glorious Huerta of Valencia, stretching for more than thirty miles from
the olive-clad hills around Jativa to that city, which is the
pleasantest in Mediterranean Spain, and the most characteristic of all,
after Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. There one travels through an
unbroken tract of superb cultivation--a garden in exact literalness, yet
a territory in size.
[Illustration: METHOD OF IRRIGATION NEAR VALENCIA.]
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SANTA CATALINA, VALENCIA.]
We took the rail from Alicante in the evening; but a mass of Oran
fugitives, escorted by a company of soldiers (for the most part drunk),
encumbered our train, and delayed its starting for an hour or two. Then
followed a slow, wearisome ride through the black night, with a change
at the junction of La Encina about twelve o'clock, involving much
tribulation in the re-weighing and renewed registering of baggage;
after which we were stowed into a totally dark compartment of the other
train, and made to wait three hours longer. With the first rays of dawn
our locomotive began to creep, and we fell into a doze, from which I was
awakened after a while by the loud irruption of somebody into our
carriage, accompanied by a jangle like that of sleigh-bells. It turned
out to be a peasant, who, in consequence of the general over-crowding,
had been ushered into the first-class carriage, bringing with him a
couple of children and some mule-harness provided with bells. I was
inclined to be indignant with him for his disturbing intrusion; but, as
it was now broad daylight, I began to look out of the window, and soon
had cause to consider the peasant a benefactor; for we were just leaving
Jativa, a most picturesque old town, with a castle famous even in Roman
times; the native place, also, of the Borgias (Pope Calixtus III., and
Rodrigro, the father of Cæsar Borgia). Immediately afterward we entered
the garden region. Miles of carefully-tended growth, thousands of
orchards linked together in one series, acres upon acres of fields where
every square inch is made to yield abundantly--such is the Huerta of
Valencia. We passed endless orange-groves, each single tree in which had
its circle of banked earth to hold the water when let on from the canals
of tile that coursed everywhere like veins of silver, carrying life to
the harvests. Then came vast fields dotted with the yellow blossom of
the pea-nut, on low vine-like plants. Again, breadths of citron and
lemon, followed by extensive rice farms, where the cultivators stood
dressing the unripe plantations, up to their ankles in the water of a
feathery green swamp. Not a rood of earth is unimproved, excepting where
some thriving red-roofed village is hemmed in by the fragrant paradise.
In one place you will see, perhaps, a mouldering red tower like those of
the Alhambra, or a church spire lifted amid the trees, and, high above
the other greenery, clusters of date-palms leaning together, as if
they whispered among themselves of other days. Near by is the Lake
of Albufera, close to the sea and twenty-seven miles in
circumference--nourished both from the sea and from the river Turia, so
that it becomes an immense reservoir of fish and game. Its marshy edges
once offered shelter to numerous smugglers, and it is said that General
Prim, who was on good terms with them, found a hiding-place there while
in danger and before he came to power. No wonder that the Cid fought
gallantly to win this land from the infidel, and when he had gained it
sent for his wife and daughter from distant Burgos to come and see the
prize! Its fertility to-day, however, is due to the irrigation
introduced by the Moors, and since maintained. The same thing could be
done with the Tagus and Ebro rivers, but the Spaniard having had the
example before him for only about six centuries, has not yet found time
to follow it. The water supply is so precious that proprietors are
allowed to use it for their own crops only on fixed days, and for so
many hours at a time. Disputes of course arise, but they are settled by
the Water Court--a tribunal without appeal, consisting of twelve peasant
proprietors, who meet once a week in Valencia; and I saw them there
holding their session in very primitive style, on a long pink sofa set
in an arched door-way of the cathedral.
[Illustration: A VALENCIA CAB.]
Valencia was in the midst of its annual festival when we arrived; a
bright, gay, spirited, and busy town, more cheerful than ever just then.
There were to be three days of bull-fighting--"bulls to the
death!"--with eight taurian victims each day; the best swordsmen in
Spain; and horses and mules displaying gilded and silvered hoofs. The
theatres were perfumed. There were match games of _pelota_--rackets--the
national substitute for cricket or base-ball; and a week's fair was in
progress on the other side of the river Turia, with bannered pavilions,
thousands of painted lanterns; lotteries, concerts, and booth shows, to
which the admission was "half price for children and soldiers." Trade
was brisk also in the city; brisk in the Mercado, that quaint business
street crowded with little stalls, and with peasants in blue, red,
yellow, mantled and cothurned, their heads topped with pointed hats or
wrapped with variegated handkerchiefs deftly knotted into a high crown;
brisk, likewise, in those peculiar shops behind the antique Silk
Exchange, which are named from the signs they hang out, representing the
Blessed Virgin, Christ, John the Baptist, or the Bleeding Heart. One had
for its device a rose, and another, distinguished by two large toy lambs
placed at its door, was known without other distinction as the Lamb of
God. But in the more modern quarter the shop-keepers ventured on a
Parisian brilliancy which we did not encounter anywhere else. Their
arrangement of wares was prettily effective, and the fashion prevailed
of having curtains for the show-windows painted with figures in modern
dress, done in exceedingly clever, artistic style, well drawn, full of
humor and fine realistic characterization.
Altogether, Valencia is the cheeriest of Spanish cities, unless one
excepts Barcelona, which is half French, and in its present estate
wholly modern. Moreover, Valencia abounds in racy and local traits, both
of architecture and humanity. The Street of the Cavaliers is lined with
sombre, strange, shabbily elegant old mansions of the nobility, with
Gothic windows and open arcades in the top story; the new houses are
gayly tinted in blue and rose and cream-color; and the gourd-like domes
of the cathedral and other large buildings glisten with blue tiles and
white, set in stripes. You find yourself continually, as you come from
various quarters, bringing up in sight of the octagonal tower of Santa
Catalina, strangely suggestive of a pagoda, without in the least being
one. The Silk Exchange, from which the shining web that wealth is woven
out of has long since vanished, contains one of the most beautiful of
existing Gothic halls under a roof sustained by fluted and twisted
pillars, themselves light as knotted skeins; while from the outer
cornice grotesque shapes peer out over the life of to-day; a grinning
monk, an imp playing a guitar, a crumbling buzzard, serving as
gargoyles. Just opposite is the market, where you may buy enormous
bunches of luscious white grapes for a penny, or pry into second-hand
shops rich in those brilliant mantles with the "cat" fringe of balls,
for which the town is as noted as for its export of oranges. The old
battlemented walls of the city, it is true, have been torn down: it was
done simply to give employment to the poor a few years since. But there
are some fine old gates remaining--those of Serranos and Del Cuarte. We
drove out of one and came in by the other, about half a mile away--a
diversion that brought us under a rigid examination from the customs
guard, which levies a tax on every basket of produce brought in from the
country, and was inclined to regard us as a dutiable importation.
[Illustration: BARCELONA FISHERMEN.]
One may go quite freely to the port, however--the Grao--which is two
miles distant. A broad boulevard hedged with sycamores leads thither,
which in summer is crowded by _tartanas_--bouncing little covered wagons
lined with crimson curtains, and usually carrying a load of pretty
señoritas--and by more imposing equipages adorned with footmen in the
English style. Everybody goes to the shore to bathe toward evening, for
Valencia is the Brighton of the Madrileños. The little bathing
establishments extend for a long distance on the sands, and are very
neat. Each has its fanciful name, as "The Pearl," or "The Madrid Girl,"
and the proprietors stand in front vociferously soliciting your custom.
Between these and the water are refreshment sheds with tables, and every
one eats or drinks on coming out of the sea. Farther down the shore the
women have their own houses, and a fence of reeds protects them from
intrusion while they are running to or from the surf; but it is my duty
to record that the men formed a line at this fence, and systematically
gazed through the breaks in it, which was the more embarrassing,
perhaps, because the fair Valencians bathe in very plain, baggy, and
ugly gowns. On the streets or in the Glorieta Garden, and in their
proper habiliments, they are the noblest looking and most beautiful of
Spanish women, often possessing flaxen hair and dark-blue eyes which
recall a Gothic ancestry, together with something simple and regular
about the features that is perhaps due to the ancient Greek
colonization. At still another part of the beach horses were allowed to
go into the waves; and this was a sight also eminently Greek in its
suggestion. Naked boys bestrode the animals, and urged them forward into
the spray-fringed tide. The arched necks, the prancing movement of the
horses, the sportive shock of foam against their broad chests, and the
pressing knees of the nude riders in full play of muscle to keep their
seats, were like a breathing and stirring relief on some temple frieze,
clear-cut in the pure and sparkling sunlight. There was once a Valencian
school of painters, but we saw nothing of this in their work. The museum
offers what our newspapers would call a "carnival" of rubbish, but it
also contains some striking, shadowy, startlingly lighted canvases of
Ribalta--saints and martyrs and ascetics vividly but not joyously
portrayed; a few wonderful portraits by Goya, fresh as if only just
completed; and one of Velasquez's three portraits of himself.
From Valencia to Barcelona the valleys along the coast are fertile.
Vineyards, spreading their long files of green over a warm red soil that
seems tinged with the blood of the grape, vie with the olive in that
picturesque, productive belt between the hills and the blue, swelling
sweep of the Mediterranean. Here is Murviedro, the old Saguntum, once
the scene of a fierce siege and horrible sufferings, now basking quietly
in the hot light--a time-worn, sun-tanned, beggared old city, which is
not ashamed to make a show of its decayed Roman theatre; and farther on
Tarragona, which professes to have had at one time a million
inhabitants, and is now a little wine-producing town. Churches and
castles, rich in delicate workmanship and all manner of historic
association, crop up everywhere. The very shards in the fields, you
fancy, may suddenly unfold something of that full and varied past which
was once as real as to-day's meridian glow. Yet at any moment you may
lose sight of all this in the brilliant, stimulating, yet softly
modified beauty of the landscape's colors, and your whole mind is
absorbed by the vague neutral hues of a treeless hill-side, or the rich,
positive blue of the sea, in which the white sail of a _chalupa_ seems
to be inlaid like a bit of ivory.
All the while, as you go northward, Spain--the real Spain--is slipping
from you. The palms disappear as if a noiseless earthquake had swallowed
them up; even the olive becomes less frequent, and by-and-by you are in
piny Catalonia. You reach Barcelona, the greatest commercial city of the
kingdom, and you find it the boast of the citizens that they are not
Spaniards. They are Spanish mainly in their love of revolt. So prompt
are they to join in every uprising, that the garrison quartered there
has to be kept as high as ten thousand men; but for the most part it is
rather a French maritime dépot than a thing of ancient or peculiar
Spain. There is a large and artificial park on one side, and the fort
of Monjuich on the other, and a lot of shipping in the harbor; and a
glorious embowered avenue, called the Rambla, where pale-faced,
long-lashed, coquettishly smiling women walk in great numbers, carrying
out the usual national custom of a peripatetic reception and
conversation party. It was the feast of Santiago when we came--it is
always a feast of something everywhere in that pious country--and the
theatres were doing a great business with trifling plays and charming
ballets. Barcelona is not only the industrious city, it is also the
cultivated one of the Peninsula. The opera there is one of the best in
the world, and was once carried off bodily to Madrid by an ardent
manager, who for his pains received the scorn of the envious Madrid
people: they would not come to his performances, and he was almost
ruined in consequence.
The old cathedral of the city is a temple singularly impressive by
simple means--a sober Spanish-Gothic structure bathed in a perpetual
gloom, through which the stained windows show with a jewelled splendor
almost supernatural. The weirdness of the interior effect is farther
intensified by the dark pit of Santa Eulalia's shrine opening under the
altar, and set with a row of burning lamps, on which the darkness seems
to hang like a cloak depending from a chain of gold. The invariable rule
in Spanish cathedrals is that the choir should be placed in the central
nave, like that at Westminster Abbey, and elaborated into a complete
enclosure by itself--which, although it interferes with the total effect
of the interior, is frequently very striking in its lavish agglomeration
of carved wood and stone, metal railings, gilding, and similar details.
It was in the peculiarly picturesque choir of this cathedral of Santa
Eulalia that the order of the Golden Fleece was once convened by Charles
V., and the panels over the stalls are blazoned with the bearings of the
various nations and nobles represented in that body. Being discovered
only after one has grown accustomed to the dark, these fading glories of
heraldry steal gradually upon the eye, as if through the obscuring night
of time. I found the ancient cloister, without, on the south-west side,
a delightful, shadowy, suggestive place: there, too, may be seen a
fountain surmounted by a small equestrian statue of St. George, which
reminds one of a fabulous story in Münchausen; for the tail of the horse
is formed by a jet of water flowing out of the body at the rear. Inside
the church again hangs, under the organ-loft, an enormous wooden and
painted Saracen's head--a species of relic not uncommon, I believe, in
Catalonian temples. It may be added here that the custom of the
"historical giants" at Corpus Christi is maintained in Barcelona as we
had seen it at Burgos, and those effigies are stowed away somewhere in
the sacred precincts. There is a curious mingling of the naïve and the
sophisticated in the fact that some of the giants, wearing female
attire, have new dresses for each year, and thereby set the fashions for
the ensuing twelvemonth for all the womankind of the city. And however
advanced the urban society may be, with its trade, its opera, its books,
gilded cafés and superb clubs, the spirit of progress does not spread
very far into the country. When a piece of railroad was built, not very
long ago, opening up a new rural section in the neighborhood, the
peasants watched the advance of the locomotive along the rails with
profound interest. Finally, one old man asked, "But where is the _mule_
kept?--inside?"
He was willing to admit that the engine worked finely, but no power
could convince him that it was possible for it to go by other impulsion
than that of a mule's legs.
Another relic of by-gone times is the cap universally worn in this
region by the longshoremen, the fishers, and the male portion of the
lower orders generally; for it is nothing less than the old Phrygian
liberty cap, imported hither by the Paul Pry Phoenicians ages ago. Woven
in a single piece, it appears at first sight to be a long, soft,
commodious bag, tinted with vermilion or violet or brown as the case may
be. Into the aperture the native inserts his head and then pulls the
rest of the flapping contrivance down as far as he pleases, letting the
end float loose in the wind, or more commonly bringing it round to the
front, curling it over and tucking it in upon itself in such a way as to
make an overhanging protection for the eyes, and to give the whole a
look that recalls the top of an Oxford student's cap. With this
head-gear, and wearing sandals made of fine hempen cord tied by long
black tapes, the men presented a free, half barbarous and sufficiently
picturesque appearance. I don't know how long we might have continued to
roam the streets of Barcelona, listening to the uncouth _patois_ of the
locality, in which French and Spanish words are so outlandishly mingled,
nor how long we should have clung to the remnants of architecture and
history that jutted seductively above the surface of the modern here and
there, if it had not been that cold necessity limited our time and
propelled us relentlessly northward. Even now I find that my pen is
reluctant to leave the tracing of those vanished scenes, and hesitates
to write the last word as much as if it were an enchanter's wand,
instead of a plain, business-like little instrument.
With its usual fatuity the railroad obliged us to start so early that
at the first dusky gray streak of dawn we were dismally taking our
coffee in the _patio_ of the hotel. The _dueño_ was sleeping by sections
on two hard chairs, considerately screened from us by a clump of orange
shrubs, and murmuring now and then some direction to the half-invisible
waiter floating about in a dark arcade; but he roused himself, and woke
up wholly for a minute or two while perpetrating a final extortion.
Otherwise the silence was profound. It was the silence of the past, the
unseen current of oblivion that sets in and begins to eddy round the
facts of to-day, in such a country, the moment human activity is
suspended or the reality of the present is at all dimmed. Silence here
leads at once to retrospection; differing in this from the mute solitude
of American places, which somehow always tingles with anticipation. And
the _dueño_, in overcharging us, became only the type of a long line of
historic plunderers that have infested the Peninsula from the date of
the Roman rule down to the incursion of Napoleon and the most recent
period. His little game was invested with all the dignity of history and
tradition. The sickly light of day above the court struggled feebly and
dividedly with the waning yellow of the candle-flame on our table.
"After all," said Velveteen, "I'm glad to be going, for this is no
longer Spain."
And yet, at the instant of leaving, we discovered that it was indeed
Spain, and a pang of regret followed those words.
As we issued from the hotel we saw, crossing the street in the increased
dawn-light, and striding toward the dépot, the two Civil Guards. It
looked as if we should be captured on the very threshold of liberty. The
thought lent wings to our haste.... Some hours afterward, when we were
passing through the tunnels of the Pyrenees, we congratulated ourselves
on our escape; and, indeed, as we looked back to the mountain-wall from
France, we could fancy we saw two specks on the summit which might have
been our pursuers. They were too late! Their own excess of mystery had
baffled them. They had dogged us every league of the way, and yet we had
traversed Spain without being detected as--what? I really don't know,
but I'm sure those Civil Guards must. If not, their military glare,
their guns, and their secrecy are the merest mockeries.
How softly the waves broke along the Mediterranean sands that morning,
close to the rails over which we were flying! Green and white, or
violet, and shimmered over by the crimson splendor of the illumined
East, they surged one after another upon the golden shore and spent
themselves like wasted treasure. There was something mournful in their
movement--something very sad in the presence of this beauty which I was
never to see again. Did I not hear mingled with the sparkling flash and
murmur of those waves a long-drawn "_A-a-ay!_"--the most pathetic of
Spanish syllables, which had thrown its shadow across the fervid little
songs heard so often by the way?
"Bird, little bird that wheelest
Through God's fair worlds in the sky"--
the strain came back again, with the memory of a low-tuned guitar; and
the waves went on, arriving and departing; and the land of our
pilgrimage steadily receded. The waves are breaking yet on that windless
coast; but, for us, Spain--brilliant, tawny, bright-vestured Spain, with
all its ruins and poetry, its desolation and beauty and gaudy
semi-barbarism--has been rapt away once more into the atmosphere of
distance and of dreams!
[Illustration]
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS.
Spain is by no means so difficult a country to reach, nor so
inconvenient to travel in after one has got there, as is generally
supposed. Doubtless the obstacles which it presented to the tourist
until within a few years were great; and much that is disagreeable still
remains to vex those who are accustomed to the smoother ways, and
carefully-oiled machinery for travel, of regions more civilized. But the
establishment of a system of railroads, describing an outline that
passes through nearly all the places which it is desirable to visit, has
supplied a means of transit sufficient, safe, and passably comfortable.
The other disadvantages formerly opposed to the inquiring stranger are
likewise in process of diminution. In order to make clear the exact
state of things likely to be encountered by those who, having followed
the present writer in his account of a rapid journey, may determine to
take a similar direction themselves, this chapter of suggestion is
added, which it is hoped will have value in the way of a practical
equipment for the voyage.
_Patience_.--The first requisite, it should be said, in one about to
visit Spain, is a reasonable amount of good-humored patience, with
which to meet discomforts and provoking delays. The customs of that
country are not to be reversed by fuming at them; anger will not aid the
digestion which finds itself annoyed by a peculiar cookery; and no
amount of irritation will suffice to make Spanish officials and keepers
of hostelries one whit more obliging than they are at present--their
regard for the convenience of the public being just about equal to that
of the average American hotel clerk or railroad employé.