A greater attraction to the populace is the huge bull ring, seating nearly 15,000. On Sunday afternoons a gay throng gathers there; the bull-fighters march out in their brilliant costumes, and the ceremony of slaying the bull begins. It is almost a ritual, and every detail must be punctiliously observed. First, the bull is made to charge the horsemen, the picadores, who jab him with short-pointed spears; the horses wear a blinder over one eye, so that their rider can keep them from seeing the bull’s onset. If they are not killed at once when the bull gores them, they are sewed up and made to meet another attack. This is the revolting part of it. After enough of this, nimble banderilleros throw their darts into the creature’s neck and shoulders at just the proper place and interval. These men, and the espadas who follow them, show great dexterity and grace. The espada is a seasoned bull-fighter; his function is to plunge his rapier into the bull’s heart, and his calmness as he maneuvers the beast into a favorable position, teasing him the while, is fascinating to watch. The audience, with eyes keen as hawks’, applaud every good stroke, and hoot in derision at any misplays.
The net influence of the sport is demoralizing, and much of the best element in Spain is against it, unless it can be reformed; but the same can be said of our present form of football, and the one is as likely to disappear as the other. The same arguments are heard in Spain in favor of bull-fighting which are used here for football – it makes the participants brave, alert, quick to act and to help out a fellow-fighter; but at least the bull-fighters maul only animals, not their fellow-men. A Spaniard considers the latter brutal.
Not far from Madrid lies Toledo, the ancient Visigothic capital. The Tagus flows about it in a deep gorge on almost every side. High above the old mills looms the alcazar, the one-time castle, now a military school, Toledo is a fascinating city, with narrow, winding streets, and shops where one can still buy Toledo blades, tempered in the Tagus, and inlaid with gold. Down its widest street, in which two carts can actually pass, rises the great Gothic spire of the cathedral, which replaces the Moorish mosque. The main square, the Zocodover, keeps the Arabic word zuq (market) in its first syllable; one of the Moorish gates, the Puerta del Sol, of 1100, is still intact; and in the Casa de Mesa are beautiful Moorish arabesques and tiles, nearly 500 years old.
Beside the city shepherds drive their parti-colored flocks along the highway; above rises what is only too truly a type of “castles in Spain” – the dismantled fortress of San Servando.
A day’s journey to the southwest lies Merida, once a roman metropolis. It still possesses roman bridges and its ancient theater, and outside the city are still standing several arches of the old Roman aqueduct – “Los Milagros” (the miracles) they are called by the peasants, and it is a miracle that this arcade remains, after so many centuries of earthquakes and invasions. On top of the aqueduct storks, sparrow-hawks, and black-birds nest together in apparent amity.
At Cordova one enters southern Spain, with its highways bordered with aloes and prickly pear (both American importations, like tobacco, maize, and potatoes), and its groves of olive trees. Spain leads the world in the production of olive oil; but it is mostly refined for export in France an Italy; Spanish wines are also largely altered abroad for the consumer’s palate. One of Spain’s memorial of past magnificence in the Moorish mosque, the greatest Mohammedan building west of Mecca. Entering its precincts by the orange court, one finds the portal flanked by two /roman milestones. With exquisite taste the canons have set to the left one dating from the year of Christ’s birth; to the right, from that of the crucifixion. Thus they typify Christianity’s conquest of both the Roman empire and Mohammedan Moor.
The mosque itself is a forest of pillars, which divide the huge, low building into a score of naves. There are over 900 of these columns; some were sent here even from Constantinople, mates, perhaps, of those sent at the same time to Charlemagne for his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. Those were the days of Haroun-al-Rashid and the Arabian Nights; but the splendor of Cordova rivaled that of Bagdad. Abderrahman’s wonderful palace – far more sumptuous than the Alhambra, to judge from the descriptions of the Arabic historians – has perished utterly; but the mihrabs, or prayer niches, in the mosque give some idea of the beauty of Cordova at the height of her glory.
Descending the Guadalquivir, one feels the Moorish presence on all sides. The men who sit idle in the market-place, the women who bring their graceful jars to draw water, often have strongly Moorish features, and with good reason, for the Moors held the kingdom of Seville for over 500 years.
The proudest memorial in Seville is the lofty Giralda, once the muezzin-tower of the mosque. Finished in 1196, it rises 300 feet above the street. The ascent is easy, up a corkscrew inclined plane, and the view down upon the massive cathedral and over the city and plain is most impressive. The great bells swing and clang from time to time, scaring away the myriads of little sparrow-hawks which make their home here. The Orange Court of the cathedral keeps its Moorish gate of Pardon; but the mosque, which vied with that of Cordova, was razed to make room for the noble Gothic cathedral.
Not far away, however, the Moorish Aleazar is still preserved as a royal palace. Though built by Christian kings of Castile, its architects were Moors, and they employed all the delicate refinements of their art. Standing in the Court of the Damosels, where Charles V married Isabella of Portugal, one can hardly believe that this stone lace-work is merely a stucco cement, molded and fastened upon wood. Very beautiful are the dados of enameled tiles, or azulejos, and the folding doors are marvels of Arab carpentry. The horseshoe arcades of the Saloon of the Embassadors are the most graceful and ornate in Spain.
Granada, long a decaying provincial city, is now alive with trolley cars and electric lights, and tourists are so common here that the small boys have even learned a few English words with which to coax away small coin. But the herds of goats, and an occasional cow – an economical milk-delivery system – give a pastoral touch to the town. One sees the same thing at Naples, and the Neapolitan milkman has even discovered a unique way of increasing profits. Under his coat he puts a hot-water bag, with a long rubber tube running down his coat sleeve, and, as he milks, he injects into the pail that percentage of aqua pura which milkmen of all ages and peoples have found desirable.
Granada lies at the point where the Darro and Xenil, running sown from the mountains, unite as they enter the fertile plain of the Vega. Above the city rise the foothills – one crowned by the Alhambra – and beyond them the snow-capped ridges of the Sierra Nevada, 10,000 feet higher. Granada has, therefore, a singularly beautiful situation, and it enjoys a mild and agreeable climate. The romantic interest of its history completes the spell. Here was the last Saracen court in western Europe; here Isabella of Castile, with the money loaned her by a Spanish Jew, financed the Genoese adventurer’s foolhardy quest; here Ferdinand and she, in that same momentous year of 1492, decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain; and here their ashes now repose, in the great Renaissance cathedral which they built in gratitude for their triumph over Islam.
Strolling first up the Darro Valley, between lines of whitewashed houses, glaring in the spring sun, one soon reaches the gypsy quarter. These nomads, whom George Borrow sketched so intimately have settled here in cave-dwellings among the aloes and Indian figs, and issue forth to meet the tourist with guitar and invitation to a dance. Beyond lie bare hills, from which a wonderful view may be gained.
The Alhambra looms up over the valley, commanding the city and the nearer plain; like the Parthenon, its strategic value led to its undoing. But, ruinous though it is, the Alhambra remains the best western reminder of Saracen culture and magnificence. Its Myrtle Court, with a sunny pool, leads to the main enclosure, the Lion Court, off which open the gorgeously decorated rooms which Irving has immortalized. Every detail is worth noticing; the dados, with their varied tile designs; the ornamental friezes, in which verses, often from the Koran, border intricate arabesques; the beautifully fretted arches and the delicate Moorish windows. What remains is so exquisite that one hardly dares imagine its original grandeur.
The trip from Granada to Gibraltar is now easily made by railway; but no one knows Spain who has not taken a stage ride over its breezy plains and aromatic hillsides. The ride from San Fernando, near Cadiz, to Algeciras, across the bay from Gibraltar, is a fascinating experience. Relays of four or five horses rush the coach along over good roads at a steady trot, below Moorish wind-mills, past ruined castles, and beside wide marshes, where storks, cranes, herons, flamingoes, and wild fowl watch its progress. Everywhere the perfumed breeze pursues it, under the brilliant blue of the southern heaven. Now it skirts the seashore, looking over the strait to the
forbidding African mountains; now it toils up bleak hillsides, brilliant with the yellow of the fragrant broom “Pepe,” the driver, handles the clothes-line reins for all the 60 miles: his position occasionally hurls a stone artistically at one of the leaders, to bring him to reason; but in general Pepe drives with his voice, bestowing encouragement and malediction at the top of his lungs upon each of the horses by name; and better driving it would be hard to find.
At the relay stations, a half dozen in number, there are waits of 20 or 30 minutes, in which one can stroll about, watch the larks and countless other songsters, and pick the tiny blue irises and other charming wild flowers. As the coach carries the mails, it is constantly accompanied by one or more civil guards, as the Spanish gendarmes are called. In their striking hats, they are remarkable figures, especially in combination with the herdsboy, whose sheep and goats are browsing under the olive trees.
This ride ahs an added charm in its historical associations. Within a mile or two of the road are the battle-fields of the Salado, where the Visigoths vanquished the Vandals, in 417, and drove them over to Africa, and where, also, in 1340, Alfonso XI defeated the Moors, in the first battle in Europe, it is said, in which Damascus cannon were used. Near by is the Laguna de Janda, where, in 711 the great battle began in which the Moors won Spain from Roderick and his Visigoths. One of the stops is the picturesque city of Tarifa, where Cuzman el Bueno saw his own son slain before his eyes rather than give up the castle to a traitor: and from Tarifa’s Alcazar on e can see Trafalgar, off which England won the empire of the seas. As the stage, after passing the Moorish aqueduct, draws up at Algeciras in the early evening, the search-lights from “the Rock” remind one again of the consequences of that battle.
“Quien dice Espana, dice todo” – he who says Spain, says all. And, indeed, Spain has everything, from snow-clad peak and wind-swept mesa to fragrant orange groves and waving palm trees. If the traveler comes to her to learn, she sends him away richly rewarded, and her austere charm will surely draw him back.
The net influence of the sport is demoralizing, and much of the best element in Spain is against it, unless it can be reformed; but the same can be said of our present form of football, and the one is as likely to disappear as the other. The same arguments are heard in Spain in favor of bull-fighting which are used here for football – it makes the participants brave, alert, quick to act and to help out a fellow-fighter; but at least the bull-fighters maul only animals, not their fellow-men. A Spaniard considers the latter brutal.
Not far from Madrid lies Toledo, the ancient Visigothic capital. The Tagus flows about it in a deep gorge on almost every side. High above the old mills looms the alcazar, the one-time castle, now a military school, Toledo is a fascinating city, with narrow, winding streets, and shops where one can still buy Toledo blades, tempered in the Tagus, and inlaid with gold. Down its widest street, in which two carts can actually pass, rises the great Gothic spire of the cathedral, which replaces the Moorish mosque. The main square, the Zocodover, keeps the Arabic word zuq (market) in its first syllable; one of the Moorish gates, the Puerta del Sol, of 1100, is still intact; and in the Casa de Mesa are beautiful Moorish arabesques and tiles, nearly 500 years old.
Beside the city shepherds drive their parti-colored flocks along the highway; above rises what is only too truly a type of “castles in Spain” – the dismantled fortress of San Servando.
A day’s journey to the southwest lies Merida, once a roman metropolis. It still possesses roman bridges and its ancient theater, and outside the city are still standing several arches of the old Roman aqueduct – “Los Milagros” (the miracles) they are called by the peasants, and it is a miracle that this arcade remains, after so many centuries of earthquakes and invasions. On top of the aqueduct storks, sparrow-hawks, and black-birds nest together in apparent amity.
At Cordova one enters southern Spain, with its highways bordered with aloes and prickly pear (both American importations, like tobacco, maize, and potatoes), and its groves of olive trees. Spain leads the world in the production of olive oil; but it is mostly refined for export in France an Italy; Spanish wines are also largely altered abroad for the consumer’s palate. One of Spain’s memorial of past magnificence in the Moorish mosque, the greatest Mohammedan building west of Mecca. Entering its precincts by the orange court, one finds the portal flanked by two /roman milestones. With exquisite taste the canons have set to the left one dating from the year of Christ’s birth; to the right, from that of the crucifixion. Thus they typify Christianity’s conquest of both the Roman empire and Mohammedan Moor.
The mosque itself is a forest of pillars, which divide the huge, low building into a score of naves. There are over 900 of these columns; some were sent here even from Constantinople, mates, perhaps, of those sent at the same time to Charlemagne for his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. Those were the days of Haroun-al-Rashid and the Arabian Nights; but the splendor of Cordova rivaled that of Bagdad. Abderrahman’s wonderful palace – far more sumptuous than the Alhambra, to judge from the descriptions of the Arabic historians – has perished utterly; but the mihrabs, or prayer niches, in the mosque give some idea of the beauty of Cordova at the height of her glory.
Descending the Guadalquivir, one feels the Moorish presence on all sides. The men who sit idle in the market-place, the women who bring their graceful jars to draw water, often have strongly Moorish features, and with good reason, for the Moors held the kingdom of Seville for over 500 years.
The proudest memorial in Seville is the lofty Giralda, once the muezzin-tower of the mosque. Finished in 1196, it rises 300 feet above the street. The ascent is easy, up a corkscrew inclined plane, and the view down upon the massive cathedral and over the city and plain is most impressive. The great bells swing and clang from time to time, scaring away the myriads of little sparrow-hawks which make their home here. The Orange Court of the cathedral keeps its Moorish gate of Pardon; but the mosque, which vied with that of Cordova, was razed to make room for the noble Gothic cathedral.
Not far away, however, the Moorish Aleazar is still preserved as a royal palace. Though built by Christian kings of Castile, its architects were Moors, and they employed all the delicate refinements of their art. Standing in the Court of the Damosels, where Charles V married Isabella of Portugal, one can hardly believe that this stone lace-work is merely a stucco cement, molded and fastened upon wood. Very beautiful are the dados of enameled tiles, or azulejos, and the folding doors are marvels of Arab carpentry. The horseshoe arcades of the Saloon of the Embassadors are the most graceful and ornate in Spain.
Granada, long a decaying provincial city, is now alive with trolley cars and electric lights, and tourists are so common here that the small boys have even learned a few English words with which to coax away small coin. But the herds of goats, and an occasional cow – an economical milk-delivery system – give a pastoral touch to the town. One sees the same thing at Naples, and the Neapolitan milkman has even discovered a unique way of increasing profits. Under his coat he puts a hot-water bag, with a long rubber tube running down his coat sleeve, and, as he milks, he injects into the pail that percentage of aqua pura which milkmen of all ages and peoples have found desirable.
Granada lies at the point where the Darro and Xenil, running sown from the mountains, unite as they enter the fertile plain of the Vega. Above the city rise the foothills – one crowned by the Alhambra – and beyond them the snow-capped ridges of the Sierra Nevada, 10,000 feet higher. Granada has, therefore, a singularly beautiful situation, and it enjoys a mild and agreeable climate. The romantic interest of its history completes the spell. Here was the last Saracen court in western Europe; here Isabella of Castile, with the money loaned her by a Spanish Jew, financed the Genoese adventurer’s foolhardy quest; here Ferdinand and she, in that same momentous year of 1492, decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain; and here their ashes now repose, in the great Renaissance cathedral which they built in gratitude for their triumph over Islam.
Strolling first up the Darro Valley, between lines of whitewashed houses, glaring in the spring sun, one soon reaches the gypsy quarter. These nomads, whom George Borrow sketched so intimately have settled here in cave-dwellings among the aloes and Indian figs, and issue forth to meet the tourist with guitar and invitation to a dance. Beyond lie bare hills, from which a wonderful view may be gained.
The Alhambra looms up over the valley, commanding the city and the nearer plain; like the Parthenon, its strategic value led to its undoing. But, ruinous though it is, the Alhambra remains the best western reminder of Saracen culture and magnificence. Its Myrtle Court, with a sunny pool, leads to the main enclosure, the Lion Court, off which open the gorgeously decorated rooms which Irving has immortalized. Every detail is worth noticing; the dados, with their varied tile designs; the ornamental friezes, in which verses, often from the Koran, border intricate arabesques; the beautifully fretted arches and the delicate Moorish windows. What remains is so exquisite that one hardly dares imagine its original grandeur.
The trip from Granada to Gibraltar is now easily made by railway; but no one knows Spain who has not taken a stage ride over its breezy plains and aromatic hillsides. The ride from San Fernando, near Cadiz, to Algeciras, across the bay from Gibraltar, is a fascinating experience. Relays of four or five horses rush the coach along over good roads at a steady trot, below Moorish wind-mills, past ruined castles, and beside wide marshes, where storks, cranes, herons, flamingoes, and wild fowl watch its progress. Everywhere the perfumed breeze pursues it, under the brilliant blue of the southern heaven. Now it skirts the seashore, looking over the strait to the
forbidding African mountains; now it toils up bleak hillsides, brilliant with the yellow of the fragrant broom “Pepe,” the driver, handles the clothes-line reins for all the 60 miles: his position occasionally hurls a stone artistically at one of the leaders, to bring him to reason; but in general Pepe drives with his voice, bestowing encouragement and malediction at the top of his lungs upon each of the horses by name; and better driving it would be hard to find.
At the relay stations, a half dozen in number, there are waits of 20 or 30 minutes, in which one can stroll about, watch the larks and countless other songsters, and pick the tiny blue irises and other charming wild flowers. As the coach carries the mails, it is constantly accompanied by one or more civil guards, as the Spanish gendarmes are called. In their striking hats, they are remarkable figures, especially in combination with the herdsboy, whose sheep and goats are browsing under the olive trees.
This ride ahs an added charm in its historical associations. Within a mile or two of the road are the battle-fields of the Salado, where the Visigoths vanquished the Vandals, in 417, and drove them over to Africa, and where, also, in 1340, Alfonso XI defeated the Moors, in the first battle in Europe, it is said, in which Damascus cannon were used. Near by is the Laguna de Janda, where, in 711 the great battle began in which the Moors won Spain from Roderick and his Visigoths. One of the stops is the picturesque city of Tarifa, where Cuzman el Bueno saw his own son slain before his eyes rather than give up the castle to a traitor: and from Tarifa’s Alcazar on e can see Trafalgar, off which England won the empire of the seas. As the stage, after passing the Moorish aqueduct, draws up at Algeciras in the early evening, the search-lights from “the Rock” remind one again of the consequences of that battle.
“Quien dice Espana, dice todo” – he who says Spain, says all. And, indeed, Spain has everything, from snow-clad peak and wind-swept mesa to fragrant orange groves and waving palm trees. If the traveler comes to her to learn, she sends him away richly rewarded, and her austere charm will surely draw him back.
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