CHAPTER VII.LA MANCHA—ANDALUSIA.
AS I took my seat in a “first-class” car and left Toledo, a gentleman in the same compartment asked me, “Is smoking disagreeable to you?”
It was the first time that such a question had been put to me in Spain. I had heard it proposed to a lady, some days before, but generally no one pretends toaskthe privilege of smoking in the cars, or the parlor, or anywhere. Everybody smokes, everywhere. It is not interdicted in any department of any railway carriage. Occasionally, in some hotels, I notice a rule posted in the dining-room, “Smoking not allowed.” But nobody heeds it. An attempt to enforce it would probably lead to the sudden departure of all Spanish guests from the house. At the largest and best hotel in Madrid, sixty or seventy persons, ladies and gentlemen, were at dinner, (table-d’hôte), and in the midst of dinner, between the courses, gentlemen lighted their cigarettes, smoked them, and resumed their eating. Yet the notice forbidding smoking was in full view, or was until the clouds of smoke obscured it. In the reading-rooms of the hotels, oftentimes small and unventilated, nine out of ten are smoking all the time, and the thought never occurs to one of them that this may be a nuisance to others. I am told, that at the theatres in Spain, in the midst of the play, the audience smoke in their seats, and if any managers attain to such a moderate height of civilization as to publish a rule restraining the odious habit, the Dons ofSpain pay no sort of attention to it. All attempts at reform end only in smoke.
I asked Antanazio if smoking is allowed in the churches of Spain. “Oh no, no,” he answered, with a pious horror; “it was shocking to think of such a desecration.” “Then,” said I, “when I come to Spain to live, I will get a little church for myself, for nowhere else in this country can a man find refuge from this intolerable nuisance.”
“Ah, yes,” he replied; “but perhaps the incense will make a smoke quite as disagreeable as theAmericanweed.”
This was a double hit, as it reminded me of my Protestant aversion to incense in churches, and also of the fact that the weed and the habit of using it came from my part of the world.
By this time the compartment was so densely filled with smoke that I opened the window and put out my head for breath, as a signal of distress, in the hope, but vain, of enlisting the sympathies of the smokers, and inducing them to forego their pleasures while I recovered. I detected grim smiles of satisfaction on the dark faces of my fellow-travellers, who puffed away the more vigorously, as they looked on my woe-begone face.
Perhaps by advertising a reward for the discovery, it might be possible to find a man in Spain who does not smoke. Yet, strange to say, the culture of tobacco in Spain is forbidden by law. The soil and climate are favorable, and its cultivation has been a great success. But by that kind of legislation or decree peculiar to Spain, and constantly reminding one of the Chinese, the mother country, Spain, is prohibited from raising tobacco in order that the daughter, Cuba, may have the monopoly. The right of importation is sold to contractors, who make a great business of it. In the middle of the fifteenth century the Spaniards began to get tobacco from America, and they have been getting more and more of it ever since. In 1860they smoked seven millions of cigars, and cigars are not the thing they usually smoke. They have their tobacco rolled up in little bits of paper, and these they carry in their pockets, with matches. Often they carry the tobacco and the paper separately, and make a cigarette when they want it, making one while smoking another. These interesting manufactures are not peculiar to Spain; they are common in our own country, but not so general. The weed is used only for smoking and snuffing in Spain. I cannot learn that it ischewedat all.
Children smoke at an earlier age in Spain than in other countries. It is not uncommon for them to begin at six, or even five years of age. And they never leave it off till they die. Ladies smoke. Not often do we see them with a cigarette in their pretty mouths on the street or in the cars, but in the café and in the drawing-room they enjoy it, as well as in the boudoir and the bath. By cool fountains, in a marble-paved patio, among the orange-trees, or lolling at noon on their silken-hung couches, they love to smoke, and their lords have spoiled their own breaths and taste too effectually to make any objection. Where both eat garlic it amounts to the same thing.
In Seville we saw a tobacco factory, erected more than a hundred years ago, at a cost of nearly two millions of dollars then! It is 652 feet long and 524 feet wide. Five thousand persons are at work in it all the time, putting the imported tobacco into cigars or cigarettes, and making snuff, and they use two millions of pounds of tobacco every year. Most of these workers are women. Mothers who bring their children have nursery arrangements provided for them during the hours of work. But the most of them are young women, a class by themselves, known ascigareras, or cigar-girls. Smart at their business in the factory, they are wild as hawks and gay as larks at the bull-fight on Sundays, or the dance on the green. This is the largest establishmentof the kind in Spain, and produces as good an article as any other, but the cigars made in Spain are not as popular with good judges as those brought directly from Cuba. The manufacturers there prefer sending the best to London, New York, or Paris, where they find a readier market for the high-priced article. And the Cubans are as cute in concocting peculiar flavors for their cigars, as the French or the Italians for their wines, or Jerseymen for their cider. The connoisseur in tobacco pays a quarter of a dollar (more or less) for a “first-rate” cigar, and smokes it with delicious enjoyment at his club, or after dinner in his study, rejoicing in the dreamy, balmy languor that softly steals upon his senses, soothes his nerves, and makes him sweetly oblivious of the cares and toils of the day just passed. He is sure it does him good. And he does not know, and will not believe when he is told, what every one knows who looks into the subject to learn, that at the very root and source of the business there is as much concoction of tobacco as there is of coffee or wine. Potash and soda are in abundant use to impart peculiar pungency to the plant. And many in the excited atmosphere of New York or London life demand a sedative cigar more soporific than the narcotic plant in its natural state. For them, cigars are made of tobacco leavessteeped in opium. Many of our clergymen, renowned for eloquence and piety and learning, denounce with blazing zeal the baneful practice of smoking or chewingopium, a habit becoming almost as common in the United States as in China. But these same excellent men are daily smoking opium in their cigars, quite unconscious of the evils, physical and mental, they are gradually but surely inhaling with every breath they draw through this venomous weed. The cigar burns freely when first lighted, its ashes are grayish white, and the ring is faint at the end, the smoke rises lightly, and the taste, if any, is nearly imperceptible; thereforetheyknowit is a good cigar. But the opium-eater is not more surely a suicide than they. Dyspepsia often follows; and nervous debility, despondency, melancholy, insomnia, maladies supposed to be relieved by what is their producing cause. Epilepsy and apoplexy are not unknown effects.
We now cross the wide pastoral regions of La Mancha. Readers of Don Quixote recollect these plains as the scene of many a gallant exploit by the knight-errant who took his title from this province. And we had no sooner called him to mind than we saw a windmill, and then another, and soon many more, brandishing their huge arms, as when the crazy hero supposed them to be challenging him to fight, and with mad courage rushed to the encounter. Flocks of sheep are roaming over the plains as when he mistook them for hostile armies. His trusty squire Sancho proposed that they should wait until they saw which side was likely to come off conqueror, and jointhat; but the hero of the windmill denounced the counsel as worthy only of a craven, insisting it would be more becoming a valiant knight to join the weaker side, and insure it the victory.
No trees are seen.This is the peculiar feature of the Spanish landscape. Across vast plains that reach the horizon the eye seeks in vain to find a single tree to relieve the monotony of the view. And when the hills stretch away in graceful lines, bending and rising with voluptuous swells that seem to be carved and set against the sky, they are destitute of trees. In centuries past these have been stripped off, and none have been planted since; and the country is as bare as the back of your hand.
The sheep are tended by shepherds, who migrate from the higher to the lower pastures, according to the season of the year. They constitute a large part of the wealth of the people. Ten years ago there were seventeen millions of sheep in Spain. The number is, doubtless, muchgreater now. The wool trade of Spain was at one time of vast importance to the world, but England and Germany now far outstrip it, and the trade with Syria, in the coarser wools, has opened an outlet for the produce of Lebanon and the plains of Mesopotamia.
Corn, including cereals of all kinds, does well in this central part of Spain. It thrives in spite of the stupidest, or rather the most primitive style of agriculture, still prevailing. “Tickle the ground with a hoe,” and the crop will spring. But there is little tickling done with a hoe. They plough to this day with a tree, the root sticking into the ground and scratching it a little; or they leave a branch shooting out at an angle from the stem of the tree, and sometimes they cover this stick with a bit of iron, and with mules or oxen drag it along the field. They sow broadcast, and plough it under. They use no harrows. It is barely possible that one of the modern civilized ploughs has found its way into Spain, but I saw none, and heard of nothing better than the but-end of a small elm-tree. Yet agriculture is the great business of Spain, suited to the habits and genius of the people, who love the sun and enjoy the open air, and dislike trade or mechanics of any kind. And more than any other people in Europe the Spanish do as their fathers did, despising all innovations as unworthy of their ancestral dignity. The farmers of Virgil and Homer, and the rural scenes which are described in the Old Testament Scriptures, are the counterpart of what may be seen in Spain to-day. I am reminded daily of the fields in Asia Minor, in Syria, and Greece. If it were strange that improvements in husbandry had made very little progress there, much more surprising it is to find that all things in this country continue to be as they were. They are so near the rest of the world, and the means of communication are now so ready, it is a marvel of marvels that they are still in the same ruts their fathers were in a thousand years ago.
But there are signs of better times. The law of primogeniture has been abolished, and this new measure tends rapidly to the multiplication of owners of real estate. The lands of the church have been sold and divided. Vast tracts held by the crown have also been distributed by law among the people, at a moderate price. Agricultural societies have been formed, and cattle shows and fairs are becoming common. These things are in the right direction. The government has established agricultural schools and model farms. A few periodicals are published, with the intent of spreading useful information among the people; and those who can read will get some good out of them.
After crossing the plains of La Mancha we reach the Sierra Morena range of mountains, and are to work our way through and over them. The daring of the engineers who would push a road into such recesses is prodigious. The precipices are frightful. Peaks of mountains start up suddenly, and seem to pierce the clouds. Rocks of gigantic grandeur rise abruptly, and sometimes stand apart in solitary dignity. Deep gorges are to be spanned by the iron road. Long and frequent galleries lead, in gloomy state, through the bowels of the mountains. The road is sublime, if safe, and it appears to be well made. We come to a bridge under repairs. All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. They err generally on the safe side, provoking us by their delays, but very rarely breaking ournecks. And, on the whole, their way of doing things is the best.
At Manjibar we stopped for lunch, or breakfast, or dinner, whichsoever any one might call it. It was hard to say where or when our last meal was, and what was the name of this. Still more difficult was it to ascertain the names of the dishes set before us. One dishhad beenchicken, but in some advanced stage of its post-mortem existence it had been consigned to a bath of pickle, and was now offered for our consumption. A single taste sufficed. It probably returned to its brine, to wait a bolder customer, with a better appetite. Then they gave us a stew. I suggested that it was hare. My companion thought it a cat. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, and turned away. The price of this meal that we tried in vain to eat, was the same as the table-d’hôte dinner at many hotels in Paris,—four francs.
Sick, I went into the air. I sat down on a trunk outside, sighing for other lands, and something to eat. A servant came out and drove me off the trunk, saying, “It is forbidden to sit here.” Into the waiting-room I directed my steps. It was full of dirty, disgusting people, some of them beggars, some gypsies, some in queer costumes, some in rags. The fragrance was too much for me, and I walked out again. Over the way was a table with candies and liquors to be sold. It was in front of a door that opened into the side of a hill. There was no other sign of a house. I went across the railway, and entered the open door. It let me into a small room, nicely cemented above and on all sides; a fire in a neat arrangement for it, and a chimney reaching out of the ground above. A man was sitting by the fire; a babe was in a cradle; the wife was bustling about. It was a very comfortable affair. Another room was the bed-chamber; and a third was a storeroom; and the three completed the underground cottage. In other climates it might be damp. Here it was dry enough;cool in summer and warm in winter. I spent a few minutes very cheerfully with these people, and they seemed to be pleased with a visit from a stranger. It was a far better house than the rude huts we had seen on the way.
We are now in Andalusia, and in one of theworstparts of Spain. True, it isAndalusia, and the very sound of the name is musical, suggesting beauty and pastoral delights. But in the province of Jaen, and we are near the city of that name, out of a population of 360,000, more than 300,000 are unable to read; and as ignorance and crime go hand in hand, the number of murders is between 350 and 400 every year, and nearly as many robberies. Such is a picture of much of Spain. This is, perhaps, as dark a picture as could be honestly drawn, but there are hundreds of towns, of which the mayor or chief officer does not know how to read or write.
Ten years ago, when the last census was made, in a population of 15,613,536, there were actually 12,543,169 who could not read and write, leaving only 3,070,367 people in Spain possessed of these accomplishments. In 1860 there were 1,101,529 children in the public schools of Spain, and they must learn something.
It is encouraging to learn that the government is paying increased attention to the subject of education. There are 25,000 primary schools in the kingdom, which ought to be exerting a powerful effect upon the people. Spain has ten universities, and the number of students in them is far greater than one would expect under the low state ofpopulareducation. They are thus distributed:—
The course of study pursued in these institutions is substantiallythe same as that in other countries: 2,040 of the students are in the Philosophical and Literary course, 1,617 in the Exact Sciences, Physics, and so forth; while Law, Theology, and Medicine include the rest. Some of these universities once had a reputation as wide as the civilized part of the world, and students from all nations flocked to them as to the purest and sweetest fountains of knowledge in the earth. At Salamanca, where now there are less than 250 students, there were 10,000 in the fourteenth century, and its reputation has been higher than Oxford’s. It was at this university that the Copernican system of astronomy was held and taught, when the Romish Church denounced it as heretical and contrary to the Holy Scriptures. Yet even here Columbus could make no impression in favor of his theory of another continent, but all his arguments were treated with the greatest contempt by the learned men of the university of Salamanca. The professors of the modern school, which still retains the name and distinctions of the days of its glory, get $600 a year for their services, and that is probably an index of the estimation in which learning is held in these decayed and benighted regions.
The present population of Spain, making due allowance for increase since the last estimate, is about 16,400,000. It is therefore theeighthof the European powers in numbers, Italy and Turkey being both ahead of it. The increase of population in Spain is only at the rate of less than the half of one per hundred annually. At this rate the number would double only once in 181 years, placing Spain behind every country in Europe, in this respect, except poor Austria. She doubles once in 198 years; then Spain; then France, once in 122 years; Holland, once in 80 years; Scotland, once in 46 years; Prussia, once in 41 years; England and Wales, once in 29 years.
One of the most curious questions in morals, politics, and physiology, is started by these facts. They furnishfood for thought. One class of speculators will find moral causes to explain the circumstances, and they may easily gather a pile of facts to sustain their positions. Climate, too, has its influence. The civil government, with the physical condition of the people, is to be considered. But when the physical, the moral, the civil, and the social state of Austria, Spain, France, Holland, Prussia, Italy, and England is duly examined, it still remains to be ascertained why it is that the number of inhabitants increased more rapidly among the colored people of the Southern States of North America while they were slaves, and now increases more rapidly among the Irish portion of the American population, than it does among these highly favored countries of Europe. The statistics of births in New England and other parts of the United States unhappily show that, with the increase of the cost of living, and of luxury and effeminacy, the number of children born is less and less from year to year. There is no truth in social economy better established by the comparison of an adequate number of facts than this, that the diminution in the number of births is attended by, if not consequent upon, the deterioration of the health and the morals of any people. Oppression which makes a wise man mad may depress the spirits, exhaust the energies, and retard the increase of a population, not supernaturally sustained as were the Hebrews in Egypt, who, the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew. But favored as the middle and southern countries of Europe are by climate and soil, affording the people an easy and comfortable subsistence, they might and would increase in numbers as rapidly at least as the northern, if they were so disposed.
We are now coming down into the region of the aloe, the olive, the orange, and the vine. Since we have crossed the Sierra Morena, the climate has softened. At this season of the year (February), the vegetation is not far advanced,but the leaves of the olive are always green, and the orange and the lemon bear leaves and fruit and flowers at the same time. The orange should, in some climates, like this and the south of France, remain on the tree, after it appears to be ripe, for two years, before it is sweet. Much of that delicious fruit which we have in our country is too sour to be good, because gathered and sent to market before it is fully ripe. Here, and all over the southern parts of Spain, it is agloriousfruit. It is very large, very yellow, and very sweet; and being abundant, is very cheap. A cent of our money will buy the largest, and the natives get them much cheaper than that. Sweet lemons are also common. But they are not agreeable. They seem to me a miserable attempt to be an orange. And the good sour lemons grow to an enormous size. I got one in Cordova to measure, and my hat would hold one lemon only! The skin was at least an inch thick; the juice not so acid as of the lemon generally, and there was no more of it than in one of ordinary size. These large lemons are used in preserves, the skin being the only available part of the fruit.
We are now on the plains, in sight of the graceful hills ofAndalusia. In the soft sunlight of this warm winter’s day the hills appear to be sleeping and enjoying their repose. All nature, even now, invites to rest. We begin to feel the languor of the clime. There are no trees but the olive. No birds are singing, or we should know that summer is nigh. We stop frequently at little stations, to leave and take the mail. The letters and papers are tied up in a packet with a string, and are handed from the mail-car to a boy or a woman on hand to receive them. The lettersfromthe place are delivered to the mail-agent in the same way. No bag, no box, no lock or key, not even a wrapper around the letters protects them. It is the way they do things in this country.
Over these wide plains there are few or no habitations tobe seen. The peasants must travel many miles to their daily work, for they live in villages far away from the lands they till. Few cattle are to be seen; now and then a flock of sheep. More black sheep than white ones were in sight, and many of the blacks were singularly marked, having but one white spot on them, and that at the tip of their tails.
CORDOVA.
CORDOVA.
CORDOVA.