THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 /
 
 GRANADA
 
 GRAN A DA 
 
 MEMORIES, ADVENTURES, STUDIES 
 
 AND IMPRESSIONS : BY LEONARD 
 
 WILLIAMS : CORRESPONDING MEMBER 
 OF THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY : AUTHOR 
 OF "THE LAND OF THE DONS;" "TOLEDO 
 AND MADRID; THEIR RECORDS AND RO- 
 MANCES," ETC. 
 
 WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTO- 
 GRAPHS AND A FRONTISPIECE IN 
 COLOUR BY A. M. FOWERAKER, R.B.A. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 MCMVI
 
 n 
 
 t' 
 
 K 
 
 What a large volume of adventures may be 
 grasped within this little span of life by 
 him who interests his heart in everything, 
 and who, having eyes to see what time and 
 chance are perpetually holding out to him as 
 he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he 
 can fairly lay his hands on. — Sterne
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. A Journey South ..... 
 II. The Sacred Mountain .... 
 III. The Sacred Mountain (continued) 
 IV. The Sacred Mountain (concluded) 
 
 V. A Cortijo in the Sierra 
 VI. The Summit of Xolair 
 VII. The Snowstorm ... 
 
 VIII. Revival 
 
 IX. How I Did not Climb the Trevenque 
 X. The Ave Maria Colony 
 XI. A Tractate on the Gypsies of Granada 
 XII. The Old Road to Guadix . 
 
 XIII. Guadix 
 
 XIV. A Night in the Albaycin 
 XV. The Alhambra by Moonlight 
 
 17 
 39 
 61 
 73 
 85 
 
 lOI 
 
 log 
 119 
 
 135 
 149 
 
 165 
 177 
 187 
 201
 
 List of Illustrations 
 
 Page 
 
 After-glow : the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada from 
 theAlbaycin FronUsi>iccc 
 
 In a Garden of Granada . .' . 
 
 A Moorish Well near the Sacro-Monte 
 
 A Gipsy Lodging on the Way to the Sacro-Monte 
 
 In the Albaycin 
 
 The Cortijo of San Jeronimo .... 
 The Sun Rising on the Peak of the Veleta 
 
 The Lake of the Mares 
 
 Mulhacen and the Alcazaba from the Summit of th 
 
 Veleta 
 
 A Snowstorm Coming up the Mountains . 
 A Wild Scene on the Sierra Nevada . 
 A Good Head for a Height, on the Summit of the 
 Trevenque ...••••■ 
 
 The Ave Maria Colony 
 
 The Fountain of the Hazel Tree 
 The Inn of the Little Mill, from the Hill-side. 
 The Teeth of the Old Woman . . ■ • 
 The Inn of the Little Mill, on the Old Road to 
 Guadix ...•••■•• 
 
 A Wayside Wineshop 
 
 17 
 39 
 61 
 73 
 85 
 93 
 
 97 
 
 lOI 
 
 log 
 
 119 
 
 135 
 149 
 165 
 169 
 
 171 
 177 
 
 XI
 
 ILiBt of aUustv 
 
 The Gateway of Guadix . 
 
 In the Albaycin 
 
 The Casa del Gallo . 
 
 A Corner in the Albaycin 
 
 The Alhambra; the Ladies' Tower 
 
 The Alhambra; the Court of Cypresses 
 
 The Tower of Homage, seen from the Albaycin 
 
 atlons 
 
 Page 
 179 
 
 187 
 
 189 
 
 193 
 201 
 205 
 211
 
 
 In a Garden of Granada 
 
 A Journej' South 
 
 HE Catalan poet and satiri.st Bartrina 
 lias declared that the substance (as 
 distinguished from the vehicle) of a 
 man's talk is self-suHicieiit to disclose 
 his nationality. Let me sui>;ii-cst that 
 another index is the way a man performs his travel- 
 ling. The French traveller gig-oles, the Spanish 
 traveller jabbers, and the English traveller growls. 
 Precisely on the evening which took me southwards 
 to Granada I snatched a golden opportunity of 
 putting this observation to the test, for all three 
 nationalities were represented in my own compart- 
 ment of the railway carriage, tenanted by growling 
 English, giggling French, and jabbering Spaniards. 
 But since I had listened to one of Maura's sjieeches 
 
 1 A
 
 (5iana&a 
 
 the day before, and had no sympathy with growling, 
 jabbering, or giggling at that moment, I tipped the 
 guard to find me a solitary seat and bundled off' 
 elsewhither. 
 
 Night in La Mancha. Night in all cjuarters of 
 the world is desolate, but in La Mancha ! A sultry 
 night in August. The passage of the train creates 
 a current of hot air : even the moon shines fire. A 
 lonely land ; a land of vacancy or units, this La 
 ]Mancha. One vast, unbounded blot upon the ample 
 breast of Spain. No map denotes the limits of La 
 Mancha. You may begin or end it where you please. 
 One chalky desert, extending anywhere and every- 
 where. At infinite distances a single cornfield, a 
 single vineyard, a single mound, a single stream, a 
 .single sheepfold, looking, with its huddled, amal- 
 gamated inmates, like a creamy and gigantic mush- 
 room ; a single tree, upsprouting from the sunburnt, 
 wind-swept, mirthless prairie to prick the torrid 
 heaven ; a solitary windmill by the way ; a solitary 
 cottage, one-doored, one-windowed, with possibly a 
 solitary tenant slumbering in the open, up against 
 the walL Even the scanty stations are isolated from 
 the villages or towns whose name they bear, seeming 
 to have strayed as far as possible from these, and 
 squatted beside the rails in order, as it were, to take 
 a peep at passing civilisation. 
 
 You remember Y^orick's definition of a traveller ? 
 
 " The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a 
 
 dark entiy may be an excellent good man, and fit 
 
 for a hundred things ; but he will not do to make a 
 
 ^•ood sentimental traveller." " Well but,'' you ob- 
 
 o
 
 B 3ouvnc\: Soutb 
 
 ject, " this definition is only i)iu-ti;il. We see things 
 nowadays \\ ith the brain, or with both brain and eyes, 
 or merely with the eyes; but very seldom with the heart. 
 Have you no definition of a traveller generally — 
 of a modern, matter-of-fact traveller, now that senti- 
 mentalism is sadly on the wane ?"" I think I have. 
 
 The man who, when he travels by night, remem- 
 bers to wind up his watch, knows how to travel : he 
 merits, without reserve, the name of traveller. I 
 drew my timepiece forth and found it ticking feebly, 
 hastened to ply the key, and saved my re]>utation as 
 a traveller by perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then I 
 went off to sleep and dreamed that old Don Quixote 
 was "holding-up" the train. When I awoke, the 
 summit of Despenajierros was sailing overhead, tipped 
 with pale yellow against a paling sky. Night and La 
 Mancha might have never been. Yonder, suffused 
 with sunlight, lay the olive-groves of Andalusia. The 
 olive is an ugly tree; its shape is mean; its colour, as 
 llusinol would say, is that of a faded \'enetian blind. 
 Who could aspire to counterfeit the mournful elegance 
 of the weeping willow, the hauteur of the elm, or the 
 rugged majesty of the mountain pine.^ But the 
 olive ! Twist a shred of dingy green paper about an 
 inch or two of black wire — say a straightened hair- 
 pin — and factum est. Your hands have jMoved to 
 all intents and purposes as cunning as those of 
 Mother Nature.* 
 
 * Since writing this I find that Arthur Young was just of my 
 opinion. " Descend mountains terraced for olives, which grow 
 well in rocks but add nothing to their beauty ; insomuch that 
 cloathing a naked country with this most ugly of all trees, adds 
 nothing to the pleasure of the eye." — Tour in Catalonia. 
 
 3
 
 Ovana^a 
 
 ^Vhatever bards may twitter to the contrary, no 
 olive has ever beautified a land, except symbolically. 
 Yet I was glad to see these olives now. Their 
 presence betokens Andalusia ; their history is older 
 than the Flood. Tradition says their parallel or 
 diagonal files and uniform, fluffy aspect suggested 
 first the madronera of the rnaja — that singular, grace- 
 ful overskirt whose use, unhappily, decreases day by 
 day. Soon other signs revealed " the Land of Holy 
 Mary'' — sunburnt fields, with galaxies of scarlet 
 ])oppy ; sunburnt sierras, brown and yellow, melting 
 into blue ; dry river channels fringed with prickly 
 ])ear ; snowy cortijos ; a ruined castle on a hill. A 
 land of peace, though not, alas, of plenty, scarred by 
 innumerable wars, plundered by crafty priests and 
 conscienceless caciques* gnawed by centuries of mal- 
 
 * The Andalusian millionaire and potentate, a sordid, gross, 
 unschooled, ill-spoken type, whether he ostentates a title or not, 
 has nearly always made his wealth by usury, or, as he calls it, 
 banking. A prominent beato, at some time or other he spares 
 enough from his thievings to present a gewgaw lo the local 
 " Virgin." For this his fellow townsmen almost canonize him, 
 while gaping rustics grow doubly eager to confide their scrapings 
 to his pious charge, or pay him twenty per cent, per month for 
 an advance upon their crops. Of course he bends his knees to 
 the Viaticum, kisses the bishop's ring, subscribes to the clerical 
 newspaper, and frequents mass. "When a man of business," 
 said Ganivet, " conceals himself in the cloak of piety, he is more 
 to be feared than a Kruppgun." Indeed, the villainy of any 
 Spaniard may normally be estimated by the fervour of his 
 churchmanship. Perhaps in this respect Spain and Great 
 Britain do not differ very vastly. Reverting to our Andalusian 
 millionaire, he has no energy except for sucking blood, and 
 storms in pretty language against the British, German, French, 
 or Belgian capital and enterprise which fortify the land whose 
 entrails he himself is seeking to devour. 
 
 4
 
 H 3ouincv; South 
 
 administration. .V land whose ocx-upants, thn)ii<;li 
 mingled indolence and ignorance, are ever falling 
 backward in the feverish, inevitable race; nonchahmt 
 suicides whose best ambition is gdzjuicho and a 
 cigarette — bad aliment and worse tobacco ; who>e 
 onlv merriment the twani; of the lumibrious uuitar. 
 Whenever I visit Andahisia, the same (juestion 
 repeats itself to me. How can a people live upon so 
 little, and live so long? 
 
 \et still the Andalusian peasant smiles and sings. 
 I could hear them from the train — those semi-nasal, 
 semi-guttural copla-s; thrown to the wind as we thi-ow 
 promises or prayers. And then the colour of the 
 scene — red, and green, and yellow saddlebags and 
 nosebands, flowers by the wayside, flowers in the 
 women's hair. Or what of this f Before the white- 
 washed wall of a (ottage a sheet of golden maize 
 spread out upon the road ; seated beside the maize a 
 couple of tortoiseshell cats ; in the doorway a little 
 old woman with bright silver hair and a pink jacket; 
 and, over all, the sky of Andalusia. Just as the 
 cottage dwindled we overtook a tall mule with two 
 riders, a lad of some fourteen years and a smaller 
 brother clinging round his middle. The latter urchin 
 was nearly naked, and his brown legs shone a perfect 
 terra di Siena in the rising light. He might have 
 started out of a picture by Raphael. 
 
 The resignation of these Andalusians passes all 
 belief. At one point on our journey a countrified 
 fellow mounts the footboard, but fails to turn the 
 handle, which is stiff. " Que g-rasia .'" he exclaims, 
 grinning in upon the passengers, '■^ :c/i(it a Joke !'^ 
 
 5
 
 ©l•ana^a 
 
 The spirit of his remark is deeply wise, after the 
 local manner of philosophy. He may or may not 
 lose the train ; but at least the sticking of the door- 
 handle is worth a chuckle. According to this 
 standard, nothing is wholly tragic. Unluckily, the 
 converse must be true as well; "their enjoyment is 
 attended even with a sigh ; '' and hence it is that 
 Andalusian laughter never seems unmixed with 
 tears. 
 
 At one of the stations three beggars were labour- 
 ing along the platform. Labouring in two senses. 
 In the first sense they were exercising the labour 
 which belongs to their profession. Whether that 
 labour is better or worse, or worse or better paid, 
 or harder or softer than other of its kinds and rami- 
 fications, is not our business at this moment to 
 inquire. And then {labour number two) they were, 
 to use the dictionary term, " moving slowly, as 
 against opposition, or under a burden." All the 
 three had seen extended service in contriving income 
 from decay (a feat notoriously bevond the means of 
 many a moneyed potentate), and now were fired with 
 all the art and inspiration of decrepitude. This is 
 a sober truth. The only occupation we exercise with 
 better zest and strength, and larger honorariums as 
 time inclines our bodies and numbs our intellect, is 
 that of mendicancy ; some falling back upon the 
 stranger public, others upon their friends, or sons, or 
 daughters. So that in this good world that feeds 
 and shelters all, even senility is marketable ; and 
 imbecility, whether in youth or age, conspicuously 
 so. 
 
 6
 
 "R Journey Sout(3 
 
 Returiiino" to the academic as distinguished from 
 the virtual beggars, I say that all these three were 
 far advanced in years. Two were old. The third, 
 almost beyond the range of any adjective, was in- 
 iinitely older. His face, in F'lij^-ard.s- expressive 
 metaphor, might just have been the Wandering 
 Jew's, if that blasphemer had survived from Christ 
 till now. Besides being senior to his fellows., he also 
 was the raggedest and most authoritative ; for tatters 
 in a mendicant are positively modish, and onlv con- 
 secjuential beggars can aftbrd to ostentate them. This 
 beggar wore, undoubtedly, an air of chieftainship, 
 though all the gang were full of varied interest. A 
 statistician would compute for us the quantity of dirty 
 copper which had passed between those thirty thumbs 
 and fingers in the course of, say, a hundred years, show- 
 ing us in a deft, comparative picture on the colunni 
 plan, the beggar in the middle, the copper upon one 
 side of him, and the dirt (allowing something extra for 
 the superadded grime of travelled money) upon tin: 
 other. I wonder which of the ]n\u< would reach the 
 highest. 
 
 But I am not a statistician ; and what amused me 
 most was watching the co-operative system of the 
 veteran three. I found their propaganda admirably 
 plaiuied and admirably executed. jNIuttering a suit- 
 able supplicatory phrase, they crawled before the 
 carriages in solemn single file. If you were looking 
 out of the window, the first would pass you by almost 
 ignored. But then the second came along and called 
 your vagrant notice back, and when the third arrived 
 your hand obeyed the summons automatically. I 
 
 7
 
 ©ranaSa 
 
 watched the case with eager speculation. At every 
 turn they took, the third and last received the fixed 
 attention and the tangible reward. 
 
 Three men, I thought (remembering Horatius and 
 his helpers), can surely make a better stand against the 
 universe than merely one; so these associated indigents 
 })arade in shrewd alliance their tatters and anticjuity 
 as every train goes past. V Union fait hi force. 
 Turning to another foreign language ; " When you 
 have a good thing,"" said one of our American cousins, 
 " push it." In this example the iteration of the propa- 
 ganda proves itself. Debility and dirt compose the 
 goodness. Your young and lusty beggars are at best 
 probationers! What do they earn compared with 
 master-craftsmen ? Nezo rags are unconvincing and 
 theatrical, nor is the dirt of ages gathered in an 
 hour. You have seen Gringoire on the stage ? Did 
 he look dirty ? He seems to me a gentleman who 
 has just come out of a motor accident. To these, 
 upon the contrary, the dirt accumulated and matured 
 across innumerable lustrums is worth its weight in 
 glory and in gold. 
 
 I repeat that the line between beggardom and 
 non-bcggardom becomes in many places quite imagi- 
 nary. Who shall lay down, even to the splitting 
 of a hair, the just and proper definition of a mendi- 
 cant ? Not (speaking of what I know) the historic 
 codes of Spain. True, the Siete Partidas, the Or- 
 denamiento de los Menestrales of Pedro the Cruel 
 (1351), the Ordenamiento de Toro (1369), the 
 Cortes of Burgos of 1379, and the Ordenamiento 
 of Briviesca of 1387 — all these provide ferocious 
 
 8
 
 H 5oiuncv South 
 
 fines or torments for .able-bodied be<>;gar.^ of tiie 
 kiniidom. The citv of Toledo even decreed their 
 death.* But how about the soldier and tiie priest, 
 who positively <jjutted Spam tin-ou<Thout the Middle 
 Ages? The })riest, "founding his temporal estate 
 upon the spiritual estate of the faithful," spends 
 money but does not produce it. Exactly the same 
 remark applies to the soldier. \Vhy nIiouIcI not 
 these be maidiraiitcs Vdl'/di, or, as the old ("astilian 
 has it, haldfos f 
 
 It is preposterous to take for granted that the 
 only kind of mendicant is a frowsy wretch who 
 pesters or pleads upon the pavement for a copper 
 coin. How easy it is to show that mendicity, like 
 tleath, ipquo pidsat pede paupennii tuhernus regurnqiic 
 turrt's ; infects and exercises in all walks of lite, well- 
 nio-h without discrimination. The other day a young 
 and beautiful lady of title came to my house to solicit 
 a contribution towards some jewels for a (wooden) 
 " Viriiin.'''' I can recall no other instance where beaut \ 
 in a woman has disgusted and reiielled me. AVhat 
 business had this begging dame to set a sensual snare 
 for a spiritual purpose? What did she come to my 
 house to beg for? Money? Not only money. 
 When I asked the maid what kind of a stranger- 
 visitor was waiting in my anteroom, '' /jouiig^'' I was 
 told, ''a)id vcrjj handsome^ This, then, was what 
 the Countess of came to beg for. 
 
 * '• Por la.primera vez dardn a cada Jino dellos cincuenta azotes 
 piiblicamente por ena cibdad, i detnas que los echardn a azotes fiuia de 
 la cibdad: c' por la seqimda vez que les cortardn las orejas ; J por la 
 tcrcera vez que los mandardii ttiatar porello."—!fiforme de la Imperial 
 cindad de Toledo sobre pesos y medidas ; 1400, p. 103. 
 
 9
 
 OianaSa 
 
 Again, not long ago I asked a Spanish comandante 
 to lunch with nie at Lhardy's, in Madrid. He came, 
 and brought three friends of his, all officers of the 
 army, like himself, who all sat down and gorged at 
 my expense. Close to the doorway of the same estab- 
 lishment lingers an old blind pauper, who whines at 
 intervals for an ochavo. Am I to call this old blind 
 man a mendicant, but not this officer ? I will dis- 
 tinguish here. The blind old man, by merely mut- 
 tering his question more or less into my private ear, 
 left me a loophole of escape. \ot so the comandante. 
 " I beg,"' he said, " to introduce my friends, Fulano, 
 Perez, and INIengano. Perhaps ifoxi ic'dl not mind 
 their Joining ns ? "" So in this case the soldier was — 
 the soldier ; but only the old blind pauper was the 
 gentleman. 
 
 A similar confusion has prevailed at every period 
 of this nation's history. Her former laws attempted 
 vainlv enough to point a difference from the moneyed 
 to the pauper mendicant. The shrewd, observant 
 Ganivet remarks, as closely coexistent and con- 
 nected, a plebeian and an aristocratic beggardom, 
 sketching, in master terms, the inendicitijofthe noble — 
 *•' the hidalgo who gloats over the admirable temper of 
 his sword, and over his imaginary estates, who dreams 
 of grandeur and supports himself upon the crusts 
 collected by his servant." Late in the seventeenth 
 century, a report presented to the Spanish Govern- 
 ment declared that it was a matter of the utmost 
 nicety to winnow the indigent from the well-to-do ; 
 adding that swarms of beggars nere wont to game 
 awav their earnings in vaults and taverns, " meddling 
 
 10
 
 B ."^ouincv Soutb 
 
 with meat and diink, and cvcrv other form of vice." 
 Obviously a pauper who leads this kind of life is 
 nothing of a pauper. The same report goes on to 
 say that many of the women mendicants were known 
 to possess "excellent houses, jewels, fowlyards, and 
 money in abundance." A royal cedula of August 24, 
 1540, affirms that the beggars " have their concu- 
 bines, and lead an evil and dishonest life, with grave 
 excess in eating, drinking, (did other v'lccsr The 
 Ordinances of Madrid for the year 1439 provide that 
 no able-bodied beggar is to remain in the city for 
 longer than three days, on pains of a hundred lashes 
 if he go afoot; but if he be on horsebdck he is to lose 
 his beast. Salazar declared mendicity to be "the only 
 trade in which a Spaniard of the seventeenth century 
 would deign to follow in the footsteps of his father 
 and his ancestors, considering it to be the usefullest, 
 easiest, and most unfettered of all occupations."" In 
 no country is it so common to be asked for alms by 
 perfectly well-dressed, well-fed ])eople as in Spain. 
 Late in the eighteenth century the Economic Society 
 of Madrid described the same abuse ; and assuredly 
 Philip the Fourth grew no less popular when he hung- 
 up a bag in the churches of Madrid, enabling his 
 subjects to boast that " they had given an alms to 
 the King of Spain." 
 
 Partly from indolence, partly from ignorance, 
 partly from a false appreciation of the jirinciples 
 of human rather than Roman Catholic charity, 
 Spain has at all times viewed the beggar's trade in 
 various of its fornis with scarcely veiled complaisance. 
 A proof of this is in the number of her mendicants, 
 
 11
 
 6l•ana^a 
 
 and in the quantity of relief provided for them." 
 Campomanes estimated their total in his day at thirty 
 thousand trne paupers, and one hundred and forty 
 thousand idle paupers. In 1782, ^Madrid alone dis- 
 tributed in alms two hundred and twentv-five thou- 
 sand reales, and in 1783, including the King's 
 contribution, half a million ; all this in a poor, 
 thinly populated, and exhausted capital. Further- 
 more, a papal brief of ^larch 14th, 1780, empowered 
 Charles the Third to devote a third part of the entire 
 revenues of the Church to almsgiving. Campomanes 
 had previously computed the amount of money lost 
 to the nation by the collective idleness of her mendi- 
 cants at one hundred and eighty-two millions of 
 reales per annum ; and Kodrigo Caro and Ortiz de 
 Zuiiiga assure us that early in the seventeenth 
 century, when Spain was in her most impoverished 
 condition, the charities of Seville exceeded seven 
 millions of reales yearly. Over and over again the 
 prisons of the realm were choked with mendicants ; 
 but the State lacked funds to support them, and 
 since they could not be allowed to starve outright, 
 vomited them forth once more upon societ}. 
 
 Accepting for a moment the trite and vulgar defi- 
 nition of a mendicant, it were " a harder alchymy than 
 Lullius ever knew "" to point the difference of a moral 
 millimetre between this creature and the Spanish 
 priest ; or between the same creature, the Spanish 
 thief or bandit, and the Spanish common soldier 
 at least throughout the Middle Ages and even later. 
 All of those types subsisted on pillage obtained by 
 force or fraud. The Royal Letter of 1540 from 
 
 12
 
 1\ ."^ouincv South 
 
 which I have ah-eady c|Uoted, coinphiins in bitter 
 language of the hordes of mendicants who roamed 
 about the land " under the guise of pilgrims and of 
 hermits,"''' Indeed, the monks and clergy (mendicants 
 themselves) encouraged the beggar as their most 
 productive agent. The picarescjue literature of 
 Spain divides its scope, without the slightest pre- 
 ference, between the beggar and the bandit ; and 
 truly the difference is little more than fanciful 
 between the pauper who harries you along the street 
 as he demands your money, and the pauper who 
 claps a pistol to your head and makes the same 
 demand upon the highroad : or again, between the 
 bandit and the soldier-gaolbird, whose only regular 
 pay consists in plunder. Such were the Spanish 
 armies in the Netherlands, and the forces sent against 
 the Moriscos of the Alpujarra. These latter would 
 melt mysteriously away between the night and 
 morning, and when their leaders came to look for 
 them were found to be engaged in looting innocent 
 ])eople's property. 
 
 Certainly the beggar has proved as serviceable a 
 go-between to the criminal as to the priest. " They 
 pass with ease," says an old account, " from begging 
 to every kind of wickedness."" How near mendicity 
 is to theft or murder is shown by the La::arillo de 
 Tormcs, Rinconctc y CortadUlu, and similar master- 
 pieces of the picaresque. Nor has the office of the 
 mendicant in Spain been always even nominally pro- 
 hibited. Spanish towns and cities have frequently 
 provided licences for beggars in return for hire, pre- 
 tending by this means to limit the privilege of 
 
 V6
 
 C5l•ana^a 
 
 alms-asking to the strictly incapacitated and necessi- 
 tous. But here, as ever, roguery contrived to 
 triumph. The hcence was exhibited in the form of 
 " bronze insignias,"" or tablets with " the wearer's 
 name and qualitv,'" suspended round the necks of the 
 approved practitioners. In 1671 these tablets bore a 
 picture of the Virgin. But, of course, the beggars 
 made no scruple of selling, or lending, or stealing 
 one another's licences ; and very soon the tablets 
 and " insignias "" had to be suppressed. 
 
 In one of the raciest of his " custom articles," 
 the brilliant Larra describes a number of " liveli- 
 hoods which do not afford a livelihood " ; in plainer 
 words, those petty occupations that lurk perforce 
 upon the border-line of beggary. How often have 
 I seen a ]\Iadrid street-porter supplicate relief, 
 although with his coil of rope upon his shoulder. A 
 similar remark is applicable to the flo\\ er-girls, who 
 offer divers wares for sale ; to the gatherers of 
 cigarette ends ; and even to the newsboys : but, on 
 the other hand, the candeleros who used to hawk 
 about a light for smokers have disappeared from this 
 capital. Formerly the law prescribed the trades and 
 occupations which it held to constitute mendicity ; 
 such as (in 1745, Ordenanzas de Vago.s; ch. 5), 
 gamblers, drunkards, " those who maltreat their 
 wives without a visible cause," tumblers, ball- 
 throwers, bagpipe-players, exhibitors of magic- 
 lanterns or performing dogs and other animals, and 
 sellers of sugarcane, or of the sweetstuff' known as 
 turron. 
 
 So, taking one thing with another, the con- 
 14
 
 fraternity of Spanish mendicants intrudes on every 
 epocli of Spain's history, engrosses or affects all 
 classes of her citizens. On this account their 
 haughtiness has grown proverbial. Seized with pity 
 for an aged mendicant who used to crawl iibont 
 Madrid, I once permitted him to come to mv house 
 and receive daily a plate of soup and a pennv. Not 
 many days had passed before he (piarrelled with mv 
 servants, complained of the soup (the same wliieh was 
 set upon my table), and demanded, not onlv an in- 
 crease of sdlcmj, but a glass of wine and a beefsteak 
 and potatoes. 
 
 While I was busied with these reflections, some 
 stations slipped away. I did not take much notice 
 of them; firstly, because I was absorbed with the pre- 
 ceding observations ; and secondly, because no rail- 
 way-station in Spain deserves a more than casual 
 curiosity. All are identical in barrenness of archi- 
 tecture. Hear how Ganivet describes thenu " The 
 railway-station is the symbol of our political and 
 administrative incapacitv, although we mav console 
 ourselves with the thought that they are not likely 
 to remain long standing ; their term of life is marked 
 out for them by their builders; and v.hen a mistake 
 creeps in, we become by so much more the gainers."' 
 
 Nevertheless, at one of these stations nrar to 
 Granada — though whether the nearest or the 
 nearest but one or two, I cannot for the life of me 
 recall — a small girl, probably the station-masters 
 daughter, hardly old enough to walk alone, was 
 nursing a toy lamb on the platform. Even an 
 inftint's mind is sensitive to metaphor; more ^o, it 
 15
 
 (ranaJa 
 
 may be, than our own. Gazing from her toy to- 
 wards the cirro-cumukis of the early morning, " the 
 horregiiitos^'' she cried, " O look at the horreguitos'" ; 
 and truly those oval, fleecy cloudlets were not un- 
 like innumerable flocks at pasturage upon an azure 
 plain. 
 
 Yet presently, as if the hand of God had taken 
 an invisible sponge and wiped the face of heaven 
 clean, the horrcgiiitos vanished. 
 
 16
 
 A Moorish Well near the Sacro-Monte 
 
 II 
 
 The Sacred Mountain 
 
 ^tN a cloudless October nioniini;- — one of 
 the finest I recall in any land — I started 
 to walk to the church and college of 
 the Sacro-Monte of Granada, It was 
 a Sundav, too, and the streets were 
 throng-ed with mass-goers, water-sellers, strollers, 
 ])edlars, and every other class of passenger. At the 
 end of the Plaza Nueva, just where the road l)ends 
 off beside the gracefid Mudejar tower of the Church 
 of Santa Ana, a woman was frying at a stall the 
 circular cakelets with a hole in the middle vulgarly 
 denominated tejer'mgos or, more politely and less 
 locallv, churros: Even in so radiant a landscape 
 this patch of brightness stood out ablaze with colour; 
 
 17 B
 
 Ol•ana^a 
 
 the yellow discs immerged in bubbling oil: the 
 pearly smoke, the bunch of fresh-cut reeds — on which 
 to thread the merchandise — hanging beside the stove. 
 But the woman was (as women surely have the essential 
 right to be) the brightest note of all. A :Manila ker- 
 chief decked her shoulders; her cheeks and fingers were 
 ruddy with the fire, and I noticed with pleasure and 
 surprise that even the lustre of her jetty hair reflected 
 the azure of the sky. 
 
 The way to the Sacro-^NIonte lies first of all along 
 the Carrera del Darro, where once stood forty 
 Moorish palaces within the health-restoring quarter 
 of the Haxariz. Nowadays some few of the houses 
 wear yet an ancient look, and even many of the 
 modern ones possess a subtle picturesqueness all their 
 own. Sometimes their walls are rose, or tawny, or 
 vermilion ; or strings of flaming capsicums are hang- 
 ing from the window. Upon this morning a girl 
 leant over the railing of a balcony, tapping a tiny 
 foot on Seville tiles embosomed in a multitude of 
 flowers. Her cheeks, caressed by large and flashing 
 earrings reminiscent of the Moor, were flushed with 
 vigour and fresh air. Her glossy hair, as yet un- 
 dressed, was loosely held by a claret-coloured ribbon ; 
 and overhead a canary, whose breakfast she had just 
 provided, shrilled forth her praises from an emerald 
 cao-e. Before I took my eyes from her a blind man 
 came along, tapping the pavement with nis stick. 
 Never in all my life had I so pitied blindness. 
 
 Traversing the outskirts of the town I climbed the 
 steeply rising road, and found myself upon the terrace 
 of the Sacro-Monte. 
 
 18
 
 cbc Sacvc^ /iPoimtain 
 
 The buildiiii^- itself, erected in the eailier half of 
 the seventeenth century, is hardly wortii attenti(jn. 
 A chilly church, a chilly college, a chilly courtyard, 
 bordered by a basement and a single storey of chilly 
 corridors. Along these corridors are eight and 
 twenty arches, oyer which are carved the founder's 
 arms and "the cabalistic star of Solomon, the em- 
 blem of the house." Yet though the fabric is so 
 cheerless in itself, it has a southerly aspect and over- 
 looks the lovely valley of the Darro onto the historic 
 caves of " Father Piquinote," and the equally historic 
 carmen of the Genoese Pascasio. The canons' residence, 
 between the college and the chiu'ch, has room for 
 twenty prebendaries and six chaplains. The seminary, 
 whic-h is at the eastern end, harbours a hundred and 
 fifty scholars, clerical and lay. The church, a simjily- 
 vaulted structure, contains some paintings worth ex- 
 amination — five by Kisueno, and an Iiiuiutnihttc Con- 
 ception attributed to Nino de Guevara, a pu})il of 
 Alonso Cano ; but the altar, dating from the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, is hideous. At one side is 
 a passage containing a Birth oj' Christ, by Carducho, 
 typical of that artist both in colour and in stiffness ; a 
 Conccption,hy Peter Raxis ; aMarfji/rdojn of Snntiaffo, 
 by Bocanegra; and a Saint Martin, l)y Risueno.* 
 
 * A native of Granada, equally distinguished in painting and 
 in sculpture. He stands high up in the second class of Spanish 
 painters ; and this, in the land of Velazquez, Alonso Cano, and 
 Goya, is not a little. Kisueno was born about the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, and died, according to Cean. in 1721. 
 Raxis was not a Granadino, although he passed a great part of 
 his life here. Bocanegra, a pupil of Alonso Cano, and. like his 
 master, a native of this city, was a fairly fashionable painter of 
 the seventeenth century. The manner of his death was curious. 
 
 19
 
 0^ana^a 
 
 From this recess we enter the Sacred Caverns of 
 the Sacred Mountain — gloomy and constricted sub- 
 terranean passages, opening out at intervals into a 
 small, well-lighted chapel. The unusual effect of 
 this suggested to Jimenez-Serrano a pretty and a 
 prettily expressed conceit. He says : " On passing 
 through these galleries dug out between the bowels 
 of the mountain, and issuing therefrom into the 
 pleasant clearness of the chapels, we seem to witness 
 a combat of our inmost thouo-hts and roam through 
 dismal paths of ignorance and doubt, until we fix 
 our eves on God, the li";ht of all creation."* 
 
 Now let me tell the story of these caves — a longish 
 story, though full of interest, social, national and 
 psychological — the story of the most astonishing, 
 amusing, and protracted swindle that the world has 
 ever heard of. 
 
 In 1588 an ancient tower was standing in the very 
 centre of the city of Granada, close to where we now 
 observe the Sagrario of the cathedral. About this 
 tower old writers, and even comparatively recent 
 ones, have echoed or invented sundry legends, main- 
 taining it to be of prehistoric or Phoenician origin. 
 Echeverrfa has much to say about a full-length statue 
 of a Roman soldier, discovered somewhere round 
 
 A younger rival, Teodoro Ardemans, irritated by Bocanegra's 
 intolerable vanity, challenged him to a match at painting each 
 the other's portrait. The challenge was accepted by Bocanegra, 
 and Ardemans, hitting off his likeness to perfection, proved him- 
 self the better of the two, besides completing the picture within 
 an hour's work. The duel, notwithstanding its pacific nature, 
 had a fatal consequence : for Bocanegra, stung by his defeat, 
 took to his bed and died a few days after. 
 
 "■■ Manual del Artista y del Viajero en Granada, p. 362. 
 
 ^0
 
 Zbc SacvoJ /mountain 
 
 about Granada, and bearing this i:iscription at the 
 base, Cuio Ant'ist'io Turpioni. " Here," he com- 
 ments, " we have a famous man called C'aius Anti^tius 
 Turpion, who mav have <^iven his name to the Torre 
 Turpiana (such was the usual title of this tower, 
 though it was also called 'the ancient" and 'the 
 uninhabitable') either from having mended it or else 
 from having dwelt in it, or taken it bv force of 
 arms." He adds that it was ancient even in the time 
 of Nero.* Another of these silly scribes is Pedraza, 
 who assures us that "erected bv the Gentiles,"" it 
 resembled several other towers standing in his day. 
 But since Echeverria admits that it was also similar 
 to the Puerta Nueva, which still exists, we may be 
 sure that it \vas merely a Moorish fabric, probably of 
 a defensive kind, and dating from an early period of 
 the Moorish occupation. 
 
 On Friday then, March 18th, 1588, the tower 
 was beino; thrown down to make wav for part 
 of the Christian temple. A day later, while carting 
 away the debris, the workmen came upon a leaden 
 box, caked over with mud, and which, being opened by 
 the overseer, was found to contain a piece of parch- 
 ment, a scrap of linen in the shajje of an obtuse- 
 angled triangle, and a bone. The parchment was 
 covered with Arabic writing, headed by five small 
 crosses disposed so as to form a single large one. The 
 substance of the writing claimed to be a projAecy of 
 Saint John the Evangelist, presented by Saint Dio- 
 nysius to Saint Cecil, patron of Granada, uj)on the 
 latter's visiting Athens. The signature ai)peared to 
 
 * Paseos por Granada, vol. i. p. 256. 
 21
 
 ©ranatia 
 
 be autographic, and read as follows : " Cecil, Bishop 
 of' Granada.'''' 
 
 Pedraza and Echeverria explain that the writing 
 on the parchment formed a kind of cryptogram, 
 chequered with sundry letters in black, and others in 
 red ; and that, when the black letters were joined and 
 the red letters were joined, each batch of them was 
 found to form " a clear and current Spanish, as 
 polished as we speak it at this day " ; the entire 
 legend constituting a prediction of the end of 
 the world. A transient difficulty was presented by 
 the fact that the Arabic and the Spanish were pre- 
 cisely those of the time of the discovery ; until a 
 learned doctor, Lopez Madera, took upon himself to 
 show that the Spanish spoken in the first century and 
 that of the sixteenth were identical — truly a tour de 
 force of scholarship. The parchment itself was 
 examined bv experts, who pronounced it to be the 
 skin of something, but neither ram, nor ewe, nor 
 ffoat, " nor any other beast of those that are familiar 
 to us.""" The relics, says Echeverria, were genuine 
 bevond all doubt. The bone was of the proto- 
 martvr Stephen. The cloth was half of that w here- 
 with the Virgin dried her tears at the Passion of Our 
 Lord ; and for this reason the Virgen de las 
 Angustias was named patrona of Granada — a proud 
 position which she still enjoys. Strange to say, 
 the corresponding half was found, of all places 
 in the world, in America — at the town of Puebla de 
 los Angeles, formerly Tlascala. Here, once again, 
 the unbiased erudition of Echeverria shall be of use 
 to us. " Possibly," he suggests, " long years ago
 
 Zhc Sacrc? flDountain 
 
 America was joined to Palestine by stretches of land 
 where now are straits of water.' 
 
 The discoverv in the Torre Turpiana was rare 
 enough ; but rarer finds were yet to come. When 
 the excitement created by the prior event had almost 
 died away ; when Vaca de Castro had succeeded 
 Mendez de Salvatierra as archbishop of Granada ; * 
 and when the process instituted to classify and con- 
 firm the holy rag, and bone, and parchment had 
 dragged its slow length along for several years, a 
 further series of discoveries burst forth upon the 
 pious people of Granada. Just then a favourite 
 entertainment of the poorer citizens consisted in 
 searching the hollows and the hills for buried 
 treasure, not of a spiritual but of a practical descrip- 
 tion ; for times were bad and the Christian Granadinos 
 were terribly put to it to keep alive without the need 
 of work. Upon a certain day in 1594 a connnon fellow 
 by name Sebastian Lopez, accompanied by one 
 Francisco Garcia, went forth to look for treasure on 
 
 * Ramos Lopez awards a tender tribute to the memory 
 of Vaca de Castro's predecessors for their stern destruction 
 of the baths of the Moriscos — "asylums of voluptuousness,'' 
 as Seiior Ramos picturesquely calls them (El Sacio -Monte 
 de Granada, p. i8). Years after the Moriscos were expelled, 
 the laws of Spain provided that the scanty remnant of this 
 tortured people were " not to possess an artificial bath in 
 the said kingdom of Granada, or bathe therein, on pain of fifty 
 days imprisonment, two years banishment, and a fine of a 
 thousand maravedis." If the offence (i.e., the bathing) were 
 repeated, the criminal was to be fined double. If he proved to 
 be incorrigibly addicted to ablution, and washed himself yet a 
 third time, he must go to the galleys for five years and forfeit the 
 half of his property. — Francisco de la Pradilla, Snma de Todas 
 las Leyes Penales, Canonicas, Civiles, y destos Reynos. Madrid, 1628. 
 
 2ii
 
 ffirana^a 
 
 tlie outskirts of the town, bearing in his pocket a 
 written "recipe"''' in which he greatly trusted. 
 These were its directions : 
 
 " When Spain was lost, a mine of gold that used 
 to lie between Encesa and Cabrera, upon a naked 
 ridge that hath blue stones, was closed within the 
 kingdom of Granada. Within the mine aie nine and 
 forty chambers. Its mouth is to the western side ; 
 and in those days they used to draw from it two 
 ounces and a half of gold for every five ounces of soil. 
 This mine belonoed to the king; Don Roderick ; and 
 when Spain was lost, the miners perished beneath a 
 projecting mass of earth, thrown down at the mouth 
 of the mine in order that the Moors miy-ht not avail 
 themselves thereof." 
 
 So much for the " recipe." Sebastian, proceeding 
 for a while along the Guadix road, at length drew 
 near to what is now the Sacro-Monte. After scruti- 
 nizing the ridge, he came to the conclusion that it 
 well might be the spot referred to in his paper : 
 moreover, some stones on it were slightly bluish. So 
 getting to work he discovered, after digging for a 
 little while, what seemed to be a rabbit-hole. Down 
 this he thrust a stick, but moving the stick from side 
 to side and not encountering a limit to the cavity, he 
 marked the spot and returned to Granada, conveying 
 with him a fragment of cupriferous stone, which a 
 silversmith ]n-onounced to contain a quarter part of 
 copper. Roused by this analysis, which seemed to 
 tally not a little with his " recipe," our man marched 
 back upon the morrow, and resumed his operations 
 with redoubled vigour. Widening the orifice, he 
 
 24
 
 "Cbc Sacl•c^ /mountain 
 
 found beyond it a tavc with a levelled Hoor of Nofti^li 
 earth, and, digging out a part of this, a large stone, 
 too heavy for a single person to stir, covering tlu' 
 entrance to a second cavern, also made level b\ a 
 human hand. Two nionths were taken up with thcM.' 
 investigations, until, upon Fel)ruary 21 >t, one of 
 Sebastian's helpers, bv name Francisco Ilernande/. 
 unearthed a strip of rotten lead, three fingers broad 
 by some two feet in length, inscribed at one 
 extremity with three lines of clumsily executed Latin 
 letters of cuneiform design, which only with unusual 
 pains could be construed into the following: 
 
 coiu'vs vsrr.M Divi mf.syioxis 
 
 .MAltTVUlS I'ASVS EST SV]i XKltO 
 XIS LMI'KRATORIS I'Oll'.XTATV 
 
 On jVIarch 15th, 1595, and after its interj)retation 
 by two Jesuits, notice of the stri]) of lead was given 
 to the archbishop, who promptly ordered the 
 searches and researches to continue at his own 
 expense. Pedro de Castro y Quinones, tenth arch- 
 bishop of Granada, was the son of Cristobal Vaca 
 de Castro, a })rominent Spaniard who liad enriched 
 himself as governor-general of Peru, leaving at his 
 demise a handsome fortune. His son, on being- 
 appointed to the see of Granada, is stated to have 
 said that he accepted the post with extreme reluct- 
 ance, admitting of the dignity merely to giatifv the 
 king ; but, he added, God was sending him to 
 iymuadiifor .souic great cxrut. This great event is 
 naturally thou<<;ht to mean the fiiulinii of the famous 
 relics of the Sacred Mountain. However, in fairness
 
 (3 vanafa 
 
 to the prelate''s memory it must be owned that 
 although his intellect was all too small, and his 
 credulity all too large, Pedro de Castro was an 
 earnest, charitable, and well-meaning man. He went 
 through life revered and hoodwinked simultaneously. 
 In personal appearance he was, Pedraza tells us, 
 " small of body but great of head." His labours, 
 though often injudicious, were at least untiring. His 
 almsdeeds knew no limit. In the thirty-three years 
 of his prelacy — twenty in Granada and thirteen in 
 Seville — his income amounted to a total of two and 
 a half millions of ducats, of which, observes the same 
 historian, he did not keep one single real. He also 
 inherited a large amount of money through the 
 death of his two brothers ; but all of this vast 
 fortune went in charity and unselfish works. Even 
 his shirts and robes were mended, so that he might 
 have more to give away. One day his servant ven- 
 tured to order him a new cassock. When it was 
 brought, " how's this ? " exclaimed the archbishop, 
 refusing to put it on ; " why hast thou brought me 
 this without my asking for it ? Take it away and 
 give it to the poor. Those that I have are good 
 enough for me.""* 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to lay upon this 
 generous-hearted man the blame of the disgraceful 
 swindles of the Sacred Mountain. He was, in fact, 
 a victim of his own too trusting nature, as well as of 
 the cruel roguery of others. 
 
 This brings us back to the " discoveries." Isidro 
 Garcia, one of the two Jesuits who had declared the 
 * Pedraza, Historta de Granada, p. 266. 
 
 26
 
 cbc Sacl■<:^ .OOountaux 
 
 meaning of the marvellous strip of lead, visited the 
 cave and exclaimed sententiouslv, " Here we shall find 
 a mine of saints." His prophecy proved absolutely 
 true. On ]VIarch 20th, a portion of the earth fell in 
 beneath the workmen's feet, and another cave was 
 disclosed. Next, on different dates and at varying 
 intervals, appeared the whole notorious series of the 
 leaden plates and books. The first plate turned up 
 by the ])icks was three and twenty inches long by five 
 in breadth, l)eing doubled four times over so as to 
 conceal the writing. The legend, in faulty Latin, as 
 upon the strip discovered previouslv, averred that in 
 the second year of Nero's empire, and on March 1st, 
 Saint Hiscius, together with his pupils, Turilus, 
 Panuncius, Maronius, and Centulius, had earned the 
 palm of martyrdom upon this holy site, being put to 
 death bv burning. The inscription, too long and too 
 ridiculous to quote in full, concludes : " ni lap'nles in 
 calcem conversifiiernnt quonun pulvcn's in huiu.smcri 
 montis cavernis iacent (jni, ut ratio po.Htnlat* in eonaii 
 ino/ioriam vcneretury 
 
 The next plate recorded the similar martyrdom, 
 also upon the Sacro-Monte, of Saint Ctesiphon, called, 
 before Saint James converted him, Aben-Athar, and 
 in the same inscription declared Ctesiphon to be the 
 author of a book called The Foundation of the 
 Church, which book, it said, was also in these caves, 
 together with the ashes of the saint and martyr. At 
 this the citv grew wild with expectation, and public 
 prayers were offered for the discovery of the j)recious 
 
 t Of course, among a sane society, these three words, " ut 
 ratio postuhit ,'' would have sufficed to damn the whole collection. 
 
 27
 
 volume; though everybody, inchiding the archbishop, 
 believed that the work would resemble an ordinary 
 bound volume of the sixteenth century. However, 
 when finally exhumed, it proved to consist of five thin, 
 circular, leaden sheets, about the size of the Host, 
 with a cordlike strip of lead thrust through to keep 
 them joined, the whole being enclosed in a leaden 
 case inscribed, " Liber fiindamenti eelesiw Salomoiis 
 charaeteribus serijjtit.s.'" Immense rejoicings followed ; 
 liberal pourboires to the diggers ; * and discharge of 
 
 * The sum awarded to the treasure-seekers for stumbling first 
 upon the forgeries is not stated. We know that there was a law- 
 suit between Sebastian Lopez on the one hand, and Juan de 
 Leja, Juan Martinez de Paredes, and Pedro Hernandez on the 
 other. The judgment was in favour of the three companion- 
 litigants, Sebastian being condemned to keep perpetual silence as 
 to the quantityof the reward. Pedraza, Hist, de Granada, p. 270. 
 
 The archbishop, wealthy, charitable, and zealous to excess 
 about the welfare of the " relics," gave every reason to 
 the treasure-hunters to put their best foot foremost. Pedro 
 Jimenez, who extracted a leaden book on April 22nd, 1595, was 
 rewarded from the prelate's purse with a hundred ducats, and 
 his fellow workmen with fifty bushels of corn, because the book 
 contained " the most essential portions of our holy Catholic 
 faith." A month before this Castro had presented a woman 
 named Catalina de la Cueva with thirty thousand maravedis 
 for bringing him a triangular cover enclosing three circular 
 leaden plates inscribed with Arabic characters. — Echeverria, 
 Paseos pov Granada, pp. 295-297. (Note to the edition of 1814.) 
 
 As time advanced the archbishop seems to have grown less 
 open-handed. Late in 1606 a "book," containing fifty-one 
 leaves, written by Saint Cecil and annotated by Saint James, was 
 found in possession of a dying man who had unearthed it eight 
 years earlier on the Sacro-Monte, but had preferred to lay the 
 secret by, expecting prices to improve. How strong was avarice 
 in this instance is shown by the fact that the man upon his 
 deathbed sent the book to the king, in order that "if he re- 
 gained his health he might be given something." — /did. pp. 326, 
 327 {Noie). 
 
 28
 
 XT lj c S n c r c J /Di o u ti t a i m 
 
 cannon from the ramparts of the Alljambra. Pre- 
 sently another " book "" was found, as well as a plate 
 declaring- that on February 1st, in the second year of 
 Nero's reign, Saint Cecil, disciple of Saint James, had 
 also suffered martyrdom upon that holy sjiot. 
 
 Herewith, Saint Cecil being the legendarv proto- 
 l)ishop of Granada, the populace went wholly off their 
 heads. Night and day the road to the Sacred Moun- 
 tain was like an ant-heap for the multitudes who 
 plodded up and down, counting their beads in pious 
 silence; myriads of the townsfolk, the stern authori- 
 ties of the Holy Office, the President of Chancery, 
 and dames and cavaliers of high degree. Six hun- 
 dred and eighty crosses, forwarded from every part 
 of Spain, were jilanted along the wayside,* " looking 
 like an invention of Almighty God."""!" Those of 
 the rich and noble were " corpulent and well- 
 wrought," while even the poor contributed their 
 humbler ones of wood ; until, within not many 
 months, "there was not a handbreadth of soil the 
 mountain over but was covered with a cross." * 
 
 At length were found the plate referring to 
 Saint Ctesiphon, and the oven (similar enough to 
 
 * Three are still standing on the summit of the hill, and were 
 dedicated, two by the silkmen and market vendors, and the 
 other by the stonecutters and the soldiery of the Alhambra. — 
 Gomez Moreno, GuUi dc Granada, p. 471. 
 
 t Lopez Madera, Discursos de la Certidumhn' dc las Reliquiae 
 descuhiertas en Granada, p. 27. Granada, 1601. This was one of 
 a shoal of tomes produced with the object of demonstrating the 
 genuineness of the " relics," and crammed with undigeslible and 
 undigested scholarship. Indeed, these books are quite as leaden 
 in their way as those of the Sacro-Monte. The title-page bears 
 imaginary portraits of Don Cecilius, Don Hiscius, and so forth. 
 
 ;|: Echeverria, Paseos por Granada, vol. i. p. 219. 
 
 i>9
 
 ©ranaiia 
 
 an everyday cooking stove) which had served for 
 burning San CeciHo. The Latin of the plates was 
 remarked to be not only modern, but bad Latin 
 at that, " with a good many solecisms."'"' No matter. 
 " Was it necessary,"'"' demands Echeverria with scorn, 
 "that the plates should have been inscribed by a 
 Christian person thoroughly versed in the Latin 
 language ? "" As for the ashes of the martyrs, 
 hardened by now into a chalky mass (excepting 
 the body of Saint ^Vlesiton, which was only half 
 consumed), they were submitted to the soap-makers 
 and silversmiths, and stated to be human remains, 
 mixed up Avith earth. 
 
 From now until the winter of ]59T, a mighty 
 quantity of bones, and leaden books, and plates was 
 dragged to light ; sometimes by the navvies, some- 
 times by amateur rehc-hunters, sometimes even by 
 children at their play. Several of the plates and book- 
 covers were found to contain, besides inscriptions in 
 bad Arabic or worse Latin, fanciful designs, chiefly 
 of interlacing triangles, professing to be " the seal of 
 Solomon.'"' Hence the star of Solomon engraved upon 
 the columns of the courtyard of the Sacro-Monte. 
 
 From long before this date the Sacred ^fountain 
 had borne a name for prodigies and portents. Its 
 grass and thyme were said to fatten flocks above all 
 other jiasture. The ancients spoke of its surround- 
 ings as the Ravine of Glory^ from mystic flres or 
 lights which hung about it after dark ; and from its 
 foot issued the Stream of Healthy which banished all 
 diseases.* These marvels now revived and multi- 
 * Pedraza, Hist, de Granada, p. 270. 
 
 30
 
 "Che Sacl•c^ /mountain 
 
 plied apace. The bcata Ana de Jesus dejiosed to 
 having felt "a suave and fragrant tide,"' wafted 
 from the caves towards lier house top, while >lie 
 knelt there praying ; and " all," says Ramos Lopez, 
 writing in 1883, " who know this venerable mother's 
 reputation, will recognise the value of her testi- 
 mony."" Even the archbishop remembered to have 
 seen " processions of lights and balls of fire sus- 
 pended above the Holy Mountain."'' The bones 
 and books wrought numberless cures, the mere 
 examination of which kept Castro busv for thiee 
 years. Nor had the relics of the Torre Turpiana 
 grown inactive. The scrap of kerchief, or, as 
 Pedraza calls it, the toca (head-dress) of the \'irgin, 
 applied to the leg of a divine obliterated three 
 unsavoury sores rebellious to all ])revious treatment. 
 Stranger still, a cloth which had merely been in 
 contact with the iuca relieved the .Alartjuis of 
 Mondejar, governor of the Alhambra, of a painful 
 Huxion, and cured a case of cataract. One day, 
 when Philip the Second had fallen sick, he called for 
 the original rag, and wrapping it about his person 
 recovered upon the spot ; so prior to sending back 
 the relic to Granada, he snipped a fragment off one 
 corner and placed it in a costly reliquary in the 
 Escorial, where it was still adored in EcheverriVs 
 time, and jjrobably is so at this hour, " But," 
 remarks Pedraza, with unconscious irony, '"strangest 
 of all is this ; that the ashes of the martyrs should 
 have been preserved for sixteen hundred years en- 
 closed in earth without becoming one with it, 
 against the rules of all philosophy." 
 
 31
 
 (5rana^a 
 
 Now let me state the titles of the leaden books, 
 whose total reached nineteen : 
 
 (1) Concerning the Foundations of the Faith, bv 
 Ctesiphon Ebnathar, disciple of Saint James the 
 Apostle. 
 
 (2) Concerning the Venerable Essence, by the same 
 author. 
 
 (3) The Mass Ritual of Saint Javws the Apostle, 
 by his disciple Ctesiphon. The directions for the 
 service provide that after the appointed prayer the 
 minister is to wash his hands and face. 
 
 (4) The Oration and Apology of Saint James the 
 Apostle, son of Xaniech Zebedee, against all manner 
 of adversity, zcherexcith he made his prayer to God, 
 and ichich zcas taught him by his master, Jesus, the 
 Son of Mary. 
 
 (5) The Book of the Preaching of the Apostle Saint 
 James, icritten at his command by his disciple and 
 amanuensis Ctesiphon Ebnathar, an Arab; for 
 general use and preaching to the people of the land 
 of Spain. 
 
 (6) The Weeping of Peter the Apostle a>id Vicar, 
 after his denial of Our Lord Jesus. This weeping 
 lasted seven vears, after which time Peter heard a 
 voice proclaiming his pardon. 
 
 (7) The Book of Glorious Deeds of Our Lord Jesus 
 and of Mary the Virgin, his Mother, by Ctesiphon 
 Ebnathar, Disciple of the Apostle Saint James. This 
 work (to give it too flattering a name) is just a con- 
 glomeration of media?val tales and excerpts from the 
 Koran and the gospels. Godoy Alcantara (on whose 
 relation of the forgeries and their discovery 1 partly 
 
 32
 
 Zhc Sac re ^ /fountain 
 
 base my own) observes that tlie fifth chajjter, 
 describiiifi; " the beauty and person of Jesus and his 
 Mother Mary," is eminently oriental. Jesus, it tells 
 us, was the handsomest of men, and Mary the love- 
 liest of women ; the colour of their hair being that 
 of the ripe date. 
 
 (8) The Guerdon of Believers in theeertd'ndij of the 
 Gospel., eontaining' eip;ht questions asKrdof Holij M(irif 
 bij Saint James the Apostle, standard-hearer of the 
 Faith: xcritten, at his eonunand, bij his disciple ttnd 
 amanuensis, Ctesiphoti Ebnathar, the Arab. 
 
 (9) Co)uernino' the g-reat Mijsteries xcit)ie-ssed btj 
 Saint James the Apostle on the Saered Montdain : 
 written, (d his eomnunul, hp Cecil his disciple. 
 
 (10) The Book of the Enignuis and Mpsteries seen 
 by the Virgin Holy Mary, throns^-h the grace (fGod, 
 on the night of her spiritual conversation, as she de- 
 clared them to Saint James the A/)0stle ; icritten, at 
 his command, by his amanuettsis atul disciple, Cecil 
 Ebnelradi. 
 
 (11) The Book of Sentotees co)urr)iing the Faith, 
 manifested by Holy Mary, the stainless Virgin, to 
 Saint James the Apostle, translated into Arabic, at 
 Holy Marys comnunul, by Cecil Ebnelradi". These 
 sentences are stated to have been written by the 
 Virgin in person upon a piece of parchment ; l)ut 
 she bade Cecil, " tidic them and translate thou into 
 Arabic, and place them upon lead in order tlud they 
 may guide the servants of the Lord in the last fit/n-.s.'" 
 
 (12) 7'he History of the Seal of Solomon, the -s m 
 of David, prophet of the Lord, according to Holy 
 Mary, by Cecil Ebnelradi. 
 
 33
 
 ^Sl•ana^a 
 
 (IJJ) Of the cornprehensihility of the Divine jmxver, 
 clemency^ and justice toicards creation., hij Cecil 
 Ebnelradi, disciple of Saint James the Apostle., 
 defender of the Evangelic laxo. 
 
 (14) The second part of the preceding work. 
 
 (15) Of the nature of the Angel, and of his poxver ; 
 hy Cecil Ebnebridf, disciple of the Apostle Sairit 
 James. 
 
 (16) The delation of the House of Peace, and of 
 the House of Veng-eance, and of Torments ; by Cecil 
 FJ)nelradi. 
 
 (17) Of the illustrious deeds of the Apostle Saint 
 James and of his miracles; hy Cecil Ebnelradi, his 
 disciple and amannensis. Contains a ^^ physical and 
 moral portrait of the Apostle.'" 
 
 (18) The second part of the preceding. 
 
 (19) History of the Certainty of the Holy Gospel. 
 Here is one of those prognostics which used to be 
 extremely popular with the Moriscos. In order to 
 grasp its whole significance, says Godoy Alcantara, 
 we must think of it as pointing to one of the leaden 
 books inscribed with unintelligible characters, and 
 therefore called the "illegible"'"' or "dumb" book. 
 This latter professed to be a gospel presented by the 
 Virgin to Saint James, and the circumstances of its 
 preparation were as follows. " One day, when the 
 apostles were gathered together in Mary"'s house, 
 after the coming of the Holy Ghost, she told them 
 that by God"'s command, conveyed to her by Gabriel 
 the archangel, she purposed to reveal to them the 
 certainty of the glorious gospel sent down to her by 
 the Almighty, after her conversation with Him. 
 
 34
 
 C b c S a c r c ^ /B> o u n t a i n 
 
 Thereupon she exhibited the gospel in question, 
 written bv a powerful hand with radiant Hght on 
 circular tables of precious stones, whose value God 
 alone has knowledge of; and also a copy made by 
 herself on leaden plates, sealed with the seal of 
 Solomon. Peter said to her, ' What dost thou bid us 
 do with this Certainty ? ' She replied, ' It hath been 
 ordered nie that thou do with it as was done with 
 the tables of Moses ; James will bear this copy to an 
 uttermost quarter of the earth, and there he will 
 conceal it in a holy spot where God shall guard it 
 till the appointed time."" Peter inquired how God 
 would make this revelation. Mary replied that the 
 gospel would remain under Gabriel's protection 
 until the heresies and offences of the world should 
 need the application of the remedy ; that those 
 offences and heresies would be disclosed by the hand 
 of a holv priest (the Archbishop Vaca de Castro) : and 
 that God would thereupon avenge His law by means 
 of the fairest people among His creatures. Then 
 said Peter, ' What people be they r ' ' Arabs and 
 their language," replied the Virgin ; ' I tell thee that 
 these Arabs shall be among the fairest of all people, 
 and their language of the most melodious. They 
 shall be chosen by God to save His law in the last 
 times, after having been its bitterest enemies; and 
 God shall endow them with might and wisdom to 
 this end. "Pis not the sons of Israel, but the Arabs 
 and their tongue that shall assist the Almighty and 
 His law, together with His holy gospel and His holy 
 church upon the latest day." Peter exclaimed, ' Our 
 Ladv, tell us how shall that befall, that our hearts 
 
 35
 
 tBranaSa 
 
 may be ([uieted." She replied, ' Know ye that in the 
 extreme west is a region called Spain, in the utter- 
 most part whereof God shall preserve the copy of 
 this Certajntf/, and when the appointed time draws 
 nigh shall make it manifest, as also the books that 
 are together with it ; and its defender shall be the 
 servant of the hidden servants of the Lord ; nor shall 
 there be any other person in the world so potent to 
 this purpose/ Then Peter said, ' O Lady, who shall 
 be this defender of the glorious gospel ? ' She 
 replied, ' When the time approaches, God shall raise 
 up a king among the kings of the east, together with 
 people hungering after victory, and shall award to 
 him a vast and mighty empire ; and terror shall 
 invade all hearts, even to lands in the remotest west ; 
 and he, though not an Arab, shall yet be king of 
 all the Arabs. God shall cause all men to readily 
 obey him, and reconcile all mortals ; and doctors, 
 expounders, and interpreters shall meet in council ; 
 and this shall be the first council in which the Arabs 
 shall be gathered together, and the last council of 
 the world. They shall assemble there by reason of 
 the book in their own Arabic tongue, which then 
 shall be the common one. AVhen they are met 
 together they shall dispute greatly, and their intelli- 
 gence shall be confounded, till God raise up a lowlv 
 creature in that place, who shall explain the 
 Certaintij of the gospel in the light of the Holy 
 Ghost. When all are satisfied, their law shall 
 become a single law, and error and impiety shall be 
 banished from the world. And yet these days of 
 <juiet shall be few, for after they are past corrup- 
 
 36
 
 Zbc SacicJ /lOoiiutnin 
 
 tion jsliall return, and only the Antichrist shall be 
 awaited. The council shall be held in the island of 
 Cyprus, which the king of the kings of the Arabs 
 shall wrest from the Venetians at the coming of 
 those latest times.' With this the \'irgin took tiie 
 tablets, and the apostles bore her company, and all 
 together in the darkness of the night went out unto 
 the Mount of Olives. There they praved to God ; 
 whereat the mountain burst asunder with a mighty 
 Hash of heavenly Hame, received the tablets into its 
 entrails, and closed once more. When thev had all 
 returned to Mary's house, she said to Saint James, 
 ' Go with this copy of the tablets of the Cei'tnintyy 
 and with this book, unto the seashore. God shall pro- 
 vide thee with a little boat, whose pilot shall be the 
 angel Gabriel. ^^' hen ye arrive in Spain, make entry by 
 the eastern side, and hide both book and tablets where 
 a dead man comes to life. Thereafter preach to the 
 inhabitants, and slacken not until a servant of the 
 servants of the Lord believes thee, thus making good 
 thy patience in thy preaching, since it is known that 
 God loveth the patient. That mortal only shall 
 believe thee ; but thy disciples shall win that nation 
 to the faith, and divers shall suffer martyrdom upon 
 that holy spot.' '' 
 
 These instructions were strictly carried out. The 
 apostle found the little boat, and guided by the 
 archangel reached the shores of Spain. As soon as 
 he had landed and laid the book and tablets down, 
 the earth began to gape, and from it came a man 
 who said, " AVhy hast thou raised me from my tomb, 
 wherein I rested since the time of Moses ? INIy soul 
 
 37
 
 (5l•ana^a 
 
 is with the blessed." Saint James replied, " It was 
 not I who raised thee, but the power of God, and 
 the copy of the Certainty of the Glorious Gospel. 
 What is thy name ? " The man replied, " Alachius,"" 
 and asked in turn, " and thine ? " " James, the 
 apostle of the apostles of Jesus, son of Mary, Spirit 
 of the Lord."" Then the other said, " Salvation be 
 with thee ; my soul is happy with Him : glad am I 
 of thy coming, and crave that thou restore me to 
 my couch."" This Santiago did, and remained with 
 his disciples in that spot for forty days, writing this 
 history and concealing it in the caves, together with 
 the copy of the Certainty^ and the book ; and on his 
 departure enjoined his disciples to visit the place 
 after his death, and hold it duly sacred. 
 
 38
 
 A Gipsy Lodging on the Way to the Sacro-Monte 
 
 III 
 
 The Sacred Mountain— ro«^/«"f'^ 
 
 ,HE discoveries of the Sacvo-Moiite 
 transpired with winged (luickne.ss 
 ^] throughout the Catholic world. Castio 
 himself conveyed the tidings to the 
 .__^i2^^ King of Spain and to the ro})e. 
 Philip, than whonwx better subject for >uch jugglei y 
 could hardlvhave been hoped for, replied ui Hattering 
 terms, and offered to defray the cost of the transla- 
 tion The papal answer was more circumspect, ior 
 while the pontift-also applauded the zeal and forttme 
 of the prelate, he reserved to Rome the vdtnnate 
 decision upon the doctrine embodied in the leaden 
 books. Decidedlv this reservation was a prudent 
 one The archbishop himself had set to work to 
 
 59
 
 ^3l•ana^a 
 
 study Arabic (thoiioh first of all, perhajis, he might 
 have studied common sense) ; while a local council 
 of eighteen eminent theologians, assembling at his 
 palace, had voted with one accord that the books 
 were stored with "holy. Catholic, and apostolic 
 doctrine; lofty, positive, and scholastic theology; 
 gravity and compression; Christian piety; a majestic 
 style ; and natural and revealed teaching exceeding 
 the power and light of human understanding, that 
 seem to be dictated by the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Yet on the other hand the archbishop was author- 
 ized by a papal brief, dated by Clement the Eighth 
 from Ferrara, July 1st, 1598, to finally decide upon 
 the authenticity of the ashes, plates, and such like 
 rubbish forming part of the collection. With this 
 intent the prelate called together a special synod of 
 five-and-forty members (nearly all of whom were of 
 the clergv) to sit in judgment on the nature and the 
 value of the precious stuff'. The proceedings were 
 conducted in his own palace ; and at their termina- 
 tion, after only half a dozen sittings, a verdict was 
 })ronounced unanimously favourable to the " relics," 
 then deposited upon a bureau in the middle of the 
 room, while all the company went down upon their 
 knees to do them reverence. This verdict was pub- 
 licly proclaimed in the cathedral, after the misa 
 nia^or on April 30th, 1600 ; and once again the in- 
 fatuated people of Granada rushed out of their heads 
 with rapture and rejoicing. 
 
 In the meantime two translators were appointed 
 to declare the meaning of the leaden books. These 
 men were both of Moorish stock, educated, possessing 
 
 40
 
 "Cbc Sacl•e^ /n^ountahi 
 
 the degree • of licentiates, and both of them inter- 
 preters, by royal warrant, to the Crown. Their 
 names, of which I beg my readers to take especial 
 notice, were Miguel de Luna and Alonso del Castillo. 
 
 Once translated and made public, however, the 
 substance of the leaden books was not received with 
 unadulterated confidence. Indeed, from the gross- 
 ness of the blunders, blasphemies, and contradictions 
 they contained, such universal credence would have 
 been impossible, even in that century and in Spain. 
 One or two persons began to murmur that they 
 smelt a hoax. They pointed out that the ground- 
 work of several of the books was patently Moham- 
 medan ; and quoted infidel expressions such as this, 
 cleanly transplanted from the Koran ; " If one of 
 the maidens of Paradise were to spit a single time 
 into the sea, the sweetness of her saliva would suffice 
 to sweeten all the waters of the vast abyss." Never- 
 theless, the books were well defended ; notably by 
 the parti-ans of the Immaculate Conception and of 
 Santiago's personal mission among the Spaniards. 
 Their chief opponents were the powerful Order of 
 Santo Domingo, supported, as time went on, by a 
 small though troublesome number of individuals. 
 
 Pending the final judgment of the holy see, the 
 Pope had forbidden all discussion on the matter. 
 But the few though indefatigable private censors 
 wei'e not to be kept silent. One of them, by name 
 Gurmendi, took lessons in Arabic with a Turk, and 
 aided by a Jesuit priest prepared an independent 
 version of his own, accompanied bv a quantitv of 
 opportune and adverse criticism. Copies of this 
 
 41
 
 (5vana&a 
 
 attack were forwarded to the Royal Council, the 
 Supreme Council, the Inquisition, and even to the 
 Pope. In November of 1607 Pedro de Valencia, a 
 pupil of the learned Arias Montano, presented an 
 Informe to the cardinal -archbishop of Toledo, in 
 which he said, " For the love of God I beseech your 
 reverence that as the primate of Spain, pious, learned, 
 and generous, vou arm yourself with holy valour and 
 intention, and hinder this from going forward. The 
 jest is now become too heavy to be borne. Well I know 
 that the Church at large, including its High Pontiff, 
 runs no risk of being deceived. The peril is for the 
 good report of Spain, since, when these books are 
 seen at Home they must perforce appear to be what 
 they are, and people will wonder greatly at their 
 having caused us such emotion." 
 
 The cause of the defenders of the forgeries grew 
 more and more discouraging. Archbishop Castro 
 was translated to Seville, and died in 1623. The 
 Marquis of Estepa wrote a ridiculous defence of the 
 books, which did a great deal more to damn them 
 than even the acrid comments of Gurmendi ; and had 
 the mortification of seeing his darling labour con- 
 fiscated by the Holy Office. The papal nuncio 
 began to thunder at the door of the palace, demand- 
 ing that the books should be despatched to Rome. 
 At length the kino- commanded their removal to 
 Madrid ; but the canons of Granada who had charge 
 of them refused compliance, and the padlock of the 
 chest which stored away the unhicky fictions had to 
 be filed through upon the warrant of a justice. Once 
 in Madrid they were exposed to the quips and epi- 
 ' 42
 
 "Cbc Sacl•c^ /n^ountain 
 
 grams of Qaevedo, and other irreverent and free- 
 thinking humorists, until, in 1641, a strong! v worded 
 papal brief enjoined their prompt translation to the 
 holy city ; and thither they were borne, attended 
 by two faithful fathers of the Sacro-Monte.* 
 
 This " battle of the books " dragged on for 
 forty-one years more ; by which time nearly all the 
 combatants had died a natural death. The books 
 would probably have done the same ; for at this date 
 the general curiosity seemed quite extinguished. 
 Even the Spanish Ambassador at Rome was heard to 
 remark with a contemptuous shrug that they were 
 good enough for making bullets of. However, the 
 indiscretions of a Spanish priest and ''plumbist'' 
 nominated to the Italian see of Trini, precipitated the 
 solemn and irrevocable papal sentence, pronounced on 
 
 * Bertaut de Rouen did not omit to visit the holy mountain 
 of Granada ; but speaks contemptuously of the relics and the 
 caves, or, as he bluntly calls them, " toutc cette histoire de faussete."' 
 This was in 1659. " Nous prisnies des chevaux pour aller plus com- 
 modement voir les cavernes de la Montague qtiHls appdlent sacree, qui 
 est dans ce Valon agreable die Darro que fay descrit, Sr* qu'ils disent 
 esire si saint par la vertu des Reliqites de Saint Ctesyphon <Sr 
 d'auttes Martyrs qui y ont este trouvez, a ce que tons les Espagnols 
 croyent 5f soustiennent." He then relates, in a similar tone of 
 scepticism, the finding of the plates, and books, and bones, and 
 adds: "On trouva encores beaucoup d'autres Lames de plomb, qui 
 portoient que Saint Cecile Disciple de Saint Jacques avoit souffert le 
 martyre en ce lieu : mais la pluspart du monde croit qu'il y a eu de la 
 fraude, &° que cela n'a servy que pour ayder d prouver la venue de 
 Saint Jacques en Espagne : ce que tons les Espagnols croyent comme un 
 article de foy. ' ' 
 
 Bertaut was unaware that the decision upon the authenticity 
 of the " relics," in distinction from the " books," had been con- 
 ceded by a papal warrant to Granada, for he adds : " Aussi on 
 n'a point encore approuve a Rome Vinvention de ces Reliques ny la 
 veritc de ces livres. ' ' 
 
 43
 
 l5l•ana^a 
 
 September 28th, 1682, and promulgated, a few days 
 later, from every pulpit throughout Spain. The so- 
 called books were declared to contain " nothing but 
 fabrications, devised to the destruction of the Catho- 
 lic faith/' They were furthermore declared to be 
 tainted with Mohammedan doctrine, and condemned, 
 in consequence, to perpetual ignominy. On penalty 
 of excommunication no preacher, reader, or professor 
 of divinity was even to mention them or their con- 
 tents, unless it were to confute, reject, and reprobate 
 the false teaching and false re\ -lations in which these 
 forgeries abounded. 
 
 A little while before, I begged my readers to take 
 particular notice of the names of INIiguel de Luna 
 and Alonso del Castillo, the two Moriscos officially 
 appointed to reduce the leaden books to the Castilian 
 vernacular. Castillo had done some service to Philip 
 the Second by collecting Arabic volumes for the library 
 of the Escorial ; and also by performhig for that 
 sovereign certain correspondence with the Moorish 
 kings of Africa. He was a scholarly man, possessing 
 both the erudite and the popular forms of Arabic, 
 as well as Spanish, Greek, and Latin. Luna was 
 less equipped with scholarship, but active and quick- 
 witted, and with a genuine sense of humour — using 
 the latter word perhaps a trifle disparagingly. We 
 must suppose that a rogue appears to other rogues 
 a virtuous fellow ; for Echeverri'a calls Luna " an 
 honest ]Morisco, reconciled with the Church." In 
 view of this assertion, we will see what kind of man 
 was " honest '" Luna ; and after that, what kind of 
 man was his votary and disciple. Father Echeverria. 
 
 44
 
 Zbc SacicJ /Iftouiitaiii 
 
 Miguel de Luna was tlie author of the false 
 chronicle professing to be a literal rendering from 
 the Arabic, known as" The True History of the King 
 Don RodericTi\ xchercin is treated the principal cause of 
 the perdition (f Spain, and the conquest of that count r/j 
 carried out by Mira)na)/i(>l/n Abnan^or, formerly King 
 (f Africa a)ul the Arab/as. Also contains the Life (f 
 the King Jacob Ahnancor. Written bv the wise 
 Alcayde Abulcacini Tarif, the Arab. Newly trans- 
 lated from the Arabic by Miguel de Luna, inhabitant 
 of Granada, and interpreter to our lord the King."' 
 This singular and mendacious work,* indited, as Luna 
 tells us (p. 438, note), at the city of Bokhara in the 
 year one hundred and forty -two of the Hijra, or 
 seven hundred and sixty-three of the Christian 
 era, is just a concoction of legends prevalent in 
 Luna's time, adorned with colouring and garnish 
 of his own make, and numerous fragments of Homan 
 and Greek mythology. To cjuote an instance of 
 this latter, in chapter ix. of part ii. (pp. 349- 
 353), headed " Concerning a Memorable Occurrence 
 which befell the Mohammedan general Abdelaziz, ichilc 
 he was hunting in a Mountain^'' we find the venerable 
 story of Androcles and the lion dished uj) anew ; 
 save that Androcles is Abdalaziz, and the lion has 
 become a bear. 
 
 Such was "honest" Michael, considered upon this 
 count alone. But worse remains b(?hind ; for J^una by 
 
 * The copy in my library is of the seventh edition, and is 
 dated 1676. The first edition appeared in 1592. This alone 
 would prove that the "chronicle" was everywhere accepted as 
 genuine, as well as that it was extremely popular. 
 
 45
 
 ©ranaia 
 
 no means limited his powers to forging a secular his- 
 tory of Spain. There is now no room for doubt that 
 he and Castillo between them — sometimes one, some- 
 times the other, sometimes the two collaborating — 
 contrived and hid away the forgeries of the Sacred 
 Mountain of Granada. Truly they played their 
 comedy with exquisite art. A grateful nation paid 
 them to decipher their own fabrications ; so entering 
 into the spirit of the joke, they drew up and matured 
 their renderings with ostentatious slowness, feigning 
 to squabble with each other over a reading here and 
 there, or professing themselves exhausted by the diffi- 
 culty of unwonted or archaic words and phrases. Of 
 course the hugest jest of all was the "dumb book" — 
 which nobody (even its authors) could faintly under- 
 stand — professing to relate the " Certainty of 
 the Hohj GospeV handed by the Virgin to Saint 
 James, to bear away to Spain. This masterpiece of 
 impudence was gravely submitted to Athanasius 
 Kircher, one of the leading archa?ologists of his day, 
 who finally protested that, although he had worked 
 hard at it foi* more than two years, and was thoroughly 
 versed in twenty-one " exotic languages,*" he could 
 make neither head nor tail of its contents. His only 
 discovery, he confessed, was that it was written in an 
 alphabet containing forty-two distinct characters. 
 
 Seldom, therefore, has a more incongruous or 
 ludicrous situation been created. But what was the 
 motive of the forgers ? Did they, as Godoy Alcan- 
 tara suggests, expect to fuse, by a species of reli- 
 gious reform, the Catholic and the Mohammedan 
 creeds, so as perhaps to rescue the Moriscos from 
 
 46
 
 cbc SacvcJ fountain 
 
 ejection by their subjugators; or was their purpose 
 merely to enjoy a joke ; or was it a vindictive one? 
 
 I incline to believe that their principal or only aim 
 was to avenge their persecuted brethren. The for- 
 geries were executed not long before the final expul- 
 sion of the jNIoriscos, who hated, very justly, the 
 cruel and indolent Spanish swashbucklers who had 
 settled in Granada, and were rapidly inducing the 
 moral and material ruin of that most venerable city. 
 Luna and Castillo, themselves protected by " a thin 
 varnish of Christianity," would thus endeavour to 
 instil a quantity of heretical venom into the faith of 
 their oppressors, and so confound at once the church 
 and commonwealth of Spain. 
 
 Considered in this light, their entertaining if 
 Satanic effort was almost totally successful. The 
 Spaniards, even to their prelates and their king, were 
 far too ignorant, fanatical and credulous to save 
 themselves. Just at the nick of time the Pope 
 stepped in and saved them. But for this, as Godoy 
 has summarized in a sentence of tremendous import — 
 if Rome had kept aloof, and Spain in the sixteenth 
 century had been allowed by Providence to carry out 
 her project of an independent national church, thi: 
 Spanish people would have embodied into the spirit 
 
 AND THE TEXT OE THE New^ TeSTAMENT THE ENTIRE 
 contents OF THE LEADEN FORGERIES OF THE SaCRED 
 
 Mountain. 
 
 The substance of the forgeries was carefully con- 
 trived to meet the national desire. In them we find 
 those idle tales so dear to narrow Spanish intellects — 
 the coming of Santiago, and the martyrdom of many 
 
 47
 
 <3 r a II a ^ a 
 
 saints whose merest names are nothing more than 
 "rumours of a doubt." The fable of Saint James 
 visit to the shores of Spain originated in a wild tradi- 
 tion and the Vote of Santiago — this last a formidable 
 tax imposed upon the poorer classes of the nation. 
 Echeverria, who on these matters should only be 
 consulted to excite a smile, affirms that when 
 Saint James was visiting Granada he was made a 
 prisoner by the heathen, who bound him, and were 
 on the point of putting him to death, when the \'irgin, 
 Avho yet was living in this world, appeared upon the 
 scene and set him free. AVe are further told that 
 this took place precisely on the Sacro-]\Ionte, in 
 whose notorious caves Saint James had fixed his 
 habitation by divine command. 
 
 According to a couple of ancient and obscure 
 writers, quoted by the editor of the second edition of 
 Echeverria's Paseos, Saint James was in Granada 
 about 36 or 37 a.d., this being the first of the Spanish 
 cities to imbibe his cheerful tidings. Certainly his 
 visit was sensational ; for one day, walking up the 
 Sacred Mountain, he resuscitated a man who had 
 been dead and in his grave six hundred years. The 
 wretch restored in this uncharitable fashion to the 
 miseries of life was christened and confirmed forth- 
 with, and then appointed to the see of Braga, thus 
 becoming the first bishop of that town, " This 
 miracle,'" concludes our editor, " is related by Fray 
 IVudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Tuy ; by Don 
 Rodrigo de Acuna, Archbishop of Lisbon ; and by 
 many other persons distinguished for their A'irtue, 
 knowledge and veracity." 
 
 48
 
 Zbc SacrcJ /fountain 
 
 All this nonsense has a clerical origin, and is 
 absolutely valueless. As for the lesser saints and 
 martvrs — Hiscius, Ctesiphon, and the rest of Cecil's 
 six companions— the Gothic Breviary is unconvinc- 
 ing, while the Codex of Albelda (883 a.d.) is too 
 late. Yet notwithstanding this, Cecil himself is made 
 the subject (or, more properly, the victim) of three 
 uncritical and fulsome articles by that most intolerant 
 of Catholics, Francisco Simonet.* This author 
 begins by recognising that all we know about 
 the shadowy seven is practically nothing. At the 
 same time, without adducing any reason, he thinks 
 it " probable that they were Spaniards," f and 
 pupils of Saint James. Then, waxing bolder, he 
 finds that Cecil (whom he takes for granted to have 
 been the founder of the see of Ililjerris or Granada^ 
 " preached the faith with marvellous eloquence and 
 fervour, kindling in many hearts the flames of holy 
 love which were inspiring (.sic) his own, lightening 
 the darkness of the native population, and gaining 
 many souls to Jesus Christ." A moment later the 
 panegyrist declares his preference for " the authority 
 of the Church of Granada, widely admitted through- 
 out the Catholic world, and based on vert/ probable 
 conjectures'''' (the discoveries of the Sacro-Monte !), 
 over " the silence of antiquity." 
 
 Now the mischief done to Spain by the discoveries 
 upon the so-called Sacred Mountain lies in the fact 
 
 * Cuadros Hisioricos y Descriptivos de Granada, pp. 37-63. 
 
 f Florez says they came to Spain about 62 a.d., first journey- 
 ing to Guadix, and then dispersing through the country. But 
 how is it possible to fill in a biography where even the outline 
 of the personage is wanting ? 
 
 49 D
 
 0vana^a 
 that although the leaden books were branded as a 
 forgery, the remainder of the "relics" are even to 
 this day accounted genuine. Of course, when Rome 
 condemned the books, Spain should have followed suit 
 and hastened to reverse her own decision on the bones, 
 and ashes, and plates, and ovens of the Sacro-Monte. 
 Ikit no. The relics, guarded in Echeverrias time in 
 two great boxes half imbedded in the wall, are still 
 adored ; and still the wonder-working caves are shown 
 with undiscriminating zeal to every class of visitor. 
 
 :\Iany of the saints who lie piecemeal about the 
 land, if every limb of theirs were brought together, 
 would prove to have more legs than any myriapod ; 
 vet still the Spaniards fly to their defence. Ramos 
 Lopez, principal of the Sacro-Monte church some 
 vears ago, protests against "the foreign historians 
 who endeavour to eclipse our glories, denying the 
 visit of Saint James to Spain, as well as his preaching 
 in this kingdom.'' Of course, the foreign historians 
 mio-ht obiect that it is not for themselves to 
 deny Saint James' landing on the Spanish shores 
 so much as for Ramos Lopez and his co-religionists 
 to prove it. But Ramos is incorrigible in the firm- 
 ness of his faith. "Although," he says, "certain 
 authors are averse to making the confession, it 
 must be owned that the finding of the leaden tables 
 inscribed in Latin, and also of the relics, served to 
 illustrate the Christian antiquities of our region, 
 pmikidnrhj in rchat relates to the preaching- of Saint 
 James and his disciples.'" * 
 
 So much for these enlightened days. Writing in 
 
 * El Sacro-Monte de Granada, p. 117. Madrid, 1883. 
 50
 
 ■Cbe Sa^:l•c^ /IDountam 
 
 the middle of the eighteciitli centurv, Echeverria 
 recalled that one or two unrighteous persons had 
 ventured to cast a doubt upon the relics. " Heaven," 
 he observed, " has not been slow to castigate their 
 obstinacy. The principal Antiplumbists have met 
 with a disastrous end."' * " How could Luna," he 
 asks elsewhere, "have hidden the relics in these caves 
 in sight of all the city?" This argument sounds 
 plausible. Our neatest refutation of it is to turn to 
 the Letters of the Sacristan of Finos de la Pucnte.'*- 
 The author of these dissertations, written in the un- 
 pleasant, semi-jocose, semi-cantankerous and dispu- 
 tative style also adopted by Echeverria, is Doctor 
 Cristobal Conde, described in his own words as 
 " theologian, antiquary, and interpreter in the ex- 
 cavations of the Alcazaba of Granada." Godov 
 Alccintara shall tell us something more of Conde. 
 The son of an obscure foundling, and educated at 
 the college of the Sacred ^Mountain, Conde became 
 fast friends with another ex-pupil of the same semi- 
 nary, Juan de Echeverria, author of the Paseos por 
 Granada so often quoted in these chapters. Eche- 
 verria was uncomelv in his personal appearance, 
 " after the manner of Don Basilio in The Barber 
 of Seville^'' and in his character " a crafty, knavish 
 cheat."" This pair of rascals, together with one 
 Flores (not to be confounded with the learned 
 writer on ecclesiastical antiquities), despite their holv 
 orders and professed respectability and scholarship, 
 
 * Paseos por Granada. 
 
 + Lerida and Granada, 1761, 1762, 4 vols. Complete copies 
 are very rare. Excepting mine, I have never seen an unbroken set. 
 
 51
 
 (5rana^a 
 
 agreed to forge as many " monuments " as Spain 
 could swallow, and then "discover'' them in 
 the Albaycin of Granada, round about the site of 
 the ancient Alcazaba. Conde accordingly wrote 
 his Letters to prove the genuineness of his own and 
 Echeverria's fabrications. One of the arguments he 
 uses is the following. "Let those," he says, "Avho 
 visit the Alcazaba observe the depth of the caverns 
 where the monuments have been discovered, and the 
 bulk of several of these, requiring ten yoke of oxen 
 for their removal, as well as their dilapidated look ; 
 and then decide if any fraud were possible." We 
 have just seen Echeverria employ a similar argument 
 in defending the relics of the Sacro-Monte. " How," 
 we have seen him indignantly demand, " could Luna 
 conceal the monuments in the caves, and fill these in 
 or dig these monuments out in sight of all the city, 
 in a spot where so much operation could never be con- 
 cluded without the notice of the neighbours .? " Yet 
 this was precisely what Conde and Echeverria them- 
 selves effected in the Albaycin a century and a half 
 later. Capitals, cornices, inscribed slabs, leaden tablets 
 — nothing withstood their priestly ingenuity ; and it 
 was only after a considerable while that one of the 
 workmen employed by the syndicate of swindlers 
 declared or hinted that he and his fellows buried 
 secretly by night the very " monuments " they openly 
 extracted on the following morning. This breach of 
 confidence was unendurable ; so Flores, who was an 
 influential member of the Inquisition, resorted to the 
 suave correction of that high and holy court, and 
 drove the man demented. 
 
 52
 
 "Cbc Sacrc^ flDountain 
 
 In view of the satisfactory results obtained by 
 forging sacred and profane " relics " of general 
 interest,* our trio of rogues, protected by Luis 
 Francisco de Viana,"]" abbot of the Sacro-Monte and 
 virtually a coadjutor of the other three, decided to 
 extend their industry to the preparation of docu- 
 ments of a private character. Taking the paper 
 stamped by government, they filled it in with titles 
 of nobility, genealogies, writs, wills, nnjal decrees-, 
 and so forth ; inserted the sheets so filled among the 
 archives of the law courts, and then demanded to 
 inspect and utilize them. " The existence of this 
 bureau of ftilsiflcation was no secret in Spain. Every 
 one who required a sham document took the road to 
 Granada.*";|; At the same time, Conde, who had no 
 name to truly call his own, '* discovered " himself 
 to be illustriously born, and making himself a docu- 
 ment, assumed, upon the powers which it granted 
 him, the second surname of Medina. 
 
 * I am sorry to say that one of our countrymen was taken in 
 by Conde ; or so the forger asseverates in his Pinos Puente 
 Letters (vol. i. p. 143). " Don Juan Branfurd (the surname 
 appears to be misspelt), of English nationality, colonel com- 
 manding the 13th Regiment of His Britannic Majesty in the 
 fortress of Gibraltar, came hither, instructed by the Royal Society 
 of London, in order to inspect these discoveries. He examined 
 them one by one with all deliberation, and liked them so much 
 that he attempted with wheedling words to purchase some 
 literary stones and leads, offering any price for them."' 
 
 t "That great Spaniard," as Echeverria calls him. Eche- 
 verria's good opinion is really most embarrassing. To receive 
 his praise is to assume /fr se the stamp of infamy ; and we feel 
 that when he calls Mohammed an impostor he is paying him a 
 distinct compliment. 
 
 X Godoy, Los Falsos Cronicones, p. 322. 
 
 53
 
 OranaJa 
 
 Presently a craze sprang up for everytliing con- 
 nected with the visit of Saint James to the Peninsula. 
 (Jur friends were not behind the time, and put upon 
 the market a handsome quantity of bishop's rings 
 ascribed to the tenth centurv, decorated with a 
 horseman bearing a banner and a sword, and the 
 words Jacobus Victor. These were accompanied by 
 another forgery, to wit, " a letter from Mohamad 
 Benzay, a Moor who was trodden nndojvot hi/ Saint 
 James' horse at the battle of Clavijo, and made a 
 prisoner : directed to his brother, Abencholen 
 Ibrahin.'" 
 
 The national movement which provoked these 
 fictions depended from the " Vote of Santiago,"" 
 already mentioned in this chapter. The vote itself 
 consisted of a tax in kind, payable to the Cathedral 
 of Santiago in Galicia, and weighing with oppressive 
 heaviness upon the agricultural classes ; but just 
 about this time the "privilege"" was menaced by the 
 attitude of certain of the nobles, determined to make 
 an effort to combat such imposture. This was why 
 Echeverria and his colleagues, acting as local agents 
 for the Chapter of the great Cantabrian temple, 
 hastened to afford new testimony of Saint James' 
 mythical appearance in the mythical affray ; and of 
 the validness of the grant alleged to emanate from 
 the Spanish Crown. 
 
 My library contains a copy of this " \'ote of 
 Santiago,"" telling us all that we can want to know. 
 The work, drawn up before a notary public at 
 Granada in 1685, is printed on stamped paper, and 
 bears a curious title depicting Santiago at the 
 
 54
 
 cbc S.^v:rc^ /IBountain 
 
 battle of Clavijo, i^ravely carving at the clouds ; nr, 
 well as other scenes relating to his residence in Spain. 
 The tax, it seems, is payable to "the stewards or 
 servants" of the church of Santiago, and is required 
 to consii^t of " heavy measures of the choicest 
 wheat, barley, and other grain," not omitting " wine 
 for the sustenance of the canons residentiai-y of the 
 said church of Santiago.""' Although the languajre 
 is archaic in form, its phraseology is manifestlv 
 modern. Should any descendant of King Ramiro 
 " or anybody else seek to violate this our Testa- 
 ment, or hinder its fulfilment, whatever be his 
 condition, whether clerical or secular, may he for 
 ever be danuied in Hell, together with Judas the 
 traitor. Also, may his children become orphans 
 and his wife a widow ; and may another possess his 
 temporal estate. Also, he shall be deprived of the 
 body and blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore of the 
 eternal kingdom, for ever and for ever. More- 
 over he shall pay unto the king and the church of 
 Santiago, equally between the two, six thousand 
 pounds of silver.'"' A few lines further on, this 
 malediction is repeated with increase of viru- 
 lence. " Whoso should seek to break this docu- 
 ment and donation of the church of Santiago, or 
 should refuse to pay the same, whatever his station, 
 whether king, prince, labourer, layman, or cleric, we 
 curse and excommunicate him, and sentence him to 
 the pains of Hell, that there he be tormented ever- 
 lastingly, together with Judas the traitor." 
 
 The detailed account of the battle which goes 
 before these truly Christian phrases is carefully 
 
 55
 
 Orana^a 
 
 drawn up ad hoc, and makes delightful reading. 
 " While I was meditating many matters and turning 
 over in my mind the peril of the Christians, I, King 
 Ramiro, fell asleep. So, as I slumbered, the blessed 
 apostle Santiago, defender of the Spains, was pleased 
 to show himself before me in the flesh. And when, 
 astonished at this sight, I asked him who he w^as, the 
 apostle of God made answer, 'I am Santiago.' 
 Therewith I wondered greatly, and he proceeded ; 
 ' Perchance thou knewest not that Jesus Christ, 
 what time he distributed the other portions of the 
 world among the rest of the apostles, my brethren, 
 gave unto me the whole of Spain to guard, placing 
 her beneath my shelter and protection?' Then, 
 squeezing my hand, he said, ' Be strong and confident, 
 for verilv I shall assist thee; and on the morrow, 
 through the might of God, thou shalt defeat the 
 countless army of the Moors that now beset thee. Yet 
 manv of thy warriors (for whom eternal rest already 
 is prepared) shall win the crown of martyrdom in 
 this affray. And that of this there be no doubt, ye 
 and the Moors shall plainly see me riding a white 
 horse of marvellous and dazzling beauty, and I shall 
 carry a white standard of great size.' ■" Of course 
 upon the morrow the saint fulfilled his promise, and 
 sixty thousand Moors were slain. The title of this 
 spurious document is thus translated, and forms 
 almost a chronicle in itself : " The Privilege of 
 King- Ramiro, confrmed hy the Apostolic See, 
 relating to the vote he made to the glorious apostle 
 Santiago, in company icith the archbishops, bishops, 
 clergy, princes, ricos hombres, army, and peoples of 
 
 56
 
 cbc SncicJ /mountain 
 
 Spain ; in viemonj and ircognition of the deliverance 
 obtained from the Tribide of the Hundred Vir^'ins — 
 zchich tribute thetj zee re zoo nt to pajj unto the Moora — 
 by reason of the victory of Clavijo, zvherein the apostle 
 appeared before the King (defeated the day preceding 
 at Albclda) and either arr/iy, and fought against the 
 Moors and overcame them, repairing the peril and 
 the risA- of ruin zchich threatened Spain ; a special 
 privilege vouchsafed by God unto no other nation 
 in the world : wherefore from that day forth we call 
 in battle upon the name of Santiago as the patron 
 and deliverer of SpainT 
 
 Let us return to Flores and his gang. In course 
 of time the scandal became so serious and the com- 
 plaints against the trio of forgers so unceasing, that 
 the Government, obliged for decency's sake to inter- 
 fere, laid hands on all the three, and put them on 
 their trial. After much amusing evidence, delivered 
 by each one against the others* with astounding- 
 imperturbability, they were found guilty and sen- 
 tenced to short terms of imprisonment ; but luckily 
 for Spain the trash they had invented was piled into 
 a heap and publicly burnt. 
 
 * Flores, when under examination, admitted that " the very 
 workmen took pains to keep the monuments from being extracted 
 until a large concourse should assemble ; for pious persons, 
 stimulated by religious zeal, rewarded them with money for the 
 finds they made ; and such did their greed become that they 
 used to introduce among the ruins the splintered bones of 
 animals, and sprinkling them with water perfumed with sweet- 
 smelling herbs, roses, or jasmine, sold them as relics. The 
 credulous folk never suspected the deceit ; but he who was 
 declaring (Flores) med to reprove the workmen for this wickedness." 
 — Los Falsos Cronicones, p. 321, note. 
 51
 
 Ol■ana^a 
 
 This was about the tiine of S\vinbiirnc''s visit to 
 Granada. Touching the forgers and their trial, he 
 wrote: "Medina Conti, author of the Paseos de 
 Granada, pretends to have found an Arabic manu- 
 script of this j)eriod, corroborating the testimony of 
 Peres (de liita) : but these writers are sudi notorious 
 impostors that little credit can be given to anything 
 thev may advance: however, there must undoubtedly 
 be some foundation for these anecdotes, and a previous 
 knowledge of them is rather necessary for the perfect 
 understanding of the Alhambra." The statement 
 that Conde wrote the Paseos de Granada is 
 erroneous. The English traveller evidently meant 
 Kcheverria, while the " Arabic manuscript ^'' would 
 be that of which a rendering is inserted in the 
 second volume of the Paseos, pp. 71-75. Swin- 
 burne adds in a footnote: "Conti (Conde), in order 
 to favour the pretensions of the church in a great 
 lawsuit, forged deeds and inscriptions which he 
 buried in the ground where he knew they would shortly 
 be dug up again. Upon their being unearthed, he 
 published engravings of them, and gave explanations 
 of their luiknown characters, making them out to be 
 so many authentic proofs and evidences of the asser- 
 tions of the clergy. His imposture was detected, 
 and he now lies in prison without much hope of 
 recovering his liberty. I am told he is a most 
 learned, ingenious man, profoundly skilled in the 
 antiquities of his country. The Morocco ambas- 
 sador, in his way through Granada, j)urchased of 
 this man a copper bracelet of Fatima, which Medina 
 proved, by the Arabic inscription, and many certifi- 
 
 58
 
 ■Cbc Sncl■c^ /IRouiitam 
 
 cates, to be genuine, and founii among the ruins of 
 part of the Alhambra, with other treasures of the 
 last king, who liad hid them in hopes of better days. 
 This famous bracelet turned out afterwards to be the 
 work of Medina^s own hands, aiid made out of an old 
 brass candlestick." {I'l-avcls in Spci'ni, p. 185.) It 
 might have even bettered 6winburne"'s opinion of the 
 ingenuity of these gentlemen had he known that 
 Echeverri'a was in the habit of publishing anonymous 
 attacks upon his own treatises, in order to render 
 them more lively and convincing, " sustaining in this 
 manner a kind of controversy with himself.'' 
 
 59
 
 In the Albaycin 
 
 IV 
 
 The Sacred Mountain — concluded 
 
 HE regimen of the church and college 
 of the Sacro-Monte from inside deserves 
 a brief description. As soon as it was 
 known that Castro proposed to found 
 a temple and a seminary upon this 
 hallowed spot, and liberally endow them from his 
 private means, letters poured in on him from 
 numerous of the religious orders distributed through- 
 out the Peninsula, asking to be awarded the custody 
 of the new establishments. These applications were 
 carefully considered by the prelate, whose choice had 
 beo-un to incline towards the Order of Saint Benedict, 
 when it occurred to him (plucking a leaf from the 
 book of Dionysius Alexandrinus) to visit the Sacred 
 
 61
 
 C5rana&a 
 
 Mountain and solve his doubts by prayer. Accord- 
 ingly he penetrated, quite alone, into " the oven of 
 Saint Hiscius," and passed in this seclusion three 
 mysterious hours. On coining out he refused to sign 
 the o-rant he had intended for the Benedictines, 
 curtly observing that " it was not the will of God. ' 
 " The fact is,"' says Kamos Lopez, echoing the words 
 of the archbishop's confessor, "that while he was pray- 
 ing in the oven the Virgin appeared to him and bade 
 him provide his church with non-monastical officials, 
 mapping out for him the whole of the particulars 
 wherewith the building was erected a twelvemonth 
 later." 
 
 The seminary was titled after Saint Dionysius 
 the Areopagite. In 1609 a bull from Paul the 
 Fifth approved its rules and constitution, and eleven 
 vears later a royal warrant granted by Philip the 
 Fourth placed both the college and the church 
 beneath the tutelage of the Crown. Among the 
 forgeries discovered in 1595 had been a stone inscribed 
 with the words " Alary ccas not touched hij the original 
 sinT The credulous archbishop had paid a singular 
 veneration to this stone, and fervently enjomed the 
 doctrine of the Immaculate Conception on the pupils 
 of the Sacro-Monte. The college regulations were 
 numerous and irksome. As in other lands, the students 
 were divided into " Ancients " and " Moderns.'' The 
 day began with the " oration," from five to six, half- 
 past five to half-past six, or six to seven, according 
 to the season. Three-quarters of this weary hour 
 were passed afoot. After this the Seminarists were 
 allowed to breakfast (except on Saturdays and other 
 
 62
 
 •Cbc Sac^c^ /fountain 
 
 days of abstinence, when neither bite nor sup was 
 
 permitted), but not witli "fried things, such as 
 
 breadcrumbs, or anything else which might prevent 
 
 their studying."' The interval from one to other of 
 
 their morning studies was passed in '" conference " 
 
 in the cloisters ; but no group was to consist of more 
 
 than four scholars, and the rector was to be present 
 
 whenever possible — a nice way, one may think, of 
 
 developing the youthful intellect. The Ancients 
 
 were allowed a black cap and a cloak in winter, 
 
 but no gloves. The Moderns must go bare-headed. 
 
 If one of the latter should cover his mouth with a 
 
 fold of his capa (making what is known as the cmbozo*), 
 
 he must unroll it every time that the rector or any 
 
 of the prebendaries passed him by. The midday 
 
 meal was awful in the icy frigidness of its routine. 
 
 At the clanging of a bell each scholar went to his 
 
 room and fetched his knife and fork, his napkin and 
 
 his spoon, and waited in the cloisters until the rector 
 
 gave three knocks upon the door of the refectory. 
 
 Hereinto the con)pany now trooped " in total 
 
 silence," and stood in a double row while grace was 
 
 said. Two of the Moderns then conveyed into tiie 
 
 middle of the hall a bare bench, occupied forthwith 
 
 bv half a dozen wretches told off to deliver a lesson 
 
 in law. Besides the bench the dining-hall contained 
 
 a small pulpit, and occasionally, by way of varying 
 
 the digestive, the lesson was a chapter of holy writ, 
 
 followed by extracts from a volume designated by 
 
 the rector. 
 
 After the due preliminaries the kitchen hatch was 
 * See The Land of the Dons, p. 48. 
 
 6.'}
 
 ©ranafea 
 
 opened, and the servants (I need hardly state that 
 these were male) proceeded to distribute the bread 
 and the water-bottles. Nobody was to choose his 
 bread, but had to take it as it came to him. The way 
 to call the servants was by " rapping once or twice 
 upon the table, not with the hands, but with the 
 knife, or spoon, or fork."" Otherwise "the silence 
 shall be strait enough for this to seem the eating- 
 chamber of some staid community, and not of puerile 
 and orderless people.'' Even the scholar who dis- 
 covered a pressing need to quit the room must make 
 his exit " underneath the table ■" * 
 
 When the scanty meal was at an end, the kitchen 
 window was shut, the lesson-readers filed away, and 
 their bench was removed. The servants then col- 
 lected the water-bottles and the broken bread, and 
 each student, taking his leavings to the end of the 
 table and depositing them there, inclined his head 
 to signify that he freely made them over to " the 
 poor servants." Lastly, the congregation repeated a 
 Tit autem Dom'ine miserere nobis (which seems, under 
 the circumstances, to have been a very logical peti- 
 tion), and left the hall. 
 
 Yet even in so rigorous a community the emi- 
 nently Spanish institution of the siesta was loyally 
 maintained; so while their empty stomachs were 
 making believe to digest the banquet I have outlined, 
 the scholars, after a spell of conversation in the Sala 
 de Quiete, retired to the doors of their respective 
 
 * Praxis de las Ceremonias que debcn ohservarse por los Colegiales 
 del Insigne Colegio de Theologos, y Juristas del Senor S. Dionisio 
 Areopagita, sito en el Sacro llipulitano Monte, extra-Muros de la 
 Ciudad de Granada (printed about 1785), Insirnecion vi.
 
 Ubc Sacrct /IDountaiu 
 
 rooms to take their niodicuiu of oil from the Superior, 
 and shutting out the sunlight, went compulsorily to 
 bed. Later in the day, and when the afternoon 
 classes were concluded, they were permitted for half 
 an hour before the spiritual exercise of the Kosario 
 to indulge in pliysical exercise upon the sn\a\[ phicda 
 adjacent to the college, but they were not to retire 
 towards the sacred caves, or purchase honey or chest- 
 nuts, " which do more harm than benefit''; and the 
 sellers of these dainties are warned to keep their 
 distance from the holy building. Supper was as 
 wearisome as luncheon, philosophy, not law, being now 
 the mental sauce served up with every plate. Then 
 there was a spell for digestive purposes in the Sala 
 de Quietc, and at a quarter to ten Litany in the 
 chapel, with sometimes a Rosario added, and always 
 " a scrutiny of consciences." 
 
 On going to rest the students were provided with 
 a dingy, flickering ^'^/o/^ to light them into bed, from 
 when till after morning service of the day succeeding 
 no pupil was to breathe a syllable to his schoolmates. 
 But as they reached their bedrooms, all made ready 
 in the doorway to receive a dose of holy water. Each 
 scholar, both the Ancient and the Modern, nuist at 
 this instant have his collar on and "stand at cere- 
 mony " — that is, pressing his cap against his breast 
 with both hands — until the rector, attended by a 
 servant carrying the holy water, passed to administer 
 the precious fluid to every member of the company. 
 Then, after a paragraph or two of dog- Latin palaver 
 on either side, the doors were closed and bolted, and 
 all (one hopes) was sanctity and slumber. 
 
 65 E
 
 ^3l•ana^a 
 
 So much for the daily routine of the collegians. 
 The rest of their book of rules and regulations is 
 absorbed with detail, quaint from its very triviality. 
 The admission of a candidate to the Sacro-INIonte 
 was held to be a grave affair. The period of proba- 
 tion was a month, and a whole Instruction is devoted 
 to the ceremonies connected with the taking of the 
 hood. This, together with the cap and with the 
 gospel on which the candidate was to take the oath, 
 was deposited on a silver platter. Towards the close 
 of the proceedings, and when the neophyte was already 
 invested with his hood and cap, and had embraced 
 the rector and numerous other persons of the plainer 
 ^ex, an article was read to him enjoining him on pain 
 ofjirompt expulsion not to carry any kind of firearm 
 or other offensive or defensive weapon, and exacting 
 his consent that in prevention of this heinous mis- 
 demeanour the rector should search his clothing at 
 any hoiu- of the day or night. (The reason for this 
 -stringent clause will be discovered presentlv.) At 
 leno-th, when these formalities were through, the 
 victim signed the register and the public ceremony 
 terminated. Privately, the new collegian was pro- 
 hibited from "standing" celebrations at his own 
 expense — iced watei', sweets, or any other substance. 
 He might, however, bestow an alms upon the Chapel 
 of Saint Dionysiiis, and " gratify " the " poor viozos;" 
 namely, the larderer, cook, porter, cankulario or 
 beadle,* the barber, and the barber's assistant. 
 
 * Caiiiculario—" Beadle, he who beats dogs out of the church." 
 So says the venerable Spanish and English Dictionary of 
 Fathers Higgins and Connelly. In this case, more properly the 
 hedel. 
 
 66
 
 Zbc S a ci c ^ /Il> u n t a I n 
 
 Twice a year, in September and March, the student 
 paid his board and lodging. Otlierwise his wants 
 were few, consisting merely of" the indispensable 
 articles of clothing, a " little book of Saint Peter of 
 Alcantara, '^ another of Father Kempis, the Exerci^es 
 of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and " some d'l-snprnut.s^^'' 
 described in my old Spanish dictionary as " a disci- 
 pline, an instrument for whipping ; a cat o" nine 
 tails." 
 
 This Praxi.s is so stocked with prohibitions that 
 the student hardly seems to be permitted anything 
 but prayer. " Nothing fashionable " may form a 
 part of his attire. Neither externally nor inwardly 
 may he indulge in " coloured clothing, or silk, or any- 
 thing resembling it,"" or go "profanely ornamented, 
 whether indoors or out." \\'e further learn that his 
 ordinary college costume is to be "a tawny cloak, 
 a black baize cap, more than four fingers high," 
 and for outdoor wear, "a hood of rose-coloured 
 cloth, or clerical habit Avith a white collar above, 
 but no collar or anything else new-fangled to the 
 habit itself. The vest should have no flaps, or ribbcms, 
 or strings, or buttons about the upper part, but must 
 be absolutely plain. No reticles, not even black 
 ones, must confine the hair; nor nnist the shoes have 
 heels. These, furthermore, nuist fasten, not with 
 buckles but with buttons, even where a habit is 
 worn. Neither within the college nor without shall 
 gloves be used. The cloak is to be decent, and of 
 such a length as to reach the heel behind and the 
 instep before. The students must have no knife 
 except a penknife ; and this (like most of the 
 
 67
 
 ©r3na^a 
 
 prohibitions we are i-eading) " without a point to 
 it," AV^eapons, both firearms and others, are pro- 
 hibited on pain of instant banishment. He shall 
 also be expelled who secretly breaks college of anight, 
 or introduces women, even if they he his mother or 
 sisters. Playing at cards is vetoed ; likewise, under 
 special penalties, "the taking of tobacco smoke; 
 since, if this custom be endured, our community 
 will see itself invaded by a habit which induces 
 the students to forsake their studies, and congre- 
 gate in parties detrimental to their good behaviour.^'' 
 Nor are they to drink wine, aguardiente, " sundew " 
 (ros solis), or similar strong liquors. Neither Ancient 
 nor Modern is permitted the use of a brasero or a 
 fire, " nor must they {)lay on any instrument, as being 
 improper to the reverence of this sanctuary."* 
 
 Hair-cutting day was passed as follows. The 
 scholars were summoned in groups of four, the 
 Moderns in the morning and the Ancients in the 
 afternoon ; each scholar having to provide his towel. 
 Next, the crown of the head was shaved or" opened " ; 
 in other words, the clerical tonsure was performed, 
 obedient to "the common right and special privilege 
 conceded to our college. Some moderate and decent 
 locks above the ears are suffered to remain, but no 
 whiskers ; and the cue is cut so as not to fall below 
 the white collar in the Moderns, or the collar of 
 the cloak in the Ancients. No bushy hair will be 
 allowed." In this way, four times yearly at the least, 
 was carried out the rasure of the Sacro-]VIonte ; " for 
 if it be omitted, the students in their youth allow 
 * Praxis, Instr. xxi. 
 
 68
 
 "Cbc Sacrc^ /fountain 
 
 their hair to <^ro\v, and fill themselves with vanity, 
 transgressing the honesty, and modesty, and good 
 behaviour that are proper to our institution."* 
 
 Such are a selected few of the regulations, or pro- 
 hibitions (for in this case the words are practically 
 synonvius). Whether they were faithfully observed 
 I cannot say, I only know, from intimate experience, 
 that a Spaniard is never happier than when he is 
 making a law, except when he is breaking one. My 
 readers will therefore draw tiieir own conclusion. 
 
 The students reached the climax of their miseries 
 during the period of the Lenten exercises ; and also 
 when the '' discipline or cat o" nine tails '' was called 
 into employment. Grim and gloomy are the precepts 
 for this latter function. Once a week, all through 
 the year, except in May, June, and July, the entire 
 college took their places in the church, each penitent 
 at a sufficient distance from his neighbours. Then 
 the lights were put out ; and to solemn words and 
 music, and the solemn swishing of the cruel little 
 thongs, the company (excepting, we suppose, the 
 rector) performed " a fervid act of contrition '' ; 
 at the close of which a light was brought in and the 
 rector stood by the door to see if any member of his 
 flock had accidentally forgotten his cat o' nine tails.f 
 
 The Lenten exercises, though not, perhaps, so 
 painful in a literal and fleshly sense, were also fraught 
 with much discomfort. For days together the •' ex- 
 ercitants'' might neither walk, nor talk, nor break 
 their fast. Even their bedrooms were deban-ed from 
 them, although they were ajjpointed a brief interval of 
 * l^nixis, Iiistr. XX. t U . !"sti: xxvii. 
 
 09
 
 ©ranasa 
 
 repose in the " exercise room " — apparently a kind of 
 eighteenth century torture-chamber. Here, if their 
 bodies sank beneath them, they must "arrange 
 themselves upon the floor as well as they are able ; 
 ])ut without taking off their cloaks, and without 
 making tl)eir books into a pillow." 
 
 In these authentic illustrations we therefore find an 
 accurate and first-hand account of Spanish academic 
 life a hundred years ago. To-day we should expect so 
 rigorous if impractical a course to turn out little but 
 dunces, prigs, or hypocrites. Pedraza, notwithstanding, 
 dwells in terms of high complacency upon the virtue 
 and the erudition of the Sacro-Monte scholars ; * 
 while Ramos Lopez, president in our own time, assures 
 us that they emerge from these secluded and severe 
 cloisters " advanced in virtue and letters, courtesy and 
 culture, all of which is useful to them everywhere." 
 
 This may be so ; and certainly the learned gentle- 
 man devotes the whole of a lengthy chapter to the 
 pupils or professors of the Sacred Mountain whom he 
 instances as having reached celebrity. The list is 
 slightly disappointing. For my part, I can only 
 recollect three men connected with this college 
 whom the world has cared, or could have greatly 
 cared, to hear about. These are the dramatist, poet, 
 and antiquarian, Aureliano Fernandez Guerra y 
 Orbe ; the novelist Juan Valera ; and Father Andres 
 Manjdn. Thanks to PepHa Jhnhicz, Don Juan 
 Valera needs no introduction of mine among an 
 English-speaking people ; on several occasions I have 
 availed myself of Fernandez Guerra's studies and 
 * Hist, de Gran. p. 275. 
 
 70
 
 Zbc SacicJ /mountain 
 
 researches on old Granada; and to Father Manjtin, 
 philosoj)her and philanthropist, I shall devote a 
 chapter of this volume very shortlv. 
 
 On the other hand, one is rather shocked to find 
 among the Sacro-Monte worthies (juoted hv Senor 
 Ramos, the name of the former abbot and canon, 
 Luis Francisco deViana, whom we have seen aljetting 
 Echevern'a and his gang of rogues. At this rate the 
 l)iographer might just as well have included Eche- 
 vern'a himself, together with (Medina) Conde, and 
 the student who, on October 5, 1726, bestowed " a 
 violent and instantaneous death" upon a conu'ade ; 
 or, in our less benevolent though more veracious 
 Saxon term, assassinated him.* 
 
 But these are only details. Speaking in a broad, 
 uncritical, catholic spirit, who would deny that the 
 Sacred Mountain of Granada has played a prominent 
 part in Spanish history, both sacred and profane ; 
 and bears a venerated name anion"; all <i;enuine 
 believers ? Do not her legends flourish to this hour ? 
 Every Sunday, at the evening hour of eight, the 
 chaj)terand the inmates of the college, headed bv a 
 priest bearing an image of the Virgin, visit in devout 
 procession the last of the chapels constructed among 
 the holy caves, for it is known that this is the precise 
 spot whereon the saints "were accustomed to cele- 
 brate the mysteries of their religion, and preach the 
 divine word unto the new -converted. This truth 
 
 * Praxis, p. 151. This was why the student, upon admission 
 to the college, was stringently forbidden to carry arms. It is a 
 pity that our amiable friends the Spaniards are not more 
 generally prudent in this matter, instead of continuing to stick 
 and shoot one another as freely as they do at present. 
 
 71
 
 (2l•ana^a 
 
 was proved by the discovery of a t-up and leaden 
 vessels,"' 
 
 What a thing is faith — or obstinacy ! Senor 
 Ramos'' tenaciousness deserves the closing word, and 
 I shall grant it him. '• As the procession advances 
 through these holy grottos, the image of the Virgin 
 visits, week by week, the martyrs' tombs — spots 
 whicli the Lord has looked upon with special pre- 
 dilection. The shades of Cecil, Ctesiphon, Hiscius, 
 and their followers seem to come forth to welcome 
 the Virgin Mother, and mingling with the company 
 unite their voices with our own to greet in her the 
 Star of the Seas, the City of God, the ever-Virgin, 
 and the Happy Gate of Heaven."' 
 
 "These dulcet accents find an echo in the 
 empyrean, where angels, to the music of their golden 
 harps, repeat the very verses that expire beneath the 
 bosom of the catacombs.*" 
 
 72
 
 The Cortijo of San Jeronimo 
 
 A Cortijo in the Sierra 
 
 HE Granadinos are essentiallv line- 
 weather folks, coddled and spoiled bv 
 the perennial sunshine of tlieii- 
 caniu'ues and Vega ; and so, about the 
 end of October, as soon as I announced 
 my intention of climbing the Peak of the \ eleta, 
 thickly streaked with snow, they laughed into my 
 face. However, my resolve was taken. In autumn 
 I had reached (iranada ; in autumn the venture nmst 
 be made, for probably it was a (;ase of now or never. 
 Consoling mvself, therefore, with the reflection that 
 there was plenty of method in my madness, and 
 confounding mv Spanish friends and enemies with 
 
 73
 
 OranaSa 
 
 theix- own proverb insisting that a madman under- 
 stands his business better than a sane outsider under- 
 tands it,* I looked about for a prdctico, and fixed the 
 fatal hour of departure. 
 
 I found this jmlcfico or guide in one Jose Fer- 
 nandez — as we might say, an Andalusian John 
 Jones — nicknamed, for sake of readier identification, 
 Pincho, a native of the neighbouring village of 
 Huetor. "Please call me Pincho,"' he exclaimed, 
 upon the striking of our bargain : " my real name is 
 of no use to me, for nobody knows me by it ; "" so 
 taken with the novelty of his request I gave my 
 promise on the spot, and Pincho he shall remain till 
 the end of my narrative. A small, spare, sinewy, 
 vivacious, swarthy young man of seven or eight and 
 twenty, a veritable son of tlie Sierra, trained from 
 early boyhood to ransack the crannies, and caves, and 
 glaciers of INIulhacen for m((nza)uUa,oY stalk the moun- 
 tain-goat upon the slippery and jagged sides of the 
 Trevenque. He was, besides, the undisputed ow ner of 
 a brace of gaunt and sorry-looking female Rocinantes, 
 reported, notwithstanding their conspicuous lack of 
 comeliness, to be among the sturdiest and surest- 
 footed of their kind, and as familiar as their master 
 with each path and precipice of the mighty Mountains 
 of the Sun and Air. We thus agreed that for two and 
 thirty reales, or about five shillings day by day, 
 Pincho and his steeds should take me up to the Peak 
 of the V^eleta and down again to the hotel ; the 
 keep of the cattle to be at Pineiro's charge ; the 
 maintenance of Pincho to be at mine. This was the 
 * " Sale III (is el loco en sii casa, que el cuerdo en ia ajena." 
 
 74
 
 H Coitijo ii\ tbc Siciia 
 
 substance of our covenant ; and graspin<^- hands 
 across a ha'porth of adulterated as well as watered 
 wine, we testified to the honom-able word, respec- 
 tively, of Wales and Andalusia. 
 
 Our line of march and commissariat were soon 
 determined, for Pinclio, though a Spaniard, was a 
 lover of despatch. In Spanish phraseology, we carried 
 the matter " at the lance's point.'' I also had the 
 luck to bear " a letter of presentation " from the 
 owner of a farm in the Sierra to his guar da or 
 superintendent, instructing him to open wide the 
 door to the intrepid expeditionists, and put them 
 up in hospitable fashion. This referred to bed alone : 
 our board, composed as follows, must travel with us : 
 
 A tin of cocoa. 
 
 A half-bottle of brandy. 
 
 A kilo and a half of cooked veal. 
 
 A quarter of a kilo of Spanish sausage. 
 
 Three kilos of bread. 
 
 A pound of sugar. 
 
 A packet of salt. 
 
 A tin of stewed peaches. 
 The rest of the impedimenta consisted of 
 
 Two boxes of matches. 
 
 A spirit lamp, spirit, and saucepan. 
 
 An iron mug. 
 
 Cigarettes. 
 
 Two blankets. 
 
 Field glasses. 
 
 Three photographic cameras, loaded. 
 
 A spare box of plates for changing on the journey. 
 (On reaching the C'ortijo, Pincho, with the most 
 
 75
 
 Oranada 
 
 benevolent intentions in the world, mistook this box 
 for that of the stewed peaches, and with a sweep of 
 his navaja laid it dexterously open on the supper- 
 table.) 
 
 A cake of cocoa-butter for anointing chafed faces — 
 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 That admirable Hispano-Oriental institution, the 
 leathern bota. I purchased a new one, holding nearly 
 three litres, and filled it at the Venta Alegre with 
 strong red wine. One dollar, wine included. 
 
 At half-past eleven of a showery morning our 
 cavalcade was ready for the road; the capachos* packed, 
 the nags bestridden, Pincho leading on the white, I 
 following on the brown. The starting-point was the 
 hotel door. My friends, marshalled on the step, already 
 envied, I suppose, our safe return. At any rate they 
 sought with scoffs and evil auguries to intimidate the 
 pair of madmen bound for the treacherous Sierra of 
 the Snows, though strangers glanced at us with sym- 
 pathy, and wished us buen v'laje. Then, giving a 
 grin to all alike, we moved away at a majestic stride, 
 down the Alameda, over the Genii, and out of a long 
 lane, fringed with vines and gardens, onto the open 
 hillside. 
 
 The approach to the Sierra Nevada is over a series 
 of steep acclivities and descents, chiefly unwooded, 
 swelling by fuirly regular stages from a hundred feet 
 or so to four or five thousand. Plach of these 
 swellings has its name, usually derived from some- 
 
 * Big round baskets, slung on either side of the saddle. Pro- 
 perly employed for carrying grapes in harvest-time, they are 
 roomier and handier for a mountain expedition than the ordinary 
 alforja. 
 
 76
 
 K Cortijo in tbc Sicvva 
 
 thing of small importance on, or in, or round about 
 it ; the Cerro de la Ventana overtopping the Cerro 
 de la Campanuela ; el Puche * overtopping the 
 Ventana ; the Cerro de IMonachil overtopping the 
 Puche; and, further on, the Cerro de la Teja and 
 Cerro del Nogal overtopping the Cerro de Monachil. 
 After this the heights grow formidable, and the 
 Cerro del Tesoro, Cerro del Trevenque, and Cerro de 
 ]\Iatas Verdes are second only to the snow-clad slopes 
 and steeps of the Sierra. 
 
 As soon as we began to mount Sierra-wards the 
 weather grew wet and nasty, with a touch of chilli- 
 ness, although beneath the rain-clouds the sun con- 
 tinued shining. By reason of this the prospect was 
 a double one, both grave and gay at once, smiling to 
 right and left upon the Vega and the lovely valley 
 of the Genii, and frowning before us into the vapour- 
 laden summits of the higher ccrros. From end to 
 end the Vega and the valley displayed their specks 
 and rows of gleaming whitewashed villages, from the 
 Sierra de Padul on the one hand to the Sierra de 
 Alfacar on the other. Prominent among these 
 villages were Huetor, Cenes, and Pinos Puente. I 
 have seen many uncommon landscapes, but never a 
 one more strange than this, more melancholy, or 
 more beautiful. 
 
 On we plodded, silently and slowly. Pincho, im- 
 pervious to scenery, but not to rain, pulled his 
 .sombrero down upon his ears and wrapped his 
 
 * Puche or Purche = Puig.Piiy, Provencal piiech, Catalan /k^x, 
 Italian poggio ; all from Latin pogiinn, piigium, a hill, ridge, 
 mound. — Simonet, Glosario de Voces Ibertcas v Latinas usadas 
 entre los Mozdrabes, p. 451. 
 
 77
 
 C5 r a n a ^ a 
 
 shoulders in his blanket. What he could spare 
 of this he threw on the capacho.s^ looming like 
 kettledrums across the downpour. Now and then 
 we met a muleteer from some corfijo, tramping 
 beside his nodding, jangling, potato-laden beasts, 
 and sped him citywards with a short " co;? Dios,'''' 
 grudging him at heart his sunny haven in the valley. 
 And yet, at least to me, the cold, repellent scenery 
 was wondei'fully \\ild and wonderfully fascinating. 
 The mantle of the storm becomes this desolate 
 region better than blue skies. Unfathomable tajos^ 
 topless cliffs, immure the writhing roadway; and our 
 mountain nags, obedient to the awkward custom of 
 their kind, kept picking the very border of the 
 precipice. One of my feet was treading cloud ; and 
 several times I grasped the girth and tested the 
 stirrupless saddle with a shudder. 
 
 Meanwhile the soil had changed in colour from 
 tawny to vermilion ; and, washing the soil away, the 
 pelting rain brought down innumerable streamlets, so 
 that the road seemed running blood. Once, as we 
 turned a corner, I stole a backward glance ; and lo ! 
 the dwindling towers of the Alhambra were reddened 
 also — the selfsame colour of the streamlets of the 
 road. 
 
 Four hours from Granada — four hours nearer 
 heaven — we struck to the left and floundered 
 through half-fro/en mire across the level sunmiit 
 of the Puche. Here we encountered a family of 
 labourers going down to pass the winter. The man 
 was dragging an ass, heaped high with maize, pota- 
 toes, and a stick or two of furniture ; the woman 
 
 78
 
 1\ Cert 1)0 m tiK Sic I in 
 
 piloted a povker, Irisli fasliioii, by the leg"; and a 
 couple of la<>;giii<;' brats Ijrought up tlie rear. 
 
 Ueyond tlie Fuehe is a ouHy imprisoning the 
 Cortijo de las Minibres, bedded in an acre or two 
 of loaniv arable ; and over tlie crest of the opposite 
 rerro is the Cortijo of San Jerciniuio, to which we 
 were consigned. This last ascent is almost perpen- 
 dicular. In general, when we speak of a horse as 
 climbing a hill, the term is simply hyperbolic ; but 
 in this instance there is no exaggeration, for the hoof 
 seemed not to tread the ground so much as to be 
 trying to catch hold of it. 
 
 It was now so dark that very shortly only masses 
 and outlines were distinguishable. The contour of 
 the ccrro was too f\intastic for descri})tion. A moun- 
 tain, no matter how jagged and abrupt, looks always 
 orthodox so long as it retains the shape its Maker 
 gave to it; but, once enveloped in a mist, becomes 
 a fearful, unfamiliar, spectral form ; the more so 
 when a stiffish wind disturbs, and shifts, and splits, 
 and shrinks it from one moment to another. As to 
 the silence, immense describes it less inadequately 
 than inteihse. The stillness was as vast and eerie, if 
 not as changeful, as the mountain; though once I 
 heard a horse's neigh at the Cortijo underfoot, and 
 once or twice the echo of the blasting in the river 
 Monachil — strains that were carried up to us as faint 
 and sad as the sound of a convent-bell, borne from 
 far off upon the darkness of a winter morning. 
 
 At last (and never, I maintain, can two short 
 words have meant so much before), a long, taint 
 patch of white and the barking of dogs dis- 
 
 79
 
 tSranaSa 
 
 closed the near Cortijo of San Jerdnimo. Nobody, 
 except the dogs, seemed much concerned at our 
 arrival. However, the door was open, so springing 
 from the saddle we stepped within. The room in 
 which we found ourselves was long and low, lacking all 
 conscious art or symmetrv,and just designed to shelter 
 man and beast — especially the latter. At one end an 
 enormous fireplace, with a conical top that touched the 
 raftered ceiling, vomited mingled smoke and flame ; 
 and at the other a prehistorically rude stone stair- 
 case wound above into the only storey. In one 
 of the sides was the " street ■" door,*and in the other, 
 the entrance to the yard and stables. The kitchen was 
 an oblong bench of stone, with a lilliputian hornillo 
 for the cooking, and a hole for the clay water-bottle — 
 this latter of a markedly oriental shape. Close to 
 the bottle was a roughly giazed barrefio, or earthen 
 tub for scouring dishes. Before being spoiled by 
 years of wear, it might have cost a shilling; and 
 the pale sea-green of this enamel is just the pigment 
 used by the Andalusian Muslims seven hundred 
 years ago. Above the kitchen was a small shelf, built 
 into a niche in the wall and holding two glasses and 
 two plates. A dingy rack with a handful of pewter 
 spoons hung near the shelf; and close to the rack 
 a bunch of horseshoes, a gun, and a powder-flask. 
 Upon the floor were a chair or two, a bench, and a 
 heap of heads of maize. Such is the eating, sleeping, 
 and working-room of any farm in the Sierra Nevada. 
 
 * La calle, " the street." Such is the name the people of the 
 cortijo bestow upon the barren ledge on which their tenement 
 is constructed. 
 
 80
 
 H Coi-tijo in tbc Sicira 
 
 I knew the guarda at a glance, not bv the cut of 
 his clothes, which were pastoral enough, but by his 
 domineering air; and, ])ulling out the danij) and 
 rufHed letter from my cordui'ov jacket, ])resente(l my 
 credentials. Taking an iron ((tud'il and hanging it 
 from a string, he sat beneath, and, raising the mis- 
 sive to the light, nodded towards a chair. I sat. At 
 the end of every sentence he looked me over from 
 head to heel, and saw, reflected in my steadfast 
 pupils, a broad, athletic, gamekeeper-looking frame, 
 not much above the middle height, and small, sus- 
 picious, grey-green eyes set in a shaven face all cut 
 and crimsoned by polar snow and African sun. In 
 spite of the chilly evening, he wore no jacket ; but 
 round his head was twisted a speckled kerchief, re- 
 vealing, above the neck and ear, a few dark, l)ristly 
 hairs beginning to tinge with dirtv silver. 
 
 When he had reached his master's riibnca — the 
 fanciful device with which the law of Spain compels all 
 citizens to end their autograph — he folded the letter, 
 secreted it, as though it had possessed the virtues of a 
 banknote, in an inner pocket of his waistcoat, and gave 
 me his hand. This was on Monday, October ^6th, 
 1903. After a moment's pause, he asked me if the 
 Boer war were ended. 
 
 I said it was. 
 
 " That war cost England a pretty penny,"" he re- 
 marked deliberately and (as it seemed) contentedly. 
 
 " Yes," I blandly assented ; " and there are more 
 and prettier pennies whei-e that j:)enny came from." 
 
 He first described a downward jerk with his head — 
 equivalent to semi-acquiescence — and then cocked it 
 
 81 F
 
 (3l•t^na^a 
 
 on one side, meani ng to say, " ^Vho knows P Even the 
 damned ingleses may some day have to work in a 
 cortijo.'''' 
 
 Presently his family and the farm-hands all came 
 trooping into supper ; the gunrda.'i wife and daughters 
 three, besides about a dozen men and boys, miser- 
 ably clad, miserably cold, miserably resigned. The 
 puchero was dragged from the fire into the middle 
 of the floor, and clutching each a pewter spoon, 
 the party crouched around. The same dish served 
 them all, and for many minutes there was no move- 
 ment but the rhythmical plunging of the spoons, 
 no sound but the rhythmical .slop, slop, as the semi- 
 solid mass was thrust into the eaters' mouths. A 
 taciturn lot they were, doubtless from necessity rather 
 than from inclination, for what have they to talk 
 about ? Even the women weie silent. The guarda 
 with an air of rude authority sat at the head of the 
 floor (of course I was about to say table, when 
 I remembered that there was none) ; and soon, 
 standing before the fire to dry my steaming clothes, 
 I put him some (questions respecting the life and 
 business of the farm. The former is truly patri- 
 archal. Here there is health because there is no 
 doctor ; innocence, because there is no priest. But 
 work and weather are severe. The produce of their 
 toil is corn, potatoes, haricot-beans, g-arbanzos, and 
 maize. All this goes down to be sold in the city, 
 excepting the maize, the husk of which makes fodder 
 for the cows, while the grain is mashed and given to 
 the pigs. These are the highest-prized and best 
 attended-to of all the live stock, since the Sierra 
 
 82
 
 •H Coi-tijo in tbc Siena 
 
 Nevatla is famous for its breed of tliem, and the 
 hams of Trevelez, on the Alpujarra side, are noted 
 throughout the whole of Andahisia. 
 
 After the modest meal was ended, the ladies with- 
 drew to scour the dishes and spoons, and the men» 
 instead of telling' ribald stories — so inveterate a use 
 with civilized and Christian gentlemen who live on 
 lower elevations — began to })eel the maize, tossing the 
 cobs in one heap, and the grain in another. This 
 was the signal for a microscopic, bandy-legged table 
 to be fished out somewhere from u})stairs and thrust 
 into a corner of the hearth ; my guide appeared from 
 feeding the horses and unloading the capacho.s; loaded 
 the microscopic table, and down we sat. And while 
 the good things disappeared apace, the well-cooked 
 veal and sausage, the brandy and the wine, the cort't- 
 jerofi went on working, ever working, tossing the cobs 
 in one heap, and the grain in another ; and stealing 
 from time to time (though always without desisting 
 from their task) a sidelong, horrible, painful, patient 
 glance at the tempting table of the senorivo. 
 
 My bedroom, to which my host conducted me^ 
 was in the granary. The floor was piled with grain 
 above the level of a tall man's head ; but in the 
 corner next the door a hole was scooped, and in the 
 hole I found my couch made ready, two sacks of 
 maize, a small straw palliasse, a pillow, and a blanket. 
 'I sank to rest, or rather, with the intention of resting. 
 Not so the fleas, and hopeless of driving off' those 
 desperate and clearly anti-vegetarian battalions, I 
 lifted my wearv limbs, or what was left of them, 
 and dozed in a sitting position on the grain. Rats,. 
 
 85
 
 too, kept lirushing against my legs, or chattered and 
 squabbled in my very ear. At length, when quite 
 three hours must have dragged away, I saw a light 
 and heard a step outside the door. One of the 
 herdsmen was going downstairs to feed the cattle, 
 and wrapjjing my blanket round my frozen shoulders 
 I followed him. The hour was only one. There, in 
 the faint light of the embers, and each of them 
 enveloped iu his mania, the slaves were fast asleep ; 
 for the master and his wife and daughters slept 
 upstairs. There, too, a-sprawl among the rest, his 
 head artistically wrapped in a scarlet handkerchief, 
 was Pincho. I asked the herdsman who preceded 
 me downstairs how long he had re])osed. " Two 
 hours," he said ; " I go to bed at eleven." Then, 
 noticing amazement on my face, he added, " O 
 senorito. it's a hard life : even the beasts fare better." 
 The giiarda, to do him justice, was also up 
 betimes, and swearing at the slugabeds for slumber- 
 ing after three. As for myself, I drew the bolt 
 of the cortijo door and looked into the night. 
 The lesser summits, crowned with leaden cloud, 
 shot up their angry crests on every side save one. 
 Upon this side alone the sky was stormless and serene. 
 Just in the middle of the infinitely pale yet in- 
 finitely lumhious ether, a single star was burn- 
 ing ; and lit by the lamplike glitter of the star, and 
 pillowed in new-shaken snow, rested the ageless 
 features of imperial Xolair. 
 
 84
 
 The Sun Rising on the Peak of the Veleta 
 
 VI 
 
 The Summit of Xolair 
 LITTLE before the break of day we 
 saddled and set oat on our aerial voy- 
 age, for overnight our goal had ])een a 
 human habitation ; but now our cjuest 
 was undeniably towards the sun and 
 stars. At first the path itself was indistinguishable, 
 though Pincho knew it to ascend between two files of 
 Cyclopean boulders protruding violet-black against the 
 Nile-green sky ; so that the landniarks guided us, and 
 not the road. x\n hour of zigzag clauibering brought 
 us perpendicularly over the cort}jo,uo\\' visible enough. 
 Nobody was yet astir. The roof was like an open 
 book, back upwards, bound in dingy, salnH)n coloured 
 cloth; the threshing-floor beside it like a finger-ring. 
 Browning recurred to me at once ; but round about 
 both book and ring was cast a rosary of trees. 
 
 85
 
 Oralla^a 
 
 The heavens grew lighter and shed then- light 
 iijion the earth. I now was able to contrast the Alps 
 of Switzerland with these of Spain. AVe entered 
 upon a region sparsely overgrown with pigmy oaks, 
 unpleasant to the eye, at once decrepit and impuberal. 
 Despite, or possibly by reason of, their presence, naked- 
 ness and wildness were the prevalent features of the 
 scene. The peaks of Switzerland have commonly 
 a certain trimness. Villages reside beneath their pre- 
 cipices or in their interjacent valleys. Sometimes 
 a great hotel is perched within a stone's throw of 
 their top. The pines, too, have an orderly, Noah's- 
 arky look. Upon the other hand, the mountain oak 
 is sinister, unkempt, disreputable. Besides, the 
 Spanish range conveys a wider sense of atmosphere, 
 due partly to the vaster intervals from peak to peak, 
 and partly to the ex(iuisite clearness of the An- 
 dalusian air. Other, though slighter, causes are 
 the lack of vegetation and the nearness of the sea. 
 When Dr. \'on Drasch examined the Sierra to pre- 
 pare his geological report upon this region, its over- 
 whelming barrenness impressed him very forcibly. 
 '•It would seem," he said, "as though Phoenicians, 
 Romans, Visigoths, and Moors had here concerted to 
 uproot all vegetable life." Dark indeed is the his- 
 tory attaching to these mountains. From the earliest 
 time the shadow, not of the goatherd's staff, but of 
 the sword, })rojects across their boundary. His- 
 torians have recorded that the ancient dwellers in 
 this Moiis Solorhis * of the Romans were ever a 
 
 ■^ According to Saint Isidore [Etymologies, Book xiv. ch. 8) 
 Solorius is from sol oricns, corrupted by the Granadinos into sol y 
 
 m
 
 Zbc Summit of I'olaiv 
 
 troublesome and wuilike race, j)artaking- of the spirit 
 and complexion of tliese angry fastnesses. The 
 •same state of things continued beneath the Muslim 
 rule. According to the Arab Ben-Ketib-Alsalami, 
 there rose a certain desperado, Suar-Hamboun el 
 Kaisi, who styled himself " the King of the Moun- 
 tains of Xolair," and built innumerable castles in 
 the Alpujarra, until a body of the Caliph's troops sur- 
 rounded and decapitated him. Law-abiding persons, 
 whether Mussulman or Christian, spoke of the grim 
 Sierra with alarm. A thirteenth-century geographer, 
 who calls it " the mighty ^Mountain of Siler " {C/icHr- 
 el-TedJ), observed that "it is never free from snow 
 the whole year through. Therein the snow is heaped 
 for ten years at a time, looking like black stones, and 
 when thev break it the white snow lies beneath.* 
 Oil top of the mountain no herb mav thrive or 
 animal exist, by reason of the cold ; but further 
 down are many fertile villages. Five and twenty 
 rivers have their source upon this mountain, nine of 
 which join current with the Guadalquivir. Nobody 
 
 aire, i.e. the Mountains of the Sun ami Air : Arabic Xolair, Xuleyr, 
 or Che'ot'l Ats-salech. Edrisi said of this range that '"it has many 
 castles on its slopes, and one is Hisn-Farira, from which the 
 nuts are named." Farira, if Conde may be credited, was latterly 
 Ferreyra, in the jurisdiction of Guadix. 
 
 * The contrary is really what occurs. "A deep hollow sur- 
 rounded by high ridges is called in the Sierra Nevada a corral. 
 Owing to the shape of the Sierra these corrales are numerous. 
 In them the snow accumulates and grows as hard as marble, so 
 that it is difficult to scratch it even slightly with the toughest, 
 sharpest tool. It forms a series of layers varying in shade, 
 according to the time that it has lain, from black beneath to 
 white upon the surface. "^ — Rubio, Del Mar al Cielo, p. 354. 
 
 87
 
 (Bra nab a 
 
 may climb to the peak unless at midsummer, and 
 there are found a great variety of virtuous herbs ; 
 but the ascent can only be made from three spots. 
 Those who reach the top descry to a vast distance, 
 even to Tlemcen, albeit they abide in peril of the 
 cold." 
 
 Thus have the height and steepness of the Sierra, 
 its uninhabited character, and the horrid deeds com- 
 mitted in the war with the Moriscos, combined to 
 give it a strange and sinister report at everv period 
 of the past. " Cette grande montag'ne^'' wrote Bertaut 
 de Rouen, two hundred and fifty years ago, " qui est 
 couverte de nelge en tout temps, et qui Vestoit alors 
 qtCil falsoH encore nn fort grand chaud, est d cinq 
 lieiies de la Ville de Grenade ; et ainsi on pent dire qu'elle 
 en a plus de cinq ou six de haut : car depuis la Ville 
 on monte tonjours pour y alter.'''' Truly a novel system 
 for measuring the heights of mountains ! 
 
 Wondrous and weird tales, then, have gone abroad 
 concerning the lakes and caverns, the peaks and 
 precipices of Xolair. Its loftiest summit bears the 
 title of BoabdiTs sire, precipitator of the downfall of 
 Granada, the warlike and ill-fated Muley Hacen, 
 whose spirit is rumoured by the villagers of the Alpu- 
 jarra to hover nightly round his gelid and enormous 
 cenotaph. Next to the ominous crest of Mulhacen, 
 and on the southern side of it, upsoars the vast 
 Picacho del Veleta, not, as Ford declared, a cone, 
 but perpendicular at one extremity, in token of some 
 appalling landslip infinitely long ago. Millions upon 
 millions of tons of slate and granite must have 
 whirled through space onto the crags below ; millions 
 
 88
 
 Zbc Summit of Jo I air 
 
 upon millions of years since then have covered up 
 the giant debris w ith millions upon millions of tons 
 of snow. 
 
 Viewed from Granada, the precipice of the N'eleta 
 seems measurable by inches. Viewed from a moderate 
 distance, such as six or seven miles, it gives to the 
 Picacho the aspect of a coffin large enough to hold 
 the bones of all humanity from the Deluge onward. 
 In the colossal cleft between Mulhacen and the 
 Veleta nestles a lake, that of Vacares, in which, if 
 fame says true, an old-time handet rots entombed 
 for all eternitv, plunged by an avalanche beneath 
 the fathomless, unnaturally noiseless water, and 
 overshadowed by the monster spires. Bertaut de 
 Rouen had also heard of this laguna. "'"An phis 
 haut de cette montagne^ il y a lui fort grand Lac 
 dcmt on conte mesme des prodiges ; car on d'lt qiion 
 ny s^anroit troiiver de fond, et apparemment cest de- 
 la et de la quantite de neiges fondues qui iy ramas- 
 sent, qui v'lennent les deux rivieres du Darro et 
 du Xenil, quoy que Teau en so'it iViine nature fort 
 dijf'erente ; car on ni'avoit d'lt a Madrid que Teau du 
 Xenil estoit mortellc. Je trouvay Id seulement quelle 
 donnoit dcs fliuv et des maux d'cstomac a ceux qui ny 
 estoient pas accoi'itumez. Et ce nest pas nicrvcillc, car 
 cest de lean de neige toute pure.'''' 
 
 Over these mountains, therefore, legentl and 
 superstition hold a potent sway. Now we are told 
 of buried treasure, heavier and richer than all 
 the hort of all the Nibelungs ; or now of a troop 
 of phantom soldiery ; now of a hermit, frozen in 
 his sterile cell ; now of the " soul in sorrow " of a 
 
 89
 
 CBrauaJa 
 
 monarch, or a miser, or a murderer. " A shepherd 
 was tending liis flock by the side of the lake, and 
 there came two men in strange dress, one holding 
 an ojoen book, and the other a fishing-net. And 
 the man read from his book, and said, ' Cast the 
 net.' And he cast it, and drew up a black horse. 
 And he with the book said, ' This is not it ; cast 
 again.' And he cast and drew up a pied horse. 
 And he with the book said, ' This is not it ; cast 
 again.' And he cast and drew up a white horse. 
 And he with the book said, 'This is it.' And they 
 both mounted on the white horse and rode away, and 
 the shepherd saw them no more." 
 
 "These shepherds believe that some day the lake 
 will burst through the mountain and destroy Granada. 
 One night a shepherd stantling by the lake heard a 
 voice say — 
 
 ' Shall I strike and break the dike? 
 Shall I drown Granada town ? ' 
 
 And another voice answered, ' Not yet.' " 
 
 This tale is taken from Ga::pacho, one of the 
 extremely few sensible non-Spanish books on Spain 
 written about the middle of last century. Fifteen or 
 twenty years before, the anonymous author of ^ 
 Summer in Andalucia repeated an absurd belief that 
 Mulhacen was inaccessible ; and earlier still, in 1799, 
 the Spanish Government defrayed the expenses of 
 a costly expedition to recover a ]\Iorisco treasure 
 rumoured to be buried in the Barranco de Guarnon. 
 Lawyers and labourers and clerks were all despatched 
 to this ravine, a lonesome spot, secluded from the 
 usual track of passengers ; and the story of the 
 
 90
 
 Zbc Summit of Jo lair 
 methodicalthough silly search ivads nowadays like 
 some romance of the West Indian main. 
 
 In course of time we crossed the Trados del Aire, 
 or "Meadows of the Air." I need not add that 
 "meadows" is here a term completely fanciful. 
 Before us were mighty wastes ascending ever, co\ered 
 for miles with those decrepit oaks or scanty shrubs, 
 spinose and tempest-broken. But I was compensated 
 from another quartei-. The day was dawning- fast. 
 A singular effect of broadness grew into the sky. 
 The eyes of Nature seemed to open and her breast to 
 throl). In these high parts the clearest heaven, as 
 daybreak blushes forth in maiden promise of 
 approach, assumes an ugly ashen tone, a crude, inert 
 (hstemper, priming the skyey dome as though to 
 make it ready for the myriad shades of morning. 
 Then, as these last appear, the Nile-green of the 
 waning night, and afterwards that lifeless and }n-e- 
 paratory grey, are superseded, first by pearly white, 
 then gold, then rose, and lastly blue. Each of these 
 colours, advancing through innumerable gradations 
 from pallor to obscurity, occasions, as it overlaps its 
 predecessor, another nuiltitude of confluent and 
 complementary hues, namelessly beautiful, alluring 
 rather to the soul than to the senses. From j)atient 
 watching I have learned by heart, though not by 
 memory, the order of their rotation. I can even 
 imao-e them as I write : but I cannot describe them. 
 I console myself with thinking that nobody could 
 describe them. 
 
 The Sierra soon became as marvellous as the sky. 
 N'allevs and chines grew more and more distin- 
 
 91
 
 ©l•ana^a 
 
 guishable; at first about their silhouetted edges 
 only : then troops of riant sunbeams peered into 
 their tenebrose recesses until the cold earth, meeting 
 their mild regard, seemed to be smiling back, at 
 them. Hard-featured juts, and pinnacles, and crags, 
 as old as night herself, grew flushed with exquisite 
 and tender sanguine, displaying their golden neck- 
 laces of lichen or brooches of rare saxifrage, with as 
 it were the guileless vanity of girlhood. Even the 
 oak-boles seemed to expand their crooked arms, and 
 deck their wrinkles in a younger and more lustrous 
 foliage. 
 
 Now and again thin wreaths of mist, like whiffs 
 from a giant's pipe, scurried across our faces, until 
 we left that mist behind us and below. Near the 
 Penon de San Francisco, a ridge of gaunt black cliffs, 
 we came upon the earliest snows, resembling lumps 
 of cuckoo-spit, capping the scrubby herbage. As we 
 advanced, the lumps grew more profuse, until the 
 landscape mimicked with astonishing truth the 
 aspect of a gale at sea — of grey-green waters flecked 
 with streaks of foam ; and finally, a couple of miles 
 beyond, all was white except where peaks or boulders 
 broke the surface. 
 
 The air grew steadily colder, the snow deeper, the 
 Picacho larger. Between the mountain and ourselves 
 extended an immense barranca, so that our course 
 was not direct but semicircular. Black and white, 
 to right and left, above us and beneath, the fields of 
 the Sierra, scarred or dimpled here and there with 
 hollows and ravines. Fringing the eastern sky a 
 jagged range of spiring sunnnits, haloed with blazing 
 
 92
 
 "Cbc Summit of I'olair 
 
 sun, siift'iised w ith saffron s|)leii(l()iir. Awav into the 
 west tlie Vega of Granada, lier whelkv lands not all 
 unmufffcd from the hrunie ; liei- niotclike cottaEfes 
 
 The Lake of the Mares 
 
 and houses ; her ruddy walls and towers ; her files of 
 feathery cypress; her sugar factory with its cream v 
 smoke etherealized by distance into creamier 
 vapour. 
 
 Deeper and deeper grew the snow. Our animals, 
 pastern-deep, began to flag and sometimes floundered 
 on the border of a drift ; but there was the Picacho, 
 loftier and larger by degrees. Another hour should 
 bring me to his footstool. While this eternity elapsed, 
 I marked the spiky barrier that confronted us ; for 
 by this time we had described the sweeping semicircle. 
 Our road lay right ahead, over a score or so of steep 
 and large inclines, with dangerous pits between : but 
 Pincho knew these well. The l^icacho now was on 
 
 9J3
 
 Oiana&a 
 
 the left, the barrier stretching many a mile upon his 
 right and capped with many a lofty and fantastic 
 pinnacle. The most remarkable and human-shaped 
 of these is called, ingeniously enough, the Friar of 
 Capileira. 
 
 A little further on, beneath the actual shadow 
 of the barrier, a lake lies bosomed in a snowy, 
 silent cavity of the mountains. This is the " Mare's 
 Lake,"' or Laguna de las Yeguas, about a hundred 
 yards in length by thirty broad. Its edge was 
 frozen at this time of year, bat Pincho, dropping 
 on his knees beside the ice, contrived to drink 
 extravagantly. Spaniards are mighty quafFers and 
 connoisseurs of water : in fact, comparing the two 
 nations, I have noticed that on discovering a stream 
 or pond the tendency of the Englishman is to get 
 inside if ,• the tendency of the Spaniard, to get it 
 inside h'nii. Where one laves, the other laps. " In 
 the matter of water-drinking," said Ganivet, "we 
 know no rivals on the globe " ; and again, " with my 
 compatriots thirst becomes an appetite. Some, 
 imbibing water, imagine themselves to be eating- 
 food." On this account Pincho related to me with a 
 wry face how several months before two English 
 army officers whom he was guiding had stripped and 
 plunged into this lake head foremost. Did they not 
 drink it also, I inquired. " No, Senorito," was the 
 disgusted return ; " you see they brought a dozen 
 bottles of a whitish kind of brandy." 
 
 We lunched beside the lake — some slices of cold 
 sausage, bread, and snow-water. The air, though 
 sharp, was not uncomfortably cold, and stimulated 
 
 94-
 
 Z\ic Summit of Volair 
 
 hunger raix-ly. We wished our pockets had con- 
 tained more fare; hut then we (|uite expected 
 to be hack at the C'ortijo hefore nightfalL Even 
 our store of cigarettes had stayed behind. There- 
 fore, as soon as our scanty meal was swallowed, even 
 to the crumbs, we left the patient horses without 
 tethering them, and set upon the final stretch of the 
 Veleta, whose prodigious mass shoots heavenward 
 from close beside the border of the mere. Towards 
 its top the mountain is shaken together of loose and 
 slippery laminas of slate ; and the snow, new-fallen 
 though thawing rapidly beneath the noonday sun, 
 would reach my hip at least one step in every three. 
 Our going, in fact, was mainly guesswork, aggravated 
 by the portage of my cameras. In this way, with 
 distracting slow ness, we covered a thousand or fifteen 
 hundred feet, until the horses dwindled into specks 
 against the dazzling snow, and even the lake looked 
 insignificant and puny. Beneath us now I spied the 
 Friar of Capileira, silent, white-hooded, like a good 
 Carthusian, slanting his head upon the platelike 
 surface of the water, as though to nunnble grace 
 before a meal. 
 
 Suddenly the angle grew less steep. The last com- 
 ponent slabs of the Picacho projected definitely into 
 space. A wind of terrific violence and impact, 
 piercingly cold besides, issuing from a thousand 
 places simultaneously, was whirling round and 
 round and beating up and down. Luckily the sky 
 was clear, save for some glittering clouds above the 
 flexuous horizon of Alhama. I fancied them to be 
 the spirits of departed mountains, returning from 
 
 95
 
 (3rana^a 
 
 another universe to commune with this new Sierra. 
 Not Spain alone, but all the world seemed at my 
 feet. I saw a dozen maps at once, life size as Nature's 
 pulse desio;ned and coloured them. Yonder, exactly 
 on a level with ourselves, was Mulhacen ; yonder the 
 Alcazaba ; yonder, upon the seaward side, the Cerro 
 del Caballo and the Tajo de los Machos. And 
 then the sea ! Smoothness and Huency in one, its 
 larger part was pale cobalt, its lesser part a lucid 
 mazarine. Two mains join here about a strip of 
 azure water famed in history and song — 
 
 " quella face stretta, 
 Ov' Ercole segno li stioi rigiiardi, 
 Archioche I'uom pin oltre non si metta." 
 
 This was enveloping Gibraltar, and enveloped in its 
 turn by African mountains warping south and south. 
 Right underneath the wastage of the great Picacho 
 the billowy Alpujarra, ran or roamed with warworn 
 slopes, more truly sealike in suggestiveness of strife 
 and storm than ever the hushed and tranquil Medi- 
 terranean. On every side except this last a century 
 of variform Sierras, some with gold or ruddy whins 
 upon their ample flank ; others with red, or grey, or 
 tawnv stone ; others, as ours, with deej), unsullied 
 snow ; the ranges of Iznalloz and Parapanda ; the 
 Sierras of Baza and Segura, Ronda and Tejeda, 
 Gata, Sagra, Lujar, Cazorla, Gador, Huetor, Alfacar, 
 Almijara, Jarana, Grazalema, and Filabres ; the 
 Sierra Morena severing Andalusia from La Mancha, 
 the vineyards and the corn from groves and orchards 
 in whose neighbourhood the indolent Guadalquivir 
 absorbs the luscious scent of orange-bloom and 
 
 96
 
 Zbc Summit of Volair 
 
 almond ; the Pico del Lucero ; the C'eno of San 
 Cristobal ; the ^Mountains of Kxtreniadura, Portu- 
 gal, Alhania, Loja, and Algarinejo ; the "throats" 
 
 Mulbacen and the Alcazaba from the Summit of the Veleta 
 
 or passes of El Lobo and La Ragua, leading, the 
 former from the Alpujarra to Guadix, the latter 
 to the villages included in the ]\Iarquisate of the 
 Zenete. 
 
 Why does distance please ? Hazlitt, whose essay I 
 found mvself recalling now, has failed to state his 
 argument convincingly, or even clearly. " Distant 
 objects please, because in the first place they imply 
 an act of space and magnitude, and because, not 
 being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe 
 them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy. 
 In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound 
 the horizon, the mind is, as it were, conscious of all 
 
 97 t;
 
 (Brana^a 
 
 the conceivable objects and interests that lie between. 
 We imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim ; 
 strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn 
 circle, or to ' descry new lands, rivers, and moun- 
 tains,"' stretching far beyond it : our feelings, carried 
 out of themselves, lose their grossness and their husk, 
 are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten 
 into beauty, turning to ethereal mould, skv- tinctured. 
 ^Ve drink the air before us and borrow a more refined 
 existence from objects that hover on the brink of 
 nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull 
 sight we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of 
 unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with 
 hopes and wishes and more charming fears. "' 
 
 This theory is trite and superficial. The truth is 
 deeper down. Our love of distance is engendered in 
 our only age of absolute optimism, that is, childhood. 
 Distant objects please us now because thev bring 
 with them a reminiscence of our infancy, when all that 
 seemed far off' seemed also inoffensive. Nay, what 
 seems farther oft' than infancv itself; and yet it 
 soothes and pleases us to contemplate its recollection .'' 
 Childhood, delicate, poetic, unsuspecting, is far more 
 se.isitive to space and magnitude than mere maturity. 
 The hedge of the next field looks to a little child the 
 confine of another universe. ^Vhat will he think of 
 the hills upon the far horizon ? 
 
 Another of Hazlitt's errors is the following:. He 
 preconceives that every distant object must be hazy. 
 But here, upon the Sierra Nevada, the farther oft' an 
 object is the more intensely clear it looks ; and a 
 traveller has observed, with perfect truth, that 
 
 9S
 
 Tbc Summit ot folaii- 
 
 " nothini^, however small, seems capable of being 
 hidden from our view.'" 
 
 Distance in landscape is almost alwavs more or less 
 connected with a mountain or with mountains. Moun- 
 tains, indeed, involve a double distance, perpendicular 
 and horizontal — twin distances that interact uncjues- 
 tionably to increase the grandeur of the general mass. 
 Then height, of course, is irremediably linked with 
 heaven — a prettv though futile fiction, born with 
 our birth and diligently fostered by the Church. 
 
 On a fine day in the Sierra Nevada the landscape 
 never fades from the dull sight bv reason of simple 
 distance. It disappears from very smallness, as 
 though we looked at it beneath a microscope (and 
 so we virtually do) ; but even the farthest detail has 
 as vigorous an outline as the stone on which I rest 
 my pocket-book to make this memorandum. 
 
 Just as I had jotted down the words, a great 
 brown eagle left his cranny in the cliff, beat the aii' 
 into obedience, and rested motionless between the 
 earth and heaven. His head was turned towards us, 
 and he seemed to scrutinize me through and tlu-ouoh. 
 I felt a pang of shame. He filled the vastness which 
 overwhelmed my guide and me. His look was that 
 of superhuman greatness ; for the eagle sees further 
 than we do, and soars higher. 
 
 Two reasons why I would consider him superior to 
 ourselves. 
 
 99
 
 
 A Snowstorm Coming- up the Mountains 
 
 VII 
 
 The Snowstorm 
 
 \Y it's all the same to you,"' said 
 Pincho, lookinf]^ intently down into 
 the west, " well begin to get back.'''' 
 I picked up my cameras, but 
 asked him why. 
 " Because the weather up here is very strange. 
 Ifs not what you're accustomed to below. Some- 
 times upon these heights it's very crazy.''' 
 
 While he spoke he still kept looking westwards. 
 I followed the direction of his eyes. Beside the 
 spiky top of the Trevenque, and over the valley of 
 the Monachil, was a diminutive round white cloud, no 
 bigger than a puff of cannon-smoke. The under })art 
 of it was slightly grey. Unlike the cumulus resting 
 101
 
 (Srana^a 
 
 delicately on the far horizon of Alhama, this cloudlet 
 seemed incapable of change, hanging with heavy 
 insio-nificance above the snow-fields and the river. 
 Pincho was right. Its very stagnancy inspired alarm, 
 
 AVe began the descent, springing from jut to jut 
 adown the slaty steeps, and covered two thousand 
 feet of breakneck climbing in rather over half an 
 hour. When we had gone some distance I called to 
 mind the prr7)iiere, in Madrid, of a comedy by one 
 of my familiar friends. This was to be the night ap- 
 pointed ; and so, tearing a leaf from my sketch-book, 
 I wrote him a telegraphic message of goodwill, to be 
 transmitted on our arrival at Granada, and dated in 
 iocular lan^uao-e from thesunnnit of these mountains. 
 
 Then we continued. Underneath our toes the 
 pinVhead lakelet grew to a blue-black bead, next to 
 the bigness of a hand -mirror, and so by regular 
 degrees until we caught the glimmer of the fretted 
 ripples, and the mere was once again life-size. There 
 were our scraggy steeds, nosing patiently and fruit- 
 lessly amid the snow, a dozen yards fiom where we 
 had abandoned them. As Pincho hastily adjusted 
 the capaihos, muttering a kind of mingled curse and 
 prayer, I realized that the storm-cloud had swollen 
 to an alarming bulk. By some illusory effect, which 
 doubtless has a simple scientific cause, it seemed to 
 race upon, yet never to come up with, us, though all 
 around was falling in its subtle grasp. It rested on 
 the water at the further end of the lake ; it poked 
 enormous fingers into the bowels and the fissures of 
 the mountain ; but where we stood was free for quite 
 a while. At length a fine mist blew about our faces, 
 
 102
 
 Zbc Snowstorm 
 
 seeming to sprinkle us, not with drops, but clew. It 
 might have been the fair serein of any sunnner's eve. 
 IJut this did not occur in sunnner, nor was it the 
 time of twilight ; and the mist, for all its mildness, 
 was the herald and precursor of the snowstorm. 
 
 We pushed away, I mounted, Pincho, the better 
 to inspect our trail, afoot. So far, our prints had 
 undertjone no change. No earthlv wavfarer had 
 redisturbed those virgin fields except a single fowl, 
 the frail concatenation of whose tread ran crosswise 
 from our own. At first we travelled very fairly, until 
 the mist began to gather substance and snap asunder 
 the last shafts of the sun. Then, just for a moment, 
 I caught a farewell glimpse of the Picacho, infinitely 
 overhead, not motionless but seeming to upbreak 
 above the elements, undiademed atop, only his massv 
 neck torquated with the storm. Swiftness and majesty 
 in one he soared away. The prospect grew more 
 awful and unearthly every instant. Boulders that 
 proved to be within a stone's throw assumed a filmy 
 and fantastic form behind the dim, diaphanous veil 
 that hung and scoured at once across their jagged 
 edges. Deeper and darker, swifter and colder and 
 moister grew the fog. A horrible pain invaded all 
 mv limbs, then numbness, more appalling still. 
 iVIontaigne declares that " even to fear, courage is 
 required."' If this be so, I was as brave as anybody 
 under heaven, for my panic knew no bounds. Nor 
 was I alone in these emotions. Pincho, leading the 
 way, was outwardly composed ; but the horses, 
 scrambling frantically forward with distended eyes 
 and nostrils, exhibited a pitiful dismay. 
 103
 
 0rana^a 
 
 I thouffht it better to tumble from the saddle and 
 essay to walk. Apart from other adverse circum- 
 stances, each step required at least the toil of three. 
 First there was the extraction of the foot from the 
 snow, then the depth of snow to be surmounted, 
 and finally the onward step. Our track, until it 
 merged into the mist, was still distinguishable, but 
 this was not for long. Enemies were advancing 
 upon us, as multitudinous as all the sands of all the 
 seas, stealthy and skilful in attack, themselves invul- 
 nerable, though ruthless to the vanquished. A dozen 
 snowflakes fell upon my sleeve. I brushed them off, 
 vet before I could raise my hand again, a dozen more 
 had fallen on the back of it. 
 
 The caresses of a well-loved woman practised in 
 deceit are not more subtle, more insistent, more 
 insinuating. Oddly enough, a similar thought 
 occurred to Pincho. Half turning round, he said, 
 " Estd amorosa la nievey (" The snow is amorous.'') 
 An epithet of more than academic nicety, uttered by 
 a peasant who can neither read nor write. Such is 
 Andalusia. How truly he had drawn the character 
 of those feline flakes. Of course he meant to say 
 that the snow was soft, and treacherous, and tender ; 
 not the vigorous snow of winter, that makes an 
 adamantine pavement or pipes an honest warning ; 
 but the snow that kisses and ensnares in crafty 
 silence, the builder of false bridges, the fell con- 
 triver of the avalanche, the amorous snow ; snow 
 the woman ! 
 
 The sky was like a great grey sieve held up against 
 white paper. Largeness and confinement united in 
 104
 
 "Cbc Snows toiin 
 
 appalling comradeship, the one to smother us, the 
 other to mislead. The less we could espv ahead, the 
 bigger grew the vastness, the more I felt to be 
 obliterated from my view ; in spite of which one 
 strip of narrowness drew out into another, and their 
 series seemed to have no end in number and 
 monotony. The waste by now had grown unpathed. 
 Pincho, I take it, smelt our whereabouts with the 
 instinct of a born .rcrrano ; but twice or thrice we 
 plunged into a drift; at other times the snow was 
 only to our knee. 
 
 The next state or stage into which I fell is better 
 illustrated by another's words than by my own. 
 "Nature, having discovered me on one side, had 
 covered me on the other. Having disarmed me of 
 strength, she armed me witii insensibilitv, and a 
 regular or soft apprehension." Presently the " soft 
 apprehension" yielded to none at all. Mv mind was 
 less exhausted than my muscles. I thought my end 
 was both inevitable and immediate ; and yet I had 
 no fear of death, and only very little curiosity. My 
 musing was chiefly retrospective, and commonplace 
 at that. My scruples of a future state were inter- 
 ested and ignoble. All of us as Death appears in 
 the doorway are more or less of attitudinarians. I 
 have attended numberless deathbeds, and always 
 found the same misgiving ; zchat will the bystanders 
 obse?'VC, and zchnt icill thctj report of us? Pluck has 
 something to do with this, but vanity a great deal 
 more. We step into our cerements with histrionic 
 self-conceit. Let me confess, then, with an almost 
 anti-Christian candour, that I both exonerate and 
 
 105
 
 (5 V a n a ^ a 
 
 extol the deathbed attitudinarian, the more especially 
 if he succeeds in demonstrating that (judiciously 
 employed) the final moment of our lives is equal in 
 importance to the sum of all the rest. Alonso Cano 
 withdrew his wrinkled lips from the crucifix because 
 it was too ugly. Byron, that protean votary of la 
 pose — social, moral, literary and linguistic — thought 
 fit to die in Greek ; as if a man could ever speak a 
 foreign language as sincerely as his own. Each of 
 these artists posed in what he knew. But the arch- 
 pnseur of all was that illustrious rogue of whom it is 
 related that nothing in this world became him like 
 his leaving of it. This is indeed to pose imperish- 
 ably. 
 
 I thought of writing something valedictory, but 
 naturally enough I could not bend my fingers. This 
 shows that my intelligence was partly paralysed, for it 
 oi.ly dawned upon me very gradually that in my pocket 
 was the telegraphic message to my friend. It pro- 
 ceeded to dawn upon me, furthermore, that here was 
 a perfect, providential pose. Night and death were 
 joining hands to overwhelm me. I smiled at them. 
 A search-party, or if not this, the earliest visitors 
 together with the following spring, would drag my 
 unhouseled bones to light, and in the pocket of my 
 corduroy coat — my telegraphic message to my friend. 
 What w^ould they say ? Why, what an admirable 
 cynicism in the very grasp of death — to scribble a 
 facetious telegram and make no mention of that 
 sinister embrace. I felt a kind of monstrous satis- 
 faction. After all, an idle chance contributed to my 
 renown. With this my mind grew quite at rest. I 
 
 106
 
 "Cbc Snowstorm 
 
 sunk into the snow with ahsohitc contentment. 
 "Leave me*" (I think I cried). "Give me mv 
 blanket and leave nie. To-morrow I will follow you ; 
 vuiuanii^ muHuna.'''' My utterance seemed thick and 
 inarticulate, as though I were aniesthetized. Pincho 
 was at my side. " Senorito,'"" he shouted, "get up ; 
 for God's sake get up." 
 
 I felt that to rise was the easiest task in all the 
 world, yet not a limb would stir. So Pincho 
 dragged me up and beat me brutally about the 
 head and face. One of his blows hurt. It struck 
 me on the temple, where I suppose a fragment 
 of existence still remained. The pain, as hot as 
 scalding water, appeared to trickle down me; and 
 as I tried to step, once more my boots went forward. 
 So that my legs were hitherto my own. My will, 
 together with all its furniture and gimcracks, was 
 evidently Pincho's. Where now was all my Latin 
 and Greek, my history, my Christianity, and so 
 forth .? 
 
 There is no word in the English language to 
 indicate my manner of making progress. I did not 
 tramp or plod, for tramj)ing and plodiling imply a 
 definite fatigue; but here all sense of feeling had 
 worn itself away. Of course my strength was ebbing, 
 and vet 1 knew no strain. There may have been 
 exertion in the snow which bound my limbs, or in 
 the cold which petrified them ; but in myself I was 
 aware of none. 
 
 The rest of what befell was subsequently told me 
 by my guide. It seems that after several hours of 
 this unequal combat the dangerous zone was over- 
 
 107
 
 passed, the cold grew bearable, and sheets of snow 
 gave place to sheets of water. Pincho and the horses 
 were nearly dead ; I was completely so. I have a 
 notion, infinitely slight, of walking, rolling, or being 
 pushed or carried down a sticky bank, and then 
 being thrust towards a shadowy mound, which 
 proved to be a goatherd's hut, deserted, the highest 
 in the whole Sierra. Although I thought myself 
 upon the other side of death, this spurred me to a 
 last galvanic effort and I stood. An instant after- 
 wards nature surrendered me for good and all, body 
 and brain and soul, a chattel propped on end, with- 
 out volition to conceive or strength to execute ; 
 until, deposited by Pincho or by chance before the 
 cavelike entrance to the hovel, I dropped, as lifeless 
 as a log, across that unexpected threshold. 
 
 108
 
 A Wild Scene in the Sierra Nevada 
 
 Mil 
 
 Revival 
 
 ,HEN I awoke, or came again to life, I 
 found myself upon a sodden, earthen 
 floor, with water trickling from above 
 into my nostrils, eyes, and mouth (for 
 I was gasping hard). The horses, 
 fellow inmates of our shelter, were munching some 
 mysterious fodder (it proved to be the cabin roof), 
 and I could hear their hoofs gyrate within some inches 
 of my head. Finding my voice forthwith, I called 
 to Pincho, who dejectedly returned my salutation 
 and struck a match. Before it burnt away I sat up 
 and volunteered to help, ashamed of all my past 
 inaction. What could I help in ? I was told, in 
 makinir a li<rht and warmth that should endure. The 
 roof of the cabin, I repeat, was thatched inside with 
 109
 
 5l•ana^a 
 
 straw, and Pincho's box of matches was nearly full ; 
 so pulling part of the roof to pieces, while the horses 
 gobbled the remainder, we kindled simultaneously a 
 fire and a lamp, feeding the blaze by turns, about ten 
 minutes at a time. 
 
 The hours wore on, yet failed to stay the deluge. 
 What a rain ! I do believe it tumbled down in 
 thick, unbroken cords, not strings of drops, or drops. 
 As for the tediousness, all the nights of the year, or 
 many years, seemed to have joined together, like the 
 rain, in one interminable cable ; and when I looked 
 back upon the snowstorm, I almost fancied it some 
 faint adventure of my childhood, descried imperfectly 
 along the avenues of time. Hunger, and weariness, 
 and ^^eakness, all were here ; terrible antagonists 
 for two exanimate men. One comforting dis- 
 covery we made, but only one. The day before 
 Pincho had stuck a cigarette behind his ear, and there 
 forgotten it. We halved the sweet, small cylinder 
 with extjuisite impartiality. Then only did I com- 
 prehend the virtues of tobacco, that nuhilis herba, 
 as a picturesque old Oxford poet justly titles it ; and 
 as I puffed bent forward to inhale the smoke anew. 
 
 Yet even this finding of the cigarette was coimter- 
 balanced by a fresh disaster. Near the top of the 
 hovel projected a large stone horizontal slab, crown - 
 ino; a vent in the wall designed to carry off the 
 smoke. On one occasion Pincho, rising mechanically, 
 more than half asleep, to feed the fire, dashed his 
 oblivious brow full tilt against the border of the slab, 
 causing a wound which bled alarmingly, until I dried 
 my handkerchief and bound it up as well as I was 
 110
 
 tvcvival 
 
 able. So we existed till the dawn. \Vhen dav be<ran 
 to show it was no longer raining. The heavens had 
 wept themselves dry ; though still occasional drops 
 fell down in sullen protest at their impotence. Our 
 cabin was surroimded by a kind of bog, probabl\- at 
 ordinary .seasons a piece of cultivable land, but now 
 submerged through all its surface. Our feet came 
 up from it encased in kilos of thick mire. Then we 
 dragged forth the beasts and set our cavalcade in 
 marching order. Vet, when we prepared to move, 
 a further trial was awaiting me. Of course I had 
 unshod myself the night before : but now, on picking 
 up my boots, I could no more get them on than if 
 they had been an infant's; nor were thev merelv 
 shrunk and wrinkled, but, since the fire had dried 
 them, of a bricklike hardness. Luckily Pincho 
 had brought in his pocket a pair of military aljxtr- 
 gat<t6- — a couple of slabs of rope with black cloth 
 strips to bind them round the ankle. Not ^lercurv 
 himself could wish for lighter sandals ; so on thev 
 went and off we started. 
 
 After a spell of wretched ambulation, wc struck 
 some rising ground, and shortly afterwards a moun- 
 tain path without the surface water of the level land, 
 and only about shin-deep in mire. .VIong this path 
 we plodded. We were in the heart of the Sierra; yet 
 no Sierra was visible. The mountains from top to toe 
 seemed wrapped in lead-coloured cotton-wool. The 
 air was saturated ; so were \\e ; and the horses, 
 poor creatures, kept vomiting both from skin and 
 nostril as thick a vapour as the steam-cock of a 
 locomotive. 
 
 in
 
 0rana^a 
 
 Presently a dirty urchin crooning a lugubrious 
 copla sprang up, as well as I could see, from nowhere. 
 We took our bearings from him, and since he 
 proved to be going our way to some remote co7'ttjo, 
 set him before to serve as cicerone. That part of our 
 peregrination is completely indescribable, save by the 
 one word zcetness. We saw wetness, felt wetness, 
 smelt wetness, swallowed wetness. We even heard 
 wetness ; for the stunted bushes, as we brushed them 
 by, discharged their pattering load of moisture. The 
 whole of that spongy landscape, with ourselves into 
 the bargain, might just have fallen into a monster 
 pail, and been pulled out a dripping sop. 
 
 After three hours of this misery we reached the 
 farm. Its occupants were glad to see us, or said they 
 were. They also said thev were surprised ; and of 
 the truth of this there could be no doubt, for we saw 
 it written far beneath the level of their faces. I think 
 at first they took us for spectres, until we called for 
 the precious provisions we had recklessly left behind 
 on the preceding day — coffee and cocoa, biscuits, and 
 bread, and brandy, cold beef and Alpujarra ham, 
 Bologna sausage and tinned salmon. Surely there 
 are definable and definite occasions (and this, I plead, 
 was one of them) when gluttony is not only excusable 
 but praiseworthy. 
 
 AVhen at a sing-le sittino^ we had breakfasted and 
 lunched, and " overtaken "' — in Pincho's phrase — our 
 supper of the night before, our limbs unstiffened 
 enough for us to mount the horses, and on we moved. 
 Providence had blown us out with self-importance, 
 and besides, our stomachs were refreshed. No further 
 
 112
 
 1R c V i V a I 
 
 effort was demanded of us ; all the rest was glorv. 
 Therefore our talk for several hours was in the key 
 of mutual admiration. Had we not " })lanted a 
 pike in Flanders" by scaling the Picacho nearly in 
 November ? AVe spoke, in conseciuence, of the vulgar 
 herd of August or September al])inists with lordly 
 ]ntv coupled with disdain. Vet though we stretched 
 our exploit to the utmost, the danger out of sight 
 proved verilv a danger out of mind. I always found 
 it so. The times when I have stood upon the vei-y 
 verge of death must number (juite a score, and yet 
 they cause me, as I turn the backward pages of my 
 life, no more emotion than a barking dog. Does this, 
 I wonder, betray in me a somewhat strange resiliency, 
 or do I share it with my fellow men ? At any rate, 
 I find it at once a source of weakness and of power. 
 Of weakness, because it cuts me off from the sedate 
 vocabularv maintained to be inalienable from those 
 so-called solemn moments ; of power, because it 
 seems to show me that the groundwork of our being- 
 originates, if once we elbow off the parson with his 
 cant, not in pathos but in liumour. 
 
 Throughout this cogitation I felt a growing desire 
 to contemplate again the great Picacho del Veleta. 
 But no. The weather by now had mended, and the 
 sun, like a scolded child with traces of recent tears 
 across his face, crept timidly forth once more. The 
 mist rolled off the bases of the mountains. Here, 
 parallel to our path, was the Trevenque, and yonder 
 the Tesoro ; yet still the emperor-peak remained 
 enveloped in invisibility. 
 
 A dreary time ensued, although the sky kcjit 
 113 H
 
 ^3l•ana^a 
 
 brightening. While we were plodding up and 
 down the stony steeps, I tried to amuse myself by 
 examining Pincho as to his occupations, accomplish- 
 ments, and so forth. Once upon my sneezing he 
 took me up with a pious ejaculation, as is usual in 
 this country. I set the question to him from 
 Montaigne, " Can you tell me whence the custom 
 ariseth, to blesse and say God helpe to those that 
 sneese ? '' But Pincho on this point was not an 
 oracle. The humbler classes of this as of all lands 
 possess their superstitions, but know not why. 
 Properly considered, is not this what constitutes a 
 superstition ? 
 
 Then it occurred to me to ask him if he could 
 read and write. 
 
 " No, Senorito,''" was the quick reply. " I went to 
 school for seven years ; but the fact is, my school- 
 master was a dreadful fool." 
 
 The retort f/i*courteous was evident, but I set my 
 lips to hide a smile, and said nothing. 
 
 When we began to descend the cuesta winding in 
 an almost endless spiral towards Granada, a violent 
 surprise awaited me. Up to this point I had 
 imao-ined mv faithful Pincho to be the lowliest of 
 the lowlv. But now he expanded into nothing less 
 than a landed proprietor, A small boy working 
 in a field of potatoes adjacent to the roadway, ran 
 up to Pincho's side, and solicited employment as his 
 gardener and his goatherd ; for it seems that my 
 guide was owner of the following effects, enu- 
 merated to me in this order : 
 
 The two nags. 
 
 11-t
 
 ri\e <^oat.s. 
 
 A wife. 
 
 Two cliildren. 
 
 A cottage. 
 
 A plot of ground. 
 
 Pincho pulled up forthwith, and regarding the 
 candidate with an air of Sabine aust.eritv, delivered 
 a pithy sermon on the characteristics of the domestic 
 goat. 
 
 " The goat,"' he said, " is a delicate creature, whose 
 milk is easily turned bad by beating and (lis<>;itstosr 
 
 The boy assented. 
 
 " There are lads who ill-treat their goats and spoil 
 their milk." 
 
 The boy shook his head, to indicate that though 
 such criminals are not unknown, he for his part 
 repudiated all association with them. 
 
 " Vou will not lay the stick uj)on mv goats?" 
 
 '• Not I." 
 
 '• Nor frighten them with shouting .- " 
 
 •' No." 
 
 " Nor pelt them with stones .-"" 
 
 " May I see myself blind if I do." 
 
 This closed the examination. " Vou mav come 
 to my house at Huetor," observed the potentate, " on 
 Tiiursday morning." He then handed the infont a 
 cigarette, which the latter lighted with ])recoci()us 
 care, and shook his rein, while the other sprang 
 blithely back to his labours in the glebe. 
 
 The time had now arrived to settle our account^. 
 A pretty pair we nnist have looked ; I'incho, with 
 his bandaged, blood-stained head. I with mv stirruj)- 
 115
 
 ©vanaba 
 
 less, naked, swollen feet protruding through the 
 griniv sandals. Luckily nobody was by to raise a 
 laugh, and so for us the moment was intensely 
 solemn — as solemn as the signing of a treaty, or the 
 editor''s replies to coi'respondents in the Satunlatj 
 Revieic. First we brought our jaded animals to- 
 gether and shook hands in imposing silence, like 
 Wellington and Bliicher on the field of Waterloo. 
 Then I pulled out and told the money — twenty-four 
 pesetas and a gratification of another twenty. 
 Pincho took them and took his hat off. " Don 
 Leonardo,"" he said, with a distinct tremble in his 
 voice, " I am a poor man, though honest." (I recalled 
 Cervantes'* nasty cynical phrase to the effect that 
 honesty and poverty are incompatible, but charitably 
 kept the recollection to myself). " I like," my guide 
 went on, "to serve a gentleman; and you, Don 
 I^eonardo, are a gentleman."'"' I murmured my thanks 
 and did mv best to dispel the accusation ; for it is 
 not thought decent in ceremonious Spain to accept a 
 compliment without rejecting its conclusions, at once 
 besmirching your own fair fame and taxing your 
 panegyrist with untruthfulness, " I am a poor man, 
 Don Leonardo ; but if ever your circumstances 
 should become — as we often find them in this world ""' 
 (I caught a decided delicacy in the pause), " Pincho, 
 alias Jose Ferucindez, has always a dollar in his 
 pocket to share with you."'"' 
 
 After these moving words we grasped the hota, 
 
 and sealing our friendly sentiments in the approved 
 
 fashion began to thread the lanes of cottages upon 
 
 the outskirts of the town, when suddenly, in turning 
 
 116
 
 IRcviViU 
 
 a comer, Pincho glanced across his shoulder, called 
 to me, and ])()inted. There, it seemed innumerable 
 leagues away, towered the great Picacho, smothered 
 in spotless snow. And even while we looked, the rosy 
 radiance of the setting sun drew over that majestic 
 mass from crown to pedestal. 
 
 ir
 
 A Good Head for a height, on the Summit of the Trevenque 
 
 IX 
 
 How I Did Not Climb the Trevenque 
 
 )\V very stranj>er exclaimed my 
 friend and fellow expeditic)ni>t. the 
 lieutenant—" a baker who does not 
 know the price of bread."^ He 
 raised his eyeglass with co(iuettish 
 
 curiosity. 
 
 « If only my son were here/' sighed the old woman, 
 " I couhl inform vou in a moment. 
 
 The loaves were in a little cupboard in the passage : 
 not manv loaves all told-pcrhaps a sccre. I picked 
 out one and prodded it with pseudo-connoisseurship. 
 It seen^^d to me the very best of bread, this clean, 
 and close, and snowy bread of Spain. I dug my 
 thumbs into it, and then I weighed it on my palm, 
 and then I sniHed at it. The fact is, I was hungry, 
 119
 
 Oranata 
 
 and the smell of bread, just like the smell of earth, 
 is one of nature's perfumes. 
 
 I said : " It does not seem to weigh the Ai/o." 
 
 " No doubt," returned the beldam, with a stealthy 
 snigger ; " it is only a half-AvYo loaf." 
 
 " Well, well," put in my friend to cover my con- 
 fusion, " ask us all you please. But I warn you," he 
 added, "that if you overcharge I shall report you 
 to the Governor of Granada. You know the law 
 relating to articles of prime necessity ? " 
 
 " Quid,''' replied the old woman, without the least 
 dismay, " the Governor of Granada has other things 
 to busy him." 
 
 My friend drew out some coppers. " How much ? " 
 he asked again, this time a trifle snappishly. 
 
 A man of middle age stepped into the passage 
 from the street and cast a quick, suspicious glance at 
 both of us. " Thirty centimoSy'' he said, as brusquelv 
 as the officer before him, "that bread costs thirty 
 centhno-'ir 
 
 And yet the crone had suffered — or had taken — 
 no offence. " I told you so," she croaked with quick 
 contentment ; " he bakes and sells the bread. I only 
 keep his home in order." A look of motherly pride 
 went with the words : but (like a woman) slic it was 
 who held hei' hand out for the money. 
 
 The scene of this ado was Cajar, about one hour's 
 walking from the city of the Alhambra and the 
 Alahmares. Cajar is one of those villages, common 
 enough in this Peninsula, which seem, no doubt 
 fallaciously, to have more houses than inhabitants. 
 Even (a non plus ultra token of depopulation in this 
 120
 
 ■fljow 3 IDl^ IRot Climb the Cicvciuiuc 
 
 laud), there is no bull-ring and the c-hurch tan boast 
 uo beggar on its doorstep. Yet Cajar is clean, and 
 old, and well-to-do, and eminently decent. Before 
 we bade its cottages good-bye, wc turned into 
 the only tavern of the place, a two-roomed, 
 unpretentious shanty with a moiscl of a 
 counter, and summoning a niedia'val matron from 
 her needle, drank down a glass of thin white 
 wine, and afterwards a (juantity of water. Our 
 floor was simple brick, our table simple pine, our 
 walls the simplest whitewash, outraged by sundry 
 cln-omos of the German grade of hideousness ; those 
 chromos which become gamboge throughout as years 
 roll over them — the Kaiser's "yellow peiil '" with a 
 veno-eance. Between the chromos a broken bracket 
 contained a broken plaster image of Saint Michael 
 stamping Satnn underfoot. In spite of the arch- 
 angefs kicks and of his thrustings with a kind of 
 pickle-fork, only the image of the Tempter stayed 
 unbroken. Amid these natural and artistic charms 
 we sat, the officer, his servant, and myself on three 
 straw-seated chairs : and this was all the chamber. 
 
 Our limited provisions had been packed into an 
 empty camera case. We pulled them out and made 
 a rapid meal, breaking, together with a chunk of 
 cheese and hard-boiled egg, the bread we had just 
 purchased. Unluckily we cannot, like the camel, 
 store up a drink against the actual hour of our 
 thirst, and draw on such reserve as requisite. I 
 (luatted a glass, and then another glass ; and yet I 
 was not thirsty. Prevention in this instance proved 
 a I'-reat deal worse than cure, and later on I paid a 
 
 121
 
 ^5rana^a 
 
 heavy price for such dipsetic folly. However, .since 
 thirst and hunger must be positively felt before 
 we take their meaning even in a faint degree, I 
 suffered for the moment no uneasiness. So tjuitting 
 the empty tavern for the empty street, and empty 
 Cajar for the empty ways beyond, we lit our cigar- 
 ette, and strode, contentedly enough, towards the 
 high Sierra. 
 
 The taller crests of this, as everv loftv range, are 
 hidden at their base by humbler foothills, but in 
 its general consistencv and form the Sierra Nevada 
 of Spain suggests a pigmy Himalaya rather than the 
 Alps or Pyrenees of Europe. ChieHv composed of 
 mica shale, with little granite or cohesive stone, the 
 principal elevations tend to break awav w itli marked 
 abruptness on a single side ; and hence the ])rospect 
 from the crown of the Veleta nuist be strangely 
 like the mannnoth Gaurisankar and his neighbours 
 viewed from the forests of Sikkini. lietween the arms 
 or divisorias that go up towards each peak are deep 
 harrancos or ravines conveying streams of melted 
 snow. Often these latter have their source in crystal 
 lakes that lurk (juite near the summits of the chain ; 
 often their covnse is placid and the music of their 
 march melodious and suave ; often, a foaminu-, roarino- 
 mass, they overleap a thousand feet of precipice ; 
 often their silver passage may be traced for hours at 
 a time ; often for hours at a time thev creep con- 
 cealed within the very bowels of the mountain. 
 Animal life is not diversified. Eagles and wolves 
 are fairly numerous, but scarce and growing scarcer 
 every season is the beautiful cahra mantes^ a kind of 
 
 122
 
 Ibow 3 Si? IRot Clnnb tbc cicvciiouc 
 
 ibex, wary and keen-scented as tlie cliauiois. Forests 
 of chestnut, oak, and pine invest the lower zones ; and 
 here and there a scanty patcli of wheat or niaize 
 adjoins the white cortijo sheltered in some hollow of 
 the rocky ridges. Above the wheat and maize are 
 stretches of thin ])asture, where shej)herds keep their 
 cabins and their Hocks from spring till early autunni. 
 AVhen I was small I used to think the Al})> 
 and Himalayas rose u}) as jjerpeudicular as any 
 wall, from absolute sea-level to the clouds. 
 Reader, have vou not thought the same .' That mi>- 
 beliel, so tvpicallv and ])athetically infantile, origi- 
 nated in our atlas, where Everest and his l)rother 
 giants rise like the steepest sugar loaf against their 
 scale of altitude. So, too, misguided by our natural 
 history, did we not think in childhood that the 
 hottest climates are per «' the best ; that livers, like 
 a compensation-balance, accommodate themselves to 
 every temperature; that tropical America's unsullied 
 skies, year in, year out are rather warmer than an 
 English June; and that a lion is the bravest of all 
 beasts, scarcely excluding man r And yet upon 
 such misconceptions hangs no little of our latter-day 
 philosophy. A ])retty world we live in if no child 
 should know the truth a])out it till increasing yeais 
 and waning innocence oblige him ! However this 
 may be, our present process is akin to barbarism. 
 Parents, governesses, and the authors of school- 
 literature conspire to keep the child awhile in fairy- 
 land. Then na,ture, hustling fantasy aside, thrusts 
 up her bigger and more brutal book, and rubs tlu- 
 childish nose upon its pages. 
 12; J
 
 (Bl•ana^a 
 
 Of course it is impossible to plant the foot at 
 any certain spot and say, " Here begins the Sierra 
 Nevada." The first approach by where we moved 
 this morning, is up and over a softly shelving 
 and apparently interminable slope, with rounded 
 rocks, like elbows, here and there projecting 
 through a miserable, threadbare, stony soil. Only 
 at distant intervals yon spy a tall arretf clad 
 with unbroken snow. After a league or so of this 
 insensible incline we found, on looking back, the 
 tower of Cajar church beneath our feet. Beyond 
 and lower still, the maplike Vega of Granada 
 swept broadly round towards xVlhama and the 
 west, dotted all over its expanse with picturesque 
 demure hamlets interspersed with green and golden 
 cultivation. The atmosphere through which we 
 viewed that fair and far champaign was silent with 
 the silence of the mountains, where vision ripens at 
 the cost of sound. Fine-weather clouds half glided, 
 half gyrated overhead in delicate yet massy drift- 
 age ; a falcon transpierced the deepest azure ; and 
 once we passed a goatherd propped dead-weight 
 upon his staff. He and the rock on which he stood 
 seemed, like a statue and its base, equally contrived 
 from stone. We called to him. He did not hear, 
 or did not answer if he heard ; and so, to no re- 
 gret of mine, we strengthened our illusion. 
 
 About midday the slope, mounting to several 
 thousand feet and stopping at a shoulder, disclosed, 
 beyond the border of a desert table-land embosomed 
 in the cyclopean mountain walls, a splendid sweep 
 of precipice and peak ; of shaly ridges first, speckled 
 
 124
 
 1I3 w 3 ID 1 ^ 1H 1 C 1 nn b t b c Ci c v c n q ii c 
 
 and streaked witli foam, and after these the glitterinti 
 snow-fields of the great Sierra. Our [!;on\ was the 
 Trevenqiie. Yonder it lay, five miles ahead and 
 slightly to our left, a crest of Matterhorn steej)ness 
 rising from a group of lesser peak lets ranged about 
 their lord. 
 
 By this time I was dead athirst. The part of 
 the Sierra through which we now advanced is very 
 nearly destitute of water. Only at several miles 
 apart the regular path of mule and mountaineer 
 runs through or round a limpid, microscopic pool ; 
 and each of these the aborigines grandihxjuently 
 term a " fountain.'" To make my woeful situation 
 worse, a stream was purling in the vallev far be- 
 neath. So did the siren''s song provoke I'lvsses, 
 save that, unlike Ulysses, I was free to follow. 
 However, I glued my eyes upon that aiid peak 
 ahead, and manfully maintained our bearings. 
 Presently, by great good luck we struck one orange 
 at the bottom of the camera-case, and, not much 
 further on, one of the celebrated " fountains." 
 Plump in the middle of our track a small depres- 
 sion contained a quart or two of water. However, 
 unless disturbed, the priceless liquid was ethereally 
 clear, and overflowing very slightly showed that it 
 oozed and issued from a constant source. ^Making a 
 cup out of my half of the orange, I filled and cjuaffed 
 at will. In artificial craftsmanship a silver cup is 
 lined with gold. Here (and it appeti/ed me all the 
 more) nature, proceeding on another plan, had lined 
 my f>-olden o;oblet with fine silver. My fiiend. con- 
 temptuous of such luxuries, fell flat along the soil 
 125
 
 OianaJa 
 
 and thrust his lips into the mimic patch of moisture. 
 Each of these methods served its primal purpose ; yet 
 our discussion as to their respective value sustained 
 our chatter for the whole remainder of our outward 
 journev. 
 
 The sim was evidently stooping to the west when 
 we drew really near to our destination. Unlike his 
 brother mountains of this range, the conical Tre- 
 venque, an insinuating crest that steepens bv im- 
 palpable degrees, is chiefly sand and rock. From 
 autumn to early spring the snow, wherever it can 
 find a place to lie, affords some kind of foothold ; 
 but even in the best conditions the climb is what 
 the euphemistic Spanish terms comprometklo. The 
 topmost hundred yards are dangerous, and the final 
 \'e\\ completely sheer. In this ascent I did not 
 join my comrade. A long stagnation in the town 
 had disinured me to such violent exercise. Already 
 my feet were sore and swollen, and worst of all (so 
 great was my fatigue) a nail projecting from my boot 
 was piercing deep into my heel, without my recog- 
 nising that the pain of this was purely local. 
 
 Accordingly I took my seat upon a modest crag 
 and gazed at the Trevenque and my friend's recedino- 
 form. I found that on the south the mountain 
 overhangs a ramhla or dry river bed, lookinf^ from 
 this my perch just like a broad, white carriage -road. 
 The ramhla winds away into a velvety abyss fringed 
 with grey pinnacles and juts of Scandinavian weird- 
 ness. Sometimes these points of rock converge until 
 they almost meet, forming a kind of arch that only 
 lacks a keystone. \\\m\ is the end of the abyss I do 
 126
 
 ■fljow 3 Sij Wot Climb t Ik 'C i l v c no u c 
 
 not know. Some day I shall exploiv it to the (k-jjtli, 
 but tVoiu above it seems unfathomable. 
 
 A loii^- v.liile afterwards my friend returned, to- 
 g'ether with his a.s'i.stente. "Of course vou j)hoto- 
 o-raphed us at the top ?'' he asked, as I rejoined liini 
 on the path below the crag. He spok(.' huskily, 
 limped, and looked a sorry sji^lit all over. 
 
 I liad not photographed him. With j)rudent 
 inactivity I had passed a couple of hours, partlv in 
 staring at the scenery and ])artlv in a do/e. My 
 camera had lain beside me, but the index of the 
 changing-box had not advanced one single number. 
 
 The lieutenant was annoyed. " It's too bad," he 
 gasped ; " you |)romised to photograj)h us. I l)elieve 
 you've been asleep."' 
 
 I said I had. 
 
 " Vou English," he resumed, '"' are alwavs railing 
 at the Spaniards for their indolence ; but I can't see 
 much of the liritish energv in i/ou." 
 
 I said. •" 1 am not English. I am \Velsh ; and the 
 Welsh are rumoured to proceeil from an ancient 
 Spanish stock. My indolence is atavic." 
 
 " Whv, then,"' my friend retortetl, - vou \Velsh 
 are just degenerate Spaniards, that is all." 
 
 This time it was I mIio felt obliged to answer, 
 since foot-sore folks permit themselves a touchy sen.se 
 of self-esteem. Changing the current of the convei'sa- 
 tion, I pointed out that from the top of the Trevenque 
 to the spot where I had lingered was at least two miles. 
 " My lens," I argued, " does not distinguish persons at 
 that distance — not even a Spanish officer. Vou might 
 as well expect me to photograj)h a Hv on the Neleta.'' 
 
 1^>7
 
 ^5vana^a 
 
 They had not reached the apex of our peak. 
 They climbed upon a rocky ledge protruding out 
 and sheer eight metres from the crest ; had brushed 
 the summit with their finger-tips, but had not set 
 their toes on it. Once they had thought themselves 
 about the very brink, but crawling several inches 
 further espied the actual crown still fretted over- 
 head, and underneath, four thousand feet described 
 as perpendicular as with a })lumb, a threadlike 
 cataract. The stolid servant, who had been a shoe- 
 maker before he took to (or was made to take to) 
 soldiering, turned green from dizziness, vet sought 
 with rustic shame to mask his true emotion. " O 
 what a view," he blurted ; but overcome before the 
 words were at an end, concealed his face upon the 
 scrap of stone which barely held him from eternity. 
 Perils of other kinds had aggravated the attempt. 
 The scanty shrubs they clutched at broke away, or 
 filled their palms with prickles. In parts the snow 
 was glaciated, and once an eagle flapped its dis- 
 concerting wing across their faces. Altogether it 
 had been a bad adventure ; a very bad adventure. 
 
 Not without a selfish exultation at my heart, I 
 wagged my head and proffered my condolences. 
 Mine, after all, had been the true philosophy. Beatm 
 'die (jui procul negotiis. A pi-etty negotiiim had 
 been theirs; and so, extending to my worsted jivals 
 an ostentatious magnanimity begotten of glutted 
 vengeance, I granted, nay, I forced upon them, 
 another hour of unconditional repose. 
 
 Then we set out for home. Ushered by evanescent 
 colours in the sky, night drew her pageantry before 
 
 1^8
 
 Ujow 5 ^l^ IWot Climb tbc "Cicveiuiuc 
 
 US OH tliese large and loftv j)lacc"s. TIk' distant 
 snow-fields, smitten by the tlusk, as.su nied a sad, 
 strange, olive tone, then ash, and, last beneath the 
 failing day, a sheeny hue, half-nacreous, half-dia- 
 phanous, pencilled at every cliff and curve with dark 
 yet delicate shading. Out of the sanguine, chrome, 
 and orange west projected neighbouring sununits, 
 indigo and violet, madder, mauve and purple. \ euus 
 and a strip of moon sprang forth abreast ; then either 
 j\Iarv, with Orion at a corner of the three. So did 
 the stars appear, until, to one who strained his eyes 
 across that vapourless expanse, they seemed inviting 
 him to oversoar the realms of space, and, as a new 
 and nearer essence to themselves, to be admitted to 
 the perfect knowledge of their paths, to be initiated 
 into every secret of their superterrene splendour. 
 
 Beneath us we had light enough to keep from 
 falling flat, but often not enough to guard our- 
 selves from stuiu))ling. Thus rocks or stones of 
 biggish size could be detected ; but pebbles, round as 
 well as sharp, menaced our balance and assailed the 
 tender portions of the foot. Our road was fairly 
 plain, but sometimes crossed another one, or several 
 others at a time. The servant led the wav ; next 
 came the officer, and then myself. The lieutenant was 
 singing snatches of Italian opera — tenor, soprano, 
 contralto, baritone, or basso, just as the fancy took 
 him — his rendering of all five being equally and 
 indiscriminately execrable. He told me at a later 
 staire that he was sinoin"; " to drown the aching: 
 of his feet,'' making (at least for me) one painful 
 action to eclipse another. Once or twice he paused 
 
 1^9 1
 
 (Bl•ana^a 
 
 to point a name or other circumstance related to 
 some star. Suddenly I felt a hatred for those stars 
 that just a little before had magnetized me. Not 
 often does the mimic or untrue affect us more pro- 
 foundly than the real, yet so it was on this abrupt 
 occasion. Far above, the star-lamps glittered grandly. 
 Far ahead and far below, uncovered at some corner 
 of our way, the lamplets of Granada twinkled in the 
 blackness. Here was my sudden cynosure, and this 
 is why. Upon a time I courted a girl in the old 
 country. She lived in a great seaport, I in a small 
 suburban village on the coast ; and every night I 
 walked both in and out, around the bay, to see and 
 speak with her. Now, as I fixed my gaze upon 
 Granada, the city lamps resolved themselves into 
 those lamps of old. Again I welcomed every step 
 that brought me closer to those lamps and her ; 
 lamented every step that parted me from her and 
 them. Eyes that would fathom mine no more ; 
 hands that my own would hold no longer — I saw 
 and I caressed them once anew. Just as we sever or 
 undo the silken ribbon that binds up a bundle of 
 old love-letters, I set my life asunder from a dozen 
 years ; and fresh with even the perfume of the past, 
 the memory of those hours came very mournfully 
 and very sweetly back to me. 
 
 Proceeding downwards for about two hours we 
 halted to confer. Our line of march by now was 
 thin and indistinct, but yonder lay Granada. The 
 city lights were glittering, apparently not far ahead, 
 and rather to our right. We should be nearing 
 Cajar. Presently, to be sure, we struck the outskirts 
 130
 
 hjow .'J ^l^ iRot ciimii tbc ricvciunic 
 
 of our villajre. Trees were about us, and the air was 
 jjitchy. I drew ahead, but tliough I stepped with 
 care I nearly thrust mv foot into a water-channel. 
 Strange ! I liad seen no water-channel on tliat 
 morning. Was Cajar, like so nianv of our ladv 
 friends, one thing bv night and sonietiiing else bv 
 day ? 
 
 Suddenly I heard an exclamation from mv col- 
 league. ^' WccUcmnfi"' (the nearest a{)proach a 
 Spanish palate ever makes in the direction of my 
 surname), " Weelleams, we are in La Zubia.''' 
 
 I thought it was a savage joke, or else that he was 
 off' his head, like the survivors of the Medusa, and 
 other wights who have endured the unendurable. 
 " Don't be a fool," I angrily retorted. Nevertheless, 
 I felt some new misgiving, Mv feet were two great 
 bags of pain. I set them down ; that is to say, I 
 stopped. The officer shuffled up, attended closely 
 by our faithful shoemaker. " It's quite true," he 
 repeated in a tone of dull, monotonous despair ; "I 
 asked a cottager. We are in La Zubia." 
 
 We stared aghast towards each other's faces. I 
 make this declaration at a venture. We could not 
 see each other's faces, but I am positive that liorror 
 was inscribed on them. My ))roof is purely circum- 
 stantial. Man is so poor at husbanding his feelings 
 that we even make the same grimaces in the dark 
 as in the daylight. As if we might not spare our- 
 selves the trouble. 
 
 " How about your lights of Granada ? " asked the 
 lieutenant with a sneer, " han^in^ a couple of hundred 
 yards (iicaij like pearls upon a string' r " 
 
 131
 
 " Yes,'"' I retorted, " and how about your science 
 of the stars ? I don't believe you know Orion from 
 the moon." 
 
 But then, instead of trying to come to blows, we 
 laughed outi"ioht. 
 
 I said, " AVe must have missed our way." The 
 mean grotesqueness of the words exceeds derision ; yet 
 who, in similar straits, would not have uttered them ? 
 
 The damned village of La Zubia is distant from 
 Granada nearly seven kilometres. We could have 
 flown sooner than reach the toAvn afoot. We dragged 
 our carcasses to somewhere with a smell of wine 
 and sank upon two shaky chairs, burying our 
 heads and arms upon a table. Our shoemaker was 
 bundled off to make inquiries with a view to our 
 return. After a while he shook us up to say that 
 both the telephone wires were broken, but that a 
 native of the place possessed a carriage and its 
 corresponding team. Presently the native came, and 
 somebody shook us up again. Between the pair we 
 stammered out some syllables, and asked the price of 
 passage. 
 
 " Seven pesetas.'''' 
 
 Were we awake, or were we in a dream ? 
 
 " Seven pesetas.'^ The noble woixls restored to us 
 a measure of vitality. That man — so high a worth 
 he set on charity — was nothing of a Christian dealer. 
 His veins warti tilled with Jewish, ^Moorish, or ]Morisco 
 blood, unspilled, unspotted and unspoiled by Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella. " Seven pesetas ! " We would 
 have paid ten pounds apiece, even if we had had to 
 sign a document for their discharge before arrival. 
 
 132
 
 1I3CW 3 ^l^ HAot Climb tbc cicvciuiuc 
 
 " Seven /;6^sr/^/.y .' " It could not be; this paltiv, 
 this infinitesimal reward. It could not be : yet so it 
 was, togethei- with another marvel. Incredible to 
 state, the native took our stupefaction for a protest. 
 "Well,"' he conceded, " six y:;6'.y6'<rt.S', to say the very 
 least."" I think that after all he was a Christian — 
 and a fool. 
 
 The carria<^e came — a covered wagonette. AVe 
 tottered to its door. The shoemaker, I take it, 
 climbed upon the box. Some one was doubtless 
 also there to drive. 
 
 We scnorifo.s clambered on the stej), then fiom the 
 step upon the floor, and from the floor u])ori the 
 parallel and ample cushions. Darkness and sleep 
 an-ain took charg-e of us herewith, until, extended 
 prone as in an ambulance, we drove into Granada. 
 
 13;J
 
 The Ave Maria Colony 
 
 X 
 
 The Ave Maria Colony 
 
 iPON the road to the Sac ro-Monte, just 
 where it makes a couple of rapid bends 
 about the Darro, the passer-bv looks 
 down on half a dozen sunnv villas nest- 
 lino- in luxuriant foliage. If he looks 
 down with some attentiveness, these villas will impress 
 themselves upon him as mvsteriously associated one 
 with another, constitutinp^, for all their separate 
 garden-plots and boundaries, a single large estate, 
 disposed by the same intelligence, ruled bv the same 
 administrator. And he will hear, distinguishable 
 from the murmur of a neighbouring brook, the 
 babble and ring of many youthful voices ; far more 
 than ever a single family might muster. Here, in
 
 ©ranaJa 
 
 fact, is the Colony of the Ave Maria ; where waifjs 
 and strays, and pauper boys and girls are educated 
 both in body and in brain, and — best of all — edu- 
 cated from the love of God, ami not the lust of 
 Mammon ; schoolrooms converted into carmenes, 
 carmenes into schoolrooms ; sunshine into study, and 
 study into sunshine; where "recreations and jollv 
 pastimes fetch the day about from sun to sun. and 
 rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream " ; a 
 pedagogic paradise in the open air ; the best, and 
 brightest, and blithest institution in the whole of 
 modern Andalusia. 
 
 As I shall presently tell, a dozen years ago this 
 noble work had only just begun. To-dav the colony 
 consists of these six carmenes, with beautiful and 
 ample grounds attached, classes for five hundred 
 boys and girls, and workshops for such as are old 
 enough to learn a trade. Besides this, the colony has 
 branches, also with several hundred pupils apiece — 
 the Tr'mnfo, at the northern apex of the city, 
 and the Quinfd Alegve, at the southern, upon the 
 road to Huetor. The cost of keeping up the whole 
 amounts to more than fifty thousand pesetas annually ; 
 a stiff amount for Spanish purses, and to which the 
 State, which only thinks of soldiering and sailoring 
 and such tomfoolery, contributes not one single 
 centhno. 
 
 Of course, as soon as I was told of the wonders of 
 the Ave Maria, I burned to inspect them for myself; 
 and so one day, accompanied and guided by a friend 
 who knows the Colony well, I stepped aside into those 
 gardens on the Sacro-Monte road. Threading a 
 
 136
 
 Zbc Bvt /ID a via Colcnv 
 
 maze ofslinihs we came upon a terrace covered at 
 one extremity with a trellised \iiie, sliadini; a class 
 of /;r/'/t'«/as', oi- tiny children. These were the hi-ats 
 who once upon a time had spent the day in stoning' 
 and molestinii; peaceful wayfarers; yet now, as soon 
 as they caught si<;ht of us, they sprant; to their feet, 
 pulled off their caj)s, and shouted ''^ Ave Marui'' ; 
 which is, I was informed, the colonists' indispensable 
 salute. A o-eiitle featured lad was their preceptor. 
 Him we asked for Don Andres — that is, Father 
 Andres Manjon, to whom Granada owes this admir- 
 able labour. AVe learned that " the father " (how 
 appropriate the title sounded) would not appear 
 until midday, for, being a canon of the Sacro-Monte, 
 his duties there detain him till this hour. However, 
 the second in command was sununoned to entertain 
 us prior to his chiefs arrival, and show us all the 
 carvicncs and all their occupants. 
 
 While this lieutenant was being sent for from 
 another garden, I marked the spot itself. Here and 
 there a piece of the w'hitewashed wall of one or other 
 of the villas projected its brilliant surface from 
 between the foliage. Flowers and trees and bushes 
 were on every side, pleasant lawns and shady paths, 
 and birds and water-courses in full song. Upon my 
 left, beyond a rustic bridge that spans a miniature 
 ravine, I faintly caught the hivelike murnun- of a 
 multitude of lips. Beneath, the Darro twined in 
 graceful coils, partly concealed by velvety leafage. 
 Amidst this latter is the Fountain of the Hazel 
 Tree, the favourite haunt of (.'bateau briand, who 
 used to liken it to Vaucluse. Above, the huge 
 137
 
 ©rana&a 
 
 Alhambra overshadowed all, between the Tower 
 of Comares at the western end, and, at the other, 
 the slender, delicately-pencilled cypresses of the 
 Generalife. 
 
 The second in command of Don Andres is a com- 
 fortable looking, rather short and rather stout eccle- 
 siastic, with a highish colour and a small and cheerful 
 eye — the kind of eye which might arouse misgivings 
 in a layman, but which is always pardoned in a priest. 
 In any case Don Juan (to quote his name), despite a 
 rather gruff and sudden voice which I suspect to be 
 somewhat affected, is (juite in favour with the young- 
 sters, who stroke his hand and tweak his robe with 
 absokite impunity, although they venerate as well as 
 Jove him. The smallest child who asks or answers 
 him a question, or runs his message, must doff his 
 cap and utter the semi-talismanic '■^ Ave Maria.'''' 
 " En i>Tac'ia conceh'ula^'' is the prompt reply ; and only 
 then the message or the (juestion is proceeded with. 
 
 Don Juan conducted us across the rustic bridge 
 into a kind of playground. I say a kind of play- 
 ground, because, in point of fact, it proved to be a 
 schoolroom, with stone benches raised along one side, 
 and on the benches some fifty or sixty little people 
 learning to count by means of ninepins and blocks of 
 wood. The teacher of this class was a girl from the 
 Albaycin, herself an ex-disciple of the colony. 
 
 I noticed that the middle of the space before the 
 benches was not level, but raised into irregidar little 
 heaps and sunk into irregular little hollows. " Here," 
 explained the padre, " we have a map of Spain, with 
 all its mountains and all its valleys." So saying, he 
 138
 
 "Cbc Bvc /Caiia Colons 
 
 approached the seated rows upon the beiKhe>, and 
 called '' Antonio Torres." 
 
 Up darted an eao;er-looking little boy, and pulled 
 off' his cap. 
 " Ave Mariay 
 
 " En iiTdcia roiictbida.'''' 
 
 Another sinnmons from the padre. This time 
 Alberto Vega. Another eager-looking little bov ; 
 again the countersign. 
 
 " You, Antonio, go to Barcelona." 
 
 Antonio, who, as far as I could gather, was some- 
 where in the Mountains of Lechi, darted across 
 country, planted his foot upon the haughty city of 
 the Berenguers, and beamed at us. 
 
 " Antonio, where are you now ? "" 
 
 " In Barcelona."' 
 
 " Where is Barcelona ? " 
 
 " In Cataluna.'"' 
 
 " What is there at Barcelona ? " 
 
 " A university, a bishop, and half a million 
 inhabitants." 
 
 *' What else ? "" 
 
 " It is a seaport, and sends out woollens and olives." 
 
 " Now o;o to Madrid."" 
 
 The scampering was repeated. 
 
 " Where are you now r " 
 
 " In New Castile, in the capital of the kingdom." 
 
 " What does it produce ? " 
 
 " Nothing." (A sharp if not unmerited rebuke for 
 the court of the Hapsburgs and Bourbons.) 
 
 " Now, both of you, go to Portugal." 
 
 Off went the bold excursionists, hand in hand. 
 139
 
 ©vanaJa 
 
 " You have gone too far : you are standing in the 
 sea;" and the padre, with a pat upon their .shoulders, 
 good-naturedly redeemed the drowning manikins 
 from the angry ocean. 
 
 Next on our programme was a spelling-lesson, 
 conducted something in the fashion of a game of 
 living chess. For this the scholars utilize a kind 
 of bib, extending both before and behind their 
 bodies, with a hole for the head, a letter on the 
 chest, and a numeral in the small of the back. 
 Thus (unlike, alas, those leaden, legless pieces which 
 interpret me), sentences and words arrange and 
 disarrange and rearrange themselves with winged 
 alacrity ; each lettei' and each number wears a 
 smiling and expectant face ; spelling becomes 
 gymnastics, and literature a veritable pastime. 
 
 Then we passed on to other scenes. In <nie of 
 the upstairs rooms a pretty, soft-voiced, brown- 
 eyed girl, in the whitest of white print dresses, was 
 teaching geography to a group of loving little 
 maids, who lavished caresses on her as fondly as 
 thou oh she had been their elder sister. As we 
 entered they broke into a simple jingle relative to 
 the provinces of Spain, a map of the Peninsula was 
 hanging on the wall, and the learners, taking a wand 
 by turns, pointed to the regions being enumerated 
 in their artless little canticle. Their happy voices 
 were so insinuative that 1 asked to be presented 
 with a copy of the verse : and the pretty teacher, 
 opening her desk, handed me one with a blush and 
 a smile. 
 
 I believe that there are more blackboards (of a 
 140
 
 "Cbc Bvc /iDarta Co Ion v 
 
 certain kind) in tlic Ave Maria Colonv than in the 
 whole of Europe. On the wall of every <■«///«'«, on 
 every pillar and post about the gardens, are myriads 
 of patches painted black, in case an insj)iration 
 should seize the |)Uj)ils in their playtime, or the 
 master or mistress, as they stroll about at in- 
 tervals, sui^gest some problem to them. On this 
 occasion a tinv yirl of six, catching up a piece of 
 chalk or chalkv stone from the avenue wheie she was 
 plaving hide-and-seek with her schoohnates, delivered 
 a blackboaici lesson in subtraction which niv friend 
 and I digested with no small particular ))rolit ; after 
 which, seizino- a conn-ade somewhat smaller than her- 
 self, she showed us with illustrative pullings, pushings, 
 and pinchings, the limbs and subdivisions of the 
 human figure. 
 
 Elsewhere about the Colony I spied the solar system, 
 cunningly contrived with wooden balls revolving on a 
 set of wires beneath a canopy of vine; also, in lines 
 and symbols fixed into the soil, the tropics and the 
 sisus of the Zodiac. Indeed, at every point I saw 
 fulfilled the precept of Montaigne: "he shall not so 
 much repeat, as act his lesson. In his actions shall 
 he make repetition of the same."" Here are some 
 infants round a figured skeleton, filling in the bones 
 wdth pebbles. Yonder, an older and a larger group 
 describe, in cheerful strains of song, each local Spanish 
 character. One youngster takes the part of Aragonese ; 
 " I am the butiirro of Aragdn, an honest man but 
 obstinate, and say no, and no, and no," — another that 
 of the Sevillian— " So/J Scv'ilhino, dc la t'wrra dc Marin 
 Santis'tma. Viva la si'fufe torcra."" The national 
 
 141
 
 ^5l•ana^a 
 
 religion and the national sport for ever arm-in-arm ! 
 So even bull-fighting, I notice with a mild astonish- 
 ment, is not discouraged in this model Colony. 
 
 We reach another group — sharp little faces for the 
 most, in written with all the latent picardia of Murillo's 
 beggarlings ; though these are better mannered. They 
 are, in fact, the kings of Spain, who play at leapfrog 
 as they tell their stories to posterity. Each rattles off 
 his reign in turn; but he who trips must "make a 
 back " for his successor. Many a Gothic monarch 
 with a sonorous mouth-filling name, steps forward, 
 not inopportunely, to remind me of his birth, and 
 exploits, and demise. Between the leaping and the 
 recitation each minute s\vallows up at least a century, 
 so very soon we find ourselves contemporary with 
 Velazquez, "I," shouts the mimic patron of that 
 mighty painter, looking all over as if he meant the 
 words, " I am Philip the Fourth, governed by the 
 Count-Duke of Olivares. In my reign the Catalans 
 rebelled against me." Thus, as the merry round con- 
 tinues, the past declines insensiblv into the present. 
 The last to leap conveys, of course, the latest message. 
 His frame is slighter than the rest, his voice weaker, 
 his face paler. Poor child. He seems to feel the 
 weightiness of his kingship in this age of anarchy, 
 democracy, and socialism. " I am Alfonso the Thir- 
 teenth, son of Maria Christina. I began to rule in — 
 in — . Then, faltering at the date, he thrusts, in token 
 of abdication, his tongue into his cheek, and bending 
 to a Carthaginian antecessor, sets back the march of 
 history by a trifle of two thousand years. 
 
 I was so interested with all this life, and gladness, 
 142
 
 ■Cbc Hvc /ID a I- i a Co I on v 
 
 and spontaneous, novel, outdoor scholarship, that I 
 had almost forgotten my principal ambition — that 
 of seeing and speaking with its author. Suddenly, 
 however, while I was intent upon the lesson in 
 genealogy, " here he is,"" exclaimed my friend ; and 
 looking up I found that Father ^Manjon was contem- 
 plating me. 
 
 I had expected a mild, paternal face and manners. 
 Naturally I was disappointed. Father Manjon is 
 above all else an organizer, innovator, and reformer ; 
 and such a character does not dispense ductility, but 
 on the contrary demands it ; the more so in a land like 
 this, where all is prejudice, ignorance, and routine. The 
 face of Father Manjon is the strongest and the deepest 
 I have ever seen, except Sagasta's. The lines are 
 square — square chin, square cheeks, square forehead. 
 The mouth is equally firm and forceful. The eyes of 
 Father Manjon were fixed upon and into me. Their 
 colour was just a moderate brown. Let me upset, 
 with this, the novelist's hallucination that a })ene- 
 trating eye is always black. Not necessarily. It is 
 not the colour of the eye that penetrates, but the 
 colour of the brain behind it. 
 
 As soon as I recovered my composure, I stated to 
 the padre my eager wish that he would tell me at 
 first hand the story of his Colony. At once and 
 with unostentatious kindness he complied; and this, 
 so far as I remember, is the substance of his narrative. 
 For many years Father Manjon had been a canon of 
 the Sacred Mountain, and also a professor at 
 Granada University. Now the distance between the 
 two seminaries is not a short one ; and even many 
 143
 
 Oranafta 
 
 years ago Father Manjon's legs can hardly have 
 retained the vigour and the elasticity of boyhood. 
 Consequently, following an approved and ancient 
 custom among the rural clergymen of Spain, he 
 bought himself a donkey — a white donkey, a bland 
 and blameless-looking donkey, just as sacerdotal 
 donkeys should be. Haltered beneath a staircase in 
 the university, this donkey matches very creditably 
 with the snowy marble steps, as though he, too, 
 were treated to a matutinal scrubbing. Upon the 
 highroad all Granada recognizes and respects the 
 privileged bearer of the good and gifted padre. 
 Such is life. Our wages are augmented or diminished 
 according to the company we keep, the service we 
 perform ; and the faithful ministers of the famous 
 also collect their little sheaves of fame; cars, as it 
 were, spilled over from their chieftain's superfluity. 
 
 One afternoon, then, nearly twenty years ago, 
 Father Manjon was riding down the corkscrew ciiesta 
 of the Sacro-Monte, when suddenly, from somewhere 
 underground, he heard a number of youthful voices 
 nmsicallv chanting; their Christian doctrine. Leav- 
 ing his donkey by the waj'side, he set himself to 
 search the adjacent paths among the hot and dusty 
 terraces of prickly pear, until he found the cave from 
 which the harmony proceeded. AVithin the cave was 
 a small, emaciated, miserably clad woman surrounded 
 by her pupils, ten little girls, ragged and shoeless, 
 some of them gipsies. On questioning " Mother 
 Crumbs,'"' as she was nicknamed by her charges, 
 Father ]\Ianj6n was told that she had three children 
 of her own, and no regular means of subsistence ; 
 
 144
 
 "Cbc Hvc /n^aria Colonv 
 
 that she held these humble classes because she 
 beHeved it to be her duty ; and that she paid, as 
 rentei- of" her cave, four pc.srfm and fiftv rcntiino.s 
 per month. 
 
 Such was the oiigin of the Ave Maria Colonv. 
 The poor cave-dweller was examined by a board of 
 charitable ladies and pronounced, for all her method 
 and philanthropy, a lunatic. A\'^ould that we all 
 employed our lucid moments to as sane a purpose ! 
 In course of time she disappeared from (iranada, and 
 has never since been heard of. Was she perhaps some 
 angel, and do the acts of angels seem insanitv to 
 humans? In any case, her bright example had fallen 
 upon a " towardly and pregnant soil."" Half-anima- 
 ted, half- rebuked by her discovery, Father Manjdn 
 purchased a carjnen near the \er\ cave where she 
 had laboured, engaged a (pialified schoolmistress, 
 and placed a class of little girls beneath her 
 charge. This was in the autumn of 1889. IJefore 
 long, a class of little boys was handed over to the 
 female teacher's husband. " God and the little 
 ones," observes the noble author of this noble effort, 
 "have done the rest between them. At this day we 
 possess sixteen schools and eight houses, together 
 with their gardens and orchards, where the children 
 may be educated in the open aii." 
 
 The gigantic success of the scheme is due, as far as 
 I can see, to a profound knowledge of the needs of 
 modern Spain, combinc^d with heroic sacrifice of self, 
 unflaffii'ino; viy-ilance, disinterested -zeal, and a faultless 
 and matured appreciation of the national character. 
 In one of his printed pamphlets on the Colonv, 
 145 j£
 
 (Sra^a^a 
 
 Father Man) on explains his method and ideal. 
 Unlike the generality of Latins he lays particular 
 stress upon the paramount need of physical side by 
 side with intellectual tuition. The body and the 
 brain must ffrow tojjether : hence the orchards and the 
 gardens of the Ave Maria ; for it is easy to remove 
 the schoolroom into the open air, but not the open 
 air into the schoolroom. " I seek," he says, " to 
 train my charges into thorough men and thorough 
 women, sturdy of frame and spirit, prepared to 
 utilize their physical and moral strength to benefit 
 themselves and benefit their neighbours." These were 
 old truths in Germany and England, but what do 
 they imply in this Peninsula ? A revolutionary 
 through and through. I dare affirm that no such 
 other has been known in Spain. 
 
 " One hears it said" (I continue quoting from the 
 padre) " that Granada is the fairest corner of the 
 earth, and that her carmenes are so many ]iieces of 
 heaven. Very well. In the fairest corner of Granada, 
 that is, the V^alley of Paradise, close to the city 
 gates upon the Sacro-Monte road, beside the right 
 bank of the Darro, are situated our own scholastic 
 carmenes.'''' 
 
 " The six are separate, for the sake of greater 
 order ; and yet they are conterminous, in order that 
 a single mind may rule them all. Everything about 
 them is ample, cheerful, and wholesome ; plenty of 
 open country both for work and play ; beautiful 
 gardens to view^ and smell ; clear and copious streams 
 for irrigation, drink, and personal ablutions; canopies 
 of vine and honeysuckle, rose and passion flower to 
 
 146
 
 Zbc Hvc /Caiia Colotiv; 
 
 part the .siinl)L';uiis ; massy trees to fiiniisli tViiit and 
 shade. The aii- is pure and perfunied ; one growth 
 of Howers siu-ceeds another ; the birds compete in 
 son<:f ; the Httle ones g-and)ol as tliey will ; and all is 
 health, and liveliness, and motion."' 
 
 In every n)atter that concerns the Colon v a rare 
 solicitude is shown. .Vt midsununer and Christmas 
 a suit of clothes is triven to all the children. Thcv 
 have a drawin<r-school, where four professors make a 
 present of their services, and a theatre with seatin<r- 
 rooni for Hfteen hundred spectators. Every Saturday 
 they march in |)rocession round the ganlens, display- 
 inj; their scarlet and white banners, sinirini; sacred 
 songs, and headed by a band of drums and cornets. 
 They have a volunteer corps, perfectly drilled and per- 
 fectly uniformed. Three or four picnics are arranged 
 annually for all the scholars, but among the poorest 
 bread and meat are distiibuted daily. Father 
 Manj()n lias no sympathy with that stupidest and 
 connnonest of boasts in Spain, that the Spaniards 
 require less nourishment than other mortals. "The 
 Spaniards are a people who do not eat. They are 
 frugal from necessity, and saving to the pitch of 
 stinginess. They make their meals on bread and 
 water, and practically fast the whole year through." 
 And again, " the best fed nation is that which works 
 the best, and that which works the best is that which 
 feeds the best. The two events are interacting.''"' 
 
 Such is the story of the Ave Maria schools as 
 
 it is told me by their author. W'liile he is 
 
 telling it, those happy little creatures gambol at our 
 
 side and round about i.s. Troops and festoons of 
 
 U7
 
 ©r3na^a 
 
 tiny girls trip in and out among the fountains. 
 Vibrating to their harmony, the water in each marble 
 basin reflects the ripple of their laughter ; roses and 
 jasmine lie beneath their twinkling feet ; tendrils of 
 vine, convolvulus, and honeysuckle caress their faces 
 and their hair ; and gold and silver sunbeams peep 
 upon them from between the branches. Above, 
 around, the air is odorous with almond, orange, and 
 acacia ; pure blossoms these, as white as innocence, 
 as innocent as childhood. A good man delved the 
 garden years ago, and God rewarded him with flowers 
 and with sunshine. I glance towards my friend, and 
 he returns the glance. Either of us is touched to 
 tears ; as though divining, within this little world of 
 candour and delight, the all-pervading, all-approving 
 presence of the Master. 
 
 148
 
 The Fountain of the Hazel Tree 
 
 XI 
 
 A Tractate on the Gipsies of Granada 
 
 /r is possible to reiranl tht-' Aiulalusian 
 gipsy (as everything upon this earth 
 above it, or beneath may be regarded) 
 in either of two ways — the serious and 
 the sentimental, or the humorous. 
 For instance, it is possible to regard him in a sjiirit of 
 lachrymose lamentation at the superiority of our par- 
 ticular morals over his, or, on the contrary, to regard 
 him as a sprightly kintl of creature, who often swindles 
 and deceives, and sometimes, as a variation, even intro- 
 mits a knife or bullet into us; but always gives us 
 exquisite amusement in exchange. Of course, to 
 realize this kind accommodation on the gipsys part 
 demands at least some sense of humour on oui- own. 
 
 149
 
 ©rana&a 
 
 The sour, contentious tourist who pokes, requesting 
 and requiring, into places where he is not wanted, 
 carries a reclamation ready in his pocket, and pesters 
 consular officials for redress, is not a proper person 
 to be murdered by a gipsy, Both should be able to 
 cooperate in cheerfulness, and set about their busi- 
 ness with a mutual, reciprocal, and trustful fellow- 
 feeling. Upon this score I would suggest how little 
 pains we take to sympathize with those whose moral 
 standard is affirmed (although by interested sections 
 of society) to be less elevated than our own. Here 
 is, initially, a want of charitableness, and subse- 
 quently a morbid aggravation of our self-esteem. 
 Goodness, as preached and practised nowadays, is 
 just a question of a show of hands. Might is not 
 only right, but righteousness as well. Ages of this 
 hypocrisy have made it rare and difficult indeed to 
 analyze from within, the acts and the emotions of 
 anybody whom society (again that hateful word) 
 succeeds bv brutal violence in branding as a bad or 
 dubious character. Most of us are so preposterously, 
 preternaturally virtuous that we do not even care to 
 try. Even an author, who normally should find the 
 s-enerous endeavour worth his while, is seldom able 
 to sympathize with a rogue (I say once more, con- 
 ventionally so-called; by putting himself into the 
 other s skin and sentiments, though either of these 
 transmutations is essential to the cause of common 
 justice, Thackeray, to be sure, bequeathed to us in 
 Barry Lyndon the story of a novelized rogue de- 
 lineated with a certain intimacy, and many of the 
 incidents and reflections suspended from that hero are 
 150
 
 B 'Cractatc on tbc Gipsies of Ol•nnn^a 
 
 prolmbleand reasonable enou<xli ; l)ut it is undeniahlv 
 superior to prevail upon a ro<j,ue of flesh and blood 
 to set his bashfulness aside and tell us his experiences 
 himself. One of these davs, in a noIuiui' of Ks.sni/s 
 on Spain and the S/ninianl.s; I hope to present 
 the doctor Charles Garcia, author of 'J'/ic Anncntncss 
 and Xohlencss nf Thieving* a work uidx-aten in 
 the fields of innocent literature for iunnour, ethics, 
 and ])hilosophy agreeably intermingled. But only 
 very rarely has the unblanied mem))er of society 
 the sense of fairness to transform himself into a tem- 
 porary rascal, or the permanent and re«^ular rascal 
 the requisite courage to assume the privileges and 
 publicity of blatant virtue. 
 
 The poet of the much becpioted verses, 
 
 " O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
 To see ourselves as ithers see us," 
 
 got hold (presumably on prosody's account) of the 
 wrong end of the stick. He should have said, 
 
 " O wad some power the giftie gie us 
 To see iihers as they see themselves — " + 
 
 a task which is a deal more difficult, and, when 
 achieved, a deal more interesting, humanizing and 
 instructive. In either case, I claim commiseration 
 for the Andalusian gipsies. Their virtues and their 
 vices do not tally with our own. Their hands arc- 
 possibly quite as clean as ours, but not so numerous, 
 
 * La Desordenada Codicia de bs Biencs Acoios. Obra apazibU y 
 curiosa, en la qual se descuhren los enrredos y maranas de los que no se 
 contentan con sii parte. Paris, 1619 ; reprinted, 1S77. 
 
 f I can make no rhyme here ; but this is not my business. 
 Nor, apparently, could Burns, whose business it was. 
 151
 
 and therefore wickeder ! Setting aside this foolish, 
 barbarous prejudice we find the naked fact start 
 forth as follows. The gipsy race believe that they 
 are doing right in doing wrong. If the rest of the 
 world conformed to their example, our present legis- 
 lation would decamp to the Antipodes, and tutti 
 would be, or ought to be, content'/. Even as matters 
 are, in clinging to their doctrine the gipsies do a 
 positive service to ourselves. Where would be the 
 harm in wickedness if every one were wicked ? Upon 
 the other hand, where would be the merit in good- 
 ness if every one were good ? These words are hardly 
 mine — the classics bear me out. " All opinions,'' 
 says the Areopagitica, "yea errors, known, read and 
 collated, are of main sei'vice and assistance toward 
 the speedy attainment of what is truest." This very 
 juxtaposition of vice and virtue is vice's best apology. 
 " Quod bono lucinum honum, quod a bono remotum^ 
 malum.'" Again, " If every action which is good or 
 evil in man at ripe years were to be under pittance 
 and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue 
 but a name, what praise could be then due to well- 
 doing, whatgramercy to be sober, just or continent ? "" 
 Thus error, by cau'sing, procreating, and fomenting 
 virtue, establishes her title to a place among the 
 virtues, unless we abrogate all notion of fair play, 
 and speak of her as gu'dttj of good actions. 
 
 Father Manjon's most thorny problem is the 
 gipsies. This brings me to the gipsies of Granada. 
 When they visited the city first is not precisely 
 known ; but Gomez Moreno has unearthed a quaint 
 old notice relating to them in the reign of Charles 
 
 152
 
 K Tractate on tbc Gipsies ot 0^alla^a 
 
 the Fiftli.* Oil the apjjcal of the aichhishup of the 
 diocese, who complained in hitter language of " the 
 nianvEgvptians who mix with the Moiiscos, teaching 
 tliem matters of witehcraft and superstition, and 
 steaHng the clothes from their houses and tluir cattle 
 from their lands,"' the emperor re-estahlislied a decree 
 of Ferdinand and Isahella. dated Madrid, March 4th, 
 1499, and beginning with these phrases : "To vou 
 Egyptians who play the vagabond about ourking{h)ins 
 and our seigniories, together with vour wives, vour 
 children, and your houses, health and grace. Know 
 that a report was made to us, how that of old vou 
 move from place to place, having no trade or means 
 of livelihood except by begging, stealing, bartering, 
 deceiving, and the exercise of sorcery, divination, and 
 other neither righteous crafts nor honest; whereas 
 most of you are fitted to do work and be of service." 
 The edict says tliat thev must choose some spot to 
 settle in and follow a decent calling, or else in sixtv 
 days they are to (jiiit the kingdom on pain of losing 
 their ears or even their libertv, being held to bomhige 
 for the rest of their existence. 
 
 This was four hundred years ago ; vet still the 
 Spanish gipsy thrives and thieves as heretofore. At 
 most he settles in the poorest cpiarter of the town, or 
 even, as at Granada, in a cavern bv the wavside ; i)ut 
 as for industry, respectability, and such like trash, 
 the centuries slip over him in \ain. " Omnvs fionir 
 Jeriunt,''^ observed the poet (iloubtless before the days 
 of the "Egyptians'"); yet which of the hours has 
 been known to iiitlic-t the slightest scratch uj)on 
 
 * Giii.i dc Gianada. pp. 4O9, 470. 
 
 153
 
 (5l•ana^a 
 
 the moral epidermis of the gipsy ? He has his code 
 and sticks to it in spite of parliaments and princes, 
 establishing, single-handed, so to speak, against all 
 comers, his claim to two of our much-bethumbed 
 and much- belauded virtues — constancy and valour. 
 Apart from this he entertains (as he would probably 
 declare, on moral grounds) a permanent and perfect 
 horror of morality. 
 
 Father Manjcni is prejudiced against the gipsy. 
 Why ? Because he tries to make him not a gipsy. 
 This may be well enough for the Utopian, but his 
 is not the only standpoint. Writers on Spain, espe- 
 cially the impecunious, have cause to thank the 
 gipsies from the bottom of their heart. Will any 
 one attempt to gainsay that the gipsies have contri- 
 buted to Andalusia about three-quarters of her pic- 
 turesqueness, indolence, disorder, dirt, and other 
 tourist-drawing, literature-creating qualities ? Of 
 course not. Viewed in this light the gipsy is the 
 creditor of art and letters. On this account, when 
 entering his company we should abstain from carry- 
 ing the debt upon our person, or he may possibly 
 repay himself upon the spot, not from improper or 
 felonious motives, but with hhe rustic, correspond- 
 ence-saving courtesy of his race. If I owe to the 
 ir'itano a tolerable jjortion of this chapter, should I 
 be justified in denying him, say, a five-pound note ? 
 Legally, perhaps, but not on moral grounds. Appre- 
 ciative of this fact, on visiting a gipsy tenement for 
 " copy *" I never court the smallest friction or un- 
 pleasantness, but make a point of buttoning up my 
 watch beforehand, so that at least is safe. What else 
 
 154
 
 H "Cractatc on Xbc Olp3ic3 ot Ol•n^a^.l 
 
 have I to losf .' My <4ipsy cannot do iiu- liaiiii iij)oii 
 the score of money, for the same reason wliicli imjieded 
 the nnniificent, or rather muu'woh'nt, Sterne from 
 giving to all the beggars who crowded round his 
 chaise — because I have it not to steal. Conse{|uentlv. 
 is it not true that, as I hinted further back, the 
 pauper writer is even more beholden to the gipsy than 
 the well to do, foi-, in the former of these instances, 
 the gipsy's toil is patently disinterested ? Vet, 
 whether this be so or not, I would impress the 
 following lesson at first hand upon mv readers. '• Suit 
 your manners to your company"''' is practical enough 
 for stay-at-homes; but when vou voyage, •"suit vour 
 purse to vour company " is still more practical. 
 
 And then the manners of the gipsy are so easy 
 and so suave. He seems to laugh and smile by 
 instinct, and, as Macaulay noted, always removes 
 his hat (or somebody else's) in passing bv a church or 
 shrine. His doings and declarations are illuminated 
 with the sunshine of good humour as with a halo. 
 Whether he robs you or only lies to you, he never 
 utters a graceless word or executes a graceless act 
 ungracefullv ; and even when he murders is able, I am 
 told by those who know, to conjure up a correspond- 
 ing smile upon the agonizing features of his victim, 
 who recognizes with his latest look the truth of the 
 adage, " iiu hommc tpi't nt nc .scr(ij(tmn'is (Ittn^ririi.r." 
 
 The base of this is stern solicitude for detail. ^Ve 
 see the same in all careers. An eminent physician 
 charges (juite a guinea extra for the way he j)ulls out 
 his watch or unscrews his thermometer ; an eminent 
 dentist for the way he hides (as well as j)lies) 
 155
 
 CBrana^a 
 
 the fatal tweezers. I know of barber-dentists in 
 Madrid who actually clean the instrument before the 
 patient's eye, denoting thus the spanless interval 
 between the artist and the second-rate practitioner. 
 Dumas, in stating that Africa begins about the 
 Pyrenees, had probably these barbarian-barbers in 
 his mind. But the Andalusian brigand (now, alas, 
 believed to be extinct), whom we may classify upon a 
 level with the doctor and the dentist 1 have instanced, 
 always began his business in a jocular fashion, re- 
 creating his victim with master quips and cranks, 
 while he was tying him to the coach-wheel. He 
 would infuse, too, a pleasurable mystery into the 
 whole proceeding. Will he pull forth his snicker-snee 
 or onlv utilize his blunderbuss? Ha! he dips his 
 hand into his sash. How prettily the sunlight gleams 
 upon the blade ! " The rest Is silence.'''' 
 
 Such an artist was Jose Maria, the gipsy and the 
 great highwayman of a hundred years ago. I use the 
 adjective great with absolute premeditation. Firstly, 
 the best of Spanish brigands always came from An- 
 dalusia. Guichot and other erudite authorities on 
 brigandism will bear me out in stating that no bungler 
 can be found to have existed here. The Andalusian 
 climate and geography united with hereditary pride 
 of craftsmanship, piously bequeathed from fathers to 
 their children, to render local brigandage /io?*confOM/\s. 
 And, secondly, I speak of the great Jose Maria upon 
 the cumbersome though potent warrant of the penal 
 code of Spain, which calls, or used to call, all national 
 brigands " famous,'' whether from Andalusia or any 
 other region of this countrv ; and what h famous but 
 
 15G
 
 B 'Cractatc on tbc Oipsics of Orana^a 
 
 a sviiojiyni for great ? * The great Jose Maria, there- 
 fore, at his death (unHke those less exalted characters 
 referred to by Mark .Antony) bc{|ucathed the lx?st 
 of him, that is, the memory and the modus opcraudi 
 of his choicest crimes, to future generations. I'n- 
 luckily, the lapses of posterity have thrown his 
 venerable precepts out of joint: for even great men 
 have to build their fame in harmony with their sur- 
 roundings, llaihvays and Givil Guards jiave spread 
 corruption over xVndalusia. To-day an honest brigand 
 cannot venture armed upon the high road without 
 being waylaid and assaulted. So is it that n)anv a 
 fine profession has been spoiled by progress. One of 
 such is brigandage ; and, thanks to Nicholas and 
 other manifest peacemakers, warfare, a legalized, 
 though possibly inferior form of brigandage, is pro- 
 mising (or menaciiig) to follow very shortly. 
 
 Everybody who visits the Alhambra is fated to 
 encounter, loitering as a rule between the Tower of 
 Justice and the I'alace of Charles the Fifth, the 
 "prince of the gipsies" (as his visiting card informs 
 us), and therefore a direct descendant of the " great " 
 Jose Maria. IJaptismally, this j)ersonage's name is 
 Mariano Fernandez ; but he prefers to be known by 
 the title of C/mrro c Jumo. His age is not much 
 less than seventy, but he carries an erect figure and 
 hangs upon it, true to a scruple, the classical habili- 
 
 * "Este delito cometen, los que de proposito estan en los caminos para 
 robar, que se Uaman salteadores, 6 en el mar con navios, a que Uaman 
 cosarios.y los unos y los otros llama el derecho, ladrones famosos, par 
 lo qual, y porque tal hurto se comete de ordinario con mucrte de los 
 ofendidos, b se da causa para ello, ticnen pena de »/«(•»/<•," — Francisco 
 de la Pradilla, Suma de Todas las Leyes Penales, p. 27. 
 
 157
 
 Oranafta 
 
 nients of his glorious ancestor. The hat is of the 
 sugar loaf pattern, with what looks like a powder 
 puff on top. The jacket is embroidered in the middle 
 of the back, and narrow breeches enveloping the 
 shrunk shanks of the wearer, decline with these into 
 a pair of leather gaiters, fringed upon the outside, 
 extending from the knee. In such a dress — perhaps 
 the very same — Jose Maria lived and laboured. Did 
 he design it to amuse his victims ? If so, he has an 
 added claim on our regard, and De Quincey's so- 
 called murderers are miserable amateurs and pigmies 
 by the side of him. 
 
 The visiting card of Chorro e Jumo also informs us 
 that he used to serve as a model to Fortunv. " We 
 did this ■" or " we did that," he says with conde- 
 scending satisfaction ; and at the end of their con- 
 joint manoeuvres, " Don Mariano handed me a dollar. 
 He was a gentleman, Don Mariano was." Accent this 
 declaration where you please. " He was a gentle- 
 man " ; he xvas a gentleman "" ; or, " he was a gentle- 
 man."'' In either case you must infer that if you do 
 the same by Chorro e Jumo as Chorro e Jumo says 
 Fortuny used to do by him, you also will attain a 
 patent of gentility. Perhaps the purchase at a 
 dollar is almost worth the making. 
 
 So Chorro e Jumo is a patron of the arts. Now 
 surely there is something truly splendid in the 
 thought (and infinitely more so in the fact) of a roval 
 person sitting, at a liberally hyp«»regal fee, not for his 
 portrait only, but for every kind of genre, historical, 
 bucolical, and so forth. What would Tolstoi say if 
 his Czar dispensed one-dollar sittings to all the 
 158
 
 B "Cractatc on tbc Oipsica of Orana^a 
 
 painters of his empire.' Would not so wliolesome 
 and so vast an aftal)ilitv entirely revolutionize the 
 veteran agitator's views on art ? I am eonviiued it 
 would. 
 
 Nevertheless, the historv of C/iorro c Juinu is a sad 
 one. lioabdil used to tell his sorrows to Hernando 
 de liaeza. In such a spirit has Chortu i- Jtitiio told 
 his own to me. His subjects are degenerate and un- 
 satisfactorv. IJesides, he does not even dwell among 
 them. Paradox must be treated nicely nowadays, ami 
 doubtle.ss for this reason Daudet omitted Churro 
 from his elegant romance ; yet, though the term may 
 sound a triHe overstrained and venturesome, this gipsy 
 king IS just a roi en exil who has never stepped outside 
 the borders of his own dominion. No one disputes 
 his moral right to the Alhambra ; yet round al)out 
 him are a people alien from his own, who bend 
 the knee unblushingly before a mm-^-'itnno monarch. 
 Some vears ago he had his private palace — a sandy 
 cave beneath the shadow of the mountain, till on a 
 day the roof fell in and very nearly scjuashed him. 
 Thenceforward Mariano hangs dejectedly about the 
 moated grange, houseless, lu)}^eless, homeless, like 
 the waifs and strays we read of at the end of 
 Whitaker. " Vnija^' he .sometimes makes lament, 
 with sad though sure philosophy, *' when a man s 
 own house falls in upon him, what in the world is 
 left to fall .^ " 
 
 I have a lively sympathy for throneless C/iorro, 
 
 especially when I fix my eyes upon his sugar 
 
 loaf. My Welsh com})atriots used to "ear a 
 
 similar one, till tvrannous England tore it oil" ami 
 
 159
 
 V a » a J a 
 
 stamped it underfoot— England, that in return for 
 stripping me of problematical estates and dignities 
 (which might have come my way had I and Wales 
 been somebody and something else), has thrown to 
 me and mine the paltry crumbs of education, order, 
 and prosperity. So, in a sense, I am a sharer of the 
 fate of Chorro e Jumo, and shoidd inscribe my 
 visiting card accordingly. When, years ago, the 
 (then) Prince of Wales passed through Granada (if I 
 may breathe the question with befitting reverence), 
 did not the sight of Mariano's sugar loaf revive an 
 echo of contrition in that royal breast ? 
 
 Father Manjon, as we have seen, considers the 
 gipsies of Granada very seriously. " They are," he 
 says, "an ignorant, degenerate, idle, homeless, trade- 
 less people, lavish of tongue and loose of life. Their 
 understanding, faulty as to any spiritual or abstract 
 idea, quickens surprisingly in dealing with the animal 
 or instinctive part of life, and lends itself to lying 
 and deceit, which seem innate in them. Their will 
 power is as weak and wavering as a child's ; and 
 since it lacks all basis of a creed, as well as the 
 habit of welldoing, their actions are decided by a 
 momentary passion or caprice. All that requires 
 effort, sacrifice, apprenticeship, subordination, is re- 
 pugnant to their character. Their one endeavour is 
 to pass their time as free as birds, as lean as stalks 
 of asparagus, as careless as a castanet." 
 
 On the other hand, the painter-poet Rusinol 
 prefers to take the gipsies as cheerfully as they 
 take themselves, and even when they swindle him, 
 describes the incident with great good humour. 
 
 IfiO
 
 H cr.iLtatc on tbc Oipsics ot ^3rana^.^ 
 
 (Jiicc, wliilf oil a sketc-hint^ expedition >oiiie«lR're 
 near the town, wearv of (lra<;gin^ about his eohair- 
 box and easel, he determined, to<^ether with some of 
 his frientls, to buy a donkey. 'I'he ^ipsv fair was in 
 full swin<>: not far away ; so thither the party turned 
 tlieir steps. Arrivino; at the spot they found it 
 choked with donkeys of all coloui-s, shapes, and si/cs, 
 in every stage of niournfuliiess, misanthropy, and 
 boredom. However, they j)icked a female out, and 
 asked her price. 
 
 "Twelve dollars," replied a gij)sv la>s, '* but give 
 nie six, and she is yours." 
 
 Eventually the beast changed hands for three ; vet 
 when the bargain was concluded lav doun in loglike 
 stagnancy. The end of the unhukv transaction was 
 that Uusinol and his connades had to take the 
 docile creature in their arms and carry her home 
 with them, besides the easel and the colour-box as 
 heretofore. 
 
 Nor is the shrewdness of this much vituperated 
 people employed exclusively or even preferentiallv 
 uj)on the Christian. Whenever an op})ortunitv 
 occurs, they just as readily devote their ingenuitv to 
 "besting" one another, as the following tale will 
 show. A couple of gipsy pedlars were hawking 
 brooms ai)out the streets and ])l<i::iis of (iranada, 
 when one of them called the other to his side. 
 "Speaking," he said, "with |)erfect frankness, I 
 make my l)rooms myself, and steal my rushes, mv 
 handles, and my cord foi- binding. Nothing proceeds 
 from me excejit the time emplowd in nwuiufacture. 
 \Vith these economies mv lowest possibli- price is 
 IGl 1.
 
 ^5rana^a 
 
 fifteen cent'unos, and yet you sell for twelve. How 
 {•an you do it for the money ? " 
 
 " Why," replied the other, unabashed, " you see I 
 steal imj brooms I'eady-made.'''' 
 
 Nevertheless, by reason of long and intimate 
 experience of his weaker points, the Civil Guards are 
 .sometimes able to outwit the gipsy. Not long ago, 
 in a country district near Granada, two members of 
 that excellent police arrested two gitanos on the 
 charge (backed by something stronger than sus- 
 picion) of having stolen a valuable horse; and as 
 thev led them in towards the capital, aj)plied all 
 manner of promises and threats to make them, first 
 confess, and subsequently furnish details of, the 
 theft. All was in vain. The gipsies, loyal to their 
 tribal law and custom, vowed and whined with 
 melting oaths and supplications that nothing had 
 they done, or seen, or even heard of in the matter of 
 the missing steed. At length the Civil Guards re- 
 sorted to an artifice they had concerted overnight, 
 in case all other means should prove of no avail. A 
 signal passed between the two, and then they halted. 
 " Ride on,"" said one of them to his mate, in tones ot 
 ominous severity, " and let us treat these criminals 
 as we decided." The other, leading his prisoner by 
 the cord which bound his elbows, drew ahead, over 
 the brow of a hill some little distance off, and out of 
 sight upon the further side. 
 
 Then the one who had remained behind dis- 
 mounted from his saddle and bade his captive kneel. 
 Trembling now with apprehension, the wretch fell 
 forward on his knees. The guardia next unslung 
 
 162
 
 B. ciactatc en tbc Oipaice c( Orann^.l 
 
 his lirio. Just at that iiionuiit the lepnit of a 
 Mauser ran<; out across the hilltoj). 
 
 " There,^ observed the ^Kdrdhi^ '* I am >orrv for 
 it, l)ut I am obliged to do to you what mv mate has 
 just done to yours." He raised his riHe to hi>^ shoulder. 
 "If you wish to make a short praver."" he a(Med, 
 measuring a convenient distance from the bosom of 
 his victim, " I oive you half a minute. ( )v if. instead 
 of praying, you choose to tell me all the truth, of 
 course I still possess the power to save vour skin."" 
 
 That skin had never seemed so precious to our 
 gipsy; and gazing at the shining barrel just before 
 his nose, he left no detail unexplained; the hour, the 
 circumstances of the theft, and the secret whereabouts 
 of the stolen animal. 
 
 The 4>-w//y//V/ put up his riHe and charitablv helped 
 the shivering culprit to his feet. 
 
 •• And now,"" he said, with a grim smile, •' let us 
 rejoin our comrades, who are waiting for us." 
 
 I(j53
 
 The Inn of the Little Mill, from the Hill-side 
 
 XII 
 
 The Old Road to Guadix 
 INLESS vou fure to tranij). tlRiv i> 
 only one way of <^ettini^ to (iiiadix l)v 
 the old road ; and that is in a gondola- 
 But there are gondohis and <;()ndola>. 
 There is the gondola which glides, as 
 I am told, along the still lagoon; and then there is tin- 
 gondola of Spain, and more especially of Andalusia. 
 drawn by two, three, four, six, eight, or anv available 
 number of horses, and which toils and tund)les up and 
 down the Andalu>ian hills and niountain>/ Mv gon- 
 dola was of this latter cla^s. and as it >wcj)t iK'side 
 
 * "Gondola. A kind of carriage in which many persons can 
 ride together, built in the likeness of the boat so named." 
 — Dominguez, Dictionary of the Spanish Lan^uaqc.
 
 OvanaJa 
 
 the door of the hotel at rather after seven, the strings 
 of bells upon the harness made a merry tintinnabula- 
 tion in the clear November morning. Even the driver's 
 swear-words seemed mellifluous — almost Arabic. 
 
 We crossed the citv at a long, soul-stirring canter, 
 down the Calle Mesones, past the university, past 
 the bull ring, and up the slope that borders 
 San ^Miguel el Alto. Beyond the crest the older 
 coach road to Guadix lay far ahead and far behind ; 
 our wheels were bruising it apace ; my charioteer was 
 tickling up the leader's ears in sjambok fashion 
 with a lash as endless as the road ; and points of 
 foam betiecked the glittering carntvra. 
 
 I looked at it with curiosity, almost with awe — 
 this old Ctnii'iHo de GikuH.v, renowned in stories of 
 the past, when diligences scoured between the cities 
 day by day, and wayside tavern-keepers handled 
 golden ounces as though they were so many 
 peas. 13ut now, with a train from ]Moreda to 
 Guadix, and another train from ]Moreda to Granada, 
 this highroad has become a desert, and the diligence is 
 numbered with the dead. The Old Koad to Guadlr. 
 Is there not something weird and uncommon in the 
 name .^ So many things die out of use, but surely 
 not a road. Is there another in this overcrowded 
 world, that people traverse less and less with 
 multiplying generations r 
 
 Old, too, are scenes that add their fascination to the 
 roadway's ; the noria of the ancient east, that irri- 
 gates the fields ; the primitive plough ; * the old 
 
 * "The construction of their plough is remarkable for its 
 simplicity. The handle, sheet, and share are of one piece. 
 
 166
 
 Zbc Ol^ 1(^oa^ tc Ou.iMr 
 
 Sicnu of Altacai" thrustiii*^ a (■kiir-ciit, tltep-blm- 
 nose into the sky, as thouji^h he were some kiii<;ly 
 inuniniv of" old time ; the olden villa<res that ne>tle 
 round his foot. The first and lai<j,(st of these 
 hamlets is the higher Fargue, a coupU- of rows 
 of staring house-wall wMshed with white, or pink, 
 or vellow, and hung with eords of searlet eapsi- 
 eum hke monster rosaries inventeil for the Devik 
 
 This, with a beam mortised into it and strengthened by a retch. 
 with two pins to form the furrow, is the whole implement 
 Both the handle and the beam are lengthened out by pieces 
 when such assistance is required." 
 
 "From a comparison of all the ploughs to be found in the 
 interior provinces of Spain, I am inclined to think that the first 
 idea of this now complicated implement originated in the use of 
 a crooked stick, pushed forwards by a man, to form a furrow in 
 loose soil. When afterwards he called for the help of oxen, it 
 became necessary to contrive a beam, in order to regulate the 
 line of draft, according to the stiffness or looseness of the soil 
 and the depth to which he wished to move the earth. For this 
 purpose it was needful that the beam should be of sufficient 
 length to reach the yoke, that there he might have his point of 
 support to be elevated or depressed as occasion might require. 
 In process of time he found it convenient to have two pins, to 
 be placed in such a direction on the share as to remove the 
 earth to the right and to the left, and thus to form a wider 
 furrow than the share alone could trace." 
 
 "Here then we have the plough commonly used for tillage 
 in the kingdom of Granada. As for the fin to the share, the 
 coulter, the fore-sheet, and hind-sheet, the mould-board, the 
 ground-wrist, the drock. the bridle or cat-head, with the foot 
 and wheel or wheels, they are evidently modern, and not yet 
 introduced." (Townsend, yoHJ-wo' tlnoiif;Ii Spaiu. 1792, vol. iii. 
 pp. 53, 54 ) Similar remarks are applicable at this moment ! 
 At the same period, however, in north-eastern Spain the art of 
 ploughing was more advanced. "The ploughs here have all 
 longljeams as in the South of France, which reach to the yokes 
 of t'he oxen, and consequently they have no traces ; two small 
 sticks form all the mould-board ; they plough all flat." (Young. 
 Tour in Catalonia, I793-) 
 
 167
 
 »5 V a u a ^ a 
 
 Uetweeii the villages are sprinkled clean cortijos, not 
 unlike the farmsteads of Cape Colony, excepting that 
 the olive or acacia stands in place of the repulsive 
 though hygienic blue gum. And when the world 
 and I were younger by a dozen years, I saw those 
 trellised vines at Rondebosch and Constantia ; those 
 clear-cut, deep blue mountain-noses thrust aloft at 
 Tulbagh, Worcester, or the Paarl. 
 
 Soon after leaving Huetor Santillan, a cottage 
 cluster girt with smiling gardens, ihe scenery grows 
 wilder, and the farms more rare. A little further 
 back their industry was bee-keeping, and rows of 
 hives, cane-woven, lined with -lay, were ranged 
 along each wall. But here it changes to esparto, 
 a mean and ugly merchandise, heaped shoulder- 
 high in drear, disordered stacks. Fresentiv the 
 scene grows wilder yet, all habitations cease, the 
 road approaches mountains, then plunges in among 
 them. Beyond the pass, and where the gorges end 
 towards a spacious prospect of forest and of field, lies 
 a caprice of nature known as " The Teeth of the Old 
 Woman ^ — a multitude of grey or tawny jagged rocks 
 some four or five feet high and shaped precisely like a 
 fang. The annals of the brigandage of Andalusia 
 award this horrid spot a lasting and a melancholy 
 fame. Years, of course, have passed away since last 
 the cry " alto el coche .'"'^ resounded from behind these 
 hungry looking crags. But few, I think, would care to 
 pass them walking and alone, at night time, even now. 
 
 I took occasion to inteiTogate my driver on the 
 subject of those sombre memories — a decent and in- 
 telligent young fellow named Fernando. His father 
 
 168
 
 Zbc Ol> Txco to OuaMr 
 
 and his grandfather ahke had (hiven the dili^rinid. 
 The latter, he assured me, had several times hetii 
 corded to the wheel, for unless tliev were resisted 
 
 » 
 
 >«^^ 
 
 The Teeth of the Old Woman 
 
 the brigands' practice was seldoni to assassinate. 
 Of coui'se, when dealing with a strong purt'idn. a 
 military escort only made the situation worse. But 
 what could be more critical than the following ad- 
 venture, also related to me by my charioteer. One 
 night his father was driving home an empty gondola 
 to Santa Fe, with notes about him from a cattle 
 purchase in Granada. Crossing a bridge, lie spied a 
 couple of black figures, ciouching, one on either side, 
 Avithin the shadow of the stonework at the farther 
 end. Suspecting that they boded him no good, 
 he lashed the horses up and strove to break away 
 by sheer speed. The two men sprang together 
 at the reins. One of tliem missed antl fell, the 
 Kil)
 
 Ovana6a 
 
 wheels just grazing him. The other also missed 
 the reins, but keeping his feet dashed at the back 
 of the vehicle and there hung on. The handle of 
 the door was new, and what with the stiffness, or the 
 jolting, or with both, it would not turn ; so, smashing 
 the pane with his fist, the brigand let the window 
 down and proceeded to crawl inside, in order to 
 attack the driver at his ease. Aware of this, the 
 latter determined not to incur additional danger 
 bv pulling up, but trusting to the horses* know- 
 ledo-e of the road i>;ave them the lash once more 
 with mioht and main, and fastened the reins to 
 the seat. Then, plucking forth his knife and 
 thrusting it open within his sleeve, after the 
 classical manner of this land, he opened the other 
 window just behind his box, and crawled in also. 
 Fortunatelv, his foe had stuck in getting past the 
 frame, so that his body hung inside the carriage, 
 and the rest of him without. Observing this, the 
 driver crept to striking range, and drawing hisfaca, 
 gave a sweeping slash ; on which the other, striving 
 to avert the weapon, received it full between his fingers, 
 and writhing desperately fell back into the roatl. 
 
 Uj) to this point Fernando had told his tale with 
 signal soberness. But since the climax is emotional, 
 no doubt he felt himself constrained to add to it a 
 splash of local colour. " As soon as my father got to 
 Santa Fc, he found, scattered about the floor of the 
 gondola, four bloody fingers ; wrapped them in a 
 piece of papei", and gave them Christian burial."" 
 
 '■'■En pa:: descanscn,'' I murmured piously — "may 
 thev rest in peace."" 
 
 170
 
 Zbc Ol^ UvonJ to OuaMr 
 
 SlicIi was Fernando's conversation, always enter- 
 taining, always pictures(|iie. Once he pointed to a 
 distant hamlet in the middle of a lonelv plain, saying 
 
 The Inn of the Little Mill, on the Old Road to Guadix 
 
 there was no water for the \i Haiders, and that thev 
 had to fetch it from aff^r. " Believe nie, Senorito," 
 he added, " those people look at a glass of water as 
 one looks at the face of God." 
 
 He meant no irreverence. It was merely an 
 atHhihcuida inherited from his eastern and Egyptian 
 forefathers. 
 
 No sign of human habitation lies between the Teeth 
 of the Old Woman and the half-wav house denomin- 
 ated the \enta liel Molinillo, or "Inn of the Little 
 ]\Iill." immoitali/ed bv the author of Dmi Qn'/.tati:* 
 
 '■' My friend, Don Miguel de Pareja, says that beyond all 
 doubt this Venta del Molinillo is the very one referred to by 
 
 171
 
 C5l•a^a^a 
 
 The wliite aubci-ge, climbed down to bv a curl- 
 ing, steep declivity impassable in snowv weather, 
 seems like a homestead rather than a hostelry. 
 Indeed, it is both one and the other now ; and 
 looks just like The Valley Farm imbedded in a 
 landscape of Salvator Rosa. Frowning cliff's are 
 all around; but in the shadow of their frown 
 these modest walls repose ; a stream spanned bv 
 a rustic bridge glides with, harmonious smoothness 
 past the door; and in the umbrage of some scarcely 
 stirring poplars the ducks and fowls unite their 
 trivial music with the purhng of the water. 
 
 The people of the Venta betray at a glance that 
 they have " come down in the world." I asked 
 one of the daughters (a foolish (juestion) if the 
 suppression of the diligence had greatly injured 
 them. " Ah, cahallero,'''' she replied, "this was pure 
 glory in the days gone by. The gold flowed in 
 here then like yonder water flowing past the door.'' 
 The tears w ere standing in her eyes ; foi- in their 
 present straits it was as much as the poor folks could 
 contrive to find me a slice of ham and a couple of 
 eggs to make my lunch upon. 
 
 When man and beast had fed and rested we re- 
 Cervantes in the opening sentence of his Kinconetc- y Cortadillo, 
 thus : "At the Venta or hostelry of the Molinillo, which is situate 
 on the confines of the renowned plain of Alcudia, and on the road 
 from Castile to Andalusia, two striplings met by chance on one 
 of the hottest days of summer," &c. In his monograph 
 Cervantes en Granada, Sr Pareja points out that although there 
 are several Alcudias in Spain — three in the Balearic Islands, 
 two in the Province of Valencia, one in the Province of Almeria, 
 and one not far from Guadix, this last alone fits in with 
 Cervantes' description. 
 
 172
 
 Cbc Ol^ •Ko.l^ to Oll;l^lr 
 
 sunic'd our way, skirtiiii;- tlif woods and iiioimtuiiis 
 of this lonely land, until, mounting- a ion<r ascvnt, 
 we swept upon the liandet of Die/nia. From the 
 panic-stricken air with which the viilati;ers removed 
 their chairs from the midcMe of the street, they 
 showed that their ears had ceased to he accustomed 
 to the sound of wheels. Formerly, I take it, thev 
 merely dozed within the doorway. 
 
 It was at Diezma that, exactly one hundred and 
 seventeen years ago, a highly uncomfortahle occur- 
 rence befell the Reverend Joseph Townsend, "Rector 
 of Pewsey, Wilts; and late of Clare Hall, Cam- 
 bridge." " The village as now," he tells us in his 
 Jounieij, " comprised about one hundred and si'ventv 
 families. As I travelled the whole day fasting, I 
 hastened to the butcher's to see what was to he had. 
 There I learnt the price of provisions, and that 
 mutton sold usually for twelve, beef for eight (piartos 
 (twopence farthing) the pound of sixteen ounces ; 
 bread for six and a half. For wine I paid thiee 
 (juartos the {juartillo. liut, unfortunatelv, neither 
 beef nor mutton were to be had; and, to fill up the 
 measure of my consolation, at the posadd I coukl 
 obtain no bed, nor yet a room."' 
 
 " What could be done .? The (Uiy was closing, and 
 it began to rain. The alcalde was to besought for; 
 but he was nowhere to be found. At the end of a 
 long search, I met him returning from the field, antl 
 after a short salutation, presented him mv pass ; vet 
 to little purpose, for he could neither write nor ri'ad. 
 We went next in pursuit of the c-strihinio^ but he was 
 not at home. At last, however, we found a peasant 
 173
 
 ^3l•ana^a 
 
 who had learned to read and write. The pass was 
 produced, and su})niitted to an accurate examination. 
 It required that I should be provided with every- 
 thing needful, at a reasonable price.'' 
 
 " The alcalde having listened to it with attention, 
 inquired what I wished to have. I replied, a bed. 
 A bed ! No such thin^' is mentioned in the pass. 
 But, if vour merev will have the goodness to observe 
 the expression, everytlihig needful. No, no, a bed is 
 not needful to a traveller ; he may do very well with- 
 out one. I told him, with great humility, that it was 
 for his- tiierc// to judge of what the pass implied, and 
 began quietlv to retire; when, seeming to recollect 
 himself, he ordered a billet to be made out." 
 
 " With this I went to my destined cottage, where a 
 bed was spread upon the Hoor, and I went supperless 
 to rest, having had little for the whole day but some 
 hard eggs, and, for the want of a corkscrew, such 
 wine only as the vineyards in the neighbourhood 
 produced.'"' 
 
 " The next morning the good people of the house 
 prepared mv chocolate, and when I was to take my 
 leave no persuasions could prevail on them to accept 
 of money for iny bed." 
 
 Even to-dav one meets some comical Spaniards 
 who like that Mayor of Diezma can neither read 
 nor write. I know of an Andalusian town where 
 even the postman is without these arts ; and so, 
 unable to deliver the letters from house to house, 
 he throws them in a heap upon the mayor's table 
 in the townhall, where the populace assemble to 
 take their pick of them. In consequence of this ex- 
 
 174
 
 Zbc Ol^ •Koa^ to CMl.^^lv 
 
 traordiiiary custom uverv one knows i-verv oik- cNe's 
 business — who lias had a letter from lier swc-etheait, 
 who from her s())i in South America, and so on ; and 
 every mail provides a paradise for tonguester> with- 
 out number. 
 
 Beyond I)ie/ma the scene is uniform and Hat, 
 until the curling road leads down upon a tract un- 
 utterably desolate, uiuitteral)lv s(rani;e. 'I'he sinface 
 ofthelandis smoothed completelv level ; but hei'eand 
 there some miohty cataclysmic force has opened a 
 tremendous <rash extending many miles. The sides 
 of these gashes appear to have been moulded bv 
 some human architect, and counterfeit with wonder- 
 ful exactitude, at one point battlements and bas- 
 tions; at another, rows of niches; and at a third, 
 the " stalactite decoration "' of the Saracens. The 
 colour of this weird tract is ashen grey combined at 
 intervals with terra cotta ; but at its boundary 
 the gashes alternate with rows of whitish, fang- 
 like peaks, from fifty to a hinidred feet in height— 
 a kind of magnified replica of the "Teeth of the 
 Old AVoman." * 
 
 Two miles before Guadix we reached the village of 
 Purullena. A few of the Purullenians live in cottages ; 
 but by for the greater number are cave (lweller>, and 
 scoop themselves abodes, such as hobgoblin> might 
 inhabit, among the pits and the protuberance^ of 
 the landscape. I even saw a farm so scoo|)ed. 
 whose chinniey projected from a mound a do/en 
 
 * For a technical notice of these geological phenomena, see 
 Dr. Von Drasch's report on the geology of the Sierra Nevada, 
 in the sixth volume of the Bolctin de la Comision del Mafa Gcolbgico 
 dc Espaha, Madrid, 1S79. 
 
 175
 
 ©ranaJa 
 
 yards within, lender this prehistoric system there 
 is no landlord and no rent, but only a trifling tax 
 imposed by Government; and one of the hobgoblin- 
 looking tenants, to whom I bawled some questions 
 from my carriage, shrilly assured me that he enjoys a 
 delectable temperature in every weather, and at every 
 time of year. 
 
 However this mav be, the weirdness of the spot 
 reduces the traveller (or at least it did myself) to a 
 state almost of stupor ; and when we rolled into 
 Guadix, I wondered whether I had awoken from 
 one of Knatchbull-Hugessen's fairy stories, such as 
 enthralled me in my uncle's hayfield — was it yester- 
 day, or was it twenty years ago ? 
 
 176
 
 A Wayside Wine Shop 
 
 XIII 
 
 Guadix 
 LITTLE old niu.stv, iiistv citv, 
 sc-attered alon<r a hillside lookiiiir 
 north, and therefore shelterless and 
 bleak; entered thr()u<^h the pite of 
 San Torcuato, a inedia-val fabric that 
 has lost all vestige of a door ; such is Guadix, the 
 Jcci of old Rome, whose occupants concern them- 
 selves but little with the freaks and frailties of time, 
 and live and do and die as in the doughtv davs of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, or even of the Homaiis, or 
 Ph(enicians, or the IJastitani, or the liastitaiii's an- 
 cestors, as far away as Tul)al, Hi ic iilcs, and Adam. 
 
 Even the Reverend Townsend, who finds j)erlia|)s 
 too uuich to say of most things, from the formation ot 
 1 77 M
 
 nitre to the expulsion of the Moriscos, or the history 
 of locusts to the breezes of the Mediterranean, 
 is very nearly mute upon the subject of Guadix. 
 He has my sympathy — the more so at this opening 
 of my chapter, when nineteen-twentieths of it stare 
 me blankly in the face like so many leagues of road 
 without a vehicle to cover them. In two respects, 
 our clerical tourist has the better of me. Guadix 
 in his day was embellished with an avenue, and 
 famous for its power of producing knives. " At the 
 entrance to the city,""' he wrote, " is the alameda 
 or public walk, well planted, and remarkable for 
 neatness.'" I have seen this alameda, or rather what 
 is left of it, and nothing in the whole of melancholy 
 Spain is more profoundly melancholy. It lies beside 
 the river bed or rambla, a ruinous fountain in the 
 midst of it, a ruinous row of elms on either side — un- 
 kempt, unwashen-looking elms, shin-deep in drifted 
 sand. Within a stone's throw of the endmost tree is 
 the wretched city gateway, and a wretcheder posada* 
 and opposite to these a farrierv for horses, asses, 
 mules, and bulls. \\'hile putting on his shoe the 
 bull is thrust into a kind of skeleton bathing-machine, 
 with a band round his belly and ropes round his legs. 
 Yet even thus he contrives to deal some very creditable 
 kicks, which do him all the greater honour, seeing 
 
 * The comparative standing of Spanish places of rest and 
 refreshment for man and beast may thus be represented : 
 Hotel = Duke, 
 Fonda = Marquis, 
 Posada = Earl, 
 Meson = Viscount, 
 
 and 
 Venta = Baron. 
 
 178
 
 Oua^il• 
 
 that tliis, as Biiffbn would step forward to apprise 
 us, is not liis customary mode of combatiii<i;. 
 
 The streets of Guadix are narrow and mispaved 
 and steep, but 
 in the n)idst of 
 them is the 
 cathedral, a 
 solid and un- 
 graceful struc- 
 ture of the 
 eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Townsend 
 affirmed it to 
 contain " three 
 orders of archi- 
 tecture, Corin- 
 thian, ('oni):)o- 
 site, and Anoma- 
 lous." I fancy I 
 descried about a 
 hundred. As 
 
 for the knife manufacture, I saw no sign of it. 
 Townsend, on the contrary, saw, or was made to see, 
 more than he cared about. "' The article for which 
 this citv is most celebrated being |)ocket knives, the 
 first attention of my guide was to purchase one ; and 
 when we set forwards on our journey the succeeding 
 day, he j)roduced it."' 
 
 "The blade was sixteen inches long, and wjien 
 
 open it was prevented from shutting again by a 
 
 strong spring. Although this was the first of the 
 
 kind I had ever seen, mv imagination imuiediatelv 
 
 l'79 
 
 The Gateway of Guadix
 
 l5rana^a 
 
 suggested the purpose for whicli it was designed. 
 Having produced his weapon, he began to brandish 
 it ; then, supposing himself to have been suddenly 
 attacked by some one armed with an implement 
 similar to his own, he stooped forwards, bending his 
 knees, and holding his hat before him, by way of 
 shield, in his left hand ; whilst his right hand, de- 
 pressed and grasping hard the handle of his knife, 
 directed its elevated point. Thus prepared, and 
 casting a look of fury on his supposed antagonist, he 
 sprang forwards, and, appearing to have received in his 
 hat the thrust of his opponent, he gave the fatal blow, 
 which was to enter at the lower belly, and in one in- 
 stant to rip up the miserable wi'etch from end to end." 
 " These knives are strictly forbidden ; but unfor- 
 tunately, inveterate custom is too strong for human 
 laws, more especially in a country where the passions 
 are easily inflamed ; and where, from the nature of 
 the judicial process, the laws must be weak in the 
 extreme. For, as we have remarked already, no 
 information can be taken but by the escnvanos^ nor 
 can any judgment be pronouni^ed but upon their 
 record. Now as these officers are usually poor, and 
 not unfrequently destitute of principle, they may, 
 without much difficulty, be persuaded to change the 
 complexion of an action, and at pleasure to make it 
 either black or white. Hence, from impunity, 
 assassinations are frequently committed ; and, as 
 little security can be derived from the laws, it 
 becomes the interest of every man to be armed for 
 his own defence. With this view only he procures 
 the formidable weapon ; but, when provoked to 
 180
 
 (3 u a M r 
 
 anger, his views are changed ; that wliich was de- 
 signed for Ids own protection becomes the insti'u- 
 inent of treachery, of maHce, and of revenge." * 
 
 My Uxlging at Guadix, near enough to the cold 
 ground for nie to see, and smell, and taste, and feel 
 the damji — all four sensations simultaneously — was 
 in a humbleyb»f/a, whose name I shall conceal. The 
 rooms, although they had no carpets and scarcely any 
 furniture, were habitable at a pinch ; but the only note 
 of cleanliness about the slovenly ]\Iaritornes was the 
 white chrysanthenunn in her hair. When I had washed 
 with neither soap nor towel, nor anvthing but water 
 (and barely a tliind)leful of that), I sought the dark 
 and dingy dining-room. Alas poor tom^r/orf*, I know 
 them well ; the oilcloth-covered table, the coarse 
 cutlery, the thick glasses and bottles, the crab-shaped 
 rosea of bread upon each plate, the flower-stand in 
 the centre, composed of half a dozen simple stands of 
 graduated sizes. The chromo on the wall — a semi- 
 naked damsel feeding from her carmine lips a parrot of 
 a poisonous green — proclaims the excellence of such 
 and such a starch, or such and such a brandy ; and 
 thrust into the libellous looking-glass are several 
 dirty business cards. 
 
 It is the custom in communicative Spain to speak 
 to every stranger vou may meet, except an English- 
 man (who seldom answers if he does not know the 
 language, and still more seldom if he does) ; so 
 
 * I am sorry to observe that this state of things has not 
 mended very greatly. The use of the sixteen-inch blade which 
 the Reverend Townsend euphemizes as a " pocket-knife," is still 
 "inveterate"; still escrivanos are "usually poor," and still by 
 far too frequently devoid of principle. 
 
 181
 
 Ol•ana^a 
 
 presently my tongue was wagging with the rest. I 
 could have told the company before I set my eyes on 
 them. Of course there were a couple of commercial 
 travellers, a priest, and the inevitable old gentle- 
 man retired on a pension from the service of the state, 
 afflicted with blindness, deafness, lameness, asthma, 
 indigestion, imbecility, and other ailments and diseases. 
 It would have been kinder to have put him out of his 
 misery upon the spot, as Professor somebody or other 
 recommended at a conference, or in an article, not 
 many months ago. 
 
 If I exclude this invalid we made between the four 
 a small yet eminently sprightly party. Nevertheless, 
 my attention was from time to time distracted by a 
 pale faced little girl of seven or eight, who waited 
 on us to the best of her diminutive power. I had 
 asked about her on the landing, just before the meal 
 began. " She is only distantly related to us," the 
 landladv had answered, in harsh tones ; " we took her 
 in for charity " ; and emphasizing charity she dealt 
 the child a violent cuff on the side of the head. 
 Upon the cuff I superposed a kiss, deeming it prudent 
 for the little sufferer's sake not to interfere by word 
 of mouth. She took both cuff and kiss with mute 
 indifference ; and I saw that she was unaccustomed 
 to the one, while to the other she was all too much 
 accustomed. 
 
 But when dessert was nearly ended, we heard out- 
 side the room the noise of a smashing plate, followed 
 by a scuffle and a shower of blows and cries. At 
 length one childish cry pealed out above the rest : " If 
 my mother were alive, you never would treat me so."" 
 ^ 182
 
 (3ua^ir 
 
 " //!"" Alas, there was a woild of nieaniii^ and of 
 pathos in that microscopic word ; for rnii^htv proljlenis 
 agitate an infant's brain. ^Vhene\•er a child com- 
 plains with reason, providence accords to him or 
 her a swift, incisive logic that is harrowing to listen 
 to. For it is terrible to hear a child cry ; but it is 
 far more terrible to hear it exjilain its sorrows. 
 Above all, in the childish mind the sense of some- 
 body or something lost or absent is poignantly 
 severe. Is any grief so great, so real., as that of a 
 broken doll ? The passions of children, stronger 
 as well as purer than our own, pulsate with all 
 sincerity (for pose is but the aftergrowth of more 
 corrupted if maturer years) ; and then their corporal 
 prison is a narrower one than ours. 
 
 I looked at the padre. He looked at me, winked, 
 grinned, and cracked a walnut. 
 
 The cries and blows continued. Again I looked 
 at the paihr. He was picking his teeth. 
 
 The sobbing and ejaculations died away. From 
 the quiet which ensued there might have been a 
 murder. For me a murder had been. 
 
 I looked at the padre for a thiid time. He had 
 risen now, and was taking out a pack of cards from 
 behind the mirror. 
 
 " PobrecUla,^'' I cried with unfeigned anguish ; 
 " que infdinefi ! ''' 
 
 " Don't be frightened," rejoined the jxidre suavely 
 and with just the shadow of a sneer ; " the child is 
 very naughtv." He shuffled the cards, sat down, 
 and dealt them into several heaps. He was play- 
 ing patience. 
 
 183
 
 (5l•ana^a 
 
 So, without a pack of cards, was I. 
 
 Disgusted with the scene I walked into the street 
 and thi'ough the town, discovered the gambling 
 hell denominated the Liceo, went over it, and 
 came away with fresh dejection. However little 
 of our college Greek and Latin may yet survive 
 in us, we still incline to mentally connect I^yceums 
 with literature and other things polite. But here 
 the air is fetid with roulette and monte. Therefore 
 the only art indulged in is that of rifling the 
 pockets of the simple or the vicious ; and yet 
 there is a library, consisting of perhaps three 
 hundred volumes, locked away into a corner, so as 
 not to obstruct the jj;amino:-tables. A chance 
 acquaintance showed me to these unthumbed tomes. 
 " We have all the English classics," he said ; 
 "Makalay" (with a strong emphasis on the lay)^ 
 "■ Shesspeer, and the rest."" At least, I think this was 
 what he said, for I only made out his vvords across 
 the rattle of the dicebox, and those most unliterary 
 and un-Lyceum-like epithets which as a rule accom- 
 pany a luckless cast. 
 
 That night, when all the lodgers of my inn had 
 sought their rooms, the beating was lenewed. Once 
 more that dreadful wail arose across the darkness : 
 " O if my mother were alive, you would not dare to 
 beat me so." 
 
 "Strange," I muttered. "No commentator has 
 yet revealed to us how nuich of Scripture is ironical." 
 The blows and cries continued. Angry and (doubt- 
 less) impious reflections surged into my heart ; for it 
 is ever in the heart that sensitive persons do their 
 
 184
 
 O u a ^ i v 
 
 reasoninj^. " After all," I thouj^ht, coveriiif^ my ears 
 with the bedclothes, " He wlio claims to temper the 
 wind to the shorn lamb, let Him temj)er thisT' 
 
 My dreams were troubled, altlioiiiih a ^lain of 
 consolation was in store for me. Hjjon the niorrow, 
 while I breakfasted, a decently-dressed youth rushed 
 in witii an armful of old books and Hunt;- them on 
 the table. 
 
 "There," he cried, "you may take yoiu" pick. 
 They tell me you are fond of such old thin<;s." 
 
 The first that came into my hand was Perez del 
 Pulgar''s Chron'nlc of the Cdtholic Sovcrc'ign.s^ Sara- 
 gossa, 1567, black letter, with the wonderful en- 
 gravings of that period. 
 
 " What do you want for this .^ " 
 
 " Whatever you like to give me." 
 
 " Better name your price." 
 
 " No, Senor, I leave the price to you," 
 
 " \'erv well, I couldn't give you more than a 
 dollar ; but I warn vou the book may be worth a 
 good deal more." 
 
 " Or less." 
 
 The grin which accompanied this startling state- 
 ment excused my Hinging conscience to the winds ; 
 so I paid the five pesetas and clutched my bargain. 
 
 We parted, I am sure, with mutual disdain, the 
 vendor of the volume despising me for giving him 
 too much, and I him for accepting too little. 
 
 185
 
 In the Albayciiii 
 
 XIV 
 
 A Night in the Albaycin 
 EYOND the northern bonier of the 
 Darro, and yet within the echo of his 
 waters and the shadow of his boskage, 
 rises a steepish hill confionting the 
 Aihanibra, and, covering this hill 
 from crown to base, the Albaycin. few tourists 
 penetrate the Albaycin, though numbers cast a care- 
 less glance upon the old, historic quarter from the 
 parapet of the Place of Cisterns, or the lordly win- 
 dows of the Tower of C'omares. A thousand years 
 have set its houses up and thrown them down, and set 
 them up and thrown them down once more, so often 
 that Time, one thinks, at last is weary of his work, 
 and even the ruins seem, as himself, perpetual. 
 Ruins, indeed, they are, yet not inanimate. They 
 187
 
 ©rana^a 
 
 seem, I say, to have outgrown the grasp of death, 
 respiring with a subtle dignity the pride of ancient 
 days, the Hfe and legends of the past. So in a quiet 
 and a reverential mood we must approach them. Then 
 they will whisper to us all their secrets ; and we shall 
 find that in these crumbling palaces and unkempt 
 gardens, hidden away like stores of jewels in a cave, 
 are half the glories of Granada. 
 
 There is an air about the Albaycin that belongs 
 to it alone ; at least I am aware of nothing even 
 faintly similar in other parts. Here, joined in closest 
 union, are wealth and penury, humility and haughti- 
 ness, the orient and the west. Within the limit of the 
 Albaycin the Christian church combines with the 
 aljama, themansionof the Christian noble clings about 
 the courtyard and the columns of the Moor. In either 
 instance both together, locked in a last embrace, are 
 falling to decay, although they do not seem to fall. 
 Already, wondering at the haunted silence of these 
 lanes, and tenements, and temples, we tread upon the 
 ashes of two peoples and two creeds, though vines 
 and blossoms caress the wrinkled walls like fresh-cut 
 wreaths upon a grave, while here and there projects 
 the cypress, starkly desolate. These contrasts have 
 at any hour and any season a sweet and subtle 
 magic ; but best of all observe them by the April 
 or October moon. It is my custom then to plunge 
 into the threadlike alleys of the old faubourg, and 
 clamber up them to the open space before Saint 
 Nicholas. The drooping beams fall full upon the 
 distant snows of the Sierra ; fall upon masses of 
 indigo foliage and russet church-towers ; fall, too, 
 188
 
 B HAiiibt in tbc Hlbavcin 
 
 upon the purpk- foothills, and the ruddy pile of the 
 Alhanibra opposite. \\'hen all of these grow dim I 
 often cross the sunuiiit of the Alhavcin to watch the 
 
 The Casa del Gallo 
 
 last reful.tj;ence from the city wall. Mv favourite way 
 to this lies past the Casa del Gallo, once the palace 
 of the kingling Badis ben Habus, but now a common 
 lodging-house. The looms, surviving from the linen 
 factory established in the palace ages since, are still 
 at work within ; and as I peer between the heavy 
 iron 7-(jas I hear them ticking like gigantic clocks 
 across the dark and damp interior. 
 
 Not far beyond I strike into the Callejchi de las 
 Monjas, " Nuns' Lane," the loneliest in Christen- 
 dom. On one side is an orchard, on the other the 
 convent and the grounds of Santa Isabel, steeped in 
 monastic silence, solitude and sadness. Just where 
 the lane bends upward to the right is a small aque- 
 189
 
 Ovanata 
 
 duct, from which they hanged the rebels in the 
 days of Philip the Fifth. Hence the fantastic 
 tales attached to it; though, to be sure, the 
 aqueduct looks red at sundown and ghastly pale 
 beneath the moon ; and close beside, a single cypress 
 gives it guard. 
 
 From the end of the Callejon de las Monjas to the 
 tavern of "Three and a Half is only a matter of 
 some paces, through the Puerta Nueva and across 
 the Plaza Larga of the Albaycin. The tavern is 
 just behind one corner of the Plaza. Its owner, 
 nicknamed (why I know not) " Trcs )/ Medio,'" a cour- 
 teous citizen under middle age, yet stout and serious 
 simultaneously, "of a sedate look, something ap- 
 proaching to gravity," will lead you through a murky 
 chamber strongly reminiscent of the final act of 
 Rigoletto — even to the curtain stretched across a 
 portion of the stage — into his orchard and the 
 open air. Here, smothered in foliage, are chairs and 
 tables for his customers. Trellises are overhead, 
 and, if it be their season, pyramids of muscatel, velvety 
 both to look and touch, caress your face in passing. 
 The orchard overhangs the ancient Cuesta de la 
 Alhacaba, once perhaps a moat, but now the road- 
 way leading steeply down into Granada, Above the 
 Cuesta, on the further side, some fifty yards away, 
 stretches the ancient city wall, level at first, declining 
 then towards the Puerta Monaita, and parallel with 
 the convent of Santa Isabel la Real, long centuries 
 ago the palace, of immortal memory, of Daralbaida. 
 
 When once the fading of the light has blotted out 
 all detail from the wall, it looks exactly like a minia- 
 
 190
 
 H "KiGbt in tbc HIbavcin 
 
 ture Alhambra. So also docs the Alhanibra dip 
 from left to right about its Alcazaba; and each of 
 these battlements might well be one of the Aliiambra's 
 towers ; except that here there is no Darro at 
 the foot ; only the moated Cuesta. The houses, too, 
 are scanty at this spot, for most of the ravine is filled 
 with gardens. Seldom a wayfarer intrudes upon its 
 silence : his road lies rather through the bowels of 
 the Albaycin. Here, then, unpestered by a human 
 voice, and fenced with fruit, and Howers, and 
 trantjuillity, you are at ease to sip your glass of 
 thin vintllo, and smoke your cigarette, and sniff the 
 grapes, and watcli the city wall. 
 
 There are two writers who belong particidarly to 
 the Albaycin ; to whom the Albaycin particularly 
 belongs. Their names are Gines Perez de Hyta and 
 Manuel Fernandez y (jonzalez. Yet Perez de Hyta 
 was not a Granadino but a Murcian, while Seville 
 was the cradle of Fernandez y Gonzalez. It is the 
 fashion with nifvny an ignorant or an envious critic to 
 scoff at Hyta''s tales as idle fantasy, or even as mis- 
 chievous romance disfiguring the solenni front of 
 history. Even the knavish Echevern'a has mauled 
 him with indignant language (although in a later 
 chapter, and in order to procure support for one of 
 his own insipid fictions, he professes to withdraw his 
 hypocritical anathema). Prior to this, the priestly 
 cheat had branded the Gucrras C'lvilcs as " fabulous 
 throughout," lamenting that in Granada every father 
 gave the volume to his children for their school- 
 book. IJut though the Murcian novelist is careful 
 to effectively disguise historical facts, the spirit 
 191
 
 Granada 
 
 of Granada is his very own. He is her Walter 
 Scott ; and makes us realize, as nobody before or 
 after him, her combats and her riots and her festivals ; 
 the splendour of her sultans ; the valour of her 
 warriors ; the sentiments and passions of her nobles 
 and her populace. 
 
 The other writer, Manuel Fernandez y Gonzalez, 
 was also a novelist with a dash of the historian. He 
 died before my time ; but many of my friends 
 remember him, and tell me largely of his eccen- 
 tricities. His tales in general are breathing 
 images of old Granada ; but Martin Gil and The 
 Monfies have brought the Albaycin a second im- 
 mortality. His manners were pervaded with a 
 quaint conceitedness that furnished endless laughter; 
 for he had steeped himself in bygone ages until 
 he firmly thought himself their citizen. " Gentle- 
 men," he declared to his associates, " you should 
 salute me with your skull in your hand " ; and 
 again, " Spain has only two poets : I am the male, and 
 Zorrilla the female."'"' He lived, as well as wrote, 
 romances, and with the full permission of her 
 parents, like Eduardo de Contreras in Gorostiza''s 
 comedy, Contigo Pan y Cebolla, robbed and carried 
 off his bride (a daughter of the Albaycin) because 
 this seemed to him the classical road to wedlock. 
 " Show him a sword," said one of his admirers, " and 
 he will paint an epoch for you."'"' He threw his work 
 on paper with the swiftness, though not, of course, 
 the versatile and varying inspiration, of a Lope. 
 Once he was told that the Spanish Congress proposed 
 to reward him with a pension. '• Tell the Congress,"'"' 
 
 192
 
 » IHuibt in tbc Blbnvcin 
 
 exclaimed Feniaiide/ haughtilv, " that I am willing 
 to dictate its shorthand writers a novel of a hundred 
 thousand words in six hours ; or if it be a novel of 
 history, in seven, 
 in order to <;ive ^^i*^ 
 
 me time to look 
 up Mariana." But 
 the oddest of his 
 customs was to 
 prowl about at 
 midnight in a 
 costume of the 
 seventeenth cen- 
 tury, not onlv 
 dressing his char- 
 acters, but dress- 
 ing himself to 
 represent them 
 in a truthful 
 mood. How of- 
 ten, after dark, 
 while roaming through the Albaycin, have I expected 
 to come upon the lonely phantom of the novelist, 
 striding up and down deserted lanes or plazuclf/s, 
 with a broad and plumed chaviJ)crgo ])ulled upon 
 his brow, a velvet capa of the time of the Philips, 
 and clanking, underneath the cloak, the ponderous 
 rapier of those fighting generations. 
 
 And yet this writer's spirit of investigation was a 
 
 wise one; for everything about this region he so 
 
 loved is mystery and strangeness. I know a corner 
 
 of the Albaycin — a corner made for moonlight and 
 
 193 N 
 
 A Corner in the Albaycin
 
 ^Bl•ana^a 
 
 romance — first a mansion, then a water-mill, and 
 now a ruin. Hither the moon may penetrate, but 
 not (from the sequestered nature of the spot) the 
 moving air. A little to one side are ranged the 
 worn-out millstones ; a coat of arms still crowns the 
 doorway ; the door is dropping from its frame ; and 
 over shield and door a weeping willow spreads its 
 mute and melancholy foliage. One night last 
 autumn I sat and watched this wondrous nook until 
 it seemed inalienable from my sight, or even from my 
 memory. My thoughts, inwoven with the scene, 
 were quietude itself. How Httle I anticipated an 
 adventure. On rising from beside the willow and the 
 millstones, I took a turning that was new to me, and 
 passing along a narrow lane between two rows of 
 garden wall, with only here and there a dwelling, 
 came out upon an open space. Here was the 
 strangest scene of any. I found myself in a deserted 
 plazuela, fallen, this one, completely to decay. I do 
 not know its name. I hope it has none. Mountains 
 of rubbish creaked beneath my tread. Houses were 
 all around ; not one was tenanted. Lumps of fungus 
 clung like clotted blood about their pallid faces, 
 horribly suggestive of the human dead ; for white- 
 wash, in these Andalusian cities, seems inseparable 
 from every kind of dwelling, occupied or no. How 
 does this happen ? Who stops at sea to paint a 
 derelict ? Who coats these shells with whitewash, 
 even when their inmates have abandoned them ? 
 Yet so it is, and whitewash is the first to come and 
 last to leave; at once a building's swaddling-clothes 
 and cerement. Here, then, the moonlight stared 
 194
 
 H IWiiibt in tbc Blbavicin 
 
 tlii()iii;li ciiijjtv saslies on to picturelcss, iinpajK'ivd 
 walls, and lib-Iike rafters sodden black with a<;e. 
 Above, the unite Alhand)ra stood or stalked a<minst 
 a sky leaden yet limpid, niarvelloiislv deep, mar- 
 vellously dear. All of the heights were in eclipse, 
 but towards the valley the darkness orew more dark, 
 or at least more dense ; while thereabout, beyond 
 the edge of the C'arrera, I seemed to catch the 
 murmur of the stream, as though the spirits of 
 an Arab garrison were whispeiing underground. 
 The moon was just behind the Moorish Palace, 
 seen)ing to cast her rays across as well as over it. 
 Even the parapets and ramparts, locked to the 
 rocky ridge like teeth within a jaw, seemed to 
 have lost their substance. Dark thev loomed, though 
 not with the opacity of thickness, l)ut of shade. A 
 piece of cardboard held against a candle has the 
 same effect. I felt I could have poked mv stick 
 through them. Nothing would have convinced me 
 then that I was looking at a mighty mass of stone. 
 Was that the l^ow er of C'omares ? I could have 
 sworn no mortal feet, still less my own, had ever 
 stepped within. 
 
 I stayed as in a trance till distant chimes .sighed 
 forth an early hour, and took, in my regress, another 
 turning. In course of time I felt myself once more 
 in contact with the habitations of the living, though 
 every noi.se was dulcet, and subdued, and echolike. 
 Across the studded jjortal of a carmen I heard from 
 time to time the murmur of a fountain, or guitar, or 
 women's voices; while here and there the overflow 
 from some aljihc coeval with the great Alahniai- diew 
 
 195
 
 (BranaBa 
 
 music from the hollows of the roadwav like the 
 cooing of innumerable doves. At length I stumbled 
 on — and almost tumbled over — a lover lying stomach 
 downwards, whispering with his dame across a sub- 
 terranean reja. Such cases are not infrequent in the 
 Albaycin. Stomachs, however, as Ibsen demonstrates 
 in Hedda Gabler, possess no element of romance ; 
 and I hastened to step aside, partly from delicacy, 
 but also partly from disgust. After this the neigh- 
 bourhood grew busier by moments ; and here and 
 there a grocer^s or a barber's shop was open still. 
 I reached the outskirts of the Albaycin. After 
 all, I thought, this is the famous — or notorious — 
 gipsy quarter of Granada — not the Brummagem 
 gipsies whom the grinning enganabobos (" take-in- 
 fools "''') of an interpreter displays to credulous tourists 
 in the courtyard of one or other of the hotels, but 
 the genuine, uncontaminated, unchristianized gitano. 
 Presently I passed an open door illuminated from 
 within. A handsome woman leaned in silhouette 
 against the post. " Come in," she said ; and in a 
 careless yet inquisitive mood I entered. 
 
 The place was a small and sordid wine-tavern, 
 stone throughout. A coloured calendar was in the 
 middle of the wall ; and in the middle of the 
 calendar a small, round hole, browned at the edge. 
 Put a person in the place of the calendar, and you 
 have a really elegant murder, that would have 
 enchanted De Quincey as constituting, from the 
 point of view of art, a huge advance upon the 
 primitive dagger-thrust of the Morisco. This 
 calendar and the bullet-hole through the middle of 
 
 196
 
 H -nigbt in tbe HIbavcin 
 
 it were positively the first objects that met my eye. 
 As soon as I turned away from tlicm, I foiiiul that 
 the woman and myself wore not alone. A man, of 
 sinister and frowning features, lolled behind the 
 counter. He had (a<rain from I)e (^uincey's point of 
 view) an unimpeachably Lombrosian head and fiice. 
 I recotrnized at this the niceness of mv situation ; for 
 the place was shady, if not worse; while I, not beini^ 
 prepared for this digression from my walk, was 
 trimly clothed and wore a scarf-pin and a ring of value. 
 Somehow or other, too, the door had closed. How- 
 ever, absorbed in contemplation of another world — 
 that dead, mysterious plazuela underneath the age- 
 less stars — I felt no fear of anything a woman could 
 do to me, much less a man. So up I stepped and 
 demanded wine for three. The sinister proprietor 
 poured it out. I took the woman's glass and placed 
 it in her hand, motioned the man to his, and raised 
 my own. The licjuor was a foul concoction, " faked " 
 and weakened both with water and sali%a ; for in these 
 Andalusian taverns all the heeltaps are returned into 
 the bottle. I think I spat out more than I sipped in. 
 " How much .? ■" I asked. 
 
 "Three pernllas (halfpennies)," was the surlily 
 delivered answer ; " since you are no Englishman.'' 
 
 " Exactly," I said, " since I am no Englishman. 
 If I were an Englishman you would charge me 
 double V' 
 
 " Toma, I should think so." 
 
 The woman, who was seated in the middle of the 
 room, now drew, with ostentatious coquetry, a chair 
 beside her ; and then another chair beside the first. 
 
 197
 
 ©rana^a 
 
 She waved her hand to me to occupy the place of 
 preference. Prudently, as I thought, I moved to take 
 the scat remotest from her. Just at that instant the 
 man came round the counter ; and if he had looked an 
 ugly ruffian hitherto, viewed at full length he looked 
 considerably uglier; for one of his legs was crooked, 
 as well as his face a nightmare. " Tieiie m'wdo el 
 seuor'do ?'''' he asked with a sneer (" Is the young 
 gentleman afraid ? '") Having had to do before with 
 some of these pot-valiant scoundrels, particidarly in 
 the Mundo Nuevo of Malaga and the Macarena of 
 Seville, I stared at him (and he at me) for quite 
 a while. In moments such as these, the fate of 
 nations is decided. I remember once extolling to 
 Mr, Cunninghame Graham the systematic courtesy 
 peculiar to the Spaniards. " Well but,'"" observed 
 that most agreeable as well as shrewd of satirists, 
 glancing me up and down, " you must be nearly forty 
 inches round the chest." I thought of those forty 
 inches now, and howl should make them to inculcate 
 softer feelings in the bosom of my adversary. As 
 for the woman, I think from the bored expression of 
 her face she would have heartily rejoiced if both of 
 us had come to grief. Probably the i-eal recipient of 
 her favours was waiting round the corner of the street. 
 However that might be, I promptly sat beside her, 
 toucliing her very shoulder with my own. " Afraid,'' 
 I said, as jocularly as I could, "not I,'' With this 
 I shot forth my hand, gripped the bully's wrist, 
 pulled him down upon the other and the outer chair, 
 and clapped my palm upon his leg with a report 
 that must have echoed in the Audiencia, Before he 
 198
 
 H -Miijbt in tbc Blbavcin 
 
 had reached his pocket for a weapon, I shoved him to 
 his feet, and sent him reeHng towards the counter. 
 "Drinks round," I cried, "and let the foreigners 
 alone. I am an Enghshman.'" 
 
 These Anglo-Saxon courtesies seldom fail to flab- 
 berixast a Latin ; nor did thev fail on this occasion. 
 My man was more than flabbergasted. Besides, his 
 plans were utterly upset; for Spanish pi'oficients in 
 J^e Quincey's favourite art, who would not scruple to 
 " suppress " a fellow-countryman, content themselves 
 with merely cheating foreigners, especially the 
 English. This, I maintain, is owing to our national 
 and natural prestige, rather than to any appreciable 
 effort proceeding from that ramshackle circumlocution 
 and circumscription office denominated at Madrid 
 the British Embassy. In either case, I say my 
 man was more than flabbergasted. He seemed to be 
 comparing me with Spanish ])ictures of an English- 
 man, such as are seen in comic papers, almanacs, and 
 theatres. I wore no sun-helmet and no whiskers ; 
 nor do mv teeth ])roject a (piarter of a mile. How 
 should I then be English ? Nevertheless, he took me 
 at my word. What he would have done to a 
 Spaniartl we need not therefore trouble to incpiire. 
 What he did was to seek his balance and stand and 
 gape at me. At last he said, forcing a laugh, " I 
 knew you were a foreigner. One can see it in your 
 face." 
 
 " Thank you,"" I rejoined, " I had rather you saw it 
 in my face than in my accent." 
 
 He held out his hand ; and since I have shaken 
 hands with millionaires, I did not feel debased by 
 199
 
 (Brana^a 
 
 taking his. We sealed our peace with several 
 libations from a better cask, in which the woman 
 joined with greater zest than in the conversation, 
 and chatted freely for about two hours. My ex- 
 assassin, or rather, my ex-assassin in posse, had been 
 in Cuba — or said he had — and since he described to 
 me in accurate terms the port of Isabela de Sagua, 
 which I had visited as a journalist during the war, I 
 credit his assertion. He had also done some smug:- 
 gling round the Campo of Gibraltar, of which be 
 told with not a little picturesqueness. Of course 
 upon this latter field I could not claim a partnership 
 with him ; although he found me quite an interested 
 listener. When I got up to go, to my astonishment 
 he would not hear of taking further money. " Vaya,^'' 
 he said, as he threw back the door, " you are the only 
 decent Englishman there is. The account is paid." 
 
 Of course we parted friends. First the woman 
 gave me her hand, and then the man. I pointed to 
 the chair. " No ofl'ence, I hope ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 "Good -night.'' 
 
 " Good-night.'' 
 
 But as I descended to the town, the yellow sun 
 stood out from the dark Sierra like a tea rose from 
 a Granadina's hair. 
 
 200
 
 The Alhambra ; the Ladies' Tower 
 
 XV 
 
 The Alhambra by Moonlight 
 
 ^E Alhambra bv moonlight ! Not 
 the gardens of the Alhambra. Not 
 the gardens or the avenues : still less 
 the Calle Real, thronged and profaned 
 bv gossiping seekers of fresh air. Nor 
 do I mean the Place of Reservoirs ; nor yet the trim, 
 newfangled esplanade that flanks the Tower of 
 Justice. Here too are people and profanity. \\'hat 
 I mean is something old and strange ; something 
 that I alone have had communion with while all the 
 world was occupied elsewhere. This, then, is what 
 I mean— the Palace of the Moorish kings; the soul 
 of the Alhambra ; the Alhambra. 
 201
 
 ©ranaba 
 
 Year in, year out, a multitude of modern men 
 and women acquaint themselves with this immortal 
 pile. Year out, year in, they come, and go away, 
 and bear abroad her story and her fame. Wonder 
 and delight are always on their lips and nearly 
 always in their heart. And yet, how singular a 
 thought it is ! For all these visitors, only the sun 
 caresses tJie Alhambra. 
 
 The night-porter had orders to expect me. I found 
 the outer door ajar; opened, closed, diew back the 
 bolt ; then crossed the vestibule and stepped with 
 bated footfall through the Court of Myrtles. For all 
 the studied softness of my tread, I seemed to break a 
 twofold silence — that of sleep and death. Instinc- 
 tively I paused in reverence, almost in shame. And 
 yet no sign or sound reproved me here. I saw, 
 unshadowed, unbeclouded by my puny presence, three 
 marvellous mirrors of the crimson sundown — the 
 glassy tiles; the glassy pool ; beyond the glassy pool, 
 the glassy leafage. 
 
 The court concluded at its northern end, not in a 
 massy door but solemn darkness in a filigree alharaca 
 frame. Entering through this the boat-shaped Hall 
 of Blessing, totally unlit, I sought the windows of 
 the Tower of Comares that look forth upon the west. 
 The sun had just declined beneath the Vega, altering 
 from shade to shade the whitest wall, the deepest 
 cypress ; here the level street, yonder the convent 
 garden of the Albaycin — " el encumbrado Albaycin^ 
 junto con el Alcazaha.'''' Midway between the Darro 
 and my balcony above, the " rivulet of the wood " 
 was very faintly murmuring. In tones that I myself 
 
 202
 
 TTbc Blbambra bv; /IftoonHabt 
 
 could scarcelv overhear, I echoed to its imisic the 
 plaintive words of Ganivet the suicide : — 
 
 Que silenciosos donnis 
 
 Torreones de la Alhambra ! 
 Dormis soiiando en la tnueite, 
 
 Y la miieite estd lejana.' 
 
 Mv whisper floated back into the silence -and yet 
 the stream sang on beneath the tower. The purling 
 of this water-course does not disturb the stillness of 
 the spot. Rather it seems to fortify and complete that 
 stillness, much as a delicately played accompaniment 
 au<;ments and beautifies the volume of a voice. 
 
 I looked again towards the darkening west. Our 
 n)etaphors and similes ])ortray the sunset as an ending 
 merelv. But it is all in all, at once a dissolution and 
 a genesis to one who spells aright its mystic meaning. 
 The phases of its infancy, and prime, and dose are 
 absolutely homotaxic with our own. Cradled in rose 
 and slain in blood, the sunset is the saddest and 
 exactest emblem of our destiny. Each swift succeed- 
 inor stage of tone and colour denotes with terrible 
 truth our hopes, ozcr dreams, our doubts, our dis- 
 illusions. Towards the moment of its agony the hues 
 of sunset deepen. The face of day turns ashy pale, his 
 lips turn purple. Then sanguine streaks proclaim the 
 mortal gash, the murder done ; and night and death, 
 too shamed or pitiful to strike another blow, desist 
 at last, enveloping those red remains in sable silence. 
 
 Chastened by such reflection I drew away to visit 
 the othei- courts and chambers of the palace. First I 
 looked down upon the small, sad patio, wrought In- 
 Christian, not by Moslem architects, where the 
 '203
 
 (Brana&a 
 
 ghost of the mad queen Juana is fabled by the 
 superstitious crowd to creep and peer behind the 
 heavy grating. After this, pi-oceeding to the Mirador 
 not far beyond, I gazed anew towards the Vega and 
 the Albaycin, the crest of San Miguel, and the valley 
 of the Darro ; and then, retracing my steps across 
 the Patio de la lleja, threaded the underground 
 approach that disembogues into the Courtyard of 
 Daraxa. 
 
 The Court of Cypresses ! The most etht real name, 
 the most ethereal spot in all the enchanted building. 
 Four walls enclose a garden, bordered with myrtle 
 boundaries; within the garden two medlars and five 
 cypresses enclose in turn an alabaster fountain, edged 
 with an oriental poem around the border of the cup. 
 Its waters, overfalling from cup to basin, moisten as 
 though with tears the tender phrases of the poem 
 and make them into melancholy music. But now, 
 as though the poet's lips were bound in silence and 
 even the fountain slumbered, those waters were not. 
 
 The scene was cold and sad, yet not disquieting. 
 I sat upon the sill of a great window reaching nearly 
 to the ground, unglazt d and open to the moon, 
 though guarded with herculean bars. Such was the 
 contrast between the moonlight and the shade that 
 when I looked towards the fountain I had to strain 
 my eyes to trace its shape, but when 1 looked towards 
 a lighted cypress I had to close them for the glare. 
 No daytime shadow is to be compared with this ; no 
 sunlight dazzles so fantastically. 
 
 Outside, across a dark expanse of soil. I saw the 
 Torre de las Damas with its ragged labyrinth of roof, 
 204
 
 chc HI bam In- a In^ /iDoonliabt 
 
 and over this a stately row of sciiiiillatiii^ elms. 
 Within, a corridor ran (K)\\n before nie, and another 
 at right angles to it on niv left, forming between the 
 two a corner of 
 the court. The 
 other corners 
 were concealed 
 by shrubs. Along 
 the corridor con- 
 fronting me were 
 marble colunnis 
 white with icy 
 purity, while 
 iasrjied beams like 
 icicles protruded 
 from between the 
 pillars and shi- 
 vered on the 
 paving. 
 
 Memories of 
 
 i"' 
 
 The Alhambra; the Court of Cypresses 
 
 many princes 
 linger here. 
 
 looked towards the Torre de las Damas, and fancied 
 that I saw Boabdil Heeing from his father's wrath, 
 lowered by a silken rope to join his comrades in the 
 whispering wood. I looked at the ceiling of the 
 corridor, and thought that I could hear the emperor 
 pacing to and fro. Yonder, from the dainty mirador 
 across the court, a sultaness had drooped her 
 languorous looks upoi\ the Darro. \Vas she 
 regarding now ? Kings of the east and kings of 
 the west were with me on all sides, and in their 
 
 }eo5
 
 0l•ana^a 
 
 company I felt at once exalted, and abashed, and 
 meditative. 
 
 Therefrom I next invaded (advisedly I use this 
 word) the Court of Lions, believed to wear a sinister 
 and horrible look beneath the midnight moon. I 
 did not find it so. I found it melancholy, as the 
 Court of Cyjjresses ; but with a melancholy something 
 less subdued. I stole beside that ever-famous foun- 
 tain, and the lions looked at me, as death or time 
 might look, with round, expressionless eyes that glare 
 with equal measures of indifference across an instant 
 or an teon. Why should I fear them ? The atmo- 
 sphere, or rather (if I may coin an Anglo-Spanish 
 word whose synonym our tongue alone does not 
 possess) the ((inh'ieiicij — that which was circumfused 
 about me — seemed even benevolent and suave. I 
 knew these monuments and all their history too well 
 to shrink from them, even from the legend-laden, 
 blood-bespattered Hall of the Abencerrajes just in 
 front of me, not thirty feet away. In this conceit I 
 felt myself a privileged intruder. The lowliest scribe 
 may serve to pen the chronicles of kings. So with 
 this palace and its inmates. I had endeavoured to 
 set their story down in earnestness and sympathy, 
 and in return they seemed to recompense my loving 
 labour and exempt me from their terrors. 
 
 After another while I turned aside into the Sala 
 de Justicia, profoundly dark, stabbed with an arrowy 
 moonbeam here and there. Now and again a falling 
 scrap of stucco ticked upon the floor, telling, as it 
 were, the agony of those illustrious halls. Then, 
 feeling my passage through, I penetrated to the 
 
 206
 
 "Cbc Slbambia bv /IPoonliobt 
 
 venerable Rauda, and stood tlit-rc till the clinibin«r, 
 creeping shadow enveloped the gravelike niches in 
 the wall. An ancient burial place of Moorish kings. 
 A kingly burial place entombed in the Alhainbra, 
 lit by the Andalusian moon and stars, kissed by the 
 breath of the great Sierra of the Snow, and faimed 
 by plumy cypresses. How many splendours mingled 
 into one ! 
 
 I stole away and found myself once more within 
 the Tower of Comares, scanning, asleej) beneath mv 
 feet, the city and the plain. How manv memories 
 and how beautiful must gather at such moments 
 "round the lover of Granada and her loie — memories 
 of Moor, and Mudejar, and Christian, and Morisco ; 
 of battle, and duel, and joust, and festival; the ringin<>- 
 trumpet, the hooting horn, the beating drum, the 
 mellow piping of the f/?<Z^am«; the dancing pennons 
 and the multicolour uniforms of all those noble 
 families ; the green and scarlet robe of the Zet^ri ; 
 the azure damask, lined with silver cloth, of the 
 Abencerraje, crowned with the cream and azure 
 plume ; the glittering shields, and swords, and 
 cimeters; the mares "as white as the Sierra of the 
 Snows." 
 
 Here lay the Bibarrambla even now ; where ladies, 
 as the legends tell, gathered to watch and to reward 
 the prowess of Granada's chivalry ; where sat the 
 sultan's bride resplendent in brocade and gold, " a 
 red rose placed upon the middle of her brow, and in 
 the middle of the rose a priceless ruby, dazzling the 
 eyes of all." Round the sultana stand the maidens 
 of her court — Galiana of Almeria, herself a prince's 
 
 207
 
 ffil•ana^a 
 
 child, together with Sarracina and Cobaida, Fatima 
 and Alboraida, Jarifa and Zelima, Gahana's younger 
 sister — each name a legend and a loveliness. 
 
 I lift my eyes and gaze afield. Yonder is haunted 
 Albolote, famed in many a battle-song ; yonder, the 
 Fountain of the Pine, where Albayaldos and his 
 comrade Alabez adventured mortal combat with the 
 Master of Calatrava. Theirs is a legend of Arthurian 
 grandeur that I found myself repeating now. " So 
 had the sun arisen about an hour when they drew 
 beside the fountain, shadowed, as its name betoken- 
 eth, by a sturdy pine. Yet nobody was near, so 
 leaping from tht'ir steeds they slung their shields upon 
 the saddle-bow, antl seated by the fountain's brink 
 relieved their thirst upon its cooling water." 
 
 While they were thus engaged their Spanish foes 
 came prancing up to the encounter, each in a pard 
 and emerald tunic, with a cross upon his shield and 
 feathers of two colours on his helmet. Then either pair 
 saluted, and in a tone half playful, half of delicate 
 courtesy, the Master said to Albayaldos with a 
 smile : " At least till now we are the losers, being 
 the latest to arrive." " It matters not," rejoined 
 the Moor; "not in this circumstance abides the 
 
 victory." 
 
 Under his splendid dress each knight was mailed in 
 massive armour cap-a-pie. So taking either pair its 
 proper station they were preparing to fall on, when one 
 of the chargers pricked its ears and gave a neigh. 
 Then looked they all, and spied the valiant Muza, 
 armed as themselves beneath a tunic of bright orange, 
 spurring to meet them from the highroad to Granada. 
 208
 
 Zbc H I b a m bra b v; /ID o o » I i ij b t 
 Up rode he and drew rein. " O gentlemen," he cried 
 reproachfully, " well did ye all agree to bring this 
 matter to an end betwixt yourselves. By Allah, for 
 all my spuning I was but on the point of time. But 
 how is this, O generous sirs and strong ? What is 
 youi- cause for battle; or have ye not a worthy cause ? 
 A\'hat shall it profit ye if either slay the other, or if 
 both be slain ? All of you are my friends whom I 
 well love, and what mischance soever befalleth unto 
 you, befalleth also unto me. Forego your enmities. 
 Make me a boon of this. Shall my arrival and my 
 prayer to you have been in vain ? " And as he spoke 
 these moving words, he looked more earnestly towards 
 the ^Master. 
 
 " Most noble Muza,"" said the JNIaster then ; " if my 
 antagonist consent, for our good friendshiij's sake 
 right gladly will I lay aside this skirmish."'' 
 
 Muza made answer ; " great is the mercy that thou 
 gran test me ; nor did I expect a less one from so 
 principal a cavalier. And thou, O Albayaldos, wilt 
 thou not stay thy rancour also, and be friends \\ ith 
 him ? " 
 
 " Muza," returned the Moor, " it may not be. The 
 Master spilled my cousin's blood, that is so present 
 to my memory : thy prayer must not be satisfied. 
 Yet would I not be loth to perish by the Master's 
 hand. Such were an honourable death ; or else, if 
 I prevail, a double glory shall be mine. These are 
 my words : in them I am resolved." 
 
 With this broke in the other pair of combatants, 
 Don Manuel I'once de Leon and Alabez the ^loor. 
 "Gentlemen," cried the first, "it is the will of 
 209 o
 
 ^Bl•ana^a 
 
 Albayaldos to avenge his cousin''s death. Let 
 him work out that will, nor hinder him therefor. 
 Begin our battle, and let Muza be the umpire of 
 us all." 
 
 " It is well spoken," added Alabez. " Why waste 
 our time in words, where deeds outweigh all talking ? 
 So thou, Don Manuel, exchange thy horse with mine 
 and let us draw.'' Then, as his willing foe dis- 
 mounted, " take this,"" he said, '• in payment of thine 
 own ; yet verily ere long the twain shall be the 
 property of only one of us " ; and each remained 
 contented with the horse that came to him. 
 
 Herewith they motioned Muza to his post and fell 
 to fighting. Each knight was quick of eye and 
 vigorous of arm, a master horseman, inured to every 
 stroke and stratagem, practised in every wile of war, 
 insomuch that the issue of the day proved arduous 
 and doubtful. Now was a helmet shattered, now a 
 gauntlet, now a shield. Now they would hurl their 
 lances from afar, now close, and clash, and struggle 
 furiously. Now it was Albayaldos who flung the 
 Master all along his charger's neck, clutching the 
 mane to keep from tumbling underfoot ; and now the 
 Master who clove the other's mail, biting the flesh 
 beyond. Now Alabez, now Ponce de Leon would 
 feint and wheel like falcons round their prey, or now 
 run in, and shock, and grapple hand to hand, or 
 carve and thrust with cimeter and sword, till blood 
 was spouting from each horse and thiough the 
 harness of each cavalier. 
 
 So when the afternoon was wearing to its end, 
 and sky and sward alike were coloured with abundant 
 210
 
 "Cbc Bib am In- a bv /IDoouli^bt 
 
 crimson, two of the combatants above the rest grew 
 
 faltering: and streny-thless. These were the Moorish 
 
 champions, both of whom, unhorsed at lenoth, lay 
 
 prone and motionless beneath the uplifted dagger of 
 
 their foe, till 
 
 Muza, darting 
 
 forward, stayed 
 
 the conqueror's 
 
 arm and begged 
 
 their lives, or, 
 
 in the case of 
 
 one, the scanty 
 
 remnant of a 
 
 life, seeing that 
 
 Albayaldos had 
 
 received three 
 
 mortal wounds. 
 
 Who, breathing 
 
 feebly and with 
 
 pain, declared his 
 
 wish to die a 
 
 faithful follower 
 
 of Christ. At 
 
 this his enemies (that had been) rejoiced exceedingly, 
 
 and raised him in their arms, and bore him to the 
 
 little fountain near the field, and by its brink the 
 
 Master gave him Christian baptisn), together with 
 
 D(m Juan for his baptismal name. 
 
 Presently with many a gentle word the Spaniards 
 took their leave and rode away to join their squad- 
 rons on the shores of the Genii, while Alabez had 
 washed and dressed his wounds, and staggering to the 
 
 211 
 
 The Tower of Homage, seen from the 
 Albaycin
 
 ©rana^a 
 
 saddle turned his horse's head for home. But loyal 
 Muza watched beside his friend, until the other's eyes 
 grew dim, and with a passionate appeal to our 
 Redeemer on his stiffening lips Don Juan gave up 
 the ghost. Just then four country fellows, carrying 
 each a spade, passed by to gather roots for fuel, and 
 these, at Muza's bidding, dug the warrior's grave and 
 buried him, and went their way in consternation at 
 his wounds. But Muza made a trophy of the hero's 
 arms and hung them from the pine above his head, 
 and when the day was ending took the bridle of his 
 conn-ade's horse and wended slowly home, now glanc- 
 ing back towards the place of death, regarding now 
 the empty saddle at his side, now contemplating, 
 through a mist of angry tears, the darkening minarets 
 and sanguine battlements of Granada. 
 
 Such is the tale I tell myself once more, gazing 
 with dreamy eyes into the enchanted plain. Then, 
 as I turn to go, each frigid beam that falls across 
 the ajhnez, discovering in the circumjacent gloom a 
 point or surface of old ornament, inspires it with a 
 sad similitude of life and light, until the deep interior 
 of the tower looks like some lesser firmament of stars, 
 whose borrowed brilliance is resorbed by the pale 
 moon. 
 
 Solemn indeed is this Alhambra now. Now is 
 the hour among all hours ; when night, disrobing, 
 trails her violet vest across the dim Sierra ; when 
 cloud assumes the shape of mountain, mountain the 
 shape of cloud ; when the Vega looks like billow 
 ^12
 
 Ube Hlbambra b^ flDoonligbt 
 
 upon billow of steel-cold water, and the city like a 
 campo-santo beside a desert ocean, her white walls 
 staring from the solitude — colossal tombstones, guard- 
 ing the memory of those mighty dead. 
 
 Printed by Ballantvne & Co. Limited 
 Tavistock Street, London
 
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