In ancient days an embattled wall connected these towers with the opposite point of the Alhambra,closing the mouth of the valley, which was not then the pleasaunce it is now, but an arid ravine used as the burial ground of the fortress. The entrance to the valley is now through the Puerta de las Granadas, built by order of Charles V. Taking the path to the left, we soon reach the fountain in the Renaissance style, erected in 1545 by Pedro Machuca, by order of the Conde de Tendilla. It is ornamented with the imperial shield and the heads of the three river-gods, Genil, Darro, and Beiro. The medallions represent Alexander the Great, Hercules slaying the hydra, Phryxus and Helle, and Daphne pursued by Apollo. The laurels growing out of the distressed damsel's head give her the appearance of a Sioux brave. A few steps beyond we reach the famous Puerta de la Justicia, so called because within it the Moorish sultans or their kadis administered justice—or it may have been merely law. This entrance is formed by two towers of reddish brick, placed back to back, and united by an upper storey. We look at once for the hand and key so often referred to by Irving, and distinguish them with difficulty—the first over the outermost horseshoe arch, the latter over the middle arch. Opinion is divided as to the meaning of these symbols. The key is supposed by some to signify the power of God to unlock the gate of Heaven to the true believer, while the hand appears to have been regarded as a talisman against the evil eye. A winding corridor leads through the gate into the citadel, past aninscription celebrating the Conquest in 1492, and an altar now enclosed within a sort of cupboard.
GRANADA—NEAR THE ALHAMBRAGRANADA—NEAR THE ALHAMBRA
This gate is placed at right angles to the wall which girdles the hill and runs along its edge, following all its inequalities of level. It is in fairly good preservation, but the rampart walk has disappeared here and there. Of the square mural towers a great many remain—some hopelessly ruinous, others inhabited by the guardians of the domain or their widows and relations. The towers on the south-west side, as far as I could judge, were better adapted for defence than those on the north-east, where the width of the windows would have greatly embarrassed the defence. The area enclosed by the outer wall was divided, it seems, by two cross walls into what, in the medieval parlance, we would call the outer, middle and inner wards. To the last corresponded the citadel proper or Kasba (Alcazaba, the Spaniards call it), whose massive walls rise to your left on emerging from the Puerta de la Justicia. This is the oldest part of the fortress. It occupies the extremity of the plateau, which is marked by the tall, square Torre de la Vela, or watch tower, whereon a silver cross was planted by the "Tercer Rey," Cardinal Mendoza, to announce the occupation of the Alhambra by the Spaniards. Here also is a bell which can be heard as far off as Loja, and which, if struck with sufficient force by a maiden, is said to have the faculty of procuring her a husband. The view from the platform is noble. The dazzling whitecity is spread out beneath, in front stretches the Vega, to the south the eyes rest lovingly on the white streaks of the Sierra Nevada.
Upon this tower I met a French entomologist, who announced that he should not trouble to visit any other part of the Alhambra, and was, in fact, surprised to learn that there was anything more to see. His horizon was bounded by the Lepidoptera, on one side, and the Coleoptera (I think that is the word) on the other. After all, archæologists take no more interest in black beetles than entomologists do in buildings. Incidentally, I should think Granada an admirable place for the intimate study of insects.
From the Torre de las Armas, a road led from the citadel down the declivity to the town, crossing the Darro by the ruined Puente del Cadi. On the inner side the citadel is strengthened by the picturesque Torre del Homenage—a name often given to towers in Spain. The open space before it, where the water-carriers gather round the well, was a comparatively deep ravine in Moorish times, and was not levelled up till after the fall of Boabdil. On the opposite side—facing the Torre del Homenage—it was bounded by what I will call the wall of the middle ward, which ran across from the Torre de las Gallinas to near the Puerta de la Justicia, and of which only the gatehouse, the beautiful Puerta del Vino, remains.
GRANADA—PUERTA DEL VINO, ALHAMBRAGRANADA—PUERTA DEL VINO, ALHAMBRA
This admitted to the area which contained the palaces and also the little town of the Alhambra—inhabited by persons attached to the court, the ulema, chiefs of such powerful tribes as the Beni Serraj and the Beni Theghri, discarded sultanas, ex-favourites, soldiers of fortune, plenipotentiaries and envoys, and a crowd of parasites and hangers-on. To-day the population is limited chiefly to one little street, composed of pensions, photographers' shops and estancos. The plan of the whole fortress no doubt varied from age to age, but in the main agreed with that according to which most European strongholds were constructed. There was the outer wall with its mural towers and gatehouses; a strong inner ward, in place of a keep shut off by a ditch or ravine; and two or more other enclosures, each defended by a wall with a fortified entrance. It does not seem that the portcullis and drawbridge were used by the Moorish engineers.
While the Kasba is generally attributed to an earlier dynasty, the outer wall and the other Moorish buildings are almost unanimously ascribed to Al Ahmar and his successors of the Nasrid dynasty. To reach the Alhambra Palace, called pre-eminently by foreigners the Alhambra and by the Spaniards the Alcazar, or Palacio Arabe, you pass across the plaza, leaving the unfinished Palace of Charles V. to your right. Behind it you find not an imposing and gorgeous structure, but what appears to be a collection of tile-roofed sheds. A mean, characterless entrance admits you to the far-famed palace.
The building belongs to the last stage of Spanish-Arabic art, when the seed of Mohammedan ideas and culture had long since taken root in the soil and produced a style purely local in many of its features. Some authorities trace the first principles of Arabic architecture back to the Copts; the Spaniards argue that their style is derived from Byzantine works they found before them in Andalusia. The germs of Arabic art are certainly not, if travellers' tales be true, to be found in Arabia. The Saracen conquerors were warriors, not artists, and their ideas of form and ornament were undoubtedly borrowed—like their vaunted culture—from the more civilized nations with which they came in contact. With Morocco just across the strait, it is not safe to claim too much of native genius and refinement for the Moor. Whatever may have been the primitive models of Andalusian architecture, as time went by it lost much of the dignity and simplicity of its earliest examples—such as the Giralda and the Mezquita. The Moors of Granada had wearied of the fanaticism and austerity of Islam. If not precisely decadent, they had lost the fire and enthusiasm of youth, and wanted to enjoy a comfortable old age. If the palace we are about to enter seems in parts more like the bower of an odalisque than the seat of royalty, we must remember that the sultans wanted to enjoy life here, and had no fancy for the stern, military-looking palaces of their Christian rivals. Your Oriental, like the cat, values luxury very highly,and yet, from our point of view, does not seem to secure it. A European would have found himself hopelessly uncomfortable at the court of Al Ahmar and Mohammed V.
GRANADA—THE ALHAMBRA: TOWER OF COMARESGRANADA—THE ALHAMBRA: TOWER OF COMARES
Architecturally the Alhambra Palace has little merit. It is impossible to trace any order in the distribution of its parts, which ought not of course to be expected in a building repeatedly added to in the course of two and a half centuries. Moreover, a portion was demolished to make room for the Palace of Charles V. The Moorish builders were fond of conceits which our taste condemns. They liked to conceal the supports of a heavy tower, and to leave it seemingly suspended in the air. There is nothing imposing about the edifice, nothing stately. Its great charm consists in its decoration, which is wonderful and, in its own line, beyond all praise. It is based on the strictest geometrical plan, and every design and pattern may be resolved into a symmetrical arrangement of lines and curves at regular distances. The intersection of lines at various angles is the secret of the system. All these lines flow from a parent stem, and nothing accidental or extraneous is permitted. The same adhesion to sharply-defined principles is conspicuous in the colour-scheme. On the stucco only the primary colours are used; the secondary tints being reserved for the dados of mosaic or tile work. The green seen on the groundwork was originally blue. To-day, when the white parts have assumed the tint of old ivory and time has subdued thevivid colouring, the effect is more harmonious than it could have been originally.
Epigraphy, or long flowing inscriptions, proclaiming the merits of the sultans or of the chambers themselves, enters largely into the decoration. Those who can read these at a glance must find the halls less monotonous than most people are likely to do. The beauty of the ornamentation consists in its exquisite symmetry, and this is not apparent to every comer, who may fail to realize with Mr. Lomas "that the exact relation between the irregular widths of cloistering on the long and short sides of the court [of the Lions] is that of the squares upon the sides of a right-angled triangle"!
The inscription that most frequently recurs in the decoration is the famous "There is no conqueror but God"—the words used by Al Ahmar on his return from the siege of Seville, in deprecation of the acclamations of his subjects. The newer parts are readily recognizable by the yoke and sheaf of arrows, the favourite devices of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose initials, F and Y, are also seen; and by the Pillars of Hercules and the motto "Plus Oultre," denoting work executed by order of Charles V.
The oldest part of the building—by which I mean that which appears to have been the least altered—is round about the Patio de la Mezquita, more properly named "del Mexuar," after the divan or "meshwâr" that held its sittings here. The southern façade of this small court reminds one very much of the front of theAlcazar at Seville. From this you enter the disused chapel, an uninteresting apartment consecrated in 1629. The Moorish decoration has almost completely disappeared, but much of the work in the little apartment adjacent, called the Sultan's Oratory, seems to be original. There never was a mosque here, but there may have been a private praying-place. Yusuf I. is supposed to have been stabbed here. The tragic deed was more probably done at the great mosque outside the palace where the Alhambra parish church now stands. From the Patio del Mexuar a tunnel called the Viaducto leads to the Patio de la Reja, the Baths, and the Garden of Daraxa.
The Court of the Myrtles (Patio de las Arrayanes, or de la Alberca) is the first entered by the visitor. It is an oblong space, the middle of which is occupied by a tank of bright green water. This is bordered by trimly kept hedges of myrtle. The side walls are modern, and do not deserve attention. The front to the right on entering is very beautiful. It is composed of two arcaded galleries, one above the other, with a smaller closed gallery—a sort of triforium—interposed. The arches spring from marble columns, with variously decorated capitals. The central arch of the lowest gallery rises nearly to the cornice, and is decorated in a style which Contreras thought suggestive of Indian architecture. Fine lattice work closes the seven windows of the triforium. The upper gallery is equally graceful, but looks in imminent danger of collapse.Above a similar but single arcade at the opposite end of the court rises the square massive upper storey of the Tower of Comares, with its crenellated summit. To reach its interior we cross the gallery beneath a little dome painted with stars on a blue ground, and a long parallel apartment (Sala de la Barca) gutted by fire in 1890, and enter the spacious Hall of the Ambassadors (Sala de los Embajadores), the largest hall in the Alhambra. Here was held the final council which decided the fate of Islam in Spain. Looking upwards we behold the glorious airy dome of larch-wood with painted stars. The decoration is magnificent—mostly in red and black—and may be divided into four zones: (1) a dado of mosaic tiles or azulejos; (2) stucco work in eight horizontal bands, each of a different design; (3) a row of five windows once filled with stained glass on each side; (4) a carved wooden cornice, supporting the roof. On three sides of the hall are alcoves, each with a window, the one opposite the entrance having been near the Sultan's throne.
The Hall of the Ambassadors probably never looked very different from what it is now. It was never a private apartment. We can imagine it occupied, when no function was proceeding, by a few slaves dozing on mats or reclining dog-like on the richly carpeted floor, ready, however, to spring up and make the lowest of salaams as some bearded dignity entered.
GRANADA—THE COURT OF THE LIONS: MOONLIGHTGRANADA—THE COURT OF THE LIONS: MOONLIGHT
This splendid hall and the other apartments adjacent to the Court of the Myrtles are supposed (I know not onwhat authority) to have constituted the official or public part of the royal residence, together with the apartments demolished to make room for the Palace of Charles V. The rest of the building, on this supposition, was the private or harem quarter. A narrow passage leads from the Court of the Myrtles to the Court of the Lions. "There is no part of the edifice that gives us a more complete idea of its original beauty and magnificence than this," says Washington Irving, "for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the centre stands the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops; and the twelve lions which support them cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. [The fountain nowadays plays only once a year.] The architecture, like that of all other parts of the palace, is characterized by elegance rather than grandeur; bespeaking a delicate and a graceful taste, and a disposition to indolent enjoyment. When one looks upon the fairy tracery of the peristyles, and the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls, it is difficult to believe that so much has survived the wear and tear of centuries, the shocks of earthquakes, the violence of war, and the quiet though no less baneful pilferings of the tasteful traveller; it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular tradition that the whole is protected by a magic charm."
I fancy that the gifted American was himself responsible for that tradition, for the Spaniards, as Lady Louisa Tenison observed sixty odd years ago,are not an imaginative race, and whatever legends or traditions are current relate almost exclusively to the Virgin and saints. Spanish folk-lore knows nothing of fairies and goblins. The palace which Irving tells us the people regarded as enchanted had been used by them for years as a factory, as store-rooms, as a laundry, as a caravanserai. This hardly suggests that it was looked upon with superstitious awe. The truth is that the palace had enchanted Washington Irving, as it has done many others—not natives—since.
The Court of the Lions is an oblong, surrounded by a gallery formed by 124 marble columns, eleven feet in height and placed irregularly, some in pairs, some single. The arches exhibit a similar variety of curve, and the capitals are of various designs. The tile roofing of the galleries rather mars the effect, but the stucco work within them is of the richest and finest description. In the centre of the short sides are two charming little pavilions, with "half-orange" domes and basins in their marble flooring. The court is gravelled, and derives its name from the twelve marble animals that support the basin of the central fountain. These creatures are called lions, but why I am at a loss to understand. They look more like poodles than any other living quadrupeds. Ford humorously remarks: "Their faces are barbecued, and their manes cut like the scales of a griffin, and their legs like bedposts, while water-pipes stuck in their mouths do not add to their dignity." An Arabic inscriptionreminds us that nothing need be feared from them, as life is wanting to enable them to show their fury. That fury would no doubt have been directed in the first instance at the sculptor who had made of the unfortunate creatures such grotesque caricatures.
GRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: PATIO DE LA ACEQUIAGRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: PATIO DE LA ACEQUIA
The court is surrounded by four splendid rooms—the halls of the Mocarabes, the Abencerrages, the Two Sisters, and of Justice. The second and third resemble each other, and are covered with the most marvellous specimens of the artesonado or carved wood ceiling. The stalactites or pendants, though in reality following a strict geometrical plan, exhibit complications and varieties that it is impossible for the eye to follow. The style may well have been suggested by the honey-comb. It is confusing, beautiful, glorious—certainly the most remarkable achievement of the art of the Spanish Moor. The walls are covered with lace-work in stucco of the most exquisite pattern, with mosaic dados, and friezes decorated with inscriptions in praise of Mohammed V. At the sides of the rooms are the alcoves characteristic of Oriental domestic architecture.
The Hall of the Two Sisters is so called from a couple of slabs of marble let into the flooring. The other chamber derives its name from the thirty-six chiefs of the Beni Serraj tribe, fabled to have been decapitated within it by order of Boabdil. The story was a pure invention of a Ginés Perez de Hita, a writer who lived in the sixteenth century. It has now spread through all lands, thanks to the version ofChateaubriand. The tribe is supposed in this story to have espoused the "Little King's" cause against his father, Mulai Hasan. Later on their chief, Hamet, was suspected of intriguing with the Castilians; and, what was still more criminal in the eyes of a Moslem, of carrying on a love affair with one of the sultanas. A cypress in the gardens of the Generalife is pointed out as the lovers' trysting-place. The sultan resolved to make an end of this pestilent brood, but Hamet himself, warned at the eleventh hour, escaped the fate of his kinsmen. The frail sultana would have shared their fate, had not four champions presented themselves and vindicated her reputation against all comers in the lists. Thus the affair ended happily—except for the thirty-six chiefs. Thus the story. I hope it will stimulate your imagination. For myself, there is an utter absence of the personal and human note about these gorgeous Moorish halls. It is certainly easier to believe that they sprang into existence at the bidding of an enchanter than that they were ever the scenes of men's loves and hates, hopes and fears.
GRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: COURT OF THE CYPRESSESGRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: COURT OF THE CYPRESSES
The Hall of Justice (Sala de la Justicia), at the far side of the Court of Lions, is a long apartment, divided into alcoves specially remarkable for the paintings on its ceiling. These have been the subject of endless controversy. To begin with, it was doubted if a Mohammedan could have painted them, since the representation of living objects is contrary to the injunctions of the Koran. I have it on the authority ofa very learned Moslem friend, a recognized authority on Mohammedan law, that the plastic arts are not forbidden by the Prophet, but merely pointed out as a possible snare and stumbling-block in the way of the believer. Painting has been a recognized art in Persia for centuries, and I have seen some pictures from that country which reveal no mean degree of skill. There is therefore no good reason to doubt that these curious works were executed by Moorish artists at the end of the fourteenth century. They are done on leather prepared with gypsum and nailed to the wooden ceiling. The colours (red, green, gold, etc.) are still vivid, but mildew is covering them in parts, and in places the gypsum is peeling off. These valuable specimens of Moorish art ought to have been taken down and placed under glass long ago. The first of the three represents ten bearded, robed, and turbaned personages, who may with some degree of probability be identified with the first sultans of the Nasrid dynasty. According to Oliver, the Moor in the green costume occupying the middle of one side is Al Ahmar, the founder of the race. Then, counting from his right, come Mohammed II., Nasr Abu-l-Juyyush, Mohammed IV., Saïd Ismaïl, Mohammed V. (in the red robe), Yusuf II., Yusuf I., Abu-l-Walid, and Mohammed III. The family likeness between these potentates is striking, and the red beards suggest a liberal use of the dye still largely used by the Oriental man of middle age. The other pictures are more interesting. The first representshunting scenes. Moors are seen chasing the wild boar, while Spanish knights are in pursuit of the lion and the bear. In another part of the composition the huntsmen are seen returning and offering the spoils of the chase to their ladies. The Moor greets his sultana with a benign and condescending air, the Christian on his knees offers his prize to his lady. In the next picture is another hunting scene, with a page, with sword and shield, leaning against a tree, awaiting his master's return. In another quarter of the picture his master (presumably) is rescuing a distressed damsel from a wild-looking creature who is quite undismayed by the tame lion accompanying his captive. Further on, the same knight is unhorsed and overthrown by a Moorish huntsman, two ladies from a castle in the background most ungratefully applauding the Christian's discomfiture. The pictures evidently were intended to record the incidents of a border warfare not dissimilar to those commemorated in our ballad of Chevy Chase.
In this hall a temporary chapel was set up, and mass was celebrated, on the taking of the city by the Spaniards.
GRANADA—TOCADOR DE LA REINAGRANADA—TOCADOR DE LA REINA
Crossing the Hall of the Two Sisters, we enter the beautiful Mirador de "Lindaraja," the most charming and elegant of all the apartments in the palace. Through three tall windows, once filled with coloured crystals, we look down into the pretty Patio de Daraxa, which, like the chamber, does not derive its name from animaginary sultana, but from a word meaning "vestibule." It is a delightful garden, where shade is always to be obtained between the closely planted cypresses, orange, and peach trees, rising between twin hedges of box and bushes of rose and myrtle. In the centre is a seventeenth-century fountain. Here you will always find some artist committing to canvas his impressions of one of the fairest gardens men have fashioned for themselves.
The rooms on the other side of the patio were built by Charles V., and include the Tocador de la Reina, or Queen's Boudoir, a prettily decorated belvedere affording an entrancing view. It was in this room that Washington Irving took up his quarters. Théophile Gautier slept sometimes in the hall of the Abencerrages, sometimes in that of the Two Sisters, and was impressed by the eerieness of the palace at night. Yet there is not a manor-house in England or a château in France that is not more suggestive of the spectral and uncanny than these gilded halls and open courts. However, everyone has his own preconceptions of the weird and the picturesque.
From the Patio de Daraxa we enter the very interesting Baths, ably restored by the late Don Rafael Contreras. The Sala de las Camas, or chamber of repose, is among the most brilliantly decorated rooms in the palace, yet, as elsewhere in this neglected pile, the gilding is being suffered to fade and the tiling in the niches, I noticed, is loosening and breaking up. From a gallery runninground the chamber, the music of the odalisques was wafted down to the sultan reclining in one of the divans below. He must have been in no hurry to leave this spot, where he dreamily puffed at his hubble-bubble and watched the play of the fountain. The light came from apertures in the superb artesonado ceiling. Without, on a stone seat, the eunuchs mounted guard and preserved their lord's repose from interruption. The actual baths are contained in two adjacent chambers. A staircase ascended to the Hall of the Two Sisters above, for the use, not improbably, of the ladies of the harem. On leaving the baths you may follow the tunnel across the uninteresting Patio de la Reja and beneath the Tower of Comares, to the Patio del Mexuar.
GRANADA—TORRE DE LAS DAMASGRANADA—TORRE DE LAS DAMAS
No visitor to the Alhambra must omit to walk round the outer wall or enceinte, and to inspect the towers. The Torre de las Damas, a fortified tower dating from the time of Yusuf I., was inhabited by Ismaïl, the brother of Mohammed V., and marked the palace limits on this side. It contains a tastefully decorated hall. Adjacent to it is a beautiful if gaudy little Mohammedan mihrab or oratory, approached through a private garden. Here was the house of Anastasio de Bracamonte, the esquire of the Conde de Tendilla, to whom was assigned the custody of the Alhambra at the Reconquest. The Puerta de Hierro, a little further on, was restored at the same time, and faces the gate and path leading to the Generalife. Passing the Torre de los Picos, wereach the Torre de la Cautiva, which contains a beautiful chamber, over which a lovely rosy tint is diffused by the tiles and stucco. The Torre de las Infantas, built by Mohammed VII., is a perfect example of an Oriental dwelling-house. Through the usual zigzag vestibule you reach a hall with a fountain in the centre and alcoves in three of the sides. The decoration is perhaps over elaborate. The towers on the other side of the enceinte were, as I have said, intended mainly for defence. Near the ruinous Torre del Agua, at the south-east extremity, a viaduct crosses the ravine from the Generalife, and some of the water precipitates itself over the brow of the hill in a mass of vivid living greenery. Further on, towards the Gate of Justice, is the Torre de los Siete Suelos, through which Boabdil is said to have made his last exit. It is supposed to extend far underground, and to contain much buried treasure. So at least Irving was told by the inhabitants, or possibly told them! Hence issues the Belludo, the spectral pack, which traverses the streets of Granada by night—also according to legend. This story of the Wild Huntsman crops up, in one form or another, in every part of Europe. There are the Dandy Dogs in Cornwall, the Wild Huntsman in Germany, Thibaut le Tricheur in the valley of the Loire, the Chasseur Noir of Fontainebleau, and so on. Folk-lore of this sort is easily fabricated. Foreigners in search of the picturesque ask the natives of such a place as this if ghosts do not haunt the ruins. The guide, anxious to please, says "Doubtless!" Theforeigner goes on to tell him of spectres that affect this particular class of building at home; and the guide readily devises a local version of the yarn for the benefit of the next stranger. I have found that the peasantry in most European countries hear of their local traditions and folk-lore first through the medium of books. And these remarks apply with especial force to the people of Latin countries, whom, contrary to the received opinion, I know to be less imaginative and less superstitious than northerners. It is natural that the gloomy forests of Germany and Sweden, rather than the sunlit plains of Andalusia, should generate dark fancies.
Strictly speaking the Generalife, the Trianon of the Moorish kings, is a more beautiful place than the Alhambra, though it has no architectural merit. It became the property at the Reconquest of a Christianized Moor, Don Pedro de Granada, who claimed to be descended from the famous Ben Hud, and from whose family it passed into the possession of the Marquises of Campotejar. The approach lies along a magnificent avenue of cypresses and tall shrubs. Arrived at the entrance you are admitted by a very comely damsel, and allowed to wander about the lovely gardens by yourself and to stay there all day if you like. At the far end of the first court is a poor collection of portraits, among which is one—No. 11—absurdly supposed to be a portrait of Ben Hud (died about 1237), though the person is dressed in the costume of the fifteenth century. This is the portrait which English travellers,and even the usually correct Baedeker, persist in mistaking for Boabdil's.
GRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: COURT OF THE CYPRESSESGRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: COURT OF THE CYPRESSES
The gardens of the Generalife are beyond all praise. Water bubbles up everywhere, and moistens the roots of gorgeous oleanders, myrtles, orange trees, cedars, and cypresses—the tallest trees in Spain. Beneath one of these—that to the right as you reach the head of the first flight of steps—the sultana is alleged to have kept her tryst with Hamet, the Abencerrage. Not a bad place, this, for a lovers' meeting. You rise from one flower-laden terrace to another till you reach the ugly belvedere—scribbled all over with idiots' names—whence you obtain a ravishing view of the Alhambra, the city, the Vega, and the mountains. The hours spent in the Generalife Gardens will be remembered as among the pleasantest of one's lifetime.
It may be, as a French writer states, impossible to tickle the surface of Granada without discovering Moorish remains, but certainly, outside the Alhambra, very few are to be seen above ground. The most conspicuous of them in the lower town is, on the whole, the Casa del Carbon, a dilapidated structure with a bold horseshoe archway which confronts you as you cross the Reyes Catolicos near the Post Office. The house is now used as a coal depot, but beneath the thick coating of grime you may discern the traces of graceful decorative work. The building is said to have been a corn exchange in Moorish days. More interesting are the vestiges of the ancient walls that girdled the oldestquarter,el viejo Albaicin. They were built in great part by Christian captives—perhaps by those whose chains are hung up on the walls of San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. The Moors of Granada grew embittered by their reverses, and treated their Christian subjects harshly. The martyrs whom the monument on the Alhambra hill commemorates are not merely the creatures of pious imagination. There is an ugly story, too, of an unfortunate monk accused of heretical doctrines, who took refuge at Granada and was burnt at the stake by the Moslems.
Two of the old gatehouses on this side of the city are still standing. They are massive crenellated towers, pierced with round-headed archways. I do not consider them entrancingly picturesque; they form the northern entrances to the Albaicin quarter, which is now a perplexing congeries of squalid houses, formless convents, and churches tottering to their fall. Whatever interest its antiquity may excite is lost in disgust at its wretchedness. On the outskirts dwell the gipsies—mostly in semi-underground burrows, and left very much to themselves by the local authority. These are the poor creatures who are dragged out to bore visitors with their wearisome dances, the fee charged for which goes almost entirely into the pockets of the guides. The gipsies of Spain are not nomadic. There are people in Granada who wish they were.
GRANADA—CASA DEL CARBONGRANADA—CASA DEL CARBON
In the Albaicin the Zirite sultans had their palaces, one of which was called the House of the Weathercock,from the bronze figure of a horseman that surmounted it and served as a vane. Washington Irving has written a story about it. Fragments of all these ancient buildings are incorporated with modern houses, and may be identified by those who care to take the trouble. Romantic legends (of the precise nature of which I am ignorant) cluster round the Casa de las Tres Estrellas, possibly because it affords ingress to a subterranean passage leading no man knows whither. But I do not think you will be tempted to linger long in this odoriferous, wormeaten quarter. You may be said to have escaped from it when you reach the picturesque Carrera de Darro, the embankment of that narrow stream facing the Alhambra. Here may be seen a Moorish bath at one of the private houses, and—much more delightful to the artist—a broken Moorish bridge, the Puente del Cadi, to which a path led down from the Torre de las Armas. Against the little church near this point you will notice a white corner house with a handsome doorway in the Renaissance style. At the angle of the house is a balcony, bearing the odd inscription, "Esperandola del Cielo" ("Waiting for it from Heaven"). The words are accounted for by the following story: The house was built by Hernando de Zafra, the astute secretary of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the negotiator of the capitulation of Granada. He suspected his daughter of a love affair with an unknown cavalier. To satisfy his doubts he surprised her one day, and found hispage assisting the lover to escape by the window. Baulked of his prey the enraged father turned upon the lad. "Mercy," implored the page. "Look for it in Heaven!" answered the Don, as he hurled his daughter's accomplice after her lover into the street below. There are those who say that De Zafra had no daughter, and that he has been libelled in this matter. But the episode is more probable than the foreign-made yarns about the Alhambra.
GRANADA—STREET IN THE ALBAICINGRANADA—STREET IN THE ALBAICIN
The rivers of Granada are more spoken of than seen. At the foot of the Alhambra the Darro disappears, its channel through the town having been roofed over at different epochs. Till the middle of the last century the houses of the Zacatin looked at the back upon the stream, as may be seen from a picture by Roberts in the South Kensington Galleries. There was a local proverb which said "Ugly as the back of the Zacatin," an evidence of the persistent confusion of the ugly and the picturesque. This part of the stream is now covered by the Reyes Catolicos Street. The famous Zacatin—a lane-like thoroughfare, like those we have seen in Seville—was once the principal street in Granada, and seems to have been full of animation in Gautier's time. That brilliant Frenchman speaks of meeting there parties of students from Salamanca, playing as they went on the guitar, triangles, and castanets—truly a singular mode of taking one's walks abroad, such as even the Spaniards of the 'thirties and 'forties must have marvelled atexceedingly. Are we to understand by this remarkable passage that the alumni of Salamanca formed processions like those of the Salvation Army, whenever they met by chance in the public street, or that, like the fine lady of Banbury Cross, they were determined to move nowhere without a musical accompaniment? At all events, the Zacatin is quiet enough nowadays. It still contains some of the best shops in the town and is one of the few comparatively shady walks outside the precincts of the Alhambra. It leads you to the far-famed Plaza de Bibarrambla, with the name of which we have been familiarized by Byron's rendering of the Spanish ballad, "Ay de mi, Alhama!" The square, like so much else in Granada, has been so completely modernized that nothing remains to recall the days when the sultans here assisted at pageants and tournaments, wherein Christians often took part. It is edifying to learn that Spanish knights, forbidden in their own country to cut each other's throats, often resorted hither to do so, by gracious permission of his Moorish Majesty.
We are now in the neighbourhood of the second great sight of Granada—the Cathedral with its adjoining buildings. The church called the Sagrario is an eighteenth-century structure immediately adjoining the west front of the Cathedral, on the south side, which served for a time as the metropolitan church of Granada. The interior is sombre, heavy, and Churrigueresque—a style which, it always strikes me,might have been devised by an undertaker accustomed to a high-class business. One of the chapels, however, is interesting. It contains the bones of "the magnificent cavalier, Fernando del Pulgar, Lord of El Salar," as the inscription records. This gallant knight, during the last siege of Granada, penetrated into the city with fifteen horsemen, and nailed a paper bearing the Ave Maria on the door of the mosque. This brave exploit earned for him and his descendants the right of remaining covered in the Cathedral and before the king. In Philip II.'s time the Marqués del Salar, the representative of the family, was fined for appearing covered before the High Court of Granada. He appealed to the king, invoking the privilege conferred on his ancestor. "Not so," replied Philip; "you may wear your bonnet in the presence of the king, but not in the sacred presence of Justice." With the fine was built the staircase in the Audiencia in the Plaza Nueva.
Behind the Sagrario is the mausoleum of Ferdinand and Isabella—the Capilla Real—a temple peculiarly sacred in the eyes of all good Spaniards. The two great sovereigns lie here in the heart of the city which they recovered for Christendom, even as many great soldiers have caused their remains to be buried on the sites of their greatest victories. The chapel, founded in 1504 and completed in 1517, is a noble example of late Gothic. The exterior is very simple, the decoration consisting mainly of two highly ornate balustrades, surmounting each of the two stages. The well-knowndevices and monograms of the founders are interwoven with the decoration. Through a portal flanked by the figures of heralds we enter the chapel—plain, bright, and airy. The chancel is railed off by a magnificent grille of gilt ironwork, wrought by Maestre Bartolomé of Jaen, in 1522. Between this and the altar are the superb tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of their daughter Joanna and her husband, Philip I. The former is ascribed to a Florentine sculptor, Domenico Fancelli.
GRANADA—INTERIOR OF A POSADAGRANADA—INTERIOR OF A POSADA
The recumbent effigies of the Reyes Catolicos are full of expression and majesty. Both wear their crowns, and Ferdinand is in full armour. At the angles of the tomb are seated figures, and the sides are sculptured with medallions and escutcheons and the figures of angels and saints. The figures of the unhappy Joanna and her Flemish consort are less lifelike, and the decoration is much more florid. It must be admitted that the Renaissance character of these sepulchral monuments contrasts rather oddly with the Gothic surroundings. The kneeling statues of the founders at the sides of the altar are believed to be actual likenesses. The reliefs on the retablo, by Vigarni, represent the surrender of Granada and the subsequent baptism of the Moors. In the former, both the sovereigns are shown, in the compan y of Cardinal Mendoza, receiving the keys from Boabdil; in the latter, we note that the candidates for baptism are so many that the rite is being administered by means of a syringe.
Beneath the tombs is the vault containing all that was mortal of the makers of Modern Spain. The sacristan thrusts a lighted taper forward into the gloomy abode of death, and you are able to distinguish five coffins—those of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip, Joanna, and the Infante Miguel. Philip's coffin, it will be remembered, was carried about by his lovesick widow till she had to be parted from it by force. The coffins are rude, bulging, and almost shapeless. One only, that of Ferdinand, can be identified, and this only by the simple letter F upon it. Might not this stand as well for Felipe?
The sacristan next shows you the treasury of the chapel. Among the relics are the crown, sceptre, and mirror of Isabella, her missal beautifully illuminated, and the standard embroidered by her that floated over the city. A casket is shown which was filled with jewels which she pawned to procure funds for Columbus's first voyage of discovery. Few investments have proved more profitable, as far as material wealth is concerned. You may also see Ferdinand's sword, rather interesting to those curious in ancient weapons.
The Royal Chapel is quite independent of the immediately adjacent Cathedral. The chaplains have a right of way across the Cathedral transept to the Puerta del Perdon, a privilege deeply resented by the chapter. Once when the Archbishop wished to visit the chapel, his attendant canons were refused admission. The irate prelate caused the chaplains to be arrested forthis affront, and a long lawsuit followed. But all this happened a long time ago, and it is to be hoped that the two bodies of clergy now live upon good terms with each other.
GRANADA—OLD HOUSES, CUESTA DEL PESCADOGRANADA—OLD HOUSES, CUESTA DEL PESCADO
A very beautiful arch, richly and tastefully adorned with statues, admits to the Cathedral. This church, described by Fergusson as one of the finest in Europe, was begun by Diego de Siloe, about 1525, and not completed till 1703. The exterior is far from corresponding to the majesty of the interior, though the Puerto del Perdon, already referred to, on the north side, is a beautiful piece of work. The impression produced on entering the Cathedral is rather similar to that experienced on entering St. Peter's. There is an atmosphere of loftiness, luxury, and cold purity—like that clinging to the finest classical works. This is certainly the triumph of Spanish Renaissance architecture. The effect is, of course, utterly different from that of the grand old Gothic fane of Seville. Like all Renaissance churches, as it seems to me, it lacks the devotional atmosphere. The nave, as usual, is obstructed by the choir—where, by the way, Alonso Cano was buried. The dome above the chancel is sublime, the daring of the arches wonderful. The altar is completely insulated by the ambulatory.
Before it are the grand sculptured heads of Adam and Eve by Cano. His also are seven of the frescoes decorating the upper part of the dome. The others are by his pupils. The Cathedral contains much ofthis irascible and wayward artist's best work. In the chapel of San Miguel is a "Virgen de la Soledad," in whose human beauty and pathos his genius finds its highest expression. In the chapel of Jesus Nazareno, Cano's "Via Crucis" does not suffer by comparison with three works of Ribera and a "St. Francis" by El Greco. The artist's studio may be seen in one of the towers flanking the west front of the Cathedral. He was a native of Granada, and a lay canon of the chapter. He died in poverty at his house in the Albaicin quarter, aged 66 years, on October 5, 1667. He was a man of hasty but not ungenerous temper, and in some of his phases of character recalls Fuseli. Justice has hardly been done to his great talent, of which he himself seems to have entertained an exaggerated estimate.
GRANADA—OLD AYUNTAMIENTOGRANADA—OLD AYUNTAMIENTO
The minor churches of Granada are not of very great interest. The church of San Geronimo was built by the Great Captain as a mausoleum for himself and his wife, but such of his remains as escaped the ghoulish spoliation of the French have been transported to Madrid. The church is no longer used as a place of worship. The retablo is remarkable, and in it may be traced the dawning of Siloe's ambition to create a true Spanish Renaissance style. The church of San Juan de Dios, not far off, is filled with tawdry rubbish, petticoated crucifixes, etc. Here is buried the titular saint, a Portuguese, Joao de Robles, who in the seventeenth century devoted himself with so much energy to thesick and suffering that his contemporaries esteemed him mad. You may see the cage in which he was confined at the hospital founded by Isabella the Catholic on the arid, ugly Plaza de Triunfo, near the Bull Ring. A column in the middle of the square marks the spot where Doña Mariana Pineda was publicly garrotted in 1831. This lady is the great heroine of Granada. She perished a victim to the reactionary tendencies then prevalent in Spain. Spaniards were then crying "Hurrah for our chains!" and Doña Mariana's house was known to be a rendezvous of the Liberals of Granada. On raiding her house the police discovered a tricolour flag. This was evidence enough, and in the thirty-first year of her age this beautiful and accomplished woman suffered a shameful death. A few years later, when the nation had recovered its sanity, the magistrate who had condemned her was shot, and her remains were transported with great pomp to the Cathedral, where they have been interred close to Alonso Cano's. A monument has also been raised to her memory in the Campillo Square.
There is another story connected with the Triunfo worth telling, though it is not very well authenticated. The remains of royal personages on their way to the Capilla Real were here identified by the officers of the court. The Duke of Gandia was present on such an occasion, and was so impressed by the evidences of mortality when the coffin was opened that he vowed he would never again serve an earthly master. Heentered the Society of Jesus, and after his death was canonized under the name of St. Francis Borgia. The story is a curious and suggestive one, as also is that of the duke praying that his wife might die if it were for his soul's good. St. Francis Borgia has always seemed to me an extreme example of other-worldliness.
A dusty road through most uninviting surroundings leads to the Cartuja, or Charterhouse, founded in 1516 by the Great Captain. The cloisters are painted with scenes of the martyrdom of the Carthusian monks in London by the minions of Henry VIII.
The church is an extraordinary edifice. Its style is damnable, but it is gorgeous and dazzling to a degree which compels admiration. The doors of the choir are exquisitely inlaid with ebony, cedar, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell. The statue of Bruno is by Cano. In the sanctuary behind the altar coloured marbles, twisted and fluted, are combined in extravagant magnificence. Some of the slabs are richly veined with agate, and the hand of nature has traced some semblances of human and animal forms. In the adjoining sacristy are some wonderful inlaid doors and presses. They must surely be the finest works of their kind in the world. It is strange that so much genius for detail and so much costly material should have been combined to produce so tasteless a building.
GRANADA—STREET IN THE OLD QUARTERGRANADA—STREET IN THE OLD QUARTER
Outside this church there are not many places in the vicinity of Granada worth a visit. The church of Sacramonte looms rather prominently in the landscape,and you are to some extent rewarded for the trouble of a pilgrimage thither by the fine view of the city. The hill contains some caves in which, in the year 1594, one Hernandez professed to have discovered certain books written in Arabic characters on sheets of lead. The find was reported to the archbishop, Don Pedro Vaca de Castro, who examined the books and declared them to contain the acts of the martyrs, Mesito and Hiscius, Tesiphus and Cecilius, put to death by the Romans and buried in the caves. His grace's pronouncement was not considered final, and theological opinion was sharply divided on the subject for many years. At last the continuance of the controversy was forbidden by Papal decree. It seems that doubt is now thrown even on the existence of the martyrs. The church built over the place of their supposed sepulchre was for a time famous as a shrine of pilgrims. The usual rock worn away by the kisses of the devout is shown. There is a superstition that a person kissing the stone for the first time will be married within the year, if single, and released from the conjugal tie if already married. As divorce does not exist in Spain it is to be hoped that few discontented Benedicts have recourse to this stone.
St. Cecilius, at all events, was known to fame before the alleged discovery of his grave; for in the Antequeruela quarter an oratory dedicated to him existed throughout the Moorish domination, and was the only Christian place of worship within the city. I do notthink that any trace of it is to be detected now. In that part of the city is the Casa de los Tiros, where you must apply for tickets for the Generalife; it is worth seeing on its own account, and it is the repository of the sword of Boabdil, which seems to have more claims to authenticity than most of the relics of the Little King. Descending towards the Puerta Real we pass the Cuarto de Santo Domingo, a private villa in which is incorporated all that remains of an Almohade palace. Near by, against the church of Santo Domingo, is an exceedingly picturesque little archway where one can fancy a bravo waiting, stiletto in hand. The Campillo, in the centre of which rises the statue of Mariana Pineda, is a quiet little square enough, referred to (as the Rondilla) by Cervantes as a resort of adventurers and desperadoes. These gentry are now more likely to be found in the immediately adjacent Alameda, outside the hotel of the same name, where the cafés and tables spread in front of them seem exceedingly well patronized.
GRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: PATIO DE LA ACEQUIAGRANADA—THE GENERALIFE: PATIO DE LA ACEQUIA
Following the Genil, and leaving the unimpressive monument of Columbus and Isabella to the left, you reach, after a walk overpoweringly fatiguing in summer, the little Ermita de San Sebastian. This was a Moorish oratory in old days, and outside it took place the surrender of the keys by Boabdil on the memorable 2nd of January, 1492. If you go farther on—and I doubt if you will be tempted to—you will come to a very old Moorish palace called the AlcazarGenil, now the property of the Duke of Gor. Here, says Simonet, were lodged the Christian princes and knights who so often found an asylum at the court of Granada. In the gardens are tanks once used, it is believed, for mimic naval fights. In the same direction, I understand, is Zubia. Here Isabella the Catholic, reconnoitring the city during the siege, narrowly escaped capture by a Moorish patrol. She concealed herself behind a laurel bush, which is still pointed out. Another instance of the small chances that determine the fate of kingdoms! To commemorate her escape the queen built near by a convent, which has long since disappeared.
You may return to the city by the Puerta Verde, near the Bab-en-Neshti or Puerta de los Molinos, through which the Spaniards entered after Boabdil's submission.
Apart from the Alhambra and the Cathedral buildings, it will have been seen that Granada has not many claims on the stranger's interest. Considering the expectations formed of it after reading Prescott and Irving, most English people will pronounce it to be a disappointment. From certain points of view it remains the pleasantest place for a protracted stay in Andalusia during the summer. It is only when you come to it from Seville or Cordova or Cadiz, that you realize how cool, in comparison, is this city on the plateau between the snow-clad mountains. Even before the sun has gone down, you can dine verypleasantly in the open, hearkening to the splash of the fountains, and inhaling the fragrance of the rose. There is no need here, as at Seville, to shut yourself, till nightfall, within walls three feet thick. By night we stroll across the Plaza of the Alhambra, and see the white city gleaming with a shimmer reflected in the luminous sky above. Granada resumes her aspect of an Oriental city beneath the crescent moon riding triumphant over Andalusia.
GRANADA—A CORNER IN THE OLD QUARTERGRANADA—A CORNER IN THE OLD QUARTER
SECONDin size among Andalusian cities, Malaga is the least interesting. Were it not for the sea, its position would be one of singular remoteness. On the extreme verge of Europe, the mighty Sierra Nevada rises behind it, and cuts it off from the rest of Spain. Yet as a flourishing port it is one of the towns in the Peninsula best known among Englishmen. It is beloved by our sailors. From the odd phases of life to be seen in and around the harbour, they derive their notions of the people and the country. With that utter absence of curiosity noticeable in their kind, they never penetrate inland, or even into the outskirts of the town. But nothing can dispel Jack's conviction that his knowledge of Spain and the Spaniards is intimate and profound.
Malaga is not, as its appearance suggests, a city of purely modern growth. It was known to the Phœnicians and the Romans, and before it became subject to the Almoravides was an independent principality under the Hammudiya dynasty. Later itshared the fortunes of the Sultanate of Granada, and its siege and capture by Ferdinand and Isabella contributed to bring about the fall of the capital. This part of its history is dealt with in great detail by Prescott. Among the numerous incidents of the siege was a determined attempt on the part of a Moor named Ibrahim al Gherbi to assassinate the Spanish sovereign. The defence was conducted by the indomitable Hemet el Zegri, who yielded to famine rather than to the arms of the besiegers. The treatment of the fallen city leaves an indelible blot on the fame of the conquerors. The population, with the exception of a few hundreds, were sold into slavery, presents of the fairest maidens being made to the various courts of Europe. A worse fate was reserved for the Jews and renegades, who were committed to the flames.
The old Moorish fortress of Gibralfaro still frowns down on the lively city to remind us of those days. Some of the walls and towers are believed to be of Phœnician origin. The stronghold has undergone repeated restorations and adaptations to military requirements, but a great deal of Moorish work may still be detected. A horseshoe arch behind the Paseo de la Alameda serves to identify the Moslems' dockyard or Atarazanas, and to indicate how far the sea has receded in the wake of the banished race southwards towards Africa.
MALAGA—THE HARBOURMALAGA—THE HARBOUR
The Cathedral towers high above all the otherbuildings of the city. It is in the Classical style, and though designed by Diego de Siloe in 1528, was built for the most part in the early eighteenth century. It must be confessed that it looks better at a distance than near. The interior is solemn and cold. It is worth visiting for some specimens of Cano's art which it contains, and for Mena's magnificent carving in the choir. As at Granada, the edifice is adjoined by a smaller church called the Sagrario, founded by the Catholic Sovereigns in 1488 as the cathedral of the conquered city.
But it is not for its monuments or historical associations that Malaga is to be visited. Its interest is of to-day. And in truth it needed not the hand of man to embellish a spot where Nature has been so lavish of her choicest gifts. The gardens round Malaga abound in the finest specimens of tropical flora. Tall india-rubber plants, gigantic eucalyptus, great bamboos, the rarest exotics, such as thePritchardia folifera, the araucaria, and theScaforthia elegans, flourish on this favoured shore. The villas of the wealthier classes stand each in a veritable Paradise. And everywhere the white flower of the orange, the oleander, the vine, and tree-high ferns!
This luxuriant vegetation is the less to be expected since want of water is the great drawback to the prosperity of the district. Through the middle of the town runs the Guadalmedina—a broad channel, without a drain of water! The new and magnificent promenade,planted with palms, sweeps round the sea-front, as fine as anything on the Riviera. To drive along it in the sensuous southern night is to drink a deep draught of the joy of life. At one point the drive descends into the bed of the river, along which you may proceed for a mile or more. And yet at times the Guadalmedina becomes a roaring torrent, bursting its banks and sweeping away farmsteads and stock. It is difficult to say whether flood or drought has done most damage to the province.
As at Seville, you find life here focussing in lane-like streets, closed to vehicles, and lined with cafés and casinos, among the finest I have seen in Spain. Here to an early hour of the morning the men of the city gossip in garrulous, intimate groups of nine and ten, all, as it seemed to me, talking together. The number of cigarettes smoked during the progress of these tremendous conversations must be stupendous. As you will see the same group meeting night after night, you wonder what there can be in the outwardly uneventful round of life of Malaga to supply topics for conversation. To an Englishman there is a mystery about this ability to talk for five or six hours about nothing at all. You will see the same thing in the dullest provincial towns in France and Italy—the same groups of stout, bald-headed citizens talking with frantic animation every evening. Their newspapers afford the slenderest mental pabulum—their contents could be dismissed in ten minutes—and the respectablegentlemen in question are never seen to read books. How then do they recruit their stock of ideas and find an inexhaustible stock of topics for conversation?
MALAGA—THE GUADALMEDINAMALAGA—THE GUADALMEDINA
Women are, of course, conspicuous by their absence. Here we have another illustration of the utterly false ideas Englishmen usually entertain concerning Latins. To judge from novels written fifty or even thirty years ago, John Bull appears to have regarded the foreigner with pitying contempt as a mere philanderer, always running after a petticoat; yet no one can be in Spain a fortnight without noticing the Spaniard's disinclination for female society, or at any rate how perfectly content he is without it.
I do not fancy the ladies of Malaga care very much for society either, in our acceptation of the word. Looking out of the window appears to be their favourite recreation. They do not inherit the habit from the Moors, for that people, as I have said, were nearly all expelled at the Reconquest, and the town was resettled. All the Andalusian towns were wholly or in part emptied of their Mohammedan population when taken by the Christians, and repeopled with Castilians and others from Northern Spain. This fact is forgotten by those who recognize in every trait of the Andalusian a heritage from the Moor. We might as well think we derive our chief national characteristics from the Britons or the Normans.
East of Malaga lie several coast towns of importance, within whose gates the traveller rarely sets foot.Motril, Adra, Almeria—what is there in them to reward the fatigue of a journey in a diligence along the parched shore, or in some crazy coasting craft, with timbers straining and creaking before the lightest breeze? Almeria is now connected directly by rail with Madrid and Granada. The prosperity of the whole district is bound to be greatly increased by the construction of the line so long promised from Guadix to Baza. This short link in the railway system would save the traveller from Malaga to Valencia nearly 180 miles, or its alternative—a long and exhausting diligence journey. It would also bring the southern parts of Andalusia into direct communication with the great commercial centres of eastern Spain and with Marseilles. It would supply us with a new route to Gibraltar, moreover. This, with a line from Jaca across the Pyrenees into France, and another from Huelva to connect with the Portuguese system Villa Real de São Antonio, are links of which Spain stands vitally in need.
MALAGA—A MARKETMALAGA—A MARKET
ATBobadilla—the Clapham Junction of Andalusia—the Spanish railway system is joined by the line of that purely British undertaking, the Algeciras Railway Company. A Spaniard told me that this line would never have been built by one of his countrymen, as no one in Spain had any desire to facilitate Gibraltar's communication with England, and the country it traversed had been sufficiently opened up. I do not think it would be difficult to demonstrate that the line may prove of very substantial benefit to Spain, but I will confine myself to thanking the promoters for having rendered accessible certainly the most beautiful part of Andalusia, and in my opinion one of the most wildly picturesque regions of Europe. The country between Ronda and Algeciras is the Andalusia dreamt of by the romancers. It is a savage, silent country, of warmer browns and greens than the rest of Spain. Here the train takes you no longer across the scorched sky-rimmed plains, but along the very edge of dizzy ravines, at the foot of which, hundreds of feet below,angry white torrents foam and froth. Now you are climbing with obvious effort the steep shoulder of a mountain, now you are racing headlong down into a valley which seems to lie almost vertically beneath you. Now you plunge into the bowels of the Sierra and emerge with a shriek of triumph in a cauldron-shaped valley, from which Nature has provided no egress. There is no want of verdure; the cork-woods, vineyards, and olives dot the lower slopes of the tawny hills. And far up against the sky-line loom shattered towers and crumbling castles, whence you seem to see trains of steel-clad knights issuing forth to do battle with the Moor.
The country is reminiscent essentially of the days of chivalry. Perhaps the ruined strongholds and the dark gorges are still haunted by the knights, who have driven away all other ghosts and will not let us think of anyone but them. The Romans were once here, and at Munda, as every schoolboy knows, Cæsar defeated with great slaughter the army led by the sons of Pompey. That town has now been identified with Ronda, the romantic capital of this most romantic region. Here the people have not forgotten Rome. They will show you a cave where in the semi-darkness you descry awful forms in stone, seeming like a ghostly and gigantic choir of monks. These are the Roman priests turned to stone upon the downfall of their gods, those of the people who cherish tradition will tell you.
MALAGA—PACKING LEMONSMALAGA—PACKING LEMONS
The town itself you will not find very interesting,though the escutcheons displayed over every second or third house in one quarter will evoke some reflections on departed glory and the fall of the mighty. In some suchsolarour novelists Seton Merriman and Mr. Mason have laid the scenes of leading episodes in their two charming romances. Ronda has had a stirring past. She shared in all the vicissitudes of Granada, and towards the end of the long agony of the Reconquest was the scene of constant and ferocious border warfare.
It was here that Mohammed V. received the head of his rival Abu Saïd, who had been put to death at Seville by Pedro the Cruel. The town was taken by the army of Ferdinand and Isabella on May 22, 1485. The people of the surrounding mountains were deeply attached to the creed of Islam, and rose in revolt in 1501 against their Christian oppressors. Before they were crushed they inflicted a severe blow on their adversaries, completely wiping out a force under Don Alonso de Aguilar. Westward, on the other side of the high mountains, lies Zahara, the capture of which one December night by Mulai Hasan was the signal for the last crusade against the Spanish Moors of Granada.
But it is to its striking situation that Ronda owes its interest. Fitted rather to be the eyrie of eagles than the abode of men, it looks down from the verge of precipitous cliffs nearly three thousand feet above sea level. Midway, town and rocky hill are cleft asunder by theTajo, an awful gorge, two hundred feet across, and twice as much in depth. Gazing down into the abyss, you realize with something of a shudder that a pebble dropped over the edge of the precipice would fall sheer and plumb, without rebound or ricochet, into the river Guadalevin, which rushes below, filling the chasm with foam and spray. The ravine is spanned by a bridge built in the eighteenth century, a wonderful construction, from which when it was near completion its architect fell headlong. Access to the river may be obtained by a flight of 365 steps called the Mina, hewn through the rock. This singular work was executed by the Moors, who thus ensured themselves a supply of water against the dangers of a siege. Numerous subterranean chambers are also ascribed to them, or rather to their Christian captives.
But the most delightful spot in Ronda is the little Alameda laid out on the edge of a perpendicular cliff. Leaning on the railing you may drink in the beauty and grandeur of a prospect hardly surpassed in Europe. The fair fertile country below is shut in by an amphitheatre of mountains which soar upwards to heights of five and six thousand feet. The eye seeks in vain for an outlet from the valley, till it discerns the white, dusty high-road winding, doubling, and finally disappearing over a dip between the ranges. The river, a thousand feet below, swirls and gurgles among the rocks, glad to have escaped from the dark gorge to which it has so long been confined.
RONDA—THE TAJORONDA—THE TAJO
In the evenings the air is keen at Ronda, and in summer you may often hear English spoken by officers of the garrison of Gibraltar and their families, who come here to escape the torrid heat of the Rock. With a little capital and energy the place might be developed into a flourishing health resort.
But now the way lies south and seaward. Ever downwards slowly travels the train. The night gathers over the castled crags and the mysterious forests. We detect by their gleam the rivers over which we pass. But now a bright starlike light is seen to the southward. It flashes and is gone, to reappear the next instant. We are nearing the strait, and the searchlight tells us that Britannia watches here with unsleeping eyes over the fortunes of her children in two seas and two continents.