The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces
around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of
white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was
very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to
choose which _fonda_ we should stop at for our luncheon, but our driver
chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not
believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put
us down across the way at the _venta_ where he was going to bait his
horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little
policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the _fonda_ and
shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a
yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our
drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we
perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned
without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in
the little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found
ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the
scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that
_fonda._ When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds in
our usage to the Spanish _almuerzo,_ began to come, it seemed as if it
never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes and
bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then there
was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish came
after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course
there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts
of fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at
a venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great
kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the
next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was
worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how
much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen
who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I
only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing
our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our
hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa.
When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts
somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt
so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had
better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was
sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from
being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself
to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to
his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he
put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which
I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count
the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank
walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through
open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected
plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them.
Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or
out of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or
Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of
the women’s costume which you are promised at the first mention of the
place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization.
Of course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide
street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just
as advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their
heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out
at the strangers. It was like the women’s costume at Chiozza on the
Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it
was authenticated by being black. “Moorish ladies,” our guide proudly
proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish;
if they were really Orientals, they followed us with those eyes single
as daringly as if they had been of our own Christian Occident.
The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding
policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have
really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from
beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did
not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and
we were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however
pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as
though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the
principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the
cleanest in all Spain.