Mountain philosophy—A Rembrandt mother and child—Egyptian cotton fields—The Khalif and thecañeria—My lodging in a bakery—Embarrassing hospitality—An Arabic banner—Subterranean reservoirs—The Way of the Cross.
Mountain philosophy—A Rembrandt mother and child—Egyptian cotton fields—The Khalif and thecañeria—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 soindeed 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 waysideventa, 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 withaguardiente(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 achozabuilt 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 mightgive the coin in order to be freed from the unmusical professional whine.
I weakly gave theperilla. 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 anothernuit blanchefor 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 aventaby 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 thehuertasare 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 littlehuertawas on the oldcañeria(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 AbderrahmanIII. 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 hishuertawould be interfered with.
All along thecañerias, 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 otherplaces, 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, thehuertas, 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 thetahona[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 cometo 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 afonda, 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 myjamugas, with my host leading the donkey, Rosario on another donkey or a mule led by her son, seated on the top of theserón(panniers) containing our food for the day and my tools and photographic apparatus; for (although this is somewhat off thepoint) 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 brilliantjeu de motson 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 subterraneanaljibes[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 importantof which is perhaps a square yard of red silk of Arabic manufacture calledtafetán, 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—infact, 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.
“A SADDLE FOR FEMININITY.”
“A SADDLE FOR FEMININITY.”