and
will pass another tide flowing the other way.
The road is as good as the roads across the
Swiss passes. The Spanish part maintains the
old-time fame of the Spanish engineers. The
French part was well planned. When we passed,
it was not in as good order as the Spanish ; but
the working parties were then engaged in the
repairs, and the French administration is so
good that no traveller need fear discomfort.

We rode out of dear little Jaca by the gate
close by our fonda, with the good wishes of our
good Gregorio Mur, and of the same crowd who
had so cordially welcomed us on Sunday morn-
ing. Just outside is a complete little fort, built
to defend the pass against invasion from France,
— just such a fort as you read about as holding
one of the Italian passes against Bonaparte's
whole army. Even in peace it is garrisoned
by a few companies, which we had seen in the
procession of Sunday. We had been cordially
welcomed there on a visit on Monday. A pic-
turesque, pretty place it is, with wonderful pros-

300 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

pects from its bastions. Of all Jaca, indeed, if
I have given any idea of the quaint old city, the
reader will readily imagine the charm for the
artists of our party. You are surrounded with
mountains, you are walled in by crenellated
walls, you are defended by a fort in Vauban's
second or his last method, with bona fide draw-
bridge, moat, and portcullis, and every human
being you meet could be put into the chorus of
Don Giovanni in the opera, so picturesque is
the costume. Throw in kind hosts and good
enough fare, and what more can heart require?

As one ought to expect at the advance guard
of Spain, the regular hours were more Spanish
than ever in Jaca. Almnerzo, or breakfast, was
at one in the afternoon, and dinner at nine at
night. I survived Monday by sharing the name-
less meals of the diligence companies at and
soon after sunrise. I had then only to call al-
muerzo dinner, and to call dinner supper, and
I adjusted things to a New England basis.

The road, like all such roads, clings to the side
of a little mountain river, and with every half-
hour or so we came to one of the little villages
which we had seen represented in the pageant
of Sunday. Always a picturesque church,
sometimes a little narrow street of houses
crowded closely together. All houses are of
stone, timber being among the most precious

J AC A. 301

commodities. Why people should live here it
is hard to tell. But so it is 'hard to tell why
they live in Pelham or Prescott, why they live
in the valley of Sawyer's River or in the Pink-
ham Notch. But any of us who have ever lived
in these places are loud in declaring that there
are good reasons for living there. I am sure
that any of my friends who like as much as I do
to spend a month at Greely's, at Waterville in
New Hampshire, would join me in saying that
the reasons for living in such places need not
be explained to those who understand them
already, and cannot be explained to those who
do not.

The same wealth of wild-flowers appears in
the pass as gives glory and beauty to the Swiss
valleys. We made out many of the same flow-
ers which we knew in Switzerland. Often one
is tempted to go on foot, perhaps by the old
smuggling mule-track, across the neck of a long
zigzag around which the carriage is winding.
From such a foray you always returned to your
seat with a new bouquet of flowers. The south-
ern slope of the Pyrenees is very steep, almost
precipitous in places. Often you cannot guess
where the road will pierce the range.

Four hours or less of rapid climbing in this
most charming way brought us easily to Can-
franc, the most northerly hamlet in Spain on

302 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

this route. "Canes Franci" these excellent
people were called in old times, — " French
dogs ; " and hence their present name. " A nest
of smugglers," says our friend Murray; and
such, perhaps, they are. The rewards of free
trade may be among the reasons for wintering
in the valley. I do not know; and I will not
bear doubtful witness about my neighbor. " See
well to the provant," says the same authority.
But for this I had been negligent, and never
did people exert themselves more promptly
than did the authorities of the little Fonda to
provide for guests, wholly unexpected as we
were. Prompt they were, and successful.

Forty houses, more or less, crowded together
in one narrow street make the little town. A
quaint, queer tower, as old as Philip the Second's
time, the ruins of an older castle, a little church
on one side of a little plaza, all cry aloud for the
camera or sketch-book. But in our case the
vistas of the river valley, as you look up or as
you look down, with the precipices almost
vertical beetling above them, claimed every
moment that we could give to fine art.

After two hours spent in drawing and at
breakfast we were again upon our way. The
mules we take this time must carry us to Urdos,
which is the town corresponding to Canfranc on
the French side of the mountains. Up and up

J AC A. 303

by zigzags steeper than ever, and now beyond
the scattered cedars and firs which had clung to
the cliffs in places further down. The flowers
are now fairly Alpine, and every vacant place on
the seats of the carriage is heaped with them.
Higher and higher ! Some walking across by
the pedestrians, as the zigzags grow steeper ;
and at last the good-natured driver, who is
delighted at our enthusiasm, draws up a little
unexpectedly, and cries, Somport. Somport, you
see, means sumtna porta, the highest gate. We
are at the top of the pass, and the place is called
by the same name which Marcus Porcius Cato
called it by when he came over, two thousand
and seventy years ago.

A monument of stone a little demolished by
frost, as if it were a monument in honor of Mr.
Champernoun in some churchyard in Massachu-
setts, has a tablet which told the history of our
debt to the two Napoleons. It seems that this
road was ordered as an imperial road by a de-
cree of the first Napoleon on the twenty-second
of July, 1808. The inscription calls it the Impe-
rial Road, number 134. It was continued by
the third Napoleon. The same inscription says,
" On the fourteenth of July, 1 86 1 — finished — "
and here a blank. I suppose that in 1808 Na-
poleon may have expected that his brother,
the King of Spain, would build his half. But

304 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

things have not moved on exactly in that line,
and it has been left for the young Alphonso to
finish it in this year, 1882, for the special ac-
commodation, as I have said, of our enterprising
party.

Just above the monument was a growth of
Alpen Rosen, the first that we had seen. It was
nine years before, I think on the fourth of July,
that I had gathered the first I ever saw in blos-
som at a place strangely like this on the pass of
the Simplon.

Resting their mules by the monument were
some Spanish muleteers, whose load was several
bags of Spanish wine, from which they regaled
our drivers, who were as thirsty as people of
their profession are wont to be. The export of
Spanish wines into France is larger with every
year, and has been increased, I believe, since
the ravages of the Phylloxera. The guide-books
and other superficial critics say that if more
care were taken, the rough Spanish vin du 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 trav-
ellers do. As I have already intimated, I think
the Spanish farmer is as industrious a farmer as
can be found. And I do not believe that a peo-
ple who know how to make sherry need much

J AC A. 305

instruction from strangers as to the use of their
grapes or their wine-presses. A few weeks after
we passed Somport I saw that the London
shops announced this Spanish country wine for
sale at very low prices. It seems always to be
called Val de Penas. But it is not really the
product of any one valley. It is the color of Bur-
gundy, very rough, very sour, and very strong.

The Pyrenees are called Pyrenees now, and
apparently have been so called ever since the
creation of the world and the first making of
maps. The Greeks and Romans so called them,
with reasonable variations in the spelling. The
Phoenicians apparently visited the Pyrenees as
well as every other spot in Europe the name of
which may be derived from the Hebrew. These
roving voyagers, they say, seeing the country to
be covered with forests, called the whole place
Purani, after a word in their own language which
meant wood. The Phoenicians were the North-
men of the Old World, and there are few places
in Europe which do not bear the marks of their
passion for nomenclature. The student of the
Greek Reader fifty years ago will remember
that Strabo, or whoever furnished the simple
Greek geography for that volume, derived the
name from the Greek word pur, which lingers in
our fire, and referred it to the destructive fires
which then, as now, often wasted the forests.

306 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

The whole passage is curious enough in the
light of modern geography, as showing what
Strabo did, and what he did not, know. Observe,
loyal reader, that Strabo lived *in the reign of
Augustus, and was certainly writing as late as
the eighteenth year of our era. He says : —

" The Pyrenean mountains excel all other
mountains in their height and in their age.
There are many forests upon them, and it is
said that in old times the whole mountain
region was entirely burnt over by some shep-
herds, who were careless of their fire, and it is
said that by the fire raging continuously for
many days all the surface of the soil was burnt
off, and the mountains were called Pyrenees
[from pur, the Greek word for fire], from that
which had happened. And it is said that the
surface of the region burned flowed with a great
deal of silver, and that thus were produced many
streams of pure silver. And it is said that be-
cause the natives were ignorant of the value of
this silver the Phoenician traders, hearing of
what had happened, bought the silver for very
trifling returns of other merchandise. And thus
these Phoenicians made great profits."

Diodorus Siculus says that when the Phoeni-
cians had loaded their ships with silver, they made
silver anchors and left the iron ones. But in our
days the silver of Spain is found in the south.

J AC A. 307

If we are fond of home production, however,
we may believe that there was once a lovely
maid here whose name was Pyrcne, or something
sounding very like it, around whom enough
romance clustered to make it perfectly reason-
able and appropriate to name after her this great
mountain chain ; for the Pyrenees are a part
of the great mountain chain which, extending
from one end of Asia to the other end of Eu-
rope, forms a sort of axis for history to revolve
upon.

This great mountain system runs into the
Atlantic Ocean, and the Pyrenees are the most
western branch. They are not among the high-
est mountains in the world. Their highest peaks
are, I believe, somewhere about 1 1,000 feet above
the sea level. At Somport my little pocket
barometer read, I think, 9,300 feet. But they
penetrate Spain and Southern France with their
spurs, and they were as good as they could be in
the Middle Ages, when they became very con-
venient resting-places for the robber-barons who
infested that period of history. At present,
however, the robber- barons are dead, and their
descendants, if there be any, are kept well in
hand, so that travelling is comparatively safe.
The castles of these middle-aged worthies are,
however, left in a state of preservation quite suf-
ficient for the picturesque. Besides this, the

303 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

mountains are in themselves beautiful, and
would be more so if the inhabitants had not a
heathen fashion of cutting down the magnificent
forests which once covered the mountains even
more than they do at present. For the hunts-
man and the angler they are delightful, because
unvisited. The forests and the mountains have
much game, and the streams are filled with
salmon and trout. With these, however, we did
not meddle, save as they presented themselves
at breakfast, dinner, and supper.

And now we are in France. And the con-
trast is as sharp as is between a salt-marsh
and an oak-island upon it. Almost on the
moment we are shaded by hemlocks and firs,
and we dash like fury downhill over a road
which makes one think he is in the White
Mountains. I have never seen a mountain
region where the evergreen growth was so
high, yet I have been higher than Somport is,
in Switzerland and in the Rocky Mountains.
The Spanish side of the range is a series of bare
precipitous cliffs ; the French side is of com-
paratively gentle slopes, clothed almost to the
top with this magnificent green forest. No one
has explained this to me, and I can only guess
at a reason.

My guess is this, that the south winds which
have crossed Spain bring very little moisture,

J AC A. 309

because the country is arid and the sea far away.
But any north or northwest winds would pass
over France, which is not a dry country, or over
the Bay of Biscay, which is not near a hundred
miles from Samport as the bird flies. Passing
south or north the winds would leave such mois-
ture as they had upon the mountain ranges, and
they would leave it on the north or south side,
whichever they might strike first. I am dis-
posed also to think that the extreme heat of a
southern sun on the precipitous cliffs of the
southern side of the Pyrenees would in itself
arrest vegetation at the only season for vegeta-
tion. It certainly would prevent much conden-
sation of vapor on that slope during at least
half the year.

Now, vegetation depends on moisture as well
as heat. The southern side of the range seemed
to me burned dry, not by these fires of which
Strabo speaks, but by the southern sun of sum-
mer. If at the same time there were moist
winds and many clouds and much rain, here
would be tropical luxury. Failing moisture,
there is a burned look on the south side, and
not a palm nor an agave.

I could not but compare this arid aspect of
what I have called the southern slope, which is
a slope so steep that it is almost a precipice,
with the rich vegetation of Isola Bella in Lago

310 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

Maggiore, after one has crossed the Simplon.
To be sure, you have many miles of distance
there, between the beautiful island and the Alps.
The moisture of the lake and the neighborhood
of the seas supply in Italy just what is wanting
in Spain for such luxurious vegetation.

I wish some one who knows about ranges of
mountains running east and west in other coun-
tries, as in Hungary or in India, would tell me
whether there is greater richness of forest vege-
tation on the northern slope than there is on the
southern. It certainly is so on the Pyrenees.

The little French omnibus we took at Urdos
differed not materially from the Spanish coche
we had left, but we missed our friendly driver;
the new one had no personal interest in us, and
there were other passengers to share his atten-
tions. It was hard to shake off our Spanish pref-
erences and become French upon the spot.

But everything had turned into French : the
language, the money, the manners of the people.
The Alpine nature of the scenery gave place to
thick midsummer verdure ; there were no more
Alpen Rosen ; great spikes of foxglove and snap-
dragon showed themselves. The hedges were
draped with clematis, and the roadside, in fact,
looked like any New England one in July,
heaped with dust, but thick with leaves and
blossoms.

J AC A. 311

The road runs through the so-called Vallce
d'Aspe, which is Basque, and means simply, low,
shut-in country. It was in old times a little re-
public, respected by its suzerains, the princes of
Beam, who promised early to allow to the inhab-
itants their liberty of their own customs. Even
after Beam was joined to the crown of France,
these liberties were respected.

Just after leaving Urdos we crossed a bridge,
and then all our heads were stretched from the
windows and door of our little omnibus, to see
the oddly constructed portalct or fort of Urdos.
In a narrow defile, upon a huge rock, two or
three hundred feet high, rise walls which seem
to be a part of the mountain. A bridge with one
arch connects the road with the base of the rock,
which is ascended by zigzag steps cut in it, to
the fortress, placed on the very edge~of the per-
pendicular precipice. The wall is pierced with
casemates, and the effect is as if the natural rock
had been scooped out to construct the interior.
The bridge we crossed could be easily removed,
and then the pass would be wholly impractica-
ble, the guns of the fort controlling it. It was
finished only in 1848, after ten years' work.
Thus the French, while they have exerted
themselves to overcome the natural barrier, the
Pyrenees, between their country and Spain, by
building good roads, have not failed to take

312 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

precautions to secure themselves in time of
invasion.

Sometimes the walls of the valley shut in upon
us ; occasionally they opened to show glimpses
of snow-capped mountain-tops, well called pics,
as almost all of them are, for they are pointed,
like inverted icicles.

At Bedous we stopped a while to change
horses, which were mules, as usual ; and to
change our positions we alighted and went into
the little wayside inn, no longer a posada, and
found our fonda replaced by a buffet. It was a
delightful, rambling old house. The large room
on the left was a kitchen, with a huge fireplace
on one side, where a few sticks only were smoul-
dering in the sunny summer afternoon. A cat
and her family of kittens were grouping them-
selves about the hearth ; two were comfortably
resting in a saucepan on the dresser.

The landlady invited us to walk in her garden,
a large, rambling place, full of all manner of
old-fashioned flowers, running wild, without
much attention from the hand of the gardener.
Her pretty maid, with head tied up in a kerchief
we must no longer call a panuela, gathered
great bunches of flowers for the ladies, among
them a great Hypericum with yellow blossoms
an inch and a half across, otherwise just like our
little St. Johnswort, so common in the fields,

JACA. 313

" punctate with transparent dots." In spite, or
perhaps on account, of the saucepan-full of
kittens, the place seemed like a pleasant rest-
ing-place, and some of the party really dreamed
of returning to stay a month. We went up to
look at the bedrooms ; they were low, but neat
and attractive, opening upon a long piazza
which overlooked the gay garden. The land-
lady was eloquent, in hopes we would come
back. But, alas ! none of us ever saw Bedous
any more.

The way was almost level now, and the river,
when we saw it, moved tranquilly along with no
more brawling. Our spirits were falling, also, a
little ; for the day had been long and everybody
was tired. We kept ourselves up by wondering
what kind of place Oleron might be, and also
how we were to connect with the rest of the
world on leaving it; for our Spanish guide-
books abandoned us at the frontier, and we were
not yet armed with a Guide Joanne.

The sun had set, and lights began to shine as
we rattled into town on pavements which alone
showed us that we were approaching a large
city. A youth sprang upon the step of an om-
nibus as we turned a corner into a wide street,
and, thirsty for information, we ventured to ask
him, " Is it true that there is a clianin de fer at
Oleron?"

314 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

"Oh, certainly," he replied, and that there
would be a train that evening for Pau.

It was not worth while lying awake about, es-
pecially as we were so tired ; but we wondered
then, and have often wondered since, what was
the meaning of that French youth. There is no
railroad from Oloron anywhere, nor was there
any means of leaving it that night.

However, there was an excellent hotel, of the
kind that ceases to be when railways begin ; a
courtyard which was the home of diligences ; in
the house friendly people and neat maids, who
would talk either Spanish or French.

There will be a railroad some day from Pau to
Oloron, a part of the route which will make
communication between Paris and Madrid more
direct than at present. The road on which we
came, pushed further at each end, will leave
only a short distance to be crossed by diligence.
To this Oloron looks forward for its future great-
ness ; at present it is a prosperous town of eight
thousand inhabitants, whose chief industry is
making the woollen sashes and caps everybody
wears in that part of the world.

Oloron has the reputation of stanch Catholi-
cism. When Jeanne d'Albret sent them a Prot-
estant minister, the people rose with such fury
that he and his companions " had enough to do
to save themselves," says the chronicle.

JACA. 315

The next morning, having assured ourselves,
in all the languages we could command, that
" the boy lied," and that there was no railroad,
we found ourselves in our own open carriage,
bag and baggage behind, rolling along a broad
smooth road to Pau.

It was a drive of five hours, through pretty-
suburban country, the road lined with villas and
chateaux, nearer and nearer together as the
great watering-place is approached. The Pyre-
nees were receding from us ; our favorite Pic du
Midi d'Ossau, which had closed the vista behind
us all the day before, showed himself less and
less often ; for Pau is miles away from the
mountain chain, its claim to which is only
through the distant view of it, very beautiful, to
be seen from its broad terraces overhanging the
river.

Let no one, therefore, visit Pau with the idea
of penetrating the heart of the Pyrenees ; for
that he must go further on, to Pierrefitte or
Luchon, where railways leave him ; and to the
wonderful amphitheatre of Gavarnie, with its
lofty waterfall ; or pause content at pretty little
Luz, nestled down in its little three-cornered
valley, bristling with poplars.

Pau is as far from the Pyrenees as Berne is
from the range of the Jungfrau ; but the view is
as wide as the celebrated one from the terrace

316 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

at Berne, and in some respects it is similar.
Across the wide valley the blue shapes of the
mountains stretch like a line of smoke ; the lower
hills are covered with green, and the river Gave
runs sparkling between them. It is the climate
of Pau which attracts people. In winter it is
crowded with invalids and strangers. When we
were there it was la saison morte ; the streets
looked like Saratoga in October and Newport in
March. All the villas were a loner, with closed
blinds and neglected gravel-walks ; there were
plenty of rooms to be had at the hotels. The
view, however, was there ; and the gay winter
world must miss something of the midsummer
beauty which lay over the shining valley as we
saw it.

The chateau of Henry IV. was also to be
seen, to the deep interest of the young histo-
rian of our party, who viewed with emotion
the tortoise-shell cradle in which her favorite
monarch was rocked. It is the whole upper
shell of a huge turtle. The castle is full of
really interesting relics ; there are the Gobelin
tapestries of scenes in the life of Henry, as fresh
in color as oil-paintings of to-day; the view
from the windows which overhang the river is
the same as that from the terrace of the pano-
rama of the Pyrenees.

All these things we saw, but with somewhat

J AC A. 317

listless eyes, for we had not yet shaken off the
impression of Spanish scenes. Henry IV. was
not to us the hero who filled our imaginations,
still employed with Boabdil and the ultimo sos-
piro del Moro. Our ultimo sospiro, up at Can-
franc, where we crossed the frontier, was too
recent for us to interest ourselves deeply in the
cradle of the Bourbon kings.

And so, dear reader, it . is time for us to bid
each other good-by, with all thanks on my part
for the loyalty with which you have held to us
in good report and in evil. What banditti we
have escaped we shall probably never know.
Whether we might have gone by better routes,
who can tell till he has tried them? Possibly,
indeed, our whole theory of travel is wrong.
Quicn sabe? as we will say for the last time.
This is certain, it is not wholly wrong. However
it may be with the reader, I know four people
who do not think the journey could be improved
upon. They think that they never expended
seven weeks of time, and the proportion of
money belonging to it, to better purpose.

Before we fairly shake hands and say the last
word, let us see if we can answer some of the
questions with which we began. First, as to that
doubtful matter of language. Believe me, we
enjoyed more, learned more, and saw more, be-
cause we had no interpreter. At the end of two

318 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

or three weeks we found we were listening to
preachers, to other public speakers, with a rea-
sonable understanding of what they were aiming
at, and, by the time our journey was over, I
found I could join quite bravely in the conversa-
tion of a table dJwte. This we owe to Mr. Pren-
dergast and his " Mastery system." I do not
say, after six months, that one does not forget
the language as readily as he learned it ; but I
think I should very soon come to my bearings
again if I were in the West Indies or in Spain.

Second, as to that matter of climate. Must
a person give up Spain because he cannot go
there in winter?

This is certain, that the Spaniards themselves
live there all the year round. They would be
very much surprised to be told that their coun-
try was uninhabitable in June, July, or August.
It is also certain that the railway trains run at
all parts of the year. The people who carry on
that business would be surprised if you told
them that travel was impossible.

As the reader has seen, we did our best to fall
in with the habits of the country. Among those
habits, foremost, I might say, is the determina-
tion not to go abroad in summer in the four hot
hours, between eleven and three. If possible, a
Spaniard would extend those hours. In travel-
ling, it is not always possible to keep up this

J AC A. 319

determination. And in Spain, as in all other
countries, a railway carriage, between two and
four in the afternoon, is about the hottest place
you can find, unless you be in the business of
rolling iron.

But it will generally be in your power to avoid
travelling in the siesta hours. For instance, we
crossed from Granada to Jaen before one, and
at four, or thereabouts, resumed our journey.
So we crossed from Zaragoza to Huesca before
ten, and at six resumed our journey. The peo-
ple of the country do not like to travel in the
heat more than this estimable reader does, and
they arrange for their convenience in preparing
their schedules quite as much as they do for his.
As I said in an early chapter, there is apt to be
only more night travel than one likes offered
to him. And one does not suffer from heat in
travelling at night.

The reader, of course, will observe that the
high sierras of the south and the Pyrenees on
the north offer the same summer advantages to
tourists, or people seeking rest, which mountain
ranges always offer.

About summer travelling, one general remark
is to be made to Americans. Our notions about
it are not the same as those of the English trav-
ellers who make most of the European guide-
books. President Felton said to me, some

320 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

twenty years ago, that he had always found sum-
mer the best time to travel, even in the south of
Europe. He spoke particularly of Greece, where
he was quite at home. Of course you must be
careful, you must choose your time. But you
have the great advantage of the long days. And
when your business as well as your pleasure is
to see things, it is certainly well to have daylight
in which you can see, and to have as much of it
as is possible. My verdict, after seven weeks of
May and June, would be the same.

So, I think, would be that of most Americans,
not unused to hot summers at home. We should
not hesitate to take June, or even July or Au-
gust, for a journey through the mountain parts
of Virginia, or to go to the caves of Kentucky.
We should expect to be careful at mid-day. But
we should know that long and delightful morn-
ings and afternoons would be our compensation.

And now comes the question which every-
body puts to me, the political question : " Will
they pull through?" I think we are all in-
terested in the reply to this. We hate the
Spaniard, in a certain sense, as Drake and
Hawkins and Amyas Leigh hated him. But
this only means that we hate Charles V. and
Philip II., — that we hate lying and treachery,
the Inquisition and its iniquities. We love Co-
lumbus. We are personally grateful to him,

JACA. 321

every man, woman, and child in America, because
we were born where we were born, which we
owe to him. And, after travel in Spain, at best
one comes to our Isabella the Good. Were
we beginning to take an interest in Mexico,
where dear old Judge Sewall thought the ter-
restrial paradise was, we cannot but see how
much we owe to Spain. We see how every
traveller is fascinated with the country. And so
every one asks me, "Will they pull through?"

Well, I am no prophet. Sometimes I wish
I were, and then again I am glad I am not.
I observe that people never believe true prophets
in their time ; they generally stone them. On
the other hand, there is the highest authority for
turning a cold shoulder on false ones. Into the
business of prediction I go not, though it is often
my pleasure to do my best in other lines of
prophecy. This is certain, that you cannot help
hoping much from a people so industrious as
the Spaniards, and so temperate. The master
evil of drinking, which is the worst evil England
has to meet, is not their evil in Spain. Charles
V. laughed at them because they were drinking
all the time. But they had the wit to drink
sugared water.

On the other hand, you cannot hope much
from a people who are well sick of their religion.
And I am afraid the Spaniards are. Yet Buckle

322 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

and the rest say they are a superstitious people.
If I judged from what I saw in our dear little
Jaca, I should say that there was implicit and
reverent faith ; and I could sympathize with
the Ultramontanists, who beg me to let it alone.
But I must not judge from Jaca. I must judge
from Madrid and Seville and Granada. And
I am afraid that they are sadly in need of some
sort of Wesley or Moody or George Fox to give
them a sense of the real intimacy of God with
man. In my notion, some layman will do this
business for them better than can any man who
has passed through the grinding oppression of
the Catholic priesthood, and is so far disabled
from speaking, man-fashion, to his fellow-men.

I have spoken rather lightly of their politics.
But here, as I owned, I have little more than
that superficial knowledge, very nearly worth-
less, which any man has who reads newspapers
alone. I had no good chance to sit down and
talk with any of their own men of affairs about
the real state of the country. The foreign mer-
chants, whom I did see a good deal, are, I think,
in any country, the last men to give you a true
idea of its affairs.

They are still in the era of talk. It is indeed
a pity, to repeat a fine phrase, that " their lan-
guage lends itself to oratory." The trouble with
the Irish people is that their language lends

J AC A. 323

itself to oratory, and their leaders cannot lead
them to any purpose, because they give up to
blatherskite what was meant for mankind. Be-
hind all this talk in Spain there is certainly
much work done. The post-office is bad. Per-
haps all travellers say that of all post-offices.
But-of other administration, the figures I have
already cited tell a not unfavorable story. And,
as I am constantly saying, industry and temper-
ance in the rank and file must tell.

Do not let us be deceived by mere Madrid
politics. That would be the same mistake which
all Englishmen make about America. They
suppose Washington is an American London.
They suppose that we are as much excited about
a change in the cabinet as they would be if Mr.
Gladstone's cabinet changed. Now, we are not.
Even the " twopenny shrieker," anxious to sell
to-day's paper, cannot pretend to that interest.
We are interested in home affairs. Just so with
Spain. Remember, that is a federate kingdom
still. All the centralization of four bad centu-
ries has not broken up the love of home and
home affairs. There is no such procession of
magnates with their families to any " season " at
the capital, as you see in England. There is
no pretence that Madrid is Spain, as men say
that Paris is France. I am apt to think that
the creation of Madrid was a mistake from the

324 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES.

beginning. But whether that be so or not, the
existence of Madrid does not destroy vigorous
life in the provinces; and, by a very sensible
system, much of their local administration is re-
ferred to local authorities.

A man might fancy at Madrid that all Spain
was given up to office-hunting. So a man might
say of America at Washington. But America is
not given up to office-hunting, and I hope Spain
will not prove to be.

I met men of energy and sense who were hard
at work on the problems of education. A long
and hard future is before them. But I would
ask for no better future than those Spanish
boys. Give them, what the church has not
given them, teachers who want to have them
think, who do not mean to do their thinking
for them, and they will have a better chance
than their fathers. And so will Spain have a
better chance than she has had. You and I,
dear reader, do not think the worse of her
people because they call each other cabal-
lero, and because they can do a favor without
expecting a fee. And certainly there is hope
for a people of whose country even the grumb-
ling English guide-books confess that a woman
may travel alone in any part of Spain, and shall
not anywhere be in any danger of insult.

INDEX.

Abdurrhaman, 50.

Abyla, 86.

Academy of Fine Arts, 236.

Academy of History, 161.

Administration, 182.

Admiral Fox, 117.

Africa, 84.

Agricultural Society, 187.

Aix, 20.

Alcala" de Hen&es, 240.

Alcantara, Doctor of, 241.

Alcazars, 40, 42, 53, 56, 154.

Algeciras, 84.

Albania, 92, 233.

Alhambra, 61, 93, 114.

Almuerzo, S8.

Alonzo Cano, 67, 222.

Amadis of Gaul, 89.

Americanists, Congress of, 163.

Amicis's Italy, 48, 211.

Arabian Nights, 53.

Aragon, 256.

Aranjuez, 209.

Archbishop Turpin, 17.

Armory of Madrid, 218.

Army expenses, 173.

Arroz a la Valenciana, 114.

Art School in Seville, 67.

Atrium, 150, 210.

Bad Queen, the, 182.
Baetis, the, 45.
Baeza, 148.
Barcelona, 268.

Basques, 28.

Bayonne, 20.

Bedous, 312.

Bell, the tale of the, 27S.

Bernardo del Carpio, 27.

Bishop of Spain, 192.

Bishop Sisibert, 215.

Bishop Turpin, 17.

Boabdil, 21S.

Bordeaux, 14.

Boston Public Library, 160.

Buckingham Smith, 162.

Buen Retiro, 220.

Burdigala, 16.

Burgos, 28.

Cabrera, Don Jos6, 192.
Cadiz, 80.
Calatayud, 232.
Calcografia, 238.
Calderon, Madame, 184.
California discovered, 6.
Canfranc, 301.
Canon Alonzo, 214.
Caradoc, 23.

Cardinal Xinienes, 215,240.
Carlist War, 266.
Carlos, Don, 183.
Castelar, 1S0.
Cathedrals, 66.
Cavour, 170.
Charles V., 52, 165.
Chariot, 18.
Cid's sword, 219.

326

INDEX.

Civil service, 159.

Clarimunda, 18.

Coena, 88.

Columbian Library, 65.

Columbus, 71.

Comida, 88.

Complutensian Polyglot, 241.

Congress of Americanists, 163.

Contreras, Senor, 96.

Cordova, 40.

Cortes, 174.

Cuesta, 208.

D'Aspe, 311.
Dax, 20.
Dejeuner, 88.
Democratic-Dynastic, 180.
Diligence, 134.
Diodorus Siculus, 305.
Documentos Ineditos, 162.
Don Gayferos, 238.
Don Quixote, 43.
Don Ramiro, 261.
Durandarte, 27.
Dutch pictures, 222.

El Dia, 1 So.
El Pilar, 258.
El Zagal, 90.
Esplandian, 89.
Exports, 176.

Fans, 245.

Ferdinand and Isabella, 132.

First Parliament, 293.

Flint-locks, 219.

Folk-lore societies, 65.

Fonda, 41.

Fontarabia, 21.

Fortuny, 107.

Fox, Admiral, on Columbus, 117.

Fra Agapida, 117.

Franklin, 14.

Fueros, 293.

Galleries of Madrid, 24.
Garcia Fernandez, 76.
Garibaldi's death, 180.
Gaspacho, 114.
Gay's Pictorial History, 6.
Gens d'armes, 137.
Gibraltar, 84.
Gothic blood, 177.
Gothic church, 193.
Goths, 11.
Goya, 226.
Granada, 72.
Gregorio Mur, 2S5.
Grice, Joseph, 220.
Guadalajara, 243.
Guadalquivir, 45, 71.

Henry IV., of France, 317.
Herrera, Senor, 176.
Horticultural Gardens, 187.
Hotels, 62.
Huelva, 74.
Huesca, 268.
Huon of Bordeaux, 17.
Hydrographical Bureau, 160.

Impluvium, 150.

Inglis, Miss F., 185.

Inquisition, 65.

Irrigation, 47.

Irving, Washington, 94, 114.

Irving's, Washington, Granada, 83,

218.
Isabella II., 146, 171.
Isabella Salon, 226.

Jaca, 266, 278.
Jaen, 134, 147, 179.
Joshua, Book of, 10.
Jubarra, 220.

King Alfonso, 182.
King Ramiro, 219, 294.

INDEX.

327

La Mancha, 43.

Landfall of Columbus, 117.

Landscape of France, 15.

Lathrop and Reinhart, $}, 211.

Laurent's photographs, 23S.

Leonardo da Vinci, 222.

Leparrto, Battle of, 219.

Liberalism, 183.

Libraries, 160.

Lockhart's ballad, 32.

Loja, 91.

Madrazos, the Senores, 222, 227.
Madrid, 36.
Magerit, 229.
Malaga, 80.
Manzanarcs, 249.
Maria de Rabida, 75.
Marshal Serrano, 179.
Martial, 210.

Martines, Senor Don Diego, 18S.
Mastery system, 9.
Mayoral, 135.
Medinacoeli, 233.
Melisendra, Princess, 264, 279.
Melons, 177.
Moschena, 75.
Mosque of Cordova, 57.
Munoz's Collections, 162.
Murillo, 62, 222, 224.
Murray's guide-books, 34.
Museums, 218.

Napoleon I., 160, 219.
National Library, 161.
Naval expenses, 173.
Navarrette, 115.
Newspapers, 166.

Oleron, 313.
Orchata, 230.
Orleans, 14.

O'Shea's guide-book, 34.
Osoria, Santa, 284.

Pacific Ocean, 6.
Paco, Perro, 198.
Palos, 71.

Panticosa baths, 266, 283.
Pau, 315.
Perro Paco, 198.
Pertinax, 210.
Philip 1 1., 2ii.
Philip IV., 165.
Philippine Islands, 173.
Pinzons, 72, 76.
Pitcheries, 19.
Politics, 178.
Polyglot, 241.
Post-houses, 137.
Postilion, 13S.
Prado, 229.
Prandium, 87.
Prendergast's system, 9.
Prescott, W. H., 1.
Protestant Church, 118, 131.
Public works, 173.
Pyrene, 307.
Pyrenees, 305.

Queen Isabella, 68, 182.

Rabida, 75.
Raphael, 222.
Regnault, Henri, 107.
Reinhart's drawings, 33.
Republic, 180.
Ricci (the excellent), 158.
Roman antiquities, 15.
Roman Catholic Church, 68.
Roman mins, 16.
Roncesvalles, 23.
Roswag's guide-book, 223.
Royal Library, 160.
Rubens, 222.
Ruskin, 225.

Sachetti, 220.

Saint Anthony's vision, 66.

328

INDEX.

Saint Christopher, 212.
Saint Ildefonso, 215.
Saint John's Day, 267.
San Domingo, 57.
Serrano, Marshal, 179.
Sertorius, 269.
Seville, 56, 221.
Sierra Rallo, 134, 144.
Siesta, 63.
Siete Suelos, 98.
Siguenza, 231.
Somport, 303.
Spanish Protestants, 131.
Spanish Republic, 180.
Stilts, 21.
Strabo, 306.

Talavera de la Reina, 207.
Temperance, 232.
Teutonic races, 12.
Tiles in Seville, 221.
Tinto River, y^.
Toledo, 206.

Triclinium, 150.
Trifolium incarnatum, 15.
Turpin, Archbishop, 17.

Universitad Sertorio, 268.
Urdos, 308.

Val de Penas, 305.
Valladolid, 159.
Valle, Marques del, 164.
Vandyke, 222. w
Vega, 92, 95, 137.
Velasquez, 223, 239.
Villa Nueva, 221.

Wild-flowers, 301.
Worship, 118.

Xeres, 80.

Ximenes, Cardinal, 194.

Zagal, el, 135.
Zaragoza, 247, 267.

University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

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