Later in the afternoon, the weather continuing to clear, I drove
with a French gentleman—we were mutually unknown—to the cascades
lying not far to the southeast. Tlemcen is posed at a somewhat high
elevation on the last spurs of the ranges that encircle and dominate
it from behind, and faces a great plain, bounded with distant blue
mountains on the sides, and having the Mediterranean at its far
limit, whose gleam can be seen only on fair, clear days. It is a
spacious prospect; and the near view in which we drove by a rising
serpentine road was finely mountainous—dolomitic crags on the
right, and on the left a deep ravine denting the plain whose gently
sloping plateau had many a time been a chosen battle-ground. Birds
flew about the heights and verdure clothed the scene. The geological
formation lends itself to numerous living springs; the upper
limestone rests on sandstone, which in turn lies on marl and clay,
and the mountain rainfall is thus caught in natural reservoirs,
which issue in innumerable outlets in the porous surface. These
successive ranges of the extreme North African shore are, in fact,
a continuation of the hills of Grenada, with which they form a great
half circle, centred at Gibraltar, and with its hollow turned toward
the Mediterranean; it is the country of the Moroccan Riff, and the
character of the landscape on the African side is precisely the same
as in Spain—it is Andalusian scenery. As we drew near our goal,
the rocks took on more distinctly the picturesqueness of outline,
due to long erosion; they had a look like natural ruins high in air,
and opposite, just beyond the cascades, a superb cliff mountain
filled the lower sky.
We passed through a little garden to the foot of the fall. It was a
grotto scene. The water issued in masses from low cavernous walls
and recesses over whose broken floors and spurs it poured. It was
not a simple waterfall, however, that we had come to see, but a
succession of cascades that fell from shelf to shelf far up the
precipice. The whole scene was robed in new-fallen snow, and the
way wet and slippery; but the ascent was easily practicable by a
path that led up the incline, with many a gyration, often dipping
into the bed of a flowing stream and mounting by the rocks in the
midst, often too steep and slippery to climb without the friendly
aid of bushes, grasping hands and canes. But one scrambled up,
and the running water underfoot, snow and icy slides, only gave a
wild tang and gentle touch of adventure to the rather breathless
labor; and every little while one stopped and looked below into
the deepening ravine, or approached the falling waters in some
new aspect, till we came out at the summit of the upper cascade,
where it poured beautifully down in the midst of a cirque of
pointed rocks that rose from an indescribably fantastic mass
of juts and hanging eyries, as it were, all clothed and thick
with vegetation, vivid and bathed, inexpressibly fresh, trees
and shrubs and flowers and vines, an exuberance of plant life;
and the glittering cascade fell spraying far into its rocky heart
and sent back mellow music from the depth. “It is a landscape of
Edgar Poe,” said my companion. I was startled for a moment, but
a glance assured me that the aptitude of his remark was unknown
to the speaker—it was only a spontaneous tribute to genius,
which perhaps the casual presence of an American had helped to
germinate. But, indeed, the impression of the scene could hardly
have been better given than in those words. It was “a landscape of
Edgar Poe”—just such a one as he would have chosen as the scene
of one of his romances, as my companion went on to say; it was _sui
generis_, fantastic, a marriage of the garden and the wilderness,
not without a touch of _diablerie_, the suggestion that would make
of such a retreat the haunt of Arabian fancy, primitive tragedy,
and enchanted legend. It had the formal character of romance and
the atmosphere of natural magic; a place where _unearthliness_ might
find its home. That was the Poesque trait that the random suggestion,
perhaps, overdefined. This scene, however, was not all, as, indeed,
our ears warned us; and crossing a narrow crown of land toward the
muffled roar, we saw another falling river; the slender column of
wavering waters came from a great height, sprayed and united, and
rushed with a flood of force and speed to join the waterfall below;
it had the beauty of something seen against the sky, in contrast with
what was seen below against the earth; it was a unique combination,
and the only time I have ever seen the junction of two rivers by
the waterfall of one flowing into the waterfall of the other.
We went by an upper path to the high viaduct of a railroad that
crosses the deep glen at that point, and thence commanded the
broad expanse of the seaward plain with its near amphitheatre of
mountain ranges, and Tlemcen lying below on its headland among its
orchards. The reason why it grew up, and stood for centuries, was
plain; it is the key of the country. It seemed, and is, a garden
city; and as we walked or scrambled down the looped pathway over
the terraced face of the hill on that side, and drove on round the
circuitous road and back on our track to the city, I was most struck
by the endless orchards lying beneath us on the bottom-lands at the
foot of the ravine, and others through which we passed; and during
all my stay I saw them—orchards of orange, lemon, almond, peach,
and pear, and apple trees, and olives, and especially cherries, in
profusion everywhere, and among them the constant sound of running
waters from the springs.