center is always occupied by a large square court, like the first in
ground-plan, but two-storied and glass-covered. This is the hall, or first
reception room, often the principal apartment of the whole house, from
which the other rooms open out in every direction. Usually the
ground-floor of the hall has an open arcade, supporting a sort of balcony
or gallery above, which runs right round the first floor on top of it.
This balcony is itself arcaded; but instead of the arches being left open
the whole way up, they are filled in for the first few feet from the floor
with a charming balustrade of carved Cairene woodwork. Imagine such a
court, ringed round with string-courses of old Oriental tiles, and
decorated with a profusion of fine pottery and native brasswork, and you
may form to yourself some faint mental picture of the common remodeled
Algerian villa. It makes one envious again to remember how many happy days
one has spent in some such charming retreats, homes where all the culture
and artistic taste of the West have been added to all the exquisite
decorative instinct and insight of the Oriental architect.
Nor are fair outlooks wanting. From many points of view on the Mustapha
Hill the prospect is among the most charming in the western Mediterranean.
Sir Lambert Playfair, indeed, the learned and genial British
Consul-General whose admirable works on Algeria have been the delight of
every tourist who visits that beautiful country, is fond of saying that
the two finest views on the Inland Sea are, first, that from the Greek
Theater at Taormina, and, second, that from his own dining-room windows on
the hill-top at El Biar. This is very strong praise, and it comes from the
author of a handbook to the Mediterranean who has seen that sea in all
aspects, from Gibralta to Syria; yet I fancy it is too high, especially
when one considers that among the excluded scenes must be put Naples,
Sorrento, Amalfi, Palermo, and the long stretch of Venice as seen from the
Lido. I would myself even rank the outlook on Monaco from the slopes of
Cap Martin, and the glorious panorama of Nice and the Maritime Alps from
the Lighthouse Hill at Antibes, above any picture to be seen from the
northern spurs of the Sahel. Let us be just to Piræus before we are
generous to El Biar. But all this is, after all, a mere matter of taste,
and no lover of the picturesque would at any rate deny that the Bay of
Algiers, as viewed from the Mustapha Hill, ranks deservedly high among the
most beautiful sights of the Mediterranean. And when the sunset lights up
in rosy tints the white mole and the marble town, the resulting scene is
sometimes one of almost fairy-like splendor.
Indeed, the country round Mustapha is a district of singular charm and
manifold beauty. The walks and drives are delicious. Great masses of pale
white clematis hang in sheets from the trees, cactus and aloe run riot
among the glens, sweet scents of oleander float around the deep ravines,
delicious perfumes of violets are wafted on every breeze from unseen and
unsuspected gardens. Nowhere do I know a landscape so dotted with houses,
and nowhere are the houses themselves so individually interesting. The
outlook over the bay, the green dells of the foreground, the town on its
steep acclivity, the points and headlands, and away above all, in the
opposite direction, the snow-clad peaks of the Djurjura, make up a picture
that, after all, has few equals or superiors on our latter-day planet.
One of the sights of Mustapha is the Arab cemetery, where once a week the
women go to pray and wail, with true Eastern hyperbole, over the graves of
their dead relations. By the custom of Islam they are excluded from the
mosques and from all overt participation in the public exercises of
religion; but these open-air temples not made with hands, even the Prophet
himself has never dared to close to them. Ancestor-worship and the
veneration of the kindred dead have always borne a large part in the
domestic creed of the less civilized Semites, and, like many other traces
of heathenism, this antique cult still peeps sturdily through the thin
veil of Mohammedan monotheism. Every hillock in the Atlas outliers is
crowned by the tiny domed tomb, or _koubba_, of some local saint; every
sacred grove overshadows the relics of some reverend Marabout. Nay, the
very oldest forms of Semitic idolatry, the cult of standing stones, of
holy trees, and of special high places on the mountain-tops, survive to
this day even in the midst of Islam. It is the women in particular who
keep alive these last relics of pre-Moslem faith; it is the women that one
may see weeping over the narrow graves of their loved ones, praying for
the great desire of the Semitic heart, a man-child from Allah, before the
sacred tree of their pagan ancestors, or hanging rags and dolls as
offerings about the holy grove which encloses the divine spring of pure
and hallowed water.
Algiers is thus in many ways a most picturesque winter resort. But it has
one great drawback: the climate is moist and the rainfall excessive. Those
who go there must not expect the dry desert breeze that renders Luxor and
Assiout so wholesome and so unpleasant. Beautiful vegetation means rain
and heat. You will get both in Algiers, and a fine Mediterranean tossing
on your journey to impress it on your memory.
III
MALAGA
A nearly perfect climate--Continuous existence of thirty
centuries--Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra--Systems of
irrigation--Vineyards the chief source of wealth--Esparto grass--The
famous Cape de Gatt--The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada--Last view
of Granada.
Malaga has been very differently described and appreciated. The Arab
chroniclers who knew it in the palmy days of the Moorish domination
considered it "a most beautiful city, densely peopled, large and most
excellent." Some rose to poetical rhapsody in describing it; they praised
it as "the central jewel of a necklace, a land of paradise, the pole star,
the diadem of the moon, the forehead of a bewitching beauty unveiled." A
Spanish poet was not less eloquent, and sang of Malaga as "the
enchantress, the home of eternal spring, bathed by the soft sea, nestling
amidst flowers." Ford, on the other hand, that prince of guide-book
makers, who knew the Spain of his day intimately from end to end, rather
despised Malaga. He thought it a fine but purely commercial city, having
"few attractions beyond climate, almonds and raisins, and sweet wine."
Malaga has made great strides nevertheless in the fifty-odd years since
Ford so wrote of it. While preserving many of the charming characteristics
which evoked such high-flown encomiums in the past, it has developed
considerably in trade, population, and importance. It grows daily;
building is constantly in progress, new streets are added year after year
to the town. Its commerce flourishes; its port is filled with shipping
which carry off its many manufactures: chocolate, liquorice, porous jars,
and clay figures, the iron ores that are smelted on the spot; the
multifarious products of its fertile soil, which grows in rich profusion
the choicest fruits of the earth: grapes, melons, plantains, guava,
quince, Japanese medlars, oranges, lemons, and prickly pears. All the
appliances and luxurious aids to comfort known to our latter-day
civilization are to be found in Malaga: several theaters, one of them an
opera house, clubs, grand hotels, bankers, English doctors, cabs. It
rejoices too in an indefeasible and priceless gift, a nearly perfect
climate, the driest and balmiest in Southern Europe. Rain falls in Malaga
but half a dozen days in the year, and its winter sun would shame that of
an English summer. It has a southern aspect, and is sheltered from the
north by an imposing range of mountains; its only trouble is the _terral_
or north-west wind, the same disagreeable visitor as that known on the
Italian Riviera as the Tramontana, and in the south of France as the
Mistral. These climatic advantages have long recommended Malaga as a
winter health resort for delicate and consumptive invalids, and an
increasingly successful rival to Madeira, Malta, and Algiers. The general
view of this city of sunshine, looking westward, to which point it lies
open, is pleasing and varied; luxuriant southern vegetation, aloes,
palmetto, and palms, fill up the foreground; in the middle distance are
the dazzling white façades and towers of the town, the great amphitheater
of the bull ring, the tall spire of the Cathedral a very conspicuous
object, the whole set off by the dark blue Mediterranean, and the
reddish-purple background of the Sierra Bermeja or Vermilion Hills.
There is active enjoyment to be got in and near Malaga as well as the mere
negative pleasure of a calm, lazy life amid beautiful scenes. It is an
excellent point of departure for interesting excursions. Malaga lies on
the fringe of a country full of great memories, and preserving many
curious antiquarian remains. It is within easy reach by rail of Granada
and the world-renowned Alhambra, whence the ascent of the great southern
snowy range, the Sierra Nevada, may be made with pleasurable excitement
and a minimum of discomfort. Other towns closely associated with great
events may also be visited: Alhama, the mountain key of Granada, whose
capture preluded that of the Moorish capital and is enshrined in Byron's
beautiful verse; Ronda, the wildly picturesque town lying in the heart of
its own savage hills; Almeria, Antequera, Archidona, all old Moorish
towns. By the coast road westward, a two days' ride, through Estepona and
Marbella, little seaside towns bathed by the tideless Mediterranean,
Gibraltar may be reached. Inland, a day's journey, are the baths of
Caratraca, delightfully situated in a narrow mountain valley, a cleft of
the rugged hill, and famous throughout Spain. The waters are akin to those
of Harrogate, and are largely patronized by crowds of the bluest-blooded
hidalgos, the most fashionable people, Spaniards from La Corte (Madrid),
and all parts of the Peninsula. Yet another series of riding excursions
may be made into the wild Alpujarras, a desolate and uncultivated district
gemmed with bright oases of verdure, which are best reached by the coast
road leading from Malaga through Velez Malaga, Motril to Adra, and which
is perhaps the pleasantest route to Granada itself. On one side is the
dark-blue sea; on the other, vine-clad hills: this is a land, to use
Ford's words, "overflowing with oil and wine; here is the palm without the
desert, the sugar-cane without the slave;" old Moorish castles perched
like eagles' eyries crown the hills; below cluster the spires and towers
of churches and convents, hemmed in by the richest vegetation. The whole
of this long strip of coast is rich with the alluvial deposits brought
down by the mountain torrents from the snowy Sierras above; in spring
time, before the summer heats have parched the land, everything flourishes
here, the sweet potato, indigo, sugar-cane and vine; masses of wild
flowers in innumerable gay colors, the blue iris, the crimson oleander,
geraniums, and luxuriant festoons of maidenhair ferns bedeck the landscape
around. It is impossible to exaggerate the delights of these riding trips;
the traveller relying upon his horse, which carries a modest kit, enjoys a
strange sense of independence: he can go on or stop, as he chooses,
lengthen or shorten his day's journey, which takes him perpetually and at
the leisurely pace which permits ample observation of the varied views.
The scene changes constantly: now he threads a half-dried watercourse,
thick with palmetto and gum cistus; now he makes the slow circuit of a
series of little rocky bays washed by the tideless calm of the blue sea;
now he breasts the steep slope, the seemingly perilous ascent of bold
cliffs, along which winds the track made centuries since when the most
direct was deemed the shortest way to anywhere in spite of the
difficulties that intervened.
Malaga as a seaport and place of settlement can claim almost fabulous
antiquity. It was first founded by the Phoenicians three thousand years
ago, and a continuous existence of thirty centuries fully proves the
wisdom of their choice. Its name is said to be Phoenician, and is
differently derived from a word meaning salt, and another which would
distinguish it as "the king's town." From the earliest ages Malaga did a
thriving business in salt fish; its chief product and export were the same
anchovies and the small _boquerones_, not unlike an English whitebait,
which are still the most highly prized delicacies of the Malaga fish
market. Southern Spain was among the richest and most valued of Phoenician
possessions. It was a mine of wealth to them, the Tarshish of Biblical
history from which they drew such vast supplies of the precious metals
that their ships carried silver anchors. Hiram, King of Tyre, was a sort
of goldsmith to Solomon, furnishing the wise man's house with such stores
of gold and silver utensils that silver was "accounted nothing therein,"
as we read in the First Book of Kings. When the star of Tyre and Sidon
waned, and Carthage became the great commercial center of the
Mediterranean, it controlled the mineral wealth of Spain and traded
largely with Malaga. Later, when Spain passed entirely into Roman hands,
this southern province of Boetica grew more and more valuable, and the
wealth of the country passed through its ports eastward to the great marts
of the world. Malaga however, was never the equal either in wealth or
commercial importance of its more eastern and more happily placed neighbor
Almeria. The latter was the once famous "Portus Magnus," or Great Port,
which monopolized most of the maritime traffic with Italy and the more
distant East. But Malaga rose in prosperity as Roman settlers crowded
into Boetica, and Roman remains excavated in and around the town attest
the size and importance of the place under the Romans. It was a
municipium, had a fine ampitheater, the foundations of which were laid
bare long afterwards in building a convent, while many bronzes, fragments
of statuary, and Roman coins found from time to time prove the intimate
relations between Malaga and the then Mistress of the World. The Goths,
who came next, overran Boetica, and although their stay was short, they
rechristened the province, which is still known by their name, the modern
Andal-, or Vandalucia. Malaga was a place of no importance in the time of
the Visigoths, and it declined, only to rise with revived splendor under
the Moors, when it reached the zenith of its greatness, and stood high in
rank among the Hispano-Mauresque cities.
It was the same one-eyed Berber General, Tarik, who took Gibraltar who was
the first Moorish master of Malaga. Legendary story still associates a
gate in the old Moorish castle, the Gibralfaro, with the Moorish invasion.
This Puerta de la Cava was called, it has been said, after the ill-used
daughter of Count Julyan whose wrongs led to the appeal to Moorish
intervention. But it is not known historically that Count Julyan had a
daughter named La Cava, or any daughter at all; nor is it likely that the
Moors would remember the Christian maiden's name as sponsor for the gate.
After the Moorish conquest Malaga fell to the tribes that came from the
river Jordan, a pastoral race who extended their rule to the open lands as
far as Archidona. The richness of their new possession attracted great
hordes of Arabs from their distant homes; there was a general exodus, and
each as it came to the land of promise settled where they found anything
that recalled their distant homes. Thus the tribes from the deserts of
Palmyra found a congenial resting-place on the arid coast near Almeria and
the more rugged kingdom of Murcia; the Syrian mountaineers established
themselves amidst the rocky fastness of the Ronda Serranía; while those
from Damascus and Bagdad reveled in the luxuriant beauty of the fertile
plains watered by the Xenil and Darro, the great Vega, with its
orange-groves and jeweled gardens that still make Granada a smiling
paradise.
These Moslem conquerors were admirable in their administration and
development of the land they seized, quick to perceive its latent
resources and make the most of them. Malaga itself became the court and
seat of government of a powerful dynasty whose realms extended inland as
far as Cordova, and the region around grew under their energetic and
enlightened management into one great garden teeming with the most varied
vegetation. What chiefly commended Malaga to the Moors was the beauty of
its climate and the amazing fertility of the soil. The first was a
God-sent gift, the latter made unstinting return for the labor freely but
intelligently applied. Water was and still is the great need of those
thirsty and nearly rainless southern lands, and the Moorish methods of
irrigation, ample specimens of which still survive, were most elaborate
and effective contrivances for distributing the fertilizing fluid. Many of
these ancient systems of irrigation are still at work at Murcia, Valencia,
Granada, and elsewhere. The Moors were masters of hydraulic science, which
was never more widely or intelligently practiced than in the East. So the
methods adopted and still seen in Spain have their Oriental prototypes and
counterparts. They varied, of course, with the character of the district
to be irrigated and the sources of supply. Where rivers and running water
gave the material, it was conveyed in canals; one main trunk-line or
artery supplied the fluid to innumerable smaller watercourses or veins,
the _acequias_, which formed a reticulated network of minute
ramifications. The great difficulty in the plains, and this was especially
the case about Malaga, was to provide a proper fall, which was effected
either by carrying the water to a higher level by an aqueduct, or sinking
it below the surface in subterranean channels. Where the water had to be
raised from underground, the simple pole, on which worked an arm or lever
with a bucket, was used, the identical "shadoof" of the Nile; or the more
elaborate water-wheel, the Arab _Anaoura_, a name still preserved in the
Spanish _Noria_, one of which is figured in the Almeria washing-place,
where it serves the gossiping _lavanderas_ at their work. In these norias
the motive power is usually that of a patient ox, which works a revolving
wheel, and so turns a second at right angles armed with jars or buckets.
These descend in turn, coming up charged with water, which falls over into
a reservoir or pipe, whence it flows to do its business below.
Under this admirable system the land gives forth perpetual increases. It
knows no repose. Nothing lies fallow. "Man is never weary of sowing, nor
the sun of calling into life." Crop succeeds crop with astonishing
rapidity; three or four harvests of corn are reaped in the year, twelve or
fifteen of clover and lucerne. All kinds of fruit abound; the margins of
the watercourses blossom with flowers that would be prized in a hothouse,
and the most marvelous fecundity prevails. By these means the Moors of
Malaga, the most scientific and successful of gardeners, developed to the
utmost the marvelously prolific soil. Moorish writers described the
pomegranates of Malaga as red as rubies, and unequaled in the whole world.
The _brevas_, or small green figs, were of exquisitely delicious flavor,
and still merit that encomium. Grapes were a drug in the markets, cheap as
dirt; while the raisins into which they were converted, by a process that
dates back to the Phoenicians, found their way into the far East and were
famous in Palestine, Arabia, and beyond. The vineyards of the Malaga
district, a wide tract embracing all the southern slopes towards the
Mediterranean, were, and still are, the chief source of its wealth. The
wine of Malaga could tempt even Mohammedan Moors to forget their prophet's
prohibition; it was so delicious that a dying Moor when commending his
soul to God asked for only two blessings in Paradise, enough to drink of
the wines of Malaga and Seville. As the "Mountains," this same wine was
much drunk and appreciated by our forefathers. To this day "Malaga" is
largely consumed, both dry and sweet, especially that known as the
Lagrimas, or Tears, a cognate term to the famous Lachrymæ Christi of
Naples, and which are the very essence of the rich ripe grapes, which are
hung up in the sun till the juice flows from them in luscious drops.
Orange groves and lemon groves abound in the Vega, and the fruit is
largely exported. The collection and packing are done at points along the
line of railway to which Malaga is the maritime terminus, as at La
Pizarra, a small but important station which is the starting point for the
Baths of Caratraca, and the mountain ride to Ronda through the
magnificent pass of El Burgo. Of late years Malaga has become a species
of market garden, in which large quantities of early vegetables are
raised, the _primeurs_ of French gourmets, the young peas, potatoes,
asparagus, and lettuce, which are sent north to Paris during the winter
months by express trains. This is probably a more profitable business than
the raising of the sugar-cane, an industry introduced (or more exactly,
revived, for it was known to and cultivated by the Moors) in and around
Malaga by the well-known General Concha, Marques del Duero. He spent the
bulk of a large fortune in developing the cane cultivation, and almost
ruined himself in this patriotic endeavor. Others benefited largely by his
well-meant enterprise, and the sugar fields of southern Spain prospered
until the German beet sugar drove the homegrown hard. The climate of
Malaga, with its great dryness and absolute immunity from frost, is
exceedingly favorable to the growth of the sugar-cane, and the sugar
fields at the time of the cutting are picturesque centers of activity. The
best idea, however, of the amazing fertility of this gifted country will
be obtained from a visit to one of the private residential estates, or
_fincas_, such as that of La Concepcion, where palms, bamboos, arums,
cicads and other tropical plants thrive bravely in the open air. It is
only a short drive, and is well worth a visit. The small Grecian temple is
full of Roman remains, chiefly from Cartama, the site of a great Roman
city which Livy has described. Some of these remains are of beautiful
marble figures, which were found, like ordinary stones, built into a
prison wall and rescued with some difficulty. The Malaga authorities
annexed them, thinking they contained gold, then threw them away as old
rubbish. Other remains at La Concepcion are fragments of the Roman
municipal law, on bronze tablets, found at Osuna, between Antequera and
Seville.
Malaga possesses many mementoes of the Moors besides their methods of
irrigation. The great citadel which this truly militant race erected upon
the chief point of vantage and key to the possession of Malaga still
remains. This, the Castle of Gibralfaro, the rock of the lighthouse, was
built by a prince of Granada, Mohammed, upon the site of a Phoenician
fortress, and it was so strongly fortified and held that it long resisted
the strenuous efforts of Ferdinand and Isabella in the memorable siege
which prefaced the fall of Granada. How disgracefully the Catholic kings
ill-treated the conquered Moors of Malaga, condemning them to slavery or
the _auto da fé_, may be read in the pages of Prescott. The towers of the
Gibralfaro still standing have each a story of its own: one was the
atalaya, or watch-tower; on another, that of La Vela, a great silver cross
was erected when the city surrendered. Below the Gibralfaro, but connected
with it and forming part of the four deep city walls, is the Alcazaba,
another fortification utilized by the Moors, but the fortress they raised
stands upon Phoenician foundations. The quarter that lies below these
Moorish strongholds is the most ancient part of Malaga, a wilderness of
dark, winding alleys of Oriental aspect, and no doubt of Moorish origin.
This is the home of the lower classes, of the turbulent masses who have in
all ages been a trial and trouble to the authorities of the time. The
Malagueños, the inhabitants of Malaga, whether Moors or Spaniards, have
ever been rebellious subjects of their liege lords, and uncomfortable
neighbors to one another. In all their commotions they have generally
espoused the cause which has ultimately failed.
[Illustration]