Part 9 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: STREET BARBER.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: BIBLES _VERSUS_ MELONS.]
The voyage continued as charmingly as it began. Quiet transitions from the deep blue outside to the p.r.o.nounced green within the harbors were its most startling incidents. The colporteur gave tracts to the sailors, or traded Bibles for melons with the fruit boys; the Frenchman, who was making a commercial tour through the provinces, bestowed a liberal and cheerful disparagement on the nation which afforded him a business. We continued to eat meals in holiday fas.h.i.+on on the skylight hatches, and slept there through the balmy night, occasionally seeing the sailors clambering on the taffrail or in the rigging, always with cigarettes, the glowing points of which shone in the darkness like fire-flies. The gravity with which they stuck to these _papelitos_ while knotting ropes or lowering a boat was fascinating in its inappropriateness. The headlands grew less bold before we tied to the dock at Alicante in the hush of a sultry night. We could see nothing of the town except a bright twinkle of lamps along the quay, contrasting gayly with the blood-red light on a felucca in the harbor, its long vivid stain trickling away through the water like the current from a wound; and the rules of the customs would not admit of our landing till morning.
II.
Our trunks had been on the dock two or three hours when we debarked in a small boat, and some fifteen men had gathered around them, waiting for the owners, like sharks attracted by floating fragments from a s.h.i.+p and wondering what manner of prey is coming to them. They all touched their caps to us as we b.u.mped the sh.o.r.e. These cap-touches are worth in the abstract about one real--five cents. The grand total of speculative politeness laid out upon us was therefore more than half a dollar; but, on our selecting two porters, values rapidly declined, and the market ”closed in a depressed condition.” The customs officers wore a wild, freebooters' sort of uniform--blue trousers with a red stripe, blue jeans blouses with a belt and long sword, and straw hats. They were also very lazy; and while we were awaiting their attentions we had time to observe the manner of unloading merchandise in these lat.i.tudes. Every box, barrel, or bale hoisted out of a lighter was swung by a rope to which twenty men lent their strength; there were three more men in the lighter, and three others arranged the hoisting tackle; in all, twenty-six persons were occupied with a task for which two or three ought to suffice. Each time, the crowd of haulers fastened on the cable, ran off frantically with it, and then, in a simultaneous fit of paralysis, dropped it as the burden was landed.
These laborers wore huge straw hats, on the crown of which was fitted a _birreta_, the small ordinary blue cap of the country. They had a queer air of carrying this superfluous cap around on top of the head as a sort of solemn ceremony. The wharf was alive, too, with small wagons, roofed over by a cover of heavy matting made of _esparto_ gra.s.s, and furnished with a long, rough-barked pole at the side, to be used as a brake. Above this busy scene towered a luminous sienna-tinted cliff, sustaining the castle of Santa Barbara poised in the white air like a dream-edifice; though a rift high up in the hill marks the spot where the French exploded a mine during the Peninsular war. All these Mediterranean towns are guarded by some such eagle's eyry overlooking the sea, and the old monarchs showed a fine poetic sense in granting them for munic.i.p.al arms their local castle resting on a wave. Close to the lapping waters lay the serried houses, bordered by an esplanade planted with rows of short palms. When the carbineers had looked vaguely into our trunks, and shut them again, the porters tossed them into a little cart, and plunged into the town at a pace with which we could compete only so far as to keep them in sight while they twisted first around one corner and then another, and then up a long chalky street to the Fonda Bossio, which has the name of being the best hotel in Spain. It has excellent cookery, and some furlongs of tile-floored corridor, which the servants apparently believe to be streets, for they water them every day, just as the thoroughfares are watered, out of tin basins. We were overwhelmed with courtesy. For instance, I would call the waiter.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CUSTOMS OFFICERS.]
”Command me, your grace,” was his reply.
”Can you bring me some fresh water?” (”Fresh” always means cold.)
[Ill.u.s.tration: POST INN, ALICANTE.]
”With all the will in the world.”
When he came with it I tried to rise to his standard by saying, ”Thanks--a thousand thanks.”
”They do not merit themselves, senor,” said he, not to be outdone.
I asked if I could have a _gars.p.a.cho_ for breakfast. The _gars.p.a.cho_ is an Andalusian soup-salad, very cooling, made of stewed and strained tomato, water, vinegar, sliced cuc.u.mber, boiled green peppers, a dash of garlic, and some bits of bread; the whole served frost-cold.
”I don't know--it is not in the list. I feel it, senor. It weighs upon my soul. But I will see, and will return in an Ave Maria to let you know.”
He never left me without asking, ”Is there anything wanting still?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALICANTE FRUIT-SELLER.]
The waiters and chamber-maids ate their meals at little tables in the hall, and whenever I pa.s.sed them, if they were eating, they made a gracious gesture toward their _pillau_ of rice. ”Would your grace like to eat?”
This offer to share their food with any one who goes by is a simple and kindly inheritance from the East; but it becomes a little embarra.s.sing, and I longed for a pair of back stairs to slink away by, without having to decline their hospitality every time I went out.
To go out in the middle of the day was like looking into the sun itself.
Everybody stayed in-doors behind thick curtains of matting, and dozed or dripped away the time in idle perspiration; but hearing unaccountable blasts of orchestral music during this forced retirement, I inquired, and found them to proceed from the rehearsal of a Madrid opera company then in Alicante. Our attendant at table proved to be a duplex character--a serving-man by day and a fourteenth lord in the chorus by night, with black and yellow stockings, and a number of gestures indicating astonishment, indignation, or, in fact, anything that the emergency required. We had the pleasure of seeing him on the stage that very evening, and of listening to an extravagant performance of ”La Favorita,” between two acts of which an usher came in and collected the tickets of the whole audience. The theatre was remarkably s.p.a.cious for a town of thirty thousand inhabitants; but Alicante is a favorite winter resort, and even maintains a ”Gallistic Circus;” that is, a place for c.o.c.k-fights.
The Garden of Alicante is a luscious spot, hidden away some two or three miles from the town, and owned by the Marques de Venalua, a young man of large wealth, who spends all his time at Alicante, and is a public benefactor, having introduced water in pipes at his own expense. The carriage and consumption of water, indeed, seemed to be the chief business of the population. They have a system of fountains for distributing sea-water from which the salt has been extracted, and women and children are kept going to these with huge jars, to satisfy the local thirst. To be born thirsty, live thirsty, and die so, is a privilege enjoyable only in countries like Southern Spain. One can form there, too, a vivid idea of the desert, from the delight with which he hails the green _Huerta_, or garden. The road and fields on the way thither were like a waste of cinders and ashes. The almond and fig trees, the pomegranates and algarrobas beside the way, were coated with dust that lay upon them like thin snow; and the almond-nuts, where they hung in sight, resembled plaster casts, so pervasive was the white deposit. But all at once we mounted a low rise, and the wide stretch of verdant plantations lay before us, thick-foliaged, cool, sweet, and refres.h.i.+ng, with villas embowered among the oranges and palms, a screen of dim mountains beyond, and the silent blue sea br.i.m.m.i.n.g the horizon on the right. It was a spectacle delicious as sleep to tired eyes; it brought a cry of pleasure to my lips and grateful life to the heart.
But this spot, lovely as it is, becomes insignificant beside the glorious Huerta of Valencia, stretching for more than thirty miles from the olive-clad hills around Jativa to that city, which is the pleasantest in Mediterranean Spain, and the most characteristic of all, after Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. There one travels through an unbroken tract of superb cultivation--a garden in exact literalness, yet a territory in size.
[Ill.u.s.tration: METHOD OF IRRIGATION NEAR VALENCIA.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF SANTA CATALINA, VALENCIA.]
<script>