ONE of the most picturesque features of natural scenery which the traveller comes upon in Southern Spain, is that of the olive orchards, especially those which cluster about Cordova. As the time of harvest draws near, the coloring of these orchards is particularly pleasing. The ripening fruit varies in tint, from vivid greens to gay reds and lovely purples, while the foliage, of willow-leaf shape, restless and quivering, is of a tender, shimmering, greenish gray, and the trunks often have a solemn and aged aspect. Many of these plantations are very ancient indeed, planted perhaps by the grandsires of the present owners. They are usually a source of much profit, as the best eating olives are those grown in Spain, and though the trees come into bearing late, there are orchards which have been known to yield fruit for centuries.
Each orchard has a guard, or watchman, who tends it the year round, for the pruning, the tillage, and the watch upon the ripening fruit, demand constant care. In the harvest season the watch is by night as well as by day, for a vigorous shake of the branches will dislodge almost every berry, and a thief, with his donkeys and his panniers, might easily and almost noiselessly strip an entire orchard in a few hours. The olive guard lives in a hut of thatch or grass in summer, and in a sort of cave, or burrow, in winter.
The crop is mainly harvested by girls and women, and the scene is like a picnic all day long, for Spanish girls turn all their labors into merry-making whenever it is possible to do so. The gray orchards are lighted up with the rainbowy colors of the peasant costumes, and the air is musical with the donkey bells, while the overseer, prone on the ground with his cigarette, “loafs and invites his soul,” evidently finding great delight in the double drudgery he controls—that of the donkeys and the damsels.
In regard to the great age of olive-trees, a recent writer says: “When raised from seed it rarely bears fruit under fifty years, and when propagated in other ways it requires at least from twenty to twenty-five years. But, on the other hand, it lives for centuries. The monster olive at Beaulieu, near Nice, is supposed by Risso to be a thousand years old. Its trunk at four feet from the ground has a circumference of twenty-three feet, and it is said to have yielded, five hundred pounds of oil in a single year.”
CORDOVA, lying in the beautiful valley of the Guadalquiver, surrounded with gardens and villas, is well named the city of Age, Mellowness, and Tranquility. It abounds with antiquities, and at every turn memories are awakened of old Roman emperors, and the Arabian caliphs; the gates, the sculptures, the towers, the mullioned windows and nail-studded doors, the galleried houses and their beautiful patios fitted for idle life in the soft Andalusian weather, the mosques and the great bridges are all of those times. Even the streets are named after the old Roman and Spanish scholars and poets.
The large bridge over the Guadalquiver was originally built by the Roman Emperor, Octavius Augustus; it was afterwards remodelled by the Arabs. The gate is very fine which leads into the gypsy quarter. The Moors had three thousand baths on the banks of the river, but in their day it was a full shining tide; now it is a muddy current, hardly in need of bridging at all.
The mosques of Cordova are fine, and among them is the greatest Moslem temple in the world, with its beautiful chapels, its Court of Oranges, and its wondrous grove of marbles. This mosque, now used for Christian worship, was erected on the ruins of an old cathedral, which it is said had been built upon the site of a Roman temple. The Moslem structure was erected by the Caliph Abdurrahman, in the seventh century, and was a hundred years in building. The principal entrance is through the Court of Oranges, where beautiful palms also grow, and other tropical trees. Thence one emerges among a very forest of marble pillars, where countless magnificent naves stretch away and intersect, and the shining columns and pilasters spring upward into delicate double horseshoe arches. One marble is shown where a Christian captive, chained at its base, scratched a cross upon the stone with his nails. In some sections the ceiling is dazzling with arabesques and crystals. Within the mosque, in its very centre, rises a fine Catholic church, built in the time of Charles the Fifth. It contains many illuminated missals and rare old choir books.
The Cordovans, like the people of other Spanish cities, are indebted to the Moors for the fine aqueducts which bring the cold mountain water across the valley into the public watering places. These great reservoirs are good points for observing some phases of folk-life.
GRANADA, the beautiful city, with beautiful rivers, is named for a “grenade” or pomegranate. At the time of the Conquest, King Ferdinand on being assured how valiantly the Moors would defend their last stronghold, replied, “I will pick out the seeds of this grenade one by one.”
There is a tradition among the Moors that when the hand carved over the principal entrance of the Alhambra shall reach down and grasp the key, also carved there, they shall regain their city, the ancient home of their caliphs.
The Generalife lies across the valley from the Alhambra. It was the summer palace of the Moorish sovereigns, and is built on a mountain slope by the Darro River, and its white walls gleam out from lovely terraced gardens, and groves of laurel. The grounds abound with fountains and summer houses.
The Alhambra—the great royal castle—a town in itself—is built on a lovely tree-embowered height, its many towers rising high above the mass of foliage. From these towers one looks across the vale of the Vega to the spot where Columbus is said to have turned back, recalled by Isabella, on his way to seek English aid in his discovery of a New World. From these towers, too, can be seen the valley in the distance, where Boabdil, last of the Moorish Kings, looked back on Granada for the last time; and across the river, one gazes upon the sombre region of the gypsy quarter, a swarming town of caves in the hillside.
Two relics of Alhambra housekeeping still remain; a great oven, and a fine well. Both are utilized by the custodian of the palace. The palace itself has many beautiful patios. The finest is known as the Court of Lions, named from the sculptured figures which support the fountain in the centre. Another is known sometimes as the Court of the Lake, and sometimes as the Court of the Myrtles; and still another, entered by subterranean ways, is the Hall of Divans, the special retreat of the Favorites. There are many others, and all these patios and halls are bewilderingly beautiful with arabesques, mosaics, inscriptions and wondrous arches and columns, porticos, vistas, alcoves and temples—and everywhere elegance of effect indescribable.
AT Granada, whenever it is desired, the proprietor of the Washington Irving Hotel will engage the Gypsy King to come with his daughters and dance the national dance at the house of one of the guides. This dance is a most wild and weird performance. There is an incessant clapping of hands and clatter of castañets, a sharp stamping of heels, an agonized swaying of the body and the arms; and often the castañets and guitar are accompanied by a wild and mournful wail from the dancers. The king of the Granada gypsies is said to be the best guitar player in Spain.
The climb from the city up to the vast Gypsy Quarter, known as the suburb of the Albaycin, is an adventure of a nightmare sort. The squalor and horror of the life to be witnessed on the way up along narrow streets swarming with the weirdest and dirtiest of brown beggars, may not be painted, may not be written; yet now and then one goes under a superb Arab arch, passes a door rich with arabesques, or comes upon a group of elegant columns supporting a roof of mud and rock. The long hillside seems honeycombed with the denlike habitations of the gitanos, many of whom, among the men, are blacksmiths, while others work at pottery, turning out very handsome plates and water jars, while the women weave cloth, and do a rude kind of embroidery, all selling their wares in the streets—in fact the spinning and weaving and sewing is often carried on in the street itself.
But the little ones too (las niñas) add largely to the family income, as they dance for the visitor; the traveller and his guide being always invited to enter the caves. These gypsy children dance with much spirit, and they also sing many beautiful old ballads of Spanish prowess. The most beautiful ones among the girls are early trained to practice fortune-telling.
With their dances, their songs, their fortune-telling, their importunate, imperious begging, and their rude industries, these Granada gypsies live here from century to century, in swarms of thousands, never attempting to improve their condition, but boasting, instead, of the comfort of their dismal caves as being cool in summer and warm in winter. It is plain that they consider themselves and their Quarter “a part of the show,” and hardly second in interest to the Alhambra itself.
HARDLY is there a Spanish town of note, that does not possess its great Bull Ring; and there are scores of inferior Bull Circuses throughout Spain. There is but a slight public sentiment against the brutal sport which is the favorite Sunday recreation of the whole nation. Spanish kings and queens for many centuries have sat in the royal boxes to applaud, and many of the Spanish noblemen of the present time breed choice fighting bulls on their farms, and there is the same mad admiration of the agile, skilfulespadoor bull slayer, as a hundred years ago. To be a finepicadororbanderillo, is to be sure of the praise and the presents of the entire populace. Men, women and children go; the amphitheatre is always crowded and always the crowd will sit breathless and happy to see six or eight bulls killed, and three times that count of horses—the rich and the nobles on the shady side under the awnings, the peasants sweltering and burning in the sun. It is thepicadorwho rides on horseback to invite with his lance the attacks of the bull as he enters the arena; it is thecapeadorwho springs into the arena with his cloak of maddening red or yellow, to distract the bull’s attention from the fallen horseman; it is thebanderillowho taunts the wounded creature with metal-tipped arrows, the barbs of which cannot be extracted, or with his long pole leaps tauntingly over the back of the confused creature; but it is the gorgeousespadowith his sword, entering the arena, at last, who draws all eyes. With his red flag he plays with the bull as a cat with the mouse, until the amphitheatre is mad for life blood; then with a swift, graceful stroke he ends all, his superb foe lies dead, and he turns from him to meet the wild shower of hats, cigars, flowers, fans, purses that beats upon him from all sides—it is a scene of unimaginable exultation, for there are glad cries and plaudits, and royalty itself throws the bull-slayer a golden purse and a pleased smile, and the beautiful Spanish señoritas lavish upon him the most bewildering attentions.
The Spanish boy is born with a thirst for this sport. Their favorite game isToro. One lad mounts on his fellow’s back to take the part of thepicadorand his horse; another, with horns of sticks, represents the bull; and the rest arecapeadors,banderillos, andescodas, while the audience of adult loungers look on with fierce excitement. It is in this fierce, popular street sport that the future champions of the Bull Ring are trained and developed—to be anescodais usually the height of a Spanish boy’s ambition.
NOWHERE in Spain are you refreshed with the restful sound of water, sometimes soft, sometimes gay, as in Granada. You hear the flow of the Darro over its stones and rocks, you hear the splash of fountains, the gay hurry of mountain brooks, the soft sound of springs—everywhere flow, or gurgle, or drip. You hear it on the tree-bordered and bowered Alameda in your moonlit walks, and you hear it through the windows of yourfonda, or hotel, when you wake. It is everywhere about the Alhambra heights, and the Generalife terraces. The Spaniards call this continuous water-sound, “The Sigh of the Moor.”
Most of the young Spanish women as well as the men, are accomplished guitar-players. The guitar belongs in story to the Señorita, along with her mantilla and her fan. It usually hangs on her casement, brave with ribbons and gay wool tufts and all manner of decorations, and by moonlight she will come out upon the balcony to answer her cavelier’s serenade with a song as sweet as his own. You feel the atmosphere of the Spanish night vibrating all about you, as you stroll along the moonlit street, with the low, soft, delicate twinkle of a hundred guitars, the players half-hidden in the dim patio balconies.
It is often the custom to drive the goats from door to door to be milked, and often an accustomed goat, tinkling its bells, will go along the street, stopping of its own will and knowledge at the doors of its customers, and knocking smartly with its horns should no one appear. The servant of the house comes out into the street and milks the desired quantity, while the “milkman” lounges near by with his cigarette.
Often it is as amusing to watch the dogs of the beggars by the churches as the men themselves. While the nobleCaballeros, Don Miguel and Don Pedro, exhausted with the saying of prayers and the much asking of centimos, have fallen asleep in the shade, their respective dogs remain awake to glare at each other with true professional jealousy, and to growl and snap, should a chance stranger drop a coin in one hat and not in the other. The beggar is the last sight, as well as the first, which greets the traveler in Spain.