Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A. - "The History of the Thirty Years' War"

Gertrude Page - "Winding Paths"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Tales and Sketches, Complete"

Margaret Turnbull - "W. A. G.'s Tale"

Familiar Spanish Travels

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Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and
going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed,
brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian
boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in
the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were
probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had
given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves.
They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to
sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, if
there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at
Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it was
I made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to
Tangier, which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing
till the plague had ceased to rage there. By this time the boat which
touched at Tangier on the way to Cadiz stopped going to Cadiz, and if we
could not go to Cadiz we did not care for going to Tangier. It was
something like this, if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing
Africa only from the southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa. At that
little distance across it looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton
vestments of those Moorish marketmen, but probably would have been no
cleaner on closer approach.




III


As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though
we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming
to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its
garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon's writing and inhale the
keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have
tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar,
it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of
getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in
the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you
got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes
the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the
glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother
sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would,
but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled
placidly.

At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over
the hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments of
the courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile
which runs daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was so
bad that those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and in
such a case I was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not
venture, for since then I have motored over some of the roads in the
state of Maine and lived. If people in Maine had that Spanish road as
far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road
gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the
promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every
few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as
much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out
of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of
level and even of lapse. We started at ten o'clock, and it was not too
late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and
donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing
with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green
pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown
pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating. The
pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and
gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates
in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began
passing through long stretches of cork woods.

The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes
gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of
excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it
begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings
and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark,
which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have
been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding,
for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and
the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh
year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would
rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the
trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity
them.

The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew
colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which
lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding
road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly
visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we met
soldiers possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not
molesting them; and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil
Guards, marching shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free
and their carbines on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a
mounted wayfarer came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in his
own equipment and that of his steed, and there were peasant women
solidly perched on donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded
in white kerchiefs.




IV


The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces
around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of
white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was
very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to
choose which _fonda_ we should stop at for our luncheon, but our driver
chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not
believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put us
down across the way at the _venta_ where he was going to bait his
horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little
policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the _fonda_ and
shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a
yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our
drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we
perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned
without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in the
little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found
ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the
scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that
_fonda._ When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds in
our usage to the Spanish _almuerzo,_ began to come, it seemed as if it
never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes and
bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then there
was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish came
after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course
there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts
of fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at
a venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great
kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the
next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was
worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how
much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen
who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I
only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing
our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our
hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa.

When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts
somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt
so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had
better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was
sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from
being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself
to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to
his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he
put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which
I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count
the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank
walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through
open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected
plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them.

Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or out
of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or
Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of the
women's costume which you are promised at the first mention of the
place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization. Of
course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide
street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just as
advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their
heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out at
the strangers. It was like the women's costtime at Chiozza on the
Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it was
authenticated by being black. "Moorish ladies," our guide proudly
proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish;
if they were really Orientals, they followed us with those eyes single
as daringly as if they had been of our own Christian Occident.

The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding
policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have
really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from
beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did
not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and we
were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however
pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as
though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the
principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the
cleanest in all Spain.




VI


The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond
the promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the door
cast a glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over the
comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and
gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for
the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice
was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a
vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock
feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of the
Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish
shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a
string in the other. Our young guide took the image down for us to look
at, and showed its shepherd's dress with peculiar satisfaction; and then
he left it on the ground while he went to show us something else. When
we came back we found two small boys playing with the Child, putting its
hat off and on, and feeling of its clothes. Our guide took it from them,
not unkindly, and put it back on the altar; and whether the reader will
agree with me or not, I must own that I did not find the incident
irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as if those children and
He were all of one family and they were at home with Him there.

Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those
unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the
purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred
years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from
their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the
Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their
own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de
Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those
acts of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength
for. The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out
his son whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew
his knife and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a
was saved. His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known
as Guzman the Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name
somehow does not seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had
not won it that way.

We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so
plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard
by, in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was
fought. From the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of
Guzman's dreadful heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion;
I succeeded somewhat better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of "Kiss
me, Hardy," as he lay dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much
triumph with either, and I was grateful when our good little policeman
comfortably questioned the deed of Guzman which he said some doubted,
though he took us to the very spot where the Moors had parleyed with
Guzman, and showed us the tablet over the castle gate affirming the
fact.

We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with
beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and
old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over
them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing
more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of
showing us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we had
seen nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and
Granada and Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get
it anywhere; and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted
one brown in color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly
conical in form; and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us to
a shop abounding solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses. The
proprietor came out wiping his mouth from an inner room, where he had
left his family visibly at their _almuerzo;_ and then we were desolated
together that he should only have Cordoveses that were black. But
passing a _patio_ where there was a poinsettia in brilliant bloom
against the wall, we found ourselves in a variety store where there were
Cordoveses of all colors; and we chose one of the right brown, with the
picture of a beautiful Spanish girl, wearing a pink shawl, inside the
crown which was fluted round in green and red ribbon. Seven pesetas was
the monstrous asking price, but we beat it down to five and a half, and
then came a trying moment: we could not carry a Cordovese in
tissue-paper through the streets of Tarifa, but could we ask our guide,
who was also our armed escort, to carry it? He simplified the situation
by taking it himself and bearing it back to the _fonda_ as proudly as if
he had not also worn a sword at his side; and we parted there in a
kindness which I should like to think he shared equally with us.

He was practically the last of those Spaniards who were always winning
my heart (save in the bank at Valladolid where they must have
misunderstood me), and whom I remember with tenderness for their
courtesy and amiability. In little things and large, I found the
Spaniards everywhere what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say
of them in Venice fifty years ago: "They are the honestest people in
Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which
English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader
asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the
Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty,
treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of
bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they
should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do
not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding,
although they often shoot one another, and upon mere suspicion rather
often burn negroes alive.

THE END

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