As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though
we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming
to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its
garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon’s writing and inhale the
keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have
tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar,
it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of
getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in
the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you
got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes
the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the
glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother
sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would,
but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled
placidly.
At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over
the hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments
of the courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile
which runs daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was
so bad that those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and
in such a case I was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not
venture, for since then I have motored over some of the roads in the
state of Maine and lived. If people in Maine had that Spanish road as
far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road
gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the
promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every
few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as
much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out
of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of
level and even of lapse. We started at ten o’clock, and it was not too
late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and
donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing
with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green
pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown
pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating.
The pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and
gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates
in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began
passing through long stretches of cork woods.
The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes
gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of
excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it
begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings
and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark,
which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have
been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding,
for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and
the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh
year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would
rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the
trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity
them.
The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew
colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which
lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding
road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly
visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we
met soldiers possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not
molesting them; and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil
Guards, marching shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free
and their carbines on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a
mounted wayfarer came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in
his own equipment and that of his steed, and there were peasant women
solidly perched on donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded
in white kerchiefs.