Mountain philosophy—A Rembrandt mother and child—Egyptian
cotton fields—The Khalif and the _cañeria_—My lodging in a
bakery—Embarrassing hospitality—An Arabic banner—Subterranean
reservoirs—The Way of the Cross.
It was pitch dark, and the sky was clouded when we started from
Villamartín, and the creaking and jolting of the crazy vehicle down
the sharp slope from the town to the bridge over the Guadalete would
have brought my heart into my mouth had I not been too tired and sleepy
to care what happened. Rosario smiled at my terrors. Being a Serrana
(mountain woman) by birth, she was not in the least alarmed when the
diligence seemed to be diving head-foremost to perdition. “Even if we
upset,” she said, “we should come to no harm, for the road was so narrow
and the banks so steep that we could not fall far.” She also told me that
there was a much better road on the other side, but as we were starting
late and were a light load, the driver, an old acquaintance of hers, had
chosen a short cut which in winter is a water-course.
Protected by the Providence which looks after fools, we presently landed
with a final bone-shaking jerk on the high road, and thence proceeded
for several miles in comparative comfort, so much so indeed that we
all three went to sleep, and the boy so soundly that he hardly woke
till we got within hail of his native village: for this is the King’s
highway, and well looked after, as are all of its class, by Government
road-menders. I, however, was roused by a stop and voices at a wayside
_venta_, a peasant drinking-place with a deep porch and vine-bowered
poles set up in front to give shelter from the sun. Finding that we
were to be there ten minutes, while the driver refreshed himself with
_aguardiente_ (his offer of which, as it is a fierce spirit largely made
in its cheaper forms from potatoes, I politely declined), I got down to
warm my chilled limbs by movement, for we were now pretty high up and the
air was cold.
Behind us, already a long way off, the lights of Villamartín still
twinkled as gaily as if the night were yet young. The black clouds had
broken, and the young moon stuck one slender horn out from their midst,
while near at hand a patch of burning weeds cast a Rembrandtesque glow
on a handsome young woman seated before a _choza_ built of bamboos and
maize stalks, with an infant at her breast. One wondered why in the world
she was awake and up at four in the morning, but a voice at my elbow
explained it:—
“_Señora, por Dios, una perilla pa’ pan!_” [“Lady, for God’s sake a
little dog (½d.) for bread!”]
The ubiquitous beggar, in this case a ragged child eight or nine years
old, was on the watch for a possible penny from some weary traveller who
might give the coin in order to be freed from the unmusical professional
whine.
I weakly gave the _perilla_. No other beggars were near to see, and the
picture was worth it. I continually regret as I travel in Spain that I
was not born a painter.
It was another _nuit blanche_ for me after that. Any one who knows the
joy and the glory of daybreak and sunrise over the hills will understand
that one would not willingly lose a moment of the glowing change from
darkest shadow to glowing dawn. It is not fully light in these latitudes
before six in September, and the beauty of the morning does not culminate
till nearly eight. The boy slept dreamlessly, and poor tired Rosario
dozed with her head on his shoulder, but I sat and gazed till my eyes
were dazzled by the splendour of the sun on the everlasting hills.
About 7.30 we came to a _venta_ by a fine new bridge with one arch
spanning the river. It was only built a few years ago, when the high road
was extended to Algodonales. Until then this thriving village, with some
7000 inhabitants and a large trade in fruit and vegetables and walnut
wood, had no communication with the outer world save by a mule track.
Now it is on one of the main roads from Ronda to Jerez, and I hear that
since I was there it has been provided with a motor-service from Jerez.
From the bridge to Algodonales is a shady climb, the scenery growing more
beautiful at every turn; and Algodonales itself is one of the prettiest
villages I have seen in Spain, all orchards and walnut groves, with the
music of running waters wherever one goes.
It still retains its Arabic name, the meaning of which is
“cotton-fields,” and the tradition of cotton grown there “_en tiempos
antiguos_.” One can understand that cotton-growing might have been a
staple industry among the Arabs who came here from Egypt, for the valleys
around are well sheltered, and an inexhaustible supply of water is
brought from the hills above and distributed through an Arabic fountain
with fourteen mouths. In the hottest summer it never fails, and the town
and the _huertas_ are still supplied according to irrigation laws dating
from Arabic times, in a strict order of precedence which no one ever
dreams of disputing.
I was shown the tiny garden of a poor old man, rich with green vegetables
and ripening fruit, and told how, when he brought a complaint against
a flour mill recently erected by a rich man, for taking his water, the
case was immediately decided in his favour, because his little _huerta_
was on the old _cañeria_ (irrigation system), and therefore held rights
inalienable for all time. It reminded me of the story of a poor man at
Cordoba to whom the great Khalif Abderrahman III. paid an enormous price
for a few feet of land alongside of the river, because the poor man
showed that if he lost that land the water rights of his _huerta_ would
be interfered with.
All along the _cañerias_, which everywhere except in the streets are
open to the air, maidenhair fern grows in masses, and all the banks are
green with wild vegetation. One sees here, as in many other places, that
Spain needs nothing but irrigation to become one of the richest corn- and
fruit-producing countries in Europe, for in this climate, once you have
water, one crop succeeds another all the year round.
Rosario’s coming had been announced beforehand, and it seemed to me that
the whole village was waiting to welcome her. It was pretty to see the
care she and her friends took that I should not feel left out in the
cold, and before I knew where I was I found myself installed as a guest
in the house of the youngest but most prosperous of her sisters, and
quite unable, without actual discourtesy, to seek as I had intended a
couple of rooms in the main street, whence I should get a view of the
walnut trees, the _huertas_, and the hills.
The sister’s husband was the leading baker of the place, and his ancient
bakery of Arabic construction, with its vast dark granaries and cavernous
ovens, seemed to cover about an acre of ground. They had arranged their
own bedroom for me, with beautifully embroidered linen on their own
handsome brass bedstead, and the only wash-basin in the house, a very
small one of enamelled iron, planted on one of the numerous chairs which
form the chief furniture of a Spanish bedroom, whether rich or poor. They
apologised for not having cleared out the drawers for me, as they were
full of the children’s clothes, and they had not ventured to assume that
I would honour them by accepting their hospitality until I saw whether I
could put up with so poor a house.
I only had two objections to it. The first was that the spacious entrance
was the favourite meeting-place of all the women of the neighbourhood,
with their babies, who cried a good deal; and the second was that the
one little window of the bedroom opened on to a pigsty. This Rosario
apologised for, saying that she knew English ladies did not like smells,
but if I could otherwise be comfortable here, the pigsty should be
cleaned out every day during my visit, instead of—as was customary—once a
month.
I really did not like that pigsty, but it was impossible to wound the
susceptibilities of an entire family so full of genuine hospitality by
declining the room, and I knew that I should see more of peasant life as
an inmate of the _tahona_[6] than I possibly could in a lodging apart
from Rosario. So I graciously permitted pretty blue-eyed Dolores to make
up beds for herself, her husband, and her children on the floor of the
granary, and induced her as a favour not to clear out her one chest of
drawers for me.
And there I slept for a week, with the pigs in front, the poultry behind,
and a pony in a stable to my right, which got loose regularly every night
and compelled me to call my hosts to catch him, lest he should break his
knees over a stone feeding-trough and water-vessel left in the yard by
a forgotten generation. For I knew that if they had not given me their
room they would hear the noise for themselves, and I could not let their
pony come to grief, because they were too hospitable to me. By closing
my window and its shutters I was able to exclude most of the smell of
the pigs, and there was no lack of air, because the heavy door had
dragged itself half off its hinges with age, and would not close within
six inches. It had to be fixed with a chair, but, as Rosario pointed
out, I need not be in the least nervous if it opened of itself any time,
“because I was among friends; not in a _fonda_, where one never knew who
might come along and try one’s door at night.”
It is usual for whole families of Spaniards, even of a much richer class,
to use one dressing-table and washstand in common. Indeed, at a furnished
flat which we took at a high rent one summer at the seaside, we found
only one small washstand supplied for our whole party, consisting of
three adults and a servant. Thus it never occurred to Rosario or Dolores
that I could mind washing with my door half open, and I got over the
slight inconvenience by hanging my dressing-gown over the gap, while my
host and his apprentices sat and smoked just outside.
The one thought of the family seemed to be how to secure me the most
enjoyment possible, and each day expeditions were planned. The whole
village used to turn out to see us start: I on my _jamugas_, with my
host leading the donkey, Rosario on another donkey or a mule led by her
son, seated on the top of the _serón_ (panniers) containing our food for
the day and my tools and photographic apparatus; for (although this is
somewhat off the point) the primary object of my mountain expeditions
is archæological, and I am always on the look out for ruined castles or
other interesting remains worth digging in. This makes one’s luggage
rather heavy, but it is a solid satisfaction to pretend that one’s
pleasure trips are undertaken in the cause of science.
One of our jaunts from Algodonales was to Zahara, the strong fortress
of which I have already made mention. My host’s name was Salvador Malo
(Wicked Saviour!), and he loved to be told that although wicked by name
he was not so by nature. I pressed this brilliant _jeu de mots_ on him
at Zahara, where he pulled me up to the very top of the ruined castle by
main force. It seems to have been destroyed by an earthquake, the masses
of fallen masonry are so split up and tumbled about. The Christians
are said to have surrendered Zahara through lack of water during the
Granada war, and one can well believe it, for they never seemed to have
grasped the necessity of keeping up the admirable Arabic systems either
of storing water or irrigation; and once they let the great subterranean
_aljibes_[7] get into disrepair, the garrison of Zahara must have been at
the mercy of the enemy, since the only springs are outside the old town
walls, two or three hundred feet below the fortress.
The view from the crumbling towers is superb, and the little town
climbing up the precipitous hill is full of interesting remains, the
most important of which is perhaps a square yard of red silk of Arabic
manufacture called _tafetán_, with the remains of some Arabic characters
in white. This was the banner of the Moslems, surrendered after the fall
of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella. It is now regarded as a religious
relic, and is carried once a year in procession through the streets
after the image of the patron saint of Zahara. I must not forget to
mention that the only access to Zahara, with its 1700 inhabitants, is
a bridle-path. Very neat woodwork in walnut is done here, as also at
Algodonales, but the Zahara style is more distinctly Arabic, and I saw
some brackets and a spice box carved with “stalactite” ornamentation
which might have come out of a mosque. They had been made by the village
carpenter as a wedding gift to his wife.
Longer trips were planned for me, always to places inaccessible to
wheeled vehicles, such as Grazalema, perched under the shadow of San
Cristóbal, the highest peak in the Sierra de Ronda. Here admirable cloth
is still woven by hand, and fetches a good price in all the country
round, for it has the reputation of being indestructible. The once
flourishing town has now dwindled to a village, and many of its fine
houses are in ruins.
Most of my stay at Algodonales was, however, spent in the immediate
neighbourhood, which is so richly wooded and so well watered as to
present a most picturesque contrast to the grim mountain, which the
natives say towers 700 metres above the village. I do not think it is
as high as that—in fact, I should guess that the frowning cliff which
springs straight up from the level of my pigsty into the blue sky above,
does not really measure from the pigsty to the top more than 400 or 500
feet. But the villagers think they ought to know, for on that barren crag
are perched three iron crosses, and every year the young men and maidens
toil up a path which seems fit only for goats, in the performance of the
religious exercise known as the Way of the Cross. The older people and
the children are excused, for only active youth can safely surmount that
stony way, and for them there is a humble altar set up half-way, whereat
they worship while the priest says a Mass for the safe return of the
adventurous pilgrims.
The street leading to this mountain path is called Calvary, and the
whole ceremony is a survival of bygone days, when the Passion Play took
place in every mountain town, with living actors instead of the images
now carried in procession, and every penitent must walk on his bare and
bleeding feet along the Way of the Cross before he could hope to be
shriven of his sins.
[Illustration: “A SADDLE FOR FEMININITY.”]