really Spanish, or rather Castilian, look. Creixell, especially, with
its massive church and great square building of stone standing haughtily
on a hill of wall-terraces sprinkled with carob-trees, and with its
houses the colour of the soil, has all the air of a little Toledo. Early
on an autumn morning it may be seen reflected, with every house and
window, in a blue lagoon hundreds of yards from the village and
separated by sandbanks from the sea. The olives and vineyards now extend
to the shore, and above San Vicente great white country-houses stand
among orchards and olives. After Creixell there are but two villages,
Torredenbarra and Altafulla, before Tarragona, the second coast-town of
Catalonia. Here, indeed, the sun beats with a fiery strength; here,
indeed, the Mediterranean is “crystalline,” and “the lightning of the
noon-tide ocean flashes.” Here is excellent firm sand for bathing and,
swimming far out, the sun is still seen shining through the transparent
water on the waved sand below. At the end of September the season is
over, yet the days are still almost too hot, and the deep blue of the
bay and the long purple line of hills to the north-west are
indescribably beautiful. Tarragona, the favoured city of the Romans, is
the possessor of many noble Roman ruins, and wonderful Cyclopean walls,
and its outline, seen against the sky from the road leading to Tortosa,
is one of the most magnificent in Spain. The town and its neighbourhood,
as well as the whole coast of Catalonia is, perhaps, not as well known
as it deserves. In autumn, if the days and even the nights are hot,
there is always a refreshing coolness in the early mornings; the people
are, as a rule, pleasant and courteous; in some villages many speak
Catalan only, and at times, catching a word here and there, one may
think oneself to be in Italy.
X
AN EASTERN VILLAGE
There is no cloud in the clear March sky, filled with radiant light.
Beyond the dark green of orange-trees and grey olives lies the sea, a
faint line of blue. And, to the west, the mountains of bare rock are
faintly purple, looking frail and brittle in their clear but distant
outlines. A herd of goats passes slowly down a wide river-bed of smooth
white stones, with no shred or vestige of water. Lines of aloes and tall
reeds grow along its banks, and on either side peasants dressed in black
are at work in the fields, ploughing with single mules between the brown
stems of vines recently pruned, or pruning the orange-trees and olives.
Bundles of vine and olive twigs lie ready to be carted to the village
for fuel. Women in dresses of white and pink and scarlet are hoeing the
green corn. The pear- and peach-trees are in flower, and the almond-trees
fully arrayed in freshest green. At intervals, wells or _norias_ explain
the green fresh look of the country, so different from the burnt
desolation of the waterless regions further north. For Oropesa, the
neighbouring village, is but some sixty miles north of Valencia, and is
bordered on the one side by the full fertility of the Valencian plain,
though on the other it is surrounded by barren hills. In each _noria_ a
long crooked branch forms the handle to the iron wheel and to this a
mule is tied, and as the mule turns, the wheel revolves with a slow
clinking sound, and the long earthenware jars (_arcaduces_) attached to
the wheel gush water into a trough and so by small channels of dry earth
into the fields of brown and reddish soil. A path leads through green
fields and clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields further
south the last oranges have been gathered, and thousands of pearl-shaped
buds tell that the trees before long will be covered with a glistening
snow of scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign
resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with more vivid distinctness
than when the sun blurs them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly
visible only in the level light of its rising or its setting. The trees
are bowed with fruit, and the laden branches are propped up from the
ground. The thronging oranges glow in myriad spheres of gold, here and
there lie golden mounds of gathered oranges, and below the trees the
ground is a strewn pavement of gold. On every side beneath the trees may
be seen a magic land of myriad golden lamps; single or in trefoils and
clusters of seven and ten and twenty, the oranges hang within a few
inches of the ground. Hundreds of yards away through intervals of trees
appears the same foison of gleaming fruit, and the air is all scented
with oranges. From time to time a light wind blows beneath the trees,
and the twigs with their burdens of crowding oranges sway heavily to and
fro, like slowly swung censers of burning gold. But near Oropesa the
oranges are comparatively few. The village is built on a steep
precipitous hill of grey rock, crowned by the ruinous walls of a great
castle. The houses clamber roof over roof, in ragged disarray up the
rock. They are of yellowish-brown stone with rough cement, and mostly
innocent of glass, but have a touch of whitewash in front, so that they
wear shining morning faces to the rising sun. In the mistless radiant
mornings the village stands out clearly, its sharp rock rising sheer
from the plain. The sea beyond is silver, and on the other side every
wrinkle in the rocks of the grey mountains is distinctly visible. There
is no sound but the occasional voices of children, the clink and clang
of a forge-hammer, the crowing of a cock, or a faint crystal crash of
waves breaking; but from time to time there is a dry rumour of wheels,
and the cry of a man to his mule as he passes down the road in his cart.
Wrapped in their plaids against the keen morning air, the peasants pass
leisurely in carts and on mules to work in the fields until the evening.
At dusk the slow procession returns, with many a greeting and _bona nit_
and smiles of sunburnt wrinkled faces. Thin lines of blue smoke go up
from swiftly flaring fires of vine twigs and rosemary and dry plants
gathered from the hills, and an hour or two hours later Oropesa is
given over to sleep and the silence of the stars, broken only by the
deep rhythmic cry of the _sereno_ calling the hours. To the south a road
goes up through grey rocky hills with thyme and dwarf-palms and cistus.
The bare smooth rocks have a metallic ring, and there is no sign of life
save for a herd of goats far above, the goat-herd with his plaid and
wide felt hat clearly outlined on the sky, and the sound of his flute
distinct in the solitude of the hills, utterly silent save for the
silver tinkling of goat-bells. No water can remain on these rocky hills,
it pours immediately away to the plains beyond, where, by a stream bed
barely a yard wide, a pillar tells of those who perished there in 1850,
in “the _diligencia_ carried away by the waters of the torrent.” Though
Oropesa now has a railway station, the _diligencias_ still ply between
it and Castellón and Torreblanca, and it might be fifty miles from any
railway, so primitive and self-centred is its life. Occasionally comes a
sunless morning with a quiet grey sky, rare on the east coast of Spain
except in the days of early spring. The sea lies motionless and grey,
with pale reflections of light in coils and patches of gold. So still is
the air that the quiet piping of birds among the olives falls like a
stone in hushed waters. As the day advances the mountains, which earlier
were mingled and lost in the grey of the sky, grow more distinct, till
towards sunset every line and crevice in their sharp ranges becomes
marked, and the overhanging mist of cloud melts away into the grey of
evening, sprinkled with the gold-dust of the stars.
XI
OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN
The Mediterranean off the coast of Spain is not always calm. Sometimes
the east wind, the _Llevant_, lashes the waves to fury, and the shores
along the villages and towns are black with lines of fishing-boats that
dare not put out to sea. But for weeks together it is “lulled in the
coil of its crystalline streams,” and the sun rises and sets across a
silken plain of blue. In such weather a journey along the coast has a
wonderful freshness and a fascinating charm. Again and again the
traveller recalls the magic of those lines of the old romance:
“Quién hubiese tal ventura,
Sobre las aguas del mar,
Como hubo el conde Arnaldos,
La mañana de San Juan!”
“Oh for a chance as happy,
Where the deep sea waters swell,
As on the morn of St. John’s Day,
Count Arnaldos befel,” etc.
By St. John’s Day, however, the sun flashes its rays too fiercely, and
it is in late spring or early autumn that the voyage is most enjoyable.
A land journey can give no idea of the loveliness of these coasts, and
towns such as Alicante and Almería lose much of their beauty if deprived
of their background of mountains, which can only be seen fully out at
sea. The sea and sky are unfailingly beautiful, and the life of the
ports, full of colour and movement, never loses its interest. Almería,
fallen from its ancient greatness, is yet active in its “purple-shadowed
bay,”[89] and exports every year two million barrels, a hundred million
pounds, of grapes, chiefly to America and England. Torrevieja, further
north, is a small town or village of some seven thousand inhabitants, at
which steamers touch to take in a cargo of salt, but which the tourist,
on his way from Elche to Murcia, rarely turns aside to visit. It has a
thoroughly African look, with its flat-roofed, grey-white houses on a
bare, level strip of sandy coast, with no trees except palms, that stand
conspicuous like trees of the desert; the sand in places is thinly
covered with grass, of lightest, almost yellow, green. To the left, seen
from the sea, is a long line of gleaming salt, drawn from the sea-water
by evaporation under the summer sun, and now ready to be exported.
Beyond the line of salt is a distant range of bare mountains, faintly
purple. The town has one or two small towers, four factory chimneys, and
half a dozen round mills, with arms as slender as the cranes on the
loading steamers in the harbour. A continual rosary of barges, yellow,
white, green, or black, carries the salt across the bay. The heavy load
weighs the barge to the water’s edge, and the glistening white salt
seems to float on the blue surface. In the barge, at either end, go as
many as twenty or even thirty men, some sitting rowing, others facing
them and standing to row, and others punting with their poles of immense
length that taper away at the top to the slight girth of a fishing rod.
The shirts of the men, mauve, pink, white, red, or purple, their light
blue or black coats, red sashes, trousers of velvet or velvet corduroy
of many shades, from bright yellow to dark brown, the long shining
yellow punt poles, and the white pyramids of salt on the sea of
sapphire, combine to form a strange and beautiful sight. The empty
barges return high in the water, with little mounds of salt left along
their ledges. At midday the houses seem to faint and grow indistinct,
the mountains fade to a hardly perceptible outline, only the salt
reflects the sun in every facet of its countless grains, and glitters
whiter than snow. In the sunset the lines resume their sharpness, and
the mountains are grey or blue-grey or intense leaden blue or purple,
according to their distances. The Murcian sky is famous for its clear
serenity, and the sunsets and sunrises are of surpassing fairness.
Alicante, too, which is nearer to Murcia than to Valencia, has a
wonderful sky and a wonderful sea, and here, too, the “sunrise is a
glorious birth.” “Alicante aux clochers mêle les minarets,” says Victor
Hugo in one of the poems of “Les Orientales,” and from the sea Alicante
has an Oriental look, with its lines of palms, stories of flat roofs,
and bare background of hills and mountains. But it is at evening that
Alicante is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The lights
shine softly through the four lines of palm-trees along the Paseo de los
Mártires, and are reflected across the water; in the harbour the last
radiance of evening sets the tracery of masts and cranes and rigging in
clear relief. To the west the sea is already dark, almost wine-coloured,
the οἲνψ of the Greeks, but in the east it is a most
exquisite blue, a blue that seems to be a transparent surface of
turquoise covering a layer of white chalk. The eastern horizon is
faintly purple, and against it the sails of a fleet of fishing-boats are
whiter than at any other time, and gleam long after the sun has set.
Later the sea catches for an instant the faint purple of the sky, the
sky loses its colour, and finally a mistiness of softest grey merges
them together, so that one may no longer distinguish where the sky
ceases or the sea begins. On the rocks of the coast the waves at night
break, filled with phosphorus, in a luminous spray, “like light
dissolved in star showers thrown.” The low line of pale lights along El
Grao, Valencia’s harbour, if approached at night, has a look, from some
distance at sea, of such a phosphorus wave. By day the harbour is seen
to be a forest of masts, and far away the towers of Valencia, round the
tall Miguelete, appear as numerous, and in the distance almost as
slender as the masts of the harbour: “les clochers de ses trois cents
églises.” Along the coast of the Huerta, especially to the south of
Valencia, glisten a number of snow-white pyramids, that seem at first to
be more salt, having the exact look of the mounds that lie along the bay
of Cadiz. They are the whitewashed, triangular fronts of the peasants’
thatched cottages or _barracas_, standing in the fertile plain, “Spain’s
Orchard.”
One of the most lovely and original sights along the whole coast is that
of the high range of bare, treeless mountains south of Cartagena,
falling sheer into the sea, a delicate purple above the light blue
water. There is not the merest rim of coast, in fact the sea flows round
the mountains’ flanks, and they continue far out from the land, their
tops occasionally appearing as small islands.
But especially will the traveller who has the happy chance to find
himself at dawn of a cloudless day in a boat an hour west of
Almería--especially then will he be ready to repeat the lines:
“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar.”
A slight gleam in the east warns the moon that its reign of quiet light
is to finish, and begins the long prelude of day. Above a dark line of
sea a faint orange creeps into the sky, deepening to orange-purple, and
soon fringing off in pale yellow, saffron, and daffodil. Then, later,
above this, widens a space of clearest green, and at last the body of
the sky changes from grey to a light blue. In the west all is still
grey, as with a soft woof of hanging mists. The sails of a boat going
out to sea are white in the first glow of dawn, and the gently swelling
sea eastwards reflects the light in level gleams of gold, like smooth,
burnished meadows of buttercups. Then the sun rises, red-orange, on a
cloudless sea line, the sea becomes light blue, and along the rest of
the horizon lie spaces of pearl and opal, while in the east a dim,
silver moon fades slowly. The scene is of such enchanting loveliness,
like the birth of a new world, that if the Sierra Nevada chances to be
for the most part hidden in a long cloud of mist, the traveller scarcely
notices one or two peaks that seem to be floating snow-white clouds.
Then the mist of cloud melts away, and, one by one, the snow summits
appear, till the whole immense range stands bare, looking incredibly
high in a heaven of clear, faint green. It is a sight to make men hold
their breath. The ship, night’s shadows scarce driven from her deck,
passes slowly, almost noiselessly through the water as if she, too,
understood that here is some enchanted country. The view of the Sierra
Nevada from Granada, lovely as it is, gives no hint of a sight so
incomparable as this. The range is of such vast length, the snow is so
deep and soft. Long, almost level lines, huge, abrupt crags, gently
sloping gullies, smooth, pyramid-shaped peaks, shelves and pinnacles,
crevices and ledges, are all entirely wrapped in deep, much-sunned snow,
without a break. Each look, after turning for a moment to the grey
western horizon or the waving, crystalline surface of blue sea, brings a
new wonder and a fresh surprise; so marvellous is the radiance of white
appearing in the full glow from the east, and such is the infinite
clearness and subtlety of the outlines on a sky varying from blue-grey
to transparent green. The long massive range, seen from some distance
out at sea, gives the impression of a height of twenty thousand feet,
whereas from Granada it is difficult to realize that the highest peak is
over eleven thousand. Below the snow-line, a high range of bare
grey-purple mountains seems to sink into the sea, though there is, in
fact, a line of level coast. Far or near no tree is to be seen; a white
lighthouse stands on the coast, and on the silken blue sea gleams an
occasional white sail or the flash of a seagull’s wing. As the sun rises
higher the softly folding mountains beneath the Sierra Nevada grow more
purple above the sea, and the shadows of their dimpling hollows blacken.
Above, the wide, smooth spaces and the deep ravines present their broad
surplice of glistening white to the sun without a shadow. It is all
unimaginably lovely, with a breathless purity of things primeval--
“Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”
This and other hours of delight during a coasting voyage in the Spanish
Mediterranean are not soon forgotten, and, though they cannot be
translated into words--
“They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.”
The voyage may be prolonged on the south coast, and, from the time
when, on his left, Tarifa lies along the sea, like a line of melting
snow under smoothly moulded hills of green, and, on the right, Tangiers
shows its white houses indistinctly beneath the bare, grey mountains of
Africa, to the time when at Port Bou he bids farewell to the Catalan
coast and to Spain, the traveller will not have a dull or unenjoyable
moment; if only the gods send him propitious, cloudless days--
“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar!”
XII
THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS
It was a cloudless day of November. The Cathedral of Valencia stood grey
against a sky of soft blue. In the _Plaza de la Constitución_ the sun
shone on the central fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of
the houses and the Cathedral. From the great “Door of the Apostles” came
a smell of incense as people went out and in. Surmounted by its large
rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient air, and the plants
growing here and there in the wall add to its look of venerable
splendour. Some of the apostles stand there headless, some without arms,
some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall _Miguelete_ tower rises
conspicuous here, as it is conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian
plain. A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long strings of mules,
a newspaper-seller cried the _Heraldo de Madrid_, and some peasants in
black or blue-grey groups talked together, leaning on their sticks.
Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up on the pavement
immediately in front of the Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it
was enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing, carried across the
street in sections, bore the inscription _Tribunal de las Aguas_. For it
was Thursday, the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges disputes
arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.
To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of water for his land means
starvation, and the hours at which each is allowed to draw off water
from the narrow channels that cross his land are carefully regulated. If
one takes water out of his turn the fields of another must suffer, and
the case must be brought before the judges sitting in weekly council.
Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal; it is absolutely
final, and though there must be cases of injustice, the peasants are
very proud of their tribunal. There is no writing--the cases are not
even recorded--the matter is decided on the spot and in the open air
between man and man; there are no clerks or advocates; no table, ink, or
papers to confuse the simple;[90] no fees or anxious delays, and the
judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants themselves, thoroughly
understand the questions brought before them. It is a strange sight, the
sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old, in the _Plaza
de la Constitución_, in the twentieth century. There is a dignified
simplicity about it, a lack of display which is imposing. The peasants
have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their own affairs
without interference of the men of learning, just as they are ready to
settle their more private quarrels without recourse to the law. The man
who has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name of his assailant
from the police, always reserving for himself the pleasure of taking
vengeance later on. The character of the peasants of the Huerta is
indeed a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity and
shrewdness, and the word that best describes them is the Spanish
_socarronería_--a certain malicious humour.[91] Living isolated in the
vast open plain, they form a community apart, and resent external
interference. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic; in all
its years of city life it has adopted none of the city’s ways, and has
not even the shelter of a roof.
In the present instance there was but a single question to be settled,
and the proceedings lasted less than five minutes, passing all but
unnoticed. At about a quarter to twelve the judges, five in number, and
dressed in black as ordinary peasants, walked slowly into the enclosure
and occupied their places on the official sofa, taking off their black
felt hats. The full body of the judges is seven, chosen from different
districts to represent the principal canals of irrigation. Another
peasant, officer of the tribunal (on his cap is written _A. de T.
Aguas_, the _alguacil_, that is, of the Tribunal of Waters), standing at
the small gate in the railing, formally declared the tribunal open:
_S’obri el tribunal_ are the consecrated words. He then introduced the
plaintiff and defendant, who stood bareheaded and without their sticks
at half a yard’s distance from the judges. After each had stated his
case--and any interruption is rigorously fined--one of the judges at
once passed sentence. The verdict was against the old man, and he turned
without a word to leave the enclosure. His wife, however, without the
railing, though he put his finger to his lips to silence her, was not to
be overawed, and in a shrill torrent of words reproached the judges as
they filed solemnly into the Plaza. The _Tribunal de las Aguas_ was
closed; the judges dispersed to their silent fields, to meet again in
the rattle and clamour of the crowded city on the following Thursday.
Every Thursday throughout the year the plain green sofa and circular
railing are brought out in sections, and the judges make their
appearance in the Plaza. They do not always enter the enclosure, for
sometimes there is no dispute pending, or the disputants have come to an
agreement in the Plaza without recourse to the tribunal, and when the
clock strikes twelve, railing and sofa are carried back. The judges help
to bring about a settlement, and this perhaps explains that their
official verdicts are given instantaneously, with no pause for thought
or consultation; they have no doubt heard every detail of the case and
come to a decision beforehand.