FOOTPATHS OF ANDALUSIA
Gibraltar rises early. Proof of the assertion may be lacking, but
certainly not even a "Rock lizard" could recompose himself for another
nap after the passing of the crashing military band that snatched me at
daybreak back to the waking world. With one bound I sprang from cot to
window. But there was no ground for alarm; in gorge-like Waterport
street below, Thomas Atkins, a regiment strong, was marching briskly
barrackward, sweeping the flotsam of civilian life into the nooks and
crannies of the flanking buildings.
According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse of Morocco was next in
order. But with the absurdity of things inanimate and Oriental both the
Tangiers steamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor. When
"Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels, I drifted aimlessly out
into the city. But the old eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon
upon me, heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleaming across the
bay. The harbor steamer would have landed me there a mere peseta
poorer. Instead, I sauntered through the Landport gate and away along
the shifting highway which the Holder of the Rock has dubbed, in his
insular tongue, the "Road to Spain."
It led me past the double rank of sentry boxes between which soldiers of
England tramp everlastingly, and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniard
in rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from the first stone hovel, but,
finding me empty-handed, as silently withdrew. I turned westward
through the disjointed town and out upon the curving shore of the bay.
Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, were each Spanish minute
tagged with a Broadway price-mark, the peseta would have been dearly
saved, for the apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but a tricking
of the eye. Hour after hour I waded on through seashore sand, halting
now and then in the shadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of the
departed Moor, before me such a survey of the shimmering sea to the very
base of the hazy African coast as amply to justify the setting of an
outlook on this jutting headland.
The modern guardian of the coast dwells more lowly. Every here and
there I came upon a bleached and tattered grass hut just out of reach of
the languid surf, and under it a no less ragged and listless
_carabinero_ squatted in Arabic pose and tranquillity, musket within
reach, or frankly and audibly asleep on his back in the sand. Yet his
station, too, was wisely chosen. The watch and ward of to-day is set
for no war-trimmed galley from the rival continent, but against petty
smugglers skulking along the rim of the bay. Nor could the guard better
spend his day than asleep: his work falls at night.
It was the hour of _siesta_ when I shuffled up a sandy bank into
Algeciras. Except for a cur or two that slunk with wilted tail across
the plaza, the town lay in sultry repose. I sat down in a shaded corner
of the square. Above me nodded the aged city tower, housing the
far-famed and often-cursed bell of Algeciras. Recently, which is to say
some time during the past century, it was cracked from rim to crown; and
the city fathers have not yet taken up the question of its replacement.
Meanwhile, it continues afflictingly faithful to its task. At
quarter-hourly intervals it clanked out across the bay like the
suspended hull of a battleship beaten with the butt of a cannon, a
languid sigh rose over the drowsing city, and silence settled down anew.
As the shadows spread, life revived, slowly and yawningly at first, then
swelling to a contrasting merry-making that reached its climax toward
midnight in the festooned streets beyond the plaza. Algeciras was
celebrating her annual _feria_. Somewhere I fell in with a carpenter in
blouse and hemp sandals, whose Spanish flowed musically as a woodland
brook, and together we sauntered out the evening among the lighted
booths. The amusement mongers were toiling lustily. Gypsy and clown,
_bolerina_, juggler, and ballad-singer drew each his little knot of
idlers, but a multitude was massed only around the gambling tables.
Here a hubbub of excited voices assailed the ear; an incessant rain of
coins fell on the green cloth, from the ragged and the tailored, from
quavering crones and little children. The carpenter dived into the fray
with his only peseta, screaming with excitement as the wheel stopped on
the number he had played. Within an hour a pocket of his blouse was
bulging with silver. I caught him by the sleeve and shouted a word in
his ear. Wild horses could not have dragged him away, nor the voices of
sirens have distracted his eyes from the spinning trundle. A half-hour
later he did not possess a copper.
"If you had listened," I said, when we had reached a conversational
distance, "you would not have lost your fortune."
"What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost, senor, is one peseta, and
had an evening of a lifetime."
I caught the morning steamer to Gibraltar and an hour later was pitching
across the neck of the Mediterranean on board the _Gebel Dersa_.
Third-class fare to Africa was one peseta; first-class, ten; and the
difference in accommodation about forty feet,--to wit, the distance from
the forward to the afterdeck. One peseta, indeed, seemed to be the fixed
charge for any service in this corner of the world. My evening meal, the
night's lodging, the boatman's fee for setting me aboard the steamer had
each cost as much. It would be as easy to quote a fixed selling-price
for mining-stocks as to set the value of that delusive Spanish coin.
The summer's average, however, was close upon sixteen cents for the
peseta, of which the _centimo_ is the hundredth part. There are at
large, be it further noted, a vast number of home-made pesetas worth
just sixteen cents less, which show great affinity for the stranger's
pocket until such time as he learns to emulate the native and sound each
coin on the stone set into every counter.
It was while we were skirting the calcined town of Tarifa that I made
the acquaintance of Aghmed Shat. The introduction was not of my
seeking--but of the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need say nothing,
known as he is by every resident of our land. At least I can recall no
fellow-countryman whose visiting-card he did not dig up from the abysmal
confusion of his inner garments.
To that host of admirers it will bring grief to learn that Aghmed was
most unjustly treated aboard the _Gebel Dersa_ on that blistering
thirteenth day of June. Yet facts must be reported. It chanced that
the dozen Anglo-Saxons sprawled ungracefully about the after-deck
composed, at such times as composure was possible, a single party. As
all the world knows, it is for no other purpose than to offer the
protection of his name and learning to just such defenseless flocks that
the high-born Moroccan gentleman in question has been journeying thrice
weekly to the Rock these thirty years. Yet the bellwether of the party,
blind to his opportunity, had chosen as guide an ignorant, vile, ugly,
utterly unprincipled rascal whose only motive was mercenary. True,
Aghmed and the rascal were outwardly as alike as two bogus pesetas. But
surely any man worthy the title of personal conductor should be versed
in the reading of character, or at least able to distinguish between
genuine testimonials from the world's elite and a parcel of bald
forgeries! Worst of all, the leader, with that stiff-neckedness
congenital to his race, had persisted in his error even after Aghmed had
recounted in full detail the rascal's crimes. Small wonder there was
dejection in the face of the universally-recommended as he crossed the
pitching plank that connected the first-class with the baser world, his
skirts threshing in the wind, his turban awry.
At sight of me, however, he brightened visibly. With outstretched hand
and a wan smile he minuetted forward and seated himself on the hatch
beside me with the unobtrusive greeting:
"Why for you travel third-class?"
The question struck me as superfluous. But it is as impossible to scowl
down Aghmed's spirit of investigation as to stare him into believing an
American a Spaniard. By the time the valleys of the African coast had
begun to take on individuality, I had heard not only the full story of
his benevolent life but had refused for the twentieth time his
disinterested offer of protection. Nature, however, made Aghmed a
guardian of his fellow-man, as she has made other hapless mortals poets;
and her commands must be carried out at whatever sacrifice. Gradually,
slowly, sadly, the "souvenir" which "americano gentlemen" were
accustomed to bestow upon him with their farewell hand-clasp fell from
twenty shillings to ten, to five, to three, then to as many pesetas. It
was useless to explain that I had trusted to my own guidance in many an
Arab land, and been fully satisfied with the service. When every other
argument had fallen lifeless at his slippered feet, he sent forth at
regular intervals the sole survivor, cheering it on with a cloud of
acrid cigarette smoke:
"Si el senor"--for his hamstrung English had not far endured the
journey--"if the gentleman has never taken a guide, this will be a new
experience."
In the end the sole survivor won. What, after all, is travel but a
seeking after new experience? Here, in truth, was one; and I might find
out for myself whether a full-grown man tagging through the streets of a
foreign city on the heels of a twaddle-spouting native feels as
ridiculous as he looks.
We anchored toward noon in the churning harbor of Tangiers and were soon
pitched into the pandemonium of all that goes to make up an Oriental mob
lying in wait for touring Europeans. In a twinkling, Aghmed had engaged
donkeys to carry us to the principal hotel. I paused on the outskirts
of the riot to inform him that our sight-seeing would be afoot; and with
a scream of astonishment he reeled and would, perhaps, have fallen had
not the street been paved in that which would have made such
stage-business unpleasant.
"Pero, senor!" he gasped. "You do not--you--why, people will say you
have no money!"
"Horrible!" I cried, dodging a slaughtered sheep on the head of a black
urchin in scanty night-shirt that dashed suddenly out of a slit between
two buildings. Aghmed, myopic with excitement, failed to side-step, and
it was some distance beyond that his wail again fell on my ear:
"O senor! Americano gentlemen never go by this street. I cannot guide
without donkeys--"
"You can perhaps run along home to dinner?" I suggested; but he merely
fell silent and pattered on at my heels, now and again heaving a
plaintive sigh.
For the better part of the day we roamed in and out through the tangled
city. In the confusion of donkeys, bare legs, and immodesty, the
narcotic smell of hashish, the sound of the harsh guttural tongue once
so familiar, memories of more distant Mohammedan lands surged upon me.
Yet by comparison Tangiers seemed only a faded segment of the swarming
Arab world set aside to overawe European tourists, Arabic enough in its
way, but only a little, mild-mannered sample.
Late in the afternoon I rounded the beach and, falling upon the highway
to Fez, strolled away out of sight and sound of the seaport. Aghmed
still languished at my heels. To him also the day had brought a new
experience. As we leaned back against a grassy slope to watch the
setting of the red sun, he broke a long hour's silence.
"Senor," he said, "never have I walked so much. When we had come to the
Socco I was tired. When we had seen all the city my legs were as two
stone pillars. Yet I must keep walking."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you must be protected! Ah, senor, you do not know how
dangerous is Tangiers; and here in the country alone you would before
now be dead, or carried off by bandits. Perhaps this much walking will
make me sick. Or if I have been seen by my friends or a gentleman
tourist! Allah meskeen! They will say I am no longer a gentleman guide,
but a donkey boy."
When her night traffic had taken on its wonted swing, my stone-legged
protector called at the inn for the purpose of proving that the
far-famed naughtiness of his city was no mere conceit. The
demonstration was not convincing. Two hours or more we ambled from
wineshop to _cafe cantante_, enduring a deal of caterwauling and inane
vulgarity by no means superior to a Friday-night performance on the
Bowery. The relieving shepherd's crook, moreover, being nowhere in
evidence, I fled the torture and retired to bed.
To my infinite relief, Aghmed was on hand in full health next morning to
bid me farewell at the end of the pier and to receive his specified
"souvenir." He was profuse, too, with the hope that I might soon
revisit his land; but I caught no hint of a desire to add my card to his
collection.
The steamer plowed her way back to Europe, and by mid-afternoon I
emerged from the Sailor's Institute face to face with a serious problem.
The most patient of men, which I am not, would hardly set off on a tramp
across the Iberian peninsula carrying a forty-pound suitcase, even of
unread classics. To have dumped the books in the first alleyway would
have been easy, yet painful, for there runs a strain of Scotch in my
veins. I dropped in on the nearest bookseller to inquire whether he
could see his way clear to accept at a bargain a batch of novels newly
imported from New York. But the eager glow quickly faded from his
features as I laid the volumes before him.
"Why, sir!" he cried. "These be _old_ books, out of date. I thought
had you something New York is reading this summer--"
In which attitude his two rivals also dismissed me, even though I sought
the good will of the last by squandering the bulk of a bright gold
sovereign for Baedeker's "Spain." As I turned down to the harbor, a
thought, or more exactly the sight of a sergeant's uniform under the
fortress gate, struck me. The wearer stiffened like a ramrod when I
halted before him.
"Have you a library in the barracks?"
"Ah--certainly, garrison library. But I hardly fawncy the commander
would allow--"
"Of course not," I interrupted, tossing the books into his arms; "but I
am off for Spain and if you have any use for a few novels--"
"Ah--er--well, thank you most kindly, sir!" bawled the officer after me.
Though the fact may never be called to his attention, the sergeant had
heard the last phrase of English that passed my lips in many a week. As
a personal experiment I had resolved not to speak a word of my native
tongue within the kingdom of Spain, even to myself; though this latter
proviso, to be sure, necessitated the early acquisition of a few Spanish
terms of double voltage.
The forerunner of evening was descending upon Algeciras as I mounted
through her now all but voiceless fiesta and struck away over a
grass-patched hillock. The further slope was skirted by a dusty highway
that wound off through a billowy country pregnant with the promise of
greater heights to come. But the trend of the road was west rather than
north. Over the hills ahead two male voices were bawling a sort of
dialogue of song. I mended my pace and had soon overtaken two peasants
rollicking homeward from the festival. When I inquired if this were the
highway to Madrid they fell suddenly silent, after a word of greeting,
and strode along beside me exchanging puzzled glances.
"Well, then, to Honda, senores?" I asked. "Poresta carretera?"
"No, no, senor!" they answered quickly. "Por aqui no! You must go on
the railroad."
"No, I am traveling on foot."
"Perfectamente, senor; and to walk to Honda you must take the railroad."
There was nothing in the mien of either to suggest the practical joker.
Yet so far as my experience carried there was not a corner of Europe
where two steps on the right of way was rated less a crime than arson or
housebreaking.
We reached the line not far beyond, the highway diving under by a
stone-faced cutting and bearing the peasants away with it. Over the
next rise their dove-tailed duet rang out again and, melting in volume
and rendered almost musical by distance, filtered back to me from the
deepening valleys a full quarter-hour longer.
I climbed the embankment not without misgiving. Sure enough, a track
there was, beside the broad-gauge rails, covered with cinders and
scarred with many imprints of donkey hoofs. A mile along it
demonstrated how poor a walking kit is even a half-empty suitcase. I
sat down to take stock of the contents. In the jumble was a blue
flannel shirt past its prime. I fished out thread and needle and sewed
a Jack-Tar seam across the garment below the armpits, amputated sleeves
and shoulders with a few, slashes, and behold! a knapsack that might
bear my burdens through all the kingdom of Spain, and hold its own in
any gathering of shoulder-packed wayfarers. When I had stuffed my
possessions into it there was still room to spare for such odds and ends
as find their way into the baggage of the least acquisitive of
travelers. Then pitching the suitcase spread-eagle over the bordering
hedge, I cut a stick in a neighboring thicket and struck off again at
the regular stride so indispensable to any true enjoyment of tramping.
Night fell soon after. A fall it was indeed; no half-hearted settling
down of gloom as in our northern zone, but a descendant flood of
obscurity that left the eyes blinking in dismay. To right and left,
where had been rolling uplands and heathered fields sharp-cut in
smallest detail, nothing--a sea of inky blackness; and ahead, the
stony-blind unknown. The cinder path held firm, but only a foot rubbing
along the rail guided my steps, until such time as sight resumed its
leadership.
An hour or more I marched on into the summer night. Then out of the
darkness ahead stole a feeble point of light, an increasing murmur of
human voices, and the end of the first day's tramp was before me.
Beside the way a stone building stood open, an oil torch twilighting a
cobble-floored room heaped at one end with a Spanish grocer's wares. An
unshaven man of fifty, a red handkerchief bound brigand-fashion about
his head, bulked forward through an inner doorway.
"You furnish lodgings?"
"Si, senor; and your burro?"
"I am walking. Is supper to be had?"
"Claro, hombre! Choose from the baskets and the senora shall cook it
for you in a twinkling."
All through the following day the path continued parasitic to the
railway. The roadbed was thickly covered with crushed stone, with
nowhere a hint of the existence of section-gangs. On either hand rolled
away a landscape stamped with the features of an African ancestry, all
but concealed at times by the cactus-trees of a willow's height that
hedged the track. At rare intervals a stuccoed station serving some
hamlet hidden among the hills found standing-room on the right of way.
An occasional hovel built of field stones frowned down from the crest of
a parched hillock. Now and again out of the meeting-place of the rails
ahead came jogging a peasant seated sidewise on an ass, to swerve
suddenly aside and rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing a high-pitched
ballad of Arabic cadence. But these were but bubbles on the surface of
a fathomless solitude, though a solitude brilliant with an all-invading
sunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods.
It turned out that the railroad had not been built for the exclusive
convenience of pedestrians and donkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling
arose out of the north, and no unconscionable time thereafter the daily
"expreso" roared by--at a rate close upon fifteen miles an hour. The
ticket collector, cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand along the
running board, in imminent peril of losing his footing--and being
obliged to pursue his train to the next station. During the afternoon
there passed two "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudal carload of
passengers. But the speed of these was more reasonable, varying from
six to eight miles, with vacations at each station and frequent holidays
in the open country.
The sun was still an hour high when I reached the station of San Pablo.
This time the town itself stood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of
an oak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. I plunged quickly down
into the intervening valley.
It was a checker-board place, perhaps only a century or two old;
certainly no relic of the Moor, for there was not a sign of shop or
market in all its extent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of
one of its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in the center of a bare
room. He stared at me a long moment when I halted before the immense
open window to inquire for an inn.
"San Pablo, senor," he answered at last, "is a private town owned by the
mining company. There is no inn."
I was turning away when he continued:
"But step inside and we shall see what the ama can arrange for you."
He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expert employed in the mines.
The Spanish, however, in which he addressed the _ama_ was faultless.
"Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "How can I give posada, having
no license from the government? And without the permission of Don
Jose--"
"Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering in upon us, "ask Don Jose
to have the goodness to step over. He is manager of the mines," he
continued, "and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo."
It would have been a misfortune, indeed, to have journeyed through
Andalusia without making the acquaintance of Don Jose. He burst in upon
us a moment later; a very hippopotamus of a man, dressed in baggy
trousers, slouch hat, and alpaca jacket. Unfortunately his arrival
coincided with my announcement that I was walking to Cordoba--the whole
itinerary would have been too strong meat for Latin consumption--and his
native geniality was for a time overshadowed by astonishment at my
extraordinary means of locomotion. I had all but finished the meal set
for me in an adjoining room when the pair entered and sat down beside
me.
"Senor," began the manager, in what was meant to be a whisper, "you
cannot walk to Cordoba. It is forty leagues."
"How much money have you?" put in the Frenchman.
"Er--I have something over seven pesetas," I answered.
"Bueno! Bonisima!" cried the alcalde, patting me on the shoulder. "Don
Victor and I will add the rest and I shall go with you to the station to
buy the ticket--in the morning."
Great, I reflected, is the infant mortality among generous resolutions
in the gray of dawn, and accordingly held my peace.
Having settled my future to his own satisfaction, Don Jose linked an arm
in one of mine and plunged out into the night.
"Your bed is waiting for you in your own house," he said with Spanish
formality. "You have only to say the word."
The first syllable of which I had not found time to say before we
marched full front into San Pablo's barrack-like cafe. A roar of
greeting sounded through the dense cloud of cigarette smoke: "Buenas
tardes! Don Jose!"
"Buenas, amigos! Que le gusta!" returned my companion, and pushing
toward a table with two vacant chairs he continued without a break, "Un
ponche, Don Gregario! And you, senor? Anything you may choose, though
there is nothing equal to ponche. Verdad, Rufo?" Then as I opened my
lips to express a preference, "Si! si! Don Gregario! Dos ponches!"
The room was filled with a hundred bronze-tinted miners over wine and
cards. Don Jose was the industrial autocrat of every man present, yet
one would have fancied him rather a brother or cousin, so free was the
intercourse from haughtiness on the one hand and servility on the other.
Miner and manager addressed each other by their given names, shouted at
each other in friendly dispute, thumped each other fraternally on the
back. Despite all which one felt absolute assurance that when labor
again caught up its pick the manager's word would command instant
obedience.
The landlord, flushed with the exertion of their concoction, soon set
the incomparable beverages before us. With the alacrity of a man who
will have no shadow of debt hanging over his head, Don Jose thrust a
hand into a pocket of his alpaca and cast on the table three mammoth
coppers, the combined value of which was close upon five cents. With
the first sip he rolled a cigarette and pushed pouch and papers toward
me. Then having introduced me as "Senor Newyorkano," he plunged
headlong into the story of my life, addressing not merely the assembled
miners but whomever else may have been prowling within gunshot of the
building. "And to think, amigos," he concluded, "after crossing all the
sea el senor should have wandered into San Pablo looking for a posada!"
The company beat their hands on the tables and howled with merriment.
Whatever the uproarious humor of that climax to my adventures, it lost
nothing of its poignancy as long as the evening lasted, and served to
top off a score of otherwise pointless tales.
My ignorance of the Andalusian game notwithstanding, I had soon taken a
hand. The alcalde, consuming uncounted cigarettes, beamed over my
shoulder shouting praise of my sagacity each time I cast on the table
the card he pointed out. As for "ponche," what the peerless libation
lacked in favor with the masses it gained in the unswerving fidelity of
its sponsor. With clock-like regularity his reverberating voice rang
out above the din of revelry: "Don Gregario, un ponche!" In vain did I
announce my thirst permanently abated, in vain did I "say the word" or
strive at least to take advantage of the free choice offered me. My
protest was invariably drowned in the roar of the amended order: "Si,
si! Dos ponches, Don Gregario!"
Evening rolled into night, night into morning, and still the clank of
copper coins continued. Once I attempted to forestall the diving into
that fathomless alpaca by thrusting a hand into my own pocket. My
unquenchable host started to his feet with a bellow that seemed to set
the very walls vibrating:
"Strangers, senor, cannot spend money in San Pablo! We are a private
town!"
The minute hand was nearing the completion of its third lap when a
general uprising, subtly instigated by the landlord, swept the carousers
into the coal-black night. "My house" was no such regal mansion as
befitted an industrial sovereign, an alcalde, and a man of unlimited
coppers rolled into one. It was different, to be sure, from the other
bare stone dwellings of San Pablo, but only in the wild bachelor
disorder that reigned within its four naked walls. In one corner was a
mountainous husk mattress. Its mate, alleged my host, lay somewhere
buried in the jumble; and he verified the assertion not long after by
dragging it forth. While he was booting this into some resemblance to a
bed, I kicked off my shoes and sank into profound slumber.
Don Jose, too, awoke at sunrise. His generosity, however, was but a
shadow of its former self. On the descent from the town he listened to
my objections to the proposed charity without once proffering a reply.
In the depth of the valley he halted and stared gloomily up at the
steep, sun-glazed path to the station observing that Providence after
all is the appointed guardian of the foolhardy. I thrust out a hand.
He shook it dejectedly and, bidding me go with God and remember there is
no drink equal to ponche, set out to clamber his way back to the
village.
Beyond the curve that swept San Pablo into the past a stream brawled
down out of the hills. I climbed a little way up the gorge and came
upon a tumbled boulder that had stored up a pool of just the depth for a
morning plunge. Further on the railway grew more winding with every
mile. The hills increased to mountain spurs, and soon after came the
mountains themselves, the parched and rock-tumbled Sierra de Honda,
fertile only with the memory of smugglers and intricate pathways. The
route led through many long, sombrous tunnels, entrance into which from
the blazing sunshine was like the diving into a mountain lake. Where
the burrowings ended, the line became still more circuitous, leaping
over abysmal, jagged gulleys by massive dry bridges.
I fasted all the day; for it was Sunday, and the few station buildings
that appeared were deserted. Yet the privation passed almost unnoticed.
Were a choice to be made I would willingly sacrifice any day's dinner
for the unfailing sunshine of Spain, reinforced by the pleasure of
knowing that with the new dawn another unclouded day will begin.
[Illustration: A Moorish gate of Ronda]
My night's halt was beneath swaying palm-trees.
Down through a ravine beside the track were scattered a few rambling
houses, in one of which I found accommodations. Its owner was a
peasant, battered with years, who sat before his dwelling smoking in the
cool of evening with his three sons. One of these was a _guardia civil_
who had seen all the provinces of Spain, and whose language in
consequence was Spanish. His brothers, on the other hand, spoke the
crabbed dialect of Andalusia. I caught the sense of most of their
remarks only at the third or forth repetition, to their ever-increasing
astonishment.
[Illustration: A gitana of Granada. In the district of the Alhambra.]
"Hermano," interrupted the guardia once, "you know you do not speak
Spanish?"
The speaker fell silent and listened for some time open-mouthed to his
brother in uniform.
"Caracoles!" he cried suddenly. "I speak no other tongue than you,
brother, except for the fine words you have picked up at las Cortes!"
Which was exactly the difficulty. The "fine" words were of pure
Castilian, for which the rural andaluz substitutes terms left behind by
the Moor. Furthermore his speech is guttural, explosive, slovenly, more
redolent of Arabic than of Spanish. He is particularly prone to slight
the S. His version of "estes senores" is "ete senore." Which is
comprehensible; but how shall the stranger guess that "cotoa e' l'
juti'a" is meant to convey the information that "la justicia es
costosa?"
My evening meal consisted of a _gazpacho_, olives, eggs, cherries,
blood-dripping pomegranates, a rich brown bread, and wine; my couch of a
straw mattress in a corner of the great kitchen--and my reckoning was
barely twelve cents.
Afoot with the dawn, I had soon entered the vast cork forest that covers
all the northern slope of the sierra. Wherever a siding offered, stood
long rows of open freight cars piled high with bales of the spongy bark;
the morning "mixto" hobbled by bearing southward material seemingly
sufficient to stop all the bottles in Christendom.
By rail Ronda was still a long day distant--but not afoot. Before the
morning was old I came upon the beginning of the short-cut which my
hosts of the night had described. It straggled uncertainly upward for a
time across a rolling sandy country knobbed with tufts of withered grass
and overspread with mammoth cork-trees, some still unbarked, some
standing stark naked in the blistering sun. Then all at once, path,
sand and vegetation ceased, and above me stretched to the very heavens
the grilling face of a bare rock. I mounted zigzagging, as up the slate
roof of some gigantic church, swathed in a heat that burned through the
very soles of my shoes. A mile up, two guardias civiles emerged
suddenly from a fissure, the sun glinting on their muskets and polished
black three-cornered hats. Here, then, of all places, was to be my
first meeting with these officious fellows, whose inquisitiveness was
reported the chief drawback to a tramp in Spain. But they greeted me
with truly Spanish politeness, even cordiality. Only casually, when we
had chatted a bit, as is wont among travelers meeting on the road, did
one of them suggest:
"You carry, no doubt, senor, your personal papers?"
I dived into my shirt--my knapsack, and drew out my passport. The
officers admired it a moment side by side without making so bold as to
touch it, thanked me for privilege, raised a forefinger to their hats,
and stalked on down the broiling rock.
A full hour higher I brought up against a sheer precipice. Of the town
that must be near there was still not a trace. For some time longer I
marched along the foot of the cliff, swinging half round a circle and
always mounting. Then all at once the impregnable wall gave way, a
hundred white stone houses burst simultaneously on my sight, and I
entered a city seething in the heat of noonday.