2%&\ JW'1". THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL ERNEST PEIXOTTO HISP W^/^r-"^ £&.-^r-4P&* IN I A (TclxvttofielXt *ttX3 tS ^-*M Jjr*&!&^ Oa. «.; (A BY ERNEST PEIXOTTO Each volume illustrated by the author THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL THE AMERICAN FRONT A REVOLUTIONARY PILGRIMAGE OUR HISPANIC SOUTHWEST BY ITALIAN SEAS ROMANTIC CALIFORNIA CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL ^•S -ft. ,, Vv^V W. A Corner of the Feria, Avila THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL BY ERNEST PEIXOTTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MCMXXH COPTBIOHT, 1944, BT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the "United States of America Published October, 1922 I" C\ <£ 32V P TO ARCHER M. HUNTINGTON FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA CONTENTS PAGE LISBON 1 CLNTRA SI PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS— i. Alcobaca 45 n. Batalha and Leiria 55 in. Thomae 69 TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA— i. Colmbra 79 n. Btjssaco 89 NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS ... 97 AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA 129 TWO HLLL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE— i. Avila 159 n. Segovia 172 SOME SPANISH GARDENS— i. The Gardens of Southern Spain 191 n. Aranjuez and La Granja 210 [vii] CONTENTS LN CATALONIA— i. The Catalans and their Churches .... n. Montserrat 233 MALLORCA 243 [ viii ] ®fr 1 1¥ i^SMll^^^^^ir^s^s LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Corner of the Feria, Avila Frontispiece PAGB The Water-Front, Lisbon 7 The Older Quarters of the City 9 The Torre de Belem . . 15 West Door of the Jeronymos, Belem 19 Church of the Jeronymos, Belem facing 20 Cloisters of the Jeronymos, Belem 23 Old Eoyal Palace, Cintra . facing 34 Entrance to the Pena, Cintra .... facing 38 "Sitting Sideways on Their Patient Donkeys" 47 The Tomb of Dom Pedro, Alcobaga facing 52 Batalha 57 [ix] ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE An Angle of the Cloisters, Batalha facing 60 The Castle, Leiria 63 The Market, Leiria 65 Church of the Templars, Thomar 71 Church of the Knights of the Order of Christ, Thomar ... 75 Coimbra from the Banks of the Mondego 81 Arco de Almedina, Coimbra . . 83 Choir Stalls in the Church of Santa Cruz, Coimbra . . facing 84 Quinta de Santa Cruz, Coimbra 87 The Monastery and Palace, Bussaco facing 92 The Gorge of the Douro at Oporto facing 100 An Ox-Team, Oporto 102 A Wine-Boat on the Douro 104 The Cathedral, Oporto 107 The Town Hall, Guimaraes Ill "Whose Jalousies Recall the Days of Moorish Occupation" . 115 Church of Sao Joao, Braga 119 The Monumental Scala, Bom Jesus facing 122 Corner of a Bomaria facing 124 Facade of the University of Salamanca 139 Patio of the Casa de las Conchas 145 Palace of the Monterreys 149 [x] ILLUSTRATIONS PACK Salamanca from the Puente Romano 151 "The Matador, too, Was a Competent Fellow" 153 "Massive Walls and Towers That Girdle It Without a Breach" .... facing 162 Interior of the Cathedral, Avila facing 166 The Roman Aqueduct, Segovia facing 174 The Peasants Bartered and Gossiped facing 176 The Alcazar Bristling with Barbacan and Battlement . 183 "The City Piles Up Grandly from This Side, too" . . . . 185 Gardens of the Alcazar, Seville 193 Pavilion of Charles V, Alcazar Gardens, Seville 195 The Garden of Linderaja, Alhambra 201 Upper Garden of the Generalife, Granada 205 The Fountain of Apollo, Aranjuez 213 The Carrera de Caballos, La Granja 219 "The Lace-like Towers of Burgos" 225 Cathedral of Tarragona 227 Gerona from the Banks of the Ona 229 "San Feliu's Truncated Spire" 230 Montserrat 235 The Monastery Buildings, Montserrat 237 "Seen Above the Lateen Sails of the Fishmg Smacks" ... 247 [xi] ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Almudaina and the Calle de la Seo, Palma 253 Carthusian Monastery of Valldemosa 255 Miramar . 267 Patio of the Casa Sollerich, Palma facing 274 A House Interior, Pollensa . 277 Ascent to the Calvary, Pollensa 279 [xii] I LISBON LISBON WE had left New York for Lisbon expect ing to make good connections via Gi braltar and Tangiers. On the seventh morning, however, upon awakening very early, I made out through the porthole the high cliffs of Madeira — great, purple, wall-like headlands bearing upon their summits innumerable terraces of vine yards mounting one upon another high up to the big mountains inland. Thin columns of blue smoke rose straight in the still morning air, hundreds of them, from tiny cottages scarcely visible to the eye or from brush-fires in the fields. The land looked peaceful and calm as our great steamer cut her path silently to the harbor of Fun- chal. As we entered this, I descried two big liners lying at anchor. I saw the agent as soon as he came aboard, found that one of them was to sail before noon, bound direct to Lisbon; went ashore, engaged passage (the [3] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL last cabin on the ship), and returned in a boat with two brawny oarsmen, together with a man from the company and a custom-house official to transfer our baggage. So that before eleven o'clock we were pacing the broad decks of this new ocean giant, watching the wealthy Brazilians and Argentinos, to Europe bound, to spend their summer holidays. It was a gay ship's company indeed after thirteen drowsy days together on tropic seas. By chance we met some friends from Chile and had a merry time that evening at the captain's dinner where every one made speeches and danced afterward at a costume ball, given in the huge white-and-gold saloon. Next afternoon (a record trip, I believe) we raised land at about four o'clock, and I heard some Brazil ians near me murmur, "tierra Portuguese" — their motherland. First faint and blue on the brilliant water, this land gradually took shape and became a definite hill, nay, a mountain, a jagged, purple silhouette against the sky — a shape that has guided many a weary mariner safe to port and many an intrepid discoverer home from visions of new lands beyond the sea. And mingled with thoughts of such adventures [4] LISBON crowded memories of Southey and of Byron and Childe Harold when "Cintra's mountain guides them on their way." Ships and fishing-smacks with strange jibs and queer rigs came and went upon the shimmering sea as we skirted the bright sandy shores of the Alemtejo. Two old forts reared their casemates on rocky prom ontories; then, in a green dimple by the sea, the gay houses of Cascaes and Mont' Estoril clustered among gardens, while upon a long sand spit to the right, Bagio's lighthouse guided us up the channel. The sun was nearing the horizon as the sea nar rowed to a strait, and to the left the old Tower of Belem again recalled Vasco da Gama and his glorious return. Now, as we threaded the nar rows, the pale houses of Lisbon, clustered thick as eggs in a basket, pink, blue, ochre, and white, piled up the hills to the Ajuda Palace and we entered the broad bay formed by the Tagus just as it empties into the sea — one of the largest harbors in Europe, that, however, with its sparse shipping, now seems like a frame too large for its picture. Amid great bustle and confusion we were landed [5] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL in a tender at the Alfandega, took a cab with a pair of rattling ponies, sped through the hilly streets of the city, and then the broad Avenida opened before us, and we drew up at our hotel. The first impression from our window next morn ing was a most pleasant one. And indeed Lisbon leaves the definite impression of a gay, bright capi tal, if not of a truly beautiful city. Beautiful it certainly is by nature, seated on its lofty hills over looking the Tagus and interspersed everywhere with semitropic gardens and largos, but its newer houses are too rectangular, too lacking in imagination to make anything but rather monotonous streets. Even the Praga do Commercio, though laid out upon a truly magnificent scale, fails to arouse enthusiasm. This is the city's aspect to the casual visitor who devotes but a day or two to its sights. But to one who is willing to give it a week or more, it holds many attractions. The seeker for the picturesque will delight in the water-front in the morning hours and in the fisher-folk — the men in black bag-caps and knee- breeches; the women barefoot, setting out with basket on head to trot the city streets. They are [6] itU'v <*# i-fi •/'"—«' "'«-*/, •""2 S'V THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL the most picturesque of the Lisbon types and most of them are really beautiful, the fine ovals of their faces, their smooth complexions, and lustrous, almond-shaped eyes recaUing clearly their Mauresque origin. Then, too, he will explore the older quarters of the city, spared by the terrific earthquake of 1755, that lie to the westward under the shadow of the old Moorish castle walls: a labyrinth of steep, narrow thoroughfares that recall Algiers and the slopes that lead to the Kasbah. The houses are faced with blue and brown tiles and take their air from the patio rather than from the street. No wagon ever passes. The poor carry their burdens upon their heads; the well-to-do hustle a patient donkey before them laden with panniers. Peddlers' shrill cries fill the air. The fine strong fishwife, the water-carrier with his earthen jars, the vegetable-vendor swinging his baskets across his shoulder on a long stick, call their wares from house to house, while shrillest of all and most noticeable, the hawker of lottery tickets shouts numbers one after another in hopes of tempting some housewife with the sound of a lucky combination. [8] The Older Quarters of the City THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL At the portal of this old town stands the Se, the rugged old cathedral that dates from the time of Affonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, battle- mented and castlelike as befits a church built in the time of the Crusades, when Lisbon had just been wrested from the Moors. At present it is under going restoration, especially in the ambulatory and cloister, where the fine sturdy architecture of its original form is emerging from the rubble arches and coats of whitewash that were put upon it during the Roman revival. Upon the other edge of the old town looms the huge gray bulk of Sao Vicente, a Renaissance church of noble proportions. St. Vincent is the patron saint of the city and also of the House of Braganza, who reigned uninterruptedly in Portugal for almost three centuries until King Manoel was deposed a few years ago by the present new republic. The edifice itself contains little of interest, but the kings of this house are buried in a vault in its cloisters. Expecting to see some pompous marble sarcophagi, we called the guardian, who unlocked the door. What was our surprise, however, to enter a vaulted stone chamber with a sort of deep shelf running all [10] LISBON about it. Disposed upon this shelf and piled upon the floor, rested a great number of caskets, some draped with velvet palls, others covered only with brocades or stamped leathers such as were used upon the marriage chests of Spain. Not a statue nor an urn anywhere. In the centre a huge black catafalque reared itself, hung with memorial wreaths and tokens, that shaded the coffin of the unfortunate Dom Carlos assassi nated in a late revolution. At its foot lay another casket. Before I realized what he was doing our com plaisant guide had drawn back the pall of this one and exposed to view the body of the Crown Prince, dressed in full uniform. Not content with this, he urged me to mount some steps and showed me, one after another, other royal personages with star and plaque upon their breasts and ermine-trimmed cloaks enveloping their poor shrunken bodies. It was the first time I had looked dead royalty in the face, and, though I have seen gruesome catacombs, especially in Palermo, I confess that this one seemed the worst of all — a strange sort of desecration or sacrilege, yet bringing home with terrifying force the eternal truth [H] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL that a king in death is no better than his humblest vassal. Lisbon's chief sight lies beyond the town proper in one of its immediate suburbs called Belem, a cor ruption of Bethlehem. To reach it you must take one of the busy electric cars that serve the traveller so well in all his joggings about the town (and that have a strangely familiar look, by the way, to Ameri cans, for all of them were built in Philadelphia) and ride far out along the water-front. On the way you may alight at the Quinta de Baixo and visit the Royal Museum of Coaches, a remarkable group of some twenty or more state carriages — gorgeous vehicles, dating mostly from the eighteenth century, carved, gilded, and painted with allegorical figures and lined with magnificent bro cades and velvets, even their floors being finished in ivory or Boule. Next to the collection at Madrid, I think that it is the handsomest that I have seen and, in connection with the cabriolets and sledges and cases of harness and rich livery up-stairs, gives a compelling picture of the apparat and splendor of the showy court of the Braganzas. A few minutes' walk beyond this palace brings [12] LISBON you to the great church of Jeronymos and but a little farther on stands the old Torre de Belem — St. Vincent's Tower, that has for hundreds of years guarded the mouth of the Tagus. At this spot, in the fifteenth century, there lived some fishermen and sailors in a little community called Restello. For their comfort, solace, and shel ter, Prince Henry the Navigator, friend and patron of seafarers and promoter of all the great voyages of the Portuguese discoverers, that ended by giving man full possession of the globe, had built "a refuge church, about which grew up a hermitage for aged mariners with gardens and orchards, birds and flowers. The little ermida had witnessed the departure of many a caravel and of many a navigator like Zarco and Perestrello, who first landed in Madeira and the Canaries, and Cabral, who discovered the Azores and reached far Brazil, and of those other hardy mariners — Gil Eannes, Baldaya, and Nunao Tristo — who, step by step, had crept down the west coast of Africa through tropical seas "always kept boiling by the sun," according to popular belief, as far as Cape Bojador and farther, finally reaching the redoubtable [13] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Cabo Tormentoso that was to open the route to India and become in consequence the Cape of Good Hope. It had always been Prince Henry's dream to aid one of his countrymen to double this mythical cape and reach the Indies by the direct sea route, thus bringing the wealth of the Rajahs in Portuguese boats direct to Lisbon harbor. After many a vain attempt he fitted out the expedition intrusted to Vasco da Gama, who spent his last night ashore praying in this little church of Restello. Two years later he returned to the very same spot, having landed meanwhile in Malabar and completely ful filled his mission. King Manoel "the Fortunate" welcomed him in person and, to commemorate his happy return, according to a vow, began to build the great convent of the Jeronymos and a few years later erected this watch-tower overlooking the mouth of the Tagus. The wealth that now poured into Lisbon, making it the richest city in Europe and the successor of Venice as maritime queen of the Western world, enabled him to carry out this scheme upon a scale of unprecedented magnificence, as both monuments still testify. [14] LISBON St. Vincent's Tower is a splendid specimen of the military architecture of its day — rather more florid than such a work would be in the North, but sturdy The Torre de Belem and strong despite its fretted surfaces. Until fifty years ago it stood quite surrounded by water, but sand-bars have gradually encompassed it on one side and it now forms part of a shore battery. [15] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL With a little persuasion I induced a kindly ser geant to show me through it. He first led me to the great bastion that projects seaward like the prow of a ship and that is still mounted with its antiquated artillery thrusting their black noses through deep embrasures. This battery surrounds an open court yard beneath which, on a level with the water, lie the prisons. The great tower itself contains three superposed chambers with massive vaults and walls ten feet in thickness. Its exterior is richly ornamented, its battlements emblazoned with the crosses of the Mili tary Order of Christ, its sea face enriched with a charming loggia and its angle turrets surmounted by curious melon-shaped domes. Despite the sordid gas-works near by, the place is redolent of other days and impregnated with the tang and smell of the sea and alive with memories of the Portuguese mariners. But the real temple of their glory is the vast church and monastery near by, to the building of which Dom Manoel devoted his greatest zeal. He employed the most renowned architects that he could find to carry out his dream and an army of sculp tors and carvers to chisel and fret the beautiful [16] LISBON limestone of Alcantara. The cold purist may scoff at the result, but no one with warm artistic per ceptions can withstand the fascination of these fret ted surfaces, alive with ornaments that, in the hot southern sunlight, fleck the glaring stones with a thousand delicate shadows. The long south front facing the avenue forms the principal facade, and is cut by a monumental door way that, with its fantastic array of pinnacles and niches, peopled with bishops and cardinals, saints and kings, recalls many a late-Gothic entrance in the vicinity of Rouen — perhaps for the reason that one of its architects was a certain Master Nicholas, a Frenchman, who introduced the first Renaissance details into the Portuguese churches. For this rea son also its main arch is round-headed, and it casts a lovely golden shadow over the two doors, sep arated by a pillar upon which, occupying the place of honor in the central niche, stands, not the usual Virgin and Child, but Prince Henry the Navigator, patron of sailors and promoter of great enterprises. On passing through this door from the blinding sunlight of the avenue to the mysterious gloom of the interior, one's first impression is of space and [17] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL loftiness. The vaults overhead, the deep, dark chapels, the great sustaining walls, are almost lost in the darkness. Eight slender columns, delicately proportioned and fretted with rich ornament, spring aloft like the boles of royal palms, up and up, until they burst like fronds into reticulated vaulting of most daring design, and as your eye grows accus tomed to the gloom, they take on mauve shadows, shading to amber as the light strikes upon them through the colored windows. This church is the sanctuary of Portugal's glory, its Westminster Abbey, so to speak, the most evoca tive of its buildings; so it is fitting that her greatest sons here lie buried. In the transept, side by side, rest Vasco da Gama and Camoes, her chief poet, author of her national epic, the immortal "Lusiadas." Near the high altar lie Manoel the Fortunate and various members of his family, and in a corner of the cloisters stands the monumental tomb of Hercu- lano, Portugal's greatest historian. To enter the cloisters you must pass around by the west door which in some ways, though less fa mous, is more interesting than that of the south facade. It is purely Portuguese and highly char- [18] West Door of the Jeronymos, Belem THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL acteristic of the so-called Manuelino style, the most famous examples of which lie in other parts of the country. This style has been variously estimated by archi tectural authorities. Some purists see in it noth ing but a love of ornament gone wild, a hopeless riot of detail; others find it an interesting graft ing of Moorish design upon the Gothic; others still, a transitional form between the Gothic and the Renaissance. To me, however, it is a special style, the true expression of the very soul of a people, of their thoughts and aspirations, and, therefore, good art. The soul of the nation, at the time these build ings were being erected, was fired by extraordinary tales of far-off lands, of adventures overseas. The one topic of thought and conversation was voyages, expeditions to strange countries where fabulous treasure was to be found. And later, when these same treasures brought the riches adequate to carry out their dreams, architects and sculptors alike wove into these ornaments the flora and fauna of the sea, shells, corals, sea-urchins, anemones, and ropes twisted or coiled about the columns — architectural forms never seen before nor since, but greatly appre- [20] Church of the Jeronymos, Belem LISBON ciated by the returning sailors and adventurers, who beheld in them the commemoration of their exploits beyond the seas. The cloisters at Belem, forming part of the monu ment erected to commemorate Vasco da Gama's glorious voyages, fittingly exhibit the various char acteristics of this style. Each of the bays is divided into two arches and each of these again in half and each archway is hung with elaborate cusps and medallions of open work containing crosses and shells or caravels under full sail. Colonettes and cusped arches, the deep reveals of the great bays and their pilasters, the rich vaults of the cloisters, and the parapets and towers that cut against the sky are all frosted with elaborate details of mingled Gothic and Renaissance, but time has imparted to this wealth of sculptured ornament a wonderful patina that veils its exaggerations and merges its elaborations into a marvellously rich en semble that quite disarms criticism by its sensuous appeal. A similar sumptuous strain pervades the minor arts that furnished these churches. At the Bellas Artes have been gathered from suppressed convents [21] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and monasteries glittering arrays of monstrances and reliquaries, chalices, and processional crosses, mas terpieces of the goldsmith's art made of the first pale gold that came back from the Indies. The laces and embroideries likewise show the influence of Persian and Indian design. The cases along the walls shim mer with the gold brocades of Guimaraes and vel vets from Braganza with jewelled copes and morses, mitres, chasubles, and costly altar fronts. And in this same museum, among a lot of rather dull pictures, you will find to your surprise some splendid panels by an old Portuguese painter (per haps the only one worthy to rank as a master) one Nuno Gongalves, who flourished in the fifteenth century. His best work is embodied in two trip- tychs, "The Veneration of Saint Vincent," that show the undoubted influence of Jan van Eyck, who, when he visited the court of Portugal, exerted a great influence upon the painters of his time. In the centre of each composition, Gongalves has placed the saint, a radiant figure, clad in crimson brocade, while about him kneel or stand a variety of person ages, princes and bishops, friars and fishermen, knights and ladies, characterized with remarkable ¦ [22] Cloisters of the Jeronymos, Belem THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL fidelity, each portrait head, life-size, imbued with the keen analysis of a Holbein. The Sunday following our arrival in Lisbon we were awakened by the explosion of foguetes, or small bombs, almost directly under our window. Soon voices reached our ears shrilly crying, "Sol e Som- bra !" and we knew that a bull-fight was on for that afternoon. I lost no time in going down and securing places, for I very much wanted to see a Portuguese bull fight, which is a very different affair from its Spanish prototype. This happened to be an exceptionally good one, "dedicated to the Colonia Brazileira," as the programme stated, so the Brazilian ambassador occupied the box of honor, and of the ten thousand arena seats not a single one was empty. Lisbon's bull-ring is a very handsome affair built in the Moor ish style, with huge gray minaret domes facing the four points of the compass. The boxes upon this occasion were hung with bright draperies, and the women in their best spring attire made a brilliant scene indeed, with a cloudless vault of blue over head. [24] LISBON As the Band struck up the national anthem the various participants entered, for there are many more figurants than in Spain. First came a mule covered with crimson velvet carrying the banderilhas, the farpas, and other im plements to be used in the game. When it had been unloaded and led out, the banderilheiros entered with the capinhas, eight or ten of them, in the bril liant costumes of Spanish toreadors. Then came a score of moqos de forcados, whose antics I shall de scribe later; then the service men; and lastly, but by no means least, the two cavalleiros, the famous Casimiros, father and son, the heroes of the occasion. These cavalleiros, as their name implies, are horse men, but in no way resemble the picador on his sorry nag. They are dressed as cavaliers of the eighteenth century, in velvet coats handsomely em broidered and trimmed at sleeve and throat with beautiful lace. Lace handkerchiefs protrude from their pockets and their high boots are of Russian leather. They mount superb horses richly saddled and bridled, with nodding plumes upon their heads, that go through complicated paces as they circle the arena, while their riders bow gallantly and grace- [25] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL fully with their three-cornered hats to the wild plaudits of the crowd. Then the ring is cleared, with the exception of a horseman and a single capinha with his red cape in hand. The horseman takes his first farpa (a long barbed dart), a gate is opened, and a big black bull enters. A thrill runs up your spine as he sniffs the air and makes a wild charge at the brilliant cavalier. But the horse is fleet, the rider adept, and the bull slack ens his pace. Then the rider challenges him. Rising in his stirrups, he calls, "Eh, boi ! Eh boi!" ("Come, bull") until the great beast charges again, this time coming close enough to receive the dart directly in the shoulder-blade, where it breaks off, leaving one- half in the horseman's hand with a flag fluttering from it. A second barb is then implanted upon the other shoulder, and sometimes others still, until the cavalier takes a shorter dart amid great enthusiasm, and while his horse is galloping at full speed before the enraged bull, leans far enough out of his saddle to implant this also at the base of the animal's neck. Jose Casimiro, the son, performed this feat with [26] LISBON marvellous dexterity and address, and the salvos of the audience were deafening as he rode round the ring, his horse pacing high and arching its neck as if it, too, shared the applause. In the meantime the bull is taken out by a herd of trained oxen that surround it and by their peaceful influence allay its fury so that it meekly follows them. In the Portuguese fights, barring accidents, which, of course, do happen, neither horses nor men are in real danger, for the bull's horns are padded so as to be quite harmless. The bull itself is never killed. So, having none of the cruelty of the Spanish fight and all of its picturesqueness and a little more, it becomes a splendid national sport, the best game that I have seen, and as gallant a show as may be witnessed in this humdrum world of ours to-day. According to the usual programme, five bulls are given to the cavalleiros and five to the bandarilheiros, who, having placed their darts after the Spanish fashion, the animal is then given over to the homens deforcados, the boldest of whom literally "takes the bull by the horns." For he calmly stands before it with his hands behind his back and when the ani mal tries to toss him, he grabs it around the neck [27] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and swings upon its head up and down until his com panions, rushing in from all sides hold the beast and release him. It is a thankless task and, like that of the circus clown, rewarded with laughter rather than cheers. These games are capable of infinite variety and often replete with thrilling incidents. Now and then, in quest of new sensations, members of the nobility of sporting proclivities enter the arena as cavalleiros. Upon another occasion we saw a ferro or branding of wild cattle after the fashion of the Alemtejo — a most amusing spectacle, for the spirited young ani mals cavorted about, leaped the barriers, and scat tered the toreros right and left until one by one they were thrown by the horns and tied for branding. Afterward there is the drive home, toward eve ning, in a crush of vehicles down the beautiful Avenida shaded by its quadruple rows of stately trees under which crowds of people, sitting or prome nading in the bright spring weather, watch the gay cortege go by. At the lower end of this splendid avenue, a sort of cog-wheel train, half street-car and half elevator, [28] LISBON lifts one in a moment to an upper quarter of the town and to the little square of Sao Pedro d'Alcan- tara, commonly called the Gloria. Go there some evening toward sunset and from the parapet gaze down upon the city spread beneath you. The object upon which your eye first rests is the steep hill op posite, a huddle of houses, white and pink, standing upon each other's shoulders and crowned by the walls of the old Moorish stronghold now the Castle of St. George. Half-way up, the venerable Se cuts its sturdy silhouette against the broad blue waters of the Tagus stretching off to the faint flat shores of the Alemtejo with Palmella's town and castle gleam ing white upon her distant hill. At the bottom of the valley, near the railway-station, Dom Pedro, standing atop of his column, marks the Rocio, called Roly Poly Square by the English sailors be cause of the queer undulating pattern of its pave ment. The press of houses in the nearer foreground is cut off by a second terrace just below you, set out with gardens ornamented with busts on tall pedestals and with soaring palms that wave their rustling fronds high above your head. [29] II CINTRA CINTRA BUT if in search of far horizons, it is to Cintra that you must go. A short hour from Lisbon in the train and the engine puffs into the station tired with its con stant climb. A drive through the rather dull town brings you to a little English hotel that for three generations has housed British visitors. Its little landlady, though she has spent some sixty years of her seventy-six under this roof in Portugal, is as English in her black bombazine and white bonnet as if she had but just landed from Southampton. When she leads you to your room and opens the casement you will fancy yourself in the terrestrial paradise. Deep below, a tangled glen shelters a cascade whose music rises to your ear; the perfume of rose and white locust and heliotrope and jasmine is wafted by the gentle breeze, while the eternal mildness, the sifted sunlight over the far-reaching plains stretch- [33] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL ing to the broad blue ocean that bounds the horizon, make an impression that lives forever in the memory. Tradition has it that in one of these rooms (the one in the corner where his bust stands upon a table and souvenirs of him hang framed upon the walls) Lord Byron wrote the opening cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage": " Lo, Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes In variegated maze of mount and glen." His rhapsodies in this and other poems, and those of Southey, who called it "the most blessed spot in the habitable globe," have done much for its fame, but, except by the English, it is still but little visited. Under the monarchy Cintra was the summer resi dence of the royal family, the queen mother living at the Palacio Real in the town while the king stayed above at the Pena. The former palace is a strange mixture of Moorish and Christian architecture. Its dominant features externally are the two conical chimneys once covered with green tiles that rise above its great kitchens. They, of course, are Moor ish, as are most of the exquisite tiles that ornament the various rooms and halls. [34] 21 <^EJ,..ir. Old Royal Palace, Cintra CINTRA The palace, indeed, is a veritable museum of Portuguese azulejos from the earliest Arab styles, whose patterns were formed by slightly raised lines which prevented the color from running during the firing, through the later rich geometric patterns, to the many varieties of the Renaissance, both natu ralistic and fanciful. In the royal dining-room and the Hall of the Sirens are beautiful tiles richly em bossed with vine leaves and tendrils and crested with fleur-de-lis. In the cortilla of the unfortunate young Sebastian are his exquisite tiled throne and the bench for his ministers, and there is a cool Casa d'Agua, or House of the Moorish Baths, where deli cate showers gush from walls of tiles and splash upon a broad stone floor. The older Christian portions of the palace date from the time of John the Great and his English wife Philippa of Lancaster. He it was who built the Swan Room, and the story goes that while it was building, ambassadors came from the Duke of Bur gundy to ask the king for the hand of his daughter Isabel. Among the presents they brought were several swans, which delighted the princess so much that she asked to have a long basin fashioned for [35] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL them along the windows that skirt the Moorish court. She made them collars of velvet and fed them with her own hands. Later, when she de parted for far-off Flanders, King John, in memory of her, had her swans painted in the octagonal panels of the great ceiling, whence the name of the room. Adjoining this hall is the Sala das Pegas, or Hall of the Magpies. Its name comes from another story connected with the same king. He is said to have been attracted by a certain pretty maid of honor and to have innocently kissed her when pre senting her with a rose. Another maid carried the story to his English queen, who upbraided him. His reply was characteristic: "E por bem, minha senhora" ("Platonic, my lady") and to rebuke the gossiping maids he had the ceiling of this room 'painted with chattering magpies each bearing in its beak his motto, "Por bem." These quaint rooms and the Sala das Escudos, or Hall of Shields, painted with the arms of the chief noble families of that time, each shield depending from a stag's neck, form the principal features of the palace, its later additions offering but little of interest. The Serra de Cintra, that purple silhouette that [36] CINTRA we had first beheld from the ocean, is an exceedingly beautiful succession of hills in whose dimples nestle glens of surpassing loveliness. In them you might fancy yourself in some tropic land — in Guatemala, for example — for tree-ferns spread their umbrella like fronds over cascades and splashing waters; laurestinas and daturas grow in rich profusion, while roses and ferns cover the huge oak and cork trees, and under your feet the petals of azaleas, magenta, pink and gray, mingle with rich camellias and magnolias to form a carpet soft and rich in color as the weave of a Persian loom. Such a vale is lovely Monserrate, the princely quinta laid out by Beck- ford, of Fonthill, centuries ago and still owned by an Englishman, Sir Francis Cook, who draws his Portuguese title of Visconde therefrom. I think I prefer, however, mysterious Penha Verde, once the home of Dom Joao de Castro, an honest man who died with but a single vintem in his coffers, though there had passed through his hands the un told wealth of India, of which he was governor for many years. All the reward he asked for his suc cessful siege of Diu was the hill with the six trees, upon which the chapel now stands — a knoll over- [37] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL looking the lovely valley of Collares, and a vast ex panse of glen and hillsides of dense pine woods mounting to rocky summits that touch the fleecy sea clouds. Penha Verde is a sad dark park, if you will, but filled with romantic charm — with mossy statues aligning green-carpeted pathways and, at unexpected corners, capillas and quaint fountains adorned with rare Talavera tiles depicting homely scenes of rustic beauty. But Cintra's chief enchantment is the wonderful drive up the mountain to the two highest points in the range, one crowned by the old Moorish castle walls, hung in mid-air as it were, the other by the Palace of the Pena. While the road is undoubtedly beautiful upon a sunny morning, with the pungent odor of the pines in your nostrils and glimpses at each turn over plain and valley as you mount ever higher and higher, I shall never forget it on a certain forenoon when the sky was gray and leaden. During the night the sea fog had driven in and blotted the hills from sight. We thought it would lift later, however, so called a coachman and started up. First, the vapory clouds were well above our heads [38] Entrance to the Pena, Cintra CINTRA but, as we mounted, the air freshened and the pines began to bend and their needles to hum in the gather ing wind. Then all but the nearest objects vanished; then the vapors would lift again and dim silhouettes appear like prints on Japanese kakemonos: writhing tree-forms and great granite boulders. Each twist of the road brought us more completely into a realm of dreams, of goblin-shapes and grotesque outlines, until we turned at last through a gate, a green-coated official saluted us, and we strained up to a massive portal — a fantastic creation in the dim light like the entrance to an enchanted castle. Here I sketched for a while until patches of blue opened above my head and flecks of sunshine darted through the trees. The areas of clear sky grew larger, and then, as if by the wand of a magician, the sun dispersed the cohorts of the fogs and mists and the noonday burst serene. I climbed to the aerial terraces of the castle and there below lay the great province of Estremadura spread out like a map in every direction. What a sense of space, of vision without limit ! What exhil aration to stand in this proud eagle's nest and sur vey the unbroken stretch of land and sea ! [ 39 ] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Vast plains dotted with pink-roofed farms and villages stretched to the northward and to the east ward — to the spires of Mafra's convent as large as the Escorial; to the lines of Torres Vedras, where Wellington finally stopped the all-conquering march of the Napoleonic armies; to the faint blue moun tains, one behind the other, that culminate at last in the Estrella, the Mountains of the Stars. But the eye quickly turns from these and focuses upon the mouth of the Tagus, the source of Lisbon's beauty and of its wealth — its raison d'etre. This, too, is the high light of the picture, though the city itself half hides behind its hills. All lines lead to it: the glittering white roads drawn like ribbons over the green fields; the dazzling sickle of the white sand bars that skirt the sea to the south; even the vessels that creep in and out from the broad blue Atlantic stretching forever to the westward. And again I thought of all the mariners that had set out upon this treacherous sea, so many of them never to return, and of their comrades, who, even if they did survive, bronzed and grizzled by their buffets, came back stricken with strange tropical fevers. Yet others persevered, with the indomitable [40] CINTRA spirit of their forebears, bringing home the first black men from Cabo Branco to work the fields of the Algarves, the spices and ivory from Guinea, and, finally, when the goal was reached, the wealth of Malabar and Burma to the gates of Lisbon. And yet in a single century after this golden age of achievement, sapped by corruption and enervated by its new-found wealth, the little Portuguese nation, shorn of its colonies, had sunk from its position as the wealthiest and proudest in Europe to be a mere province of Spain. This is the lesson that its history teaches: that not upon its wealth and com mercial prosperity does the greatness of a nation depend so much as upon the high ideals and en deavors and the stout hearts and rugged sinews of its people. Many times during our stay in Cintra did I walk these castle terraces, now, since the departure of the royal family, freely open to all, and always did I find new beauty in the changing moods of the picture. [41] m PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS ALCOBACA ON a certain Sunday morning we set out from Lisbon to visit Portugal's battle abbeys — her monumental trilogy, her splendid trip tych, as I like to call them: Alcobaca, singing the praises of her rude conquistador Affonso Henriques; Batalha, built by John the Great, hero of Aljubar- rota, and Thomar, stronghold of the inspired disci ples of Henry the Navigator. They lie away from the railway lines and from this fact are a little incon venient of access, but to me that is an attraction rather than a drawback, for no tourist caravan breaks the spell nor disturbs the harmony of the impression. As you leave the capital, the train skirts the sea for several hours, not indeed within sight of its breakers, for these are hidden by intervening dunes, [45] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL but through pine woods, up-hill and down, and across sandy plains. Even this short bit of railroad is re plete with souvenirs — those, for example, that cluster round Pena Castle high perches to the left upon Cintra's mountain and about the huge convent- palace of Mafra, built by the pietistic John V. Then you thread the steep declivities of Torres Vedras, into whose flanks Wellington dug those stu pendous trenches — marvels of military art — that stopped Massena's onward march forever and turned the tide of Napoleon's career. An hour later you spy Obidos, the feudal stronghold of Diniz the Good, rising proudly upon a hill, clad in all the majesty of its walls and towers, its long lines of battlements securely enfolding the vassal town that looked to it for protection. Then, in a lovely valley, the big pink Hotel Lisbonense tells of the continued vogue of the famous sulphur baths, the Caldas da Rainha, whose hospi tal, capable of sheltering some four hundred pa tients, was founded nearly five centuries ago by Leonora, wife of John II. Here you may alight, if you wish, and drive to Alcobaca, but we preferred to go by rail as far as Vallado. [46] PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS I had not written ahead for a carriage, trusting rather to luck. So when we left the station, and I saw half a dozen vehicles drawn up before it, I fV J. ''Sitting Sideways on Their Patient Donkeys" thought that all was well. What was my surprise, however, to find each of them engaged ! A party now issued from the little station and began divid ing itself among them, while we, at almost noon, saw [47] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL visions of ourselves stranded here for hours with no carriage nearer than Alcobaca itself. I spoke to one of the men (they were a distin guished-looking group), and he said that perhaps they could double up so as to leave one cab free. And so they managed to do and we were able, after all, to bundle our persons and our luggage into a vehicle and join the procession of shouting jehus in a cloud of dust. The road was gay with peasants returning from Alcobaca, so we knew it must be market-day. What bright pictures they made, these pretty girls, sitting sideways on their patient donkeys, their heads done up in fresh kerchiefs; their lithe bodies in crisp ginghams, and their cotton cloths printed with capricious colors for which the country here abouts has long been noted ! Old men and young in bag-caps and tight breeches walked with them, carrying long staves to guide or goad their calves and the clean pink pigs that squealed along the road. We crossed the little Alcoa near a waterfall and soon clattered into Alcobaca. Before the great Cistercian Abbey and all about it under the plane-trees the market was in progress, [48] PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS pottery and glassware, vegetables and fruits, in tempting profusion, but we rattled on through it to the modest hotel. When we entered the little dining-room for a tardy luncheon, we found our party of the station seating itself at a long table much beflowered that stretched through the middle of the room. One of the men stared at me and I at him, for there was something familiar about his face. Then we both uttered an exclamation, for we had been fellow students at the Academy in Paris years before. He asked us to join his party — members of the Na tional Association of Portuguese Architects — who had come to visit the monastery, and introduced us to several of its members, men of distinction, one of whom I remember was in charge of the restora tions of the Jeronymos at Belem, another of Lisbon Cathedral, as well as winner of the competition for the great monument to the Marquis de Pombal which is to close the vista at the end of the Ave- nida. Of course we accepted his invitation with plea sure. After the inevitable champagne that closed the lunch, the mayor sent flowers to the ladies, and [49] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL a delegation waited outside to take us through the convent. This was founded in the twelfth century by Af- fonso Henriques, first king of Portugal. Step by step with his crusaders, he had been driving the Moors from the north, from one stronghold to another. Santarem, key to the Tagus, was now his objective, and he had vowed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux that, if he were successful in taking it, he would erect a monastery upon the spot at which he that day lay in camp, and would give to it and to the Cistercian order all the land that stretched between it and the sea. He won, and the monastery was founded by the monks of Clairvaux called hither to build it. It became in time one of the richest and largest convents in Christendom, with perpetual masses celebrated by a thousand monks. The church, though grand, is heavy and stern, its nave walked in by massive columns that completely screen the tall narrow aisles. Some of its chapels are garish and dilapidated, but others contain monuments of the greatest beauty and interest. Affonso Henriques was not buried here, but his im mediate successors were — Affonso II and III in mod- [50] PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS est tombs in the transept, and Pedro I and his beloved Inez de Castro in a separate chamber near by. The unhappy story of this pair is the favorite love-theme in Portuguese poetry. Knowing of Pedro's deep passion for this lovely woman, jealous enemies had Inez murdered when he was away at the wars. Upon his return, hardened in character and known as Peter the Severe, he first revenged himself cruelly upon her murderers. Then he had her body brought to Alco baca with great pomp and set upon a throne, while he and his courtiers did homage to her " Que, despois de ser morta, foi Rainha " was queen only after her death. He commanded that he be buried with his feet toward hers, so that the first object to meet his gaze upon arising on judgment-day should be his beloved one, so cruelly parted from him on earth. Both tombs are exquisitely sculptured. His is later and perhaps finer than hers, but hers is imbued with a naive spirit of tender solicitude, the tribute of the nameless workmen who carved its rich niches and filled them with touching episodes of the martyr dom of the saints and the scenes of the last judg- [51] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL ment. Many of the little figures, Tanagra-like in their charming grace, are dressed in the picturesque costume of the day. His tomb is borne by lions; hers by sphinxes, and upon each rests a recumbent effigy: hers crowned, with hands crossed upon her breast and the serene expression of one sleeping; his bearded, like all the early monarchs of his house, with sword in hand, and at his feet his faithful couchant hound. Each statue is tended by six an gels whose loving concern and tender care are feel ingly depicted. Alcobaca's sacristy, once piled with rich vest ments; its sunlit gardens, its vast and gruesome hall of relics; its extensive cloisters, of which there were no less than five; and the vast dormitories that stretch interminably about each of them, all proclaim the ancient splendor of the place. Its fame, however, never rested upon its artistic trea sures, for its monks dazzled rather by the opulence and extravagance of their life. If you wish a pic ture of it, visit the kitchen. Never have I seen such a vast temple of cookery, and never do I expect to see such another1 — such a perfect apotheosis of kitchens! All the tales of [52] The Tomb of Dom Pedro, Alcobaca PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS gluttonous cenobites, all the Rabelaisian stories of Pantagruel and Gargantua come to mind and seem surpassed as you gaze aloft at its soaring vaults that rise high as the groined roof of a cathedral. In its centre stand gigantic ovens capped by an enormous conical chimney that rivals the famous one at Cintra. Near by, against the lateral wall, is a fireplace, a perfect cavern large enough to roast a spitted ox, while along the walls, fountains of water gush from sculptured lion-heads into huge basins the size of Roman baths, in which vegetables and fruits, and the complicated batteries de cuisine were washed. Down the entire length of the chamber runs a rivulet, one of the affluents of the Alcoa, a runnel of limpid water ever fresh and pure, while in a piscina, at its lower end, the river fish kept swimming until popped into the pots. Beckford saw the place in its full glory, and gives a glowing account of its plethora: its cart-loads of game and venison, its mountains of sugar and jars of purest oil (and such oil as they have in Portugal), and its "pastry in vast abundance," skilfully prepared by lay brothers "singing all the while as blithely as larks in corn fields." [53] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Now, alas, Alcobaca's glory has departed! Its cloisters are used as barracks, and all that is cooked in these glorious kitchens is rations of bean soup and the like delicacies of the modern soldier. That night I tried my first hard Portuguese bed. When I say hard I mean hard as a rock. As I con template the kings and queens in effigy stretched upon their granite tombs in peaceful slumber, their heads resting on stone pillows, I think of them as true Portuguese sleeping their eternal sleep upon the same couches that they used to occupy in life ! [54] II BATALHA AND LEIRIA EARLY in the morning, a day or two later, a carriage stood before the inn waiting to take us on to Batalha. The road first leads up a long hill and from the top you look back upon the great monastery nestled in its comfortable valley well sheltered from inclement winds. Then you cross a plateau and shortly rattle into the cobbly streets of Aljubarrota. What memories this village name evokes ! What a thrilling period of Portuguese history ! The male fine of the house of Burgundy had become extinct, and the only daughter had married into the family of Castile. The Portuguese, fearing for their inde pendence, elected as their sovereign John, master of the Order of Aviz, and bastard of their last monarch. Notwithstanding this, the Spanish King came to claim the throne supported by all the strength of his armies. Here at Aljubarrota the decisive battle was waged. As you look down over the field, you can picture [55] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL the Castilians in all the pomp of their steel accoutre ments and the pride of their ten pieces of artillery, the first ever used in the peninsula, drawn up against the little Portuguese army, one-fifth their size, that had been hastily gathered together by John of Aviz. Upon the eve of the battle, Assumption Day, John made a vow that if he won he would build a church, the fairest in the land, to Our Lady of Victory. He won, and Batalha, Battle Abbey, was the result. After we had looked over the battle-field, we were shown the bake-shop in the little square, where the baker's wife killed seven Spanish soldiers with her oven-peel and thus gave to the Portuguese language one of its famous sayings: "As full of the devil as the baker's wife of Aljubarrota." Then we drove on again through the odorous pine woods of a rather deserted country. But few houses were to be seen, and when we did approach a habita tion the children indulged in a new form of begging. They would kneel by the roadside, their hands clasped as if in prayer and their roguish eyes turned heavenward. As we approached, they would jump to their feet and run along by the carriage holding out suppliant hands. But as they were both rosy- [56] Batalha THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL cheeked and neatly clothed, these touching appeals failed to arouse our sympathy, but stirred us rather to mirth. Finally, we began to descend, and came at length upon a monumental bridge adorned with parapets and pinnacled buttresses, and then of a sudden the towers and gables and crested roofs of Batalha's great monastery-church stood disclosed before us. What an amazing pile it is, tucked away in a quiet valley miles from anywhere — a metropolitan cathe dral lost in a wilderness ! Time has imparted to its pale limestone a glorious golden tone that, in the southern sun, fairly glows in contrast with the dense green woods that sur round it. As you come nearer, however, the effect is somewhat disappointing. Its low situation, com bined with its simple fagade and long flat roofs de void of spires, fail at first to give it the uplift and spring of the great Gothic churches. But the more you view it from other angles, the more beauty you discover in its varied surfaces, in the lift of its weather-beaten buttresses, in the deli cate traceries of its tall lancet windows and the rich ness of its pierced battlements and crocketed pinna- [58] PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS cles silhouetted against the clear blue sky. Cold English ecclesiologists, like Fergusson, find less to admire in it than do the more warm-blooded French authorities who readily yield to the fascination of its picturesque appeal. And surely I shall side with these, and, despite its evident faults, vote it com parable to any of the greatest churches of Europe. Its nave is truly superb, simple, grave, and pe culiarly pure and solemn, its great golden walls and aisles unbroken by chapel or ornament. Near the west door, however, opens a square chamber, the Capella do Fundador, an exquisite chapel, whose stilted arches, with cusps and capitals painted in the Hispanic taste, spring high in air to support a tall octagonal lantern, fitting like a crown over the tombs of the greatest family in the history of Por tugal. Directly under the dome, gazing upward at its groined vaults, he the founders of the house: John of Aviz, surnamed the Great, and his wife Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, he clad in his tabard inscribed with the royal arms, she hold ing her prayer-book. Side by side their effigies lie, hand clasped in hand, and as we looked at them a [59] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL long shaft of light shot down from one of the painted windows overhead and touched the grave recum bent figures with glory, with a halo almost miracu lous, that shone like silver in the glowing chapel. In niches along the wall repose their noble chil dren "inclita geragao, altos infantes": John the master of Santiago; Peter the Traveller; Fernando the Martyr, who died a hostage in the prisons of Fez, rather than allow his country to exchange Ceuta for him; and the great Henry, surnamed the Navi gator, the hero of Portuguese maritime exploration. His monument, the only one adorned with an effigy — a wrinkled, clean-shaven, thoughtful face — bears as its motto "talent de bien fere." John's eldest son, named Duarte for England's king, is buried with his queen directly in front of the high altar. He it was who dreamed of the Capellas Imperfeitas, those marvels of ivory-like carving designed as a mausoleum for himself and for his children. As their name implies, they never were completed. Their pillars rise almost to the spring of the vaulting that was to roof them in, but the giant vaults were never constructed, for Manoel at the critical moment transferred his zeal and his riches to the buildings at Belem. [60] jjgyisjSSa—^ki-s —..._..,. An Angle of the Cloisters, Batalha PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS The ten chapels that were to receive the tombs surround a great central chamber, occupying a place at the extreme east end of the cathedral, though not now connected with the main church, the entire group forming a sort of Lady Chapel like those in the English cathedrals. In its earlier portion, this chapel is Gothic, but its later additions fall into the Manueline style in its full exuberance. Its main portal, the one that was eventually to connect it with the ambulatory of the cathedral, is one of the most florid and daring doorways in existence — a maze of jewel-like carving that overpowers the senses by its magnificence. The great cloister is more restrained, though each of its arches is enriched by elaborate screens, whose superb and robust traceries filter the hot southern sunshine without excluding it. Its buttresses are crowned with foliated pinna cles; its parapets, like those of the main walls and clerestory of the church, are enriched with elaborate pierced fretwork, and it is dominated by the only spire of the cathedral, so that its outline against the sky is of the utmost beauty. But the varied architectural features of Batalha are too manifold to describe. Its exquisite chapter house; the delicate fountain-court, a perfect laby- [61] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL rinth of enrichment; the mazes of its lesser cloisters and vast stone roofs, form an ensemble that would be difficult to match, and truly fit it for the major theme in this trilogy of battle abbeys that we had set out to see. So it was with keen regret at the shortness of our stay that we drove on toward Leiria when the afternoon shadows began to lengthen. The road lay at first through woods, and then we began to catch glimpses of the lovely valley of the Liz, a favorite theme in Portuguese song and story. And truly a charming countryside it is — a veritable " Jardin a beira-mar plantado." The little houses, neat and trim, the peasantry, self-respecting and apparently happy, the climate clement, the vegetation luxuriant, the fields well cared for — what more could be desired ! Next morning I found myself in Leiria — a willing prisoner at my hotel window, watching the world go by. No theatre could provide so good an entertain ment. In the background the river swung round a bend, and upon its stony bed the women had spread their clothes to dry, while they, knee-deep in the [62] '^\-V r-.v >v-.---. m !,r' ¦ Church of the Templars, Thomar THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL show that it was built for the Templars, this being their emblem — the cross upon the earth. Their day passed, the infidel was driven from the country for ever, and, relieved of the nightmare of the Moor's return, a new brotherhood arose and installed itself in the castle — the Order of Christ. Headed by its grand master, Henry the Navigator, its members' put all their strength to new endeavor and dreamed their dreams of conquest and exploration, unveiling one by one the secrets of the ocean, finding the water routes to the uttermost ends of the earth, adding far countries to the crown of their sover eign. The church that adjoins the castle reflects both these periods. Its earlier portions, rugged and bat- tlemented, built like a fortress, an outpost fronting the enemy, suggest the warlike spirit of the Tem plars. Its later portions voice the dreams of the Knights of Christ, and remain perhaps the supreme record of the most heroic and patriotic period of Portugal's history, when these knights constituted the vanguard of their country's civilization, supply ing the wealth to back Prince Henry's enterprises and send one expedition after another over the seas, [72] PORTUGAL'S BATTLE ABBEYS the sails of the caravels emblazoned with the special cross that was the sign of their order. Each stone of the church speaks of some feat of these navigators; every detail of its ornament chants a song of the sea and the whole edifice is a poem of patriotism written in stone by its genial architect, Joao de Castilho. To read its story you must forget cold architec tural measurements and look at the church as a vast fabric of symbols. Then, upon its buttresses, you will discern the corals and pearls of the tropic seas; upon its string-courses you will find ropes twisted through cork floats; in the reveals of its rose win dow the sails of the caravels belly in the wind, re strained by taut cordage and, capping its battle ments, pierced by a frieze of armillary spheres, emblems of hope and of the king, the crosses of the Order of Christ form the cresting against the sky. The extravagant climax is reached in the chapter house window, a fantasy in limestone, a bit of sub marine architecture worthy to grace a palace of the Nereids at the bottom of the sea: corals and sea-kelp, moving wave forms, bits of anchors and broken chains, shells and anemones, conches and cockles [73] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL blended together in a strange medley of forms too intricate to describe and too delicate to draw that contrast beautifully with the vast plain surfaces that surround them. The main entrance to the church is much more restrained and is perhaps the most beautiful door way in the country, reminding one of the same archi tect's design at Belem, but finer both in conception and execution. The interior befits the meeting-place for holy knights, recalling some temple of the Grail. The knights worshipped in the coro alto to which a staircase ascends from the great cloister, and one can readily picture the chevaliers, two and two, mounting its narrow steps in dignified procession. The cloisters are of vast extent, but, owing to their late date, offer little of artistic interest, except per haps the little cemetery courtyard, gay with flowers and Moorish tiles. From one of the large cloisters you step out upon a terrace overlooking a lovely vale. The convent wall edges the hill beyond, and all between stretch the gardens of the knights — bou quets of stately pines and rich masses of foliage — while in the quinta nearer the monastery, now the property of the Count of Thomar, oleanders, oranges, [74] Church of the Knights of the Order of Christ, Thomar THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and loquats bloom amid masses of handsome flowers. Thomar is the swan-song of the Portuguese build ers — the last outpouring of their soul, the final burst of glory before misfortune overtook their country and a Spanish Philip built the cold Palladian cloister that proclaims the death of the country's greatest hopes. [76] IV TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA COIMBRA FROM Thomar, you drive four miles to the rail way station, and then only an hour or two in the train brings you to Coimbra, which city is to Portugal what Salamanca is to Spain or Oxford or Cambridge to England — for many centuries the seat of its great university. So, naturally, one's first steps are bejit up the steep streets of the walled city to the place where the university sits enthroned upon the topmost sum mit. Its extensive buildings, of no particular aes thetic interest, surround a beautiful quadrangle adorned with trees and shrubs. At its southwestern angle is a little terrace, a shady spot and a favorite corner with the students. And who can wonder? Hung high above the city you look down upon its old roofs and upon a great bow of the Mondego, *' river of the muses," flowing through the loveliest [79] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL valley imaginable. Soft hills embowered in groves and greenwoods encompass it — range after range of varied silhouettes, fainter and more misty in the moist air as they recede, until they help to buttress the slopes of the Estrella, the mountains of the stars, that rear their purple silhouettes against the sky. Boats with tall white sails work their way through the sand-bars toward the sea. A delightful peace pervades the scene and stirs to meditation. The students read or study on the benches in this angle and once in a while raise their eyes and look toward the distant mountains. They are a fine-looking lot, these students — most of them tall and well set up, and many, especially those from north Portugal, surprisingly blond. They all wear the same costume, a long black frock coat that buttons to the neck and gives them an ecclesi astical air, and a wide, capelike cloak, also black, that they drape picturesquely over their arm or throw over their shoulders, according to the weather. This official garb was once supplemented by a black knitted cap which they did not like, so all now go bareheaded. They carry their papers and books in portfolios, from which hang knots of long ribbons, [80] dm M w;;.J&-i ¦ *¦ ¦¦¦"* to/ THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL whose colors denote the courses they are following — law, medicine, and the like. Once the capital of the kingdom, Coimbra pos sesses a number of interesting monuments. Its cathe dral dates from the early period when Coimbra upon the west, Toledo in the centre, and Saragossa to the east were the Christian outposts against the infidel. Its color, a deep golden brown, is like that of an old warrior tanned by the wars. Squarely seated upon its platform, its walls pierced only by narrow win dows that resemble loopholes, its roofs and parapets embattled, it recalls the day when praying and fight ing went hand in hand, and its rough-hewn stones sheathe it as in a bronze cuirass chased with the delicate tracery of its south door added at a later epoch. Its interior, too, is severely plain, though adorned with the only fine reredos that I saw in Portugal, and with side chapels that contain a notable array of old blue tiles. In the convent church of Santa Cruz, Affonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, and his son Sancho lie buried in handsome tombs at each side of the high altar. But the chief treasures of this church [82] Arco de Almedina, Coimbra THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL are the stalls of the upper choir that date from the same period as the later portion of Thomar and have the same imaginative appeal, with their carved caravels cutting the waves to visions of far-off cities of Coromandel and Calicut and the jungles of Brazil. I passed a morning sketching in this coro alto, and, as I worked, the priests' voices and the shuffle of many feet rose in a confused murmur to my ears, mingling pleasantly with the wheezy notes of the organ and the many-toned bells in the tower above, so that, what with my work, I forgot the hour, and when it was time to go the sacristan and all had departed. It was only after half an hour of diligent searching that I was able at last to gain a cloister through the sacristy door and find some one to let me out. We spent some charming days in Coimbra. We wandered in the thoroughfares of the upper town, admiring the picturesque corners, the old city gates, and the great palaces with their complicated escutch eons. We lingered upon the broad terraces of the botanical gardens, whose flora is, perhaps, as varied as any in existence. We wandered in the avenue that skirts the river. [84] Choir Stalls in the Church of Santa Cruz, Coimbra TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA And one morning we crossed the Mondego to visit the Quinta das Lagrimas, the Garden of Tears, and evoke sad memories of Inez de Castro, whose story, as I have already said, Camoens has woven into one of the most touching episodes of his immortal Lusiads. From the sunlit road you enter a park, almost wild, with thickets of bamboo, araucanias, and flowers in profusion, and find, perhaps, an old gardener silently working in a vegetable-patch. Then you pass a Gothic ruin with an ivy-grown portal and come upon a square pool of water deeply shaded by giant cedars and sycamores. Into one of its corners a tiny stream issues from a fissure in the rock, and the faint murmur of its water is the only audible sound. But the immor tal lines of Camoens, chiselled upon a stone near by, make the place eloquent of the death of gentle Inez: "Vede que fresca fonte rega as flores, Que lagrimas sao a agua, e o nome amores."* The murder was committed beside the fountain and that is why the Quinta is called the Garden of Tears. * "See yon fresh fountain flowing mid the flowers, Tears are its water and its name 'Amores.'" — Burton's Translation. [85] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL On a Sunday afternoon we took tea with some friends in their home overlooking a panorama of the river valley and its many hills. For our benefit they had assembled upon the table all the dainties of the Portuguese pastry-cook: ovos molles, quejadas, or cheese cakes, from Cintra, crystallized cabago, and even the bolo de mel, or honey-cake, from Madeira. After tea they asked in a group of students — our host was taking his last year in the law school — who, with their beloved guitarras and violas, in the dark ened room, sang their romances, their fardos and languishing love-songs, for here in Coimbra the ser enades form an integral part of the college life. I should say the students frequent the cafes but little and the book-shops much, especially a hand some one down by the river, provided like a library with comfortable seats and tables strewn with jour nals. They are great practical jokers, and their farces form their principal diversion. Upon our last afternoon we walked once more to the cathedral and watched the sun gild the ruddy fagade with its last dying rays. Then down to the river and to our hotel. At midnight we were awak ened by the sound of music — guitar and viola and [86] yMm^^^MUMWl >, a s THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL a sweet voice singing — and we recognized in the still night the voices of the other afternoon, first a light tenor, then a deeper barytone. What a fitting end ing to this pleasant journey; what a happy climax to our stay in Coimbra, city of the muses ! [88] n BUSSACO THE horses had just pulled up a long grade when, at the top of the hill, our coachman, with a flourish of his whip, pointed out a white speck upon a distant mountain, bare and precipitous, and he said: "There's Bussaco." We plodded on for an hour or more, and at last began to climb in earnest until we reached a village, Luzo, sunning its pink roofs among the vineyards. Then we skirted a high wall and suddenly plunged through a gateway into another world. Houses, vineyards, the smiling peasants, even the bright hot sunlight of the summer afternoon — all were blotted out in the instant. About us, interlocking their dense rank branches above our heads, great trees of infinite variety inter twined to form a forest as dense and luxuriant as any tropic jungle, where, in their efforts to reach the life-giving sun, the tree-trunks spindled upward tall and straight, their lower limbs dying in the gloom be neath. The road wound cool and fragrant between [89] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL hedges of ivy and laurel, mounting ever higher and higher until we spied a slender shaft above our heads surmounted by an armillary sphere. Some out buildings, a terrace, and a broad sunny esplanade, and, blinking in the bright light once more, we drew up before a monumental hotel, an enchanted palace in the wood ! Somewhere back in the dark ages when good men fled the turmoil of eternal wars, hermit monks found this quiet retreat and built here a primitive con vent. It never grew rich in worldly goods, nor did its barefoot brothers live in the opulence that was the shame of other Portuguese convents. On the contrary, their only luxury was this forest. As their missionary brothers one by one went forth over seas to convert the heathen of Asia and America, their home convent perched high up on its mountain top was ever present in their memories, and they sent or brought back to it every strange plant and tree that they could find which, in this marvellous climate, where everything grows, thrived and multi plied. A papal bull, issued by Urban VIII, and still to be read, inscribed upon the Portas de Coimbra, punished with major excommunication any one who [90] TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA dared cut a tree in this bosque sagrado, so that its trees have grown in peace and form to-day a virgin forest centuries old and many miles in circumference. The variety of its growth is astounding. Pines, oaks, and chestnuts indigenous to northern woods neighbor exotic palms, camphor-trees, carobs, Lusi- tanian cypresses and the giant cedars of Lebanon and Hindustan, forming dense groves where the sunlight only filters at midday, blazing in tiny bril liant spots upon the ivy, smilax and mosses that clothe the tree trunks and spread their carpets upon the ground. Sunlight is indeed necessary to the enjoyment of these woods, and I can readily imagine the dis appointment of any one who only sees them in the rain, smothered as they then are in the clouds of moisture that, in these latitudes, settle round the mountain tops. We were fortunate in our sojourn, for every day we were able to walk in a different direction through these amazing forests — a delight, a continual surprise, an everlasting wonderment at the prodigal hand of nature. Fountains, pools, cas cades greet one at each turn, and their murmur forms a rippling accompaniment to the songs of the [91] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL birds, and to the gentle refrain of the trees that hum in the breeze like the after-sweep of harp-strings. Every puff of wind and zephyr brings its scent and makes you glad indeed, if, in this material twentieth century, you still have a pagan sense left. The walk we liked best led up a zigzag path that steeply mounts behind the hotel. It was the old calvary, and at each of its turnings a square chapel still stands, mouldy and moss-grown and decorated with stone mosaics by the patient silent monks. Though shorn of their sculptures, these stations of the cross still show vestiges of their old painted back grounds. They lead you at length through ivy- covered copses and dense thickets of laurestina to two old hermitages, perched one above the other. These also were fashioned by the monks, and each contains a tiny oratory, a sleeping chamber whose hard couch is still marked upon the stone floor, a rude kitchen and a storeroom lined with cork. You step from the dense woods into these anchoretic retreats, and from them out again on to a little terrace where you pause and gasp, bewil dered, for the world lies spread. at your feet. Drunk with air and sunshine after the darkness [92] f«E£r-: ?S^s The Monastery and Palace, Bussaco TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA of the woods, you gaze without let or limit, over plains drenched and flooded with blue, where green fields and pink-tiled villages sun themselves among darker patterns of pine-woods. Far to the west ward the sand-bars gleam white against a long deep sapphire line. To the north rise the Caramulla Mountains, range after range, one behind another, fading away to far cerulean lands, so faint that one asks, is it sky, is it sea; solid earth or merely a pass ing cloud. I infinitely prefer this view to the more extensive one gained from the Cruz Alta above at the extreme top of the mountain — a panorama of vast extent indeed, but lacking both the mystery and charm of this initial glimpse coming hke a vision upon your senses. Another walk, best toward evening, brings you to the Porta de Sulla overlooking the battle-field — "Bussaco's iron ridge" — where, before Wellington's forces, Massena, the Darling of Victory, first tasted defeat. And indeed, as one looks from this gate, down the dizzy declivities up which the French troops toiled, one wonders at the temerity of the commander who would dare send his men to storm so formidable a position. [93] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL The great hotel at Bussaco is, I confess, somewhat out of the picture — insolent, in the over-elaboration of its architecture, and too sharp a contrast to the humble monastery that shelters beneath its giant bulk. But it is veritably a lotus-eater's paradise. I can imagine no lovelier place for rest and quiet recrea tion than this palatial caravansary sheltered in its miles of woods. It is kept to suit the most fastidious taste, and I am convinced that were it upon one of the beaten roads of travel, it would be famous the world over. When the old convent was secularized some years ago the Matta of Bussaco was taken over by the state, and it was decided to erect within it a palace to be presented to the crown. The palace was duly built, but, for political reasons, was never offered to the King, but turned instead into this hotel, a spe cial pavilion being reserved for the use of the royal family. In striking contrast to its magnificence is the monastery beside it — a true abode of anchorites. No spacious corridors here as at Thomar; no vast kitchens like Alcobaca; no gorgeous cloisters as at Belem. All is meek and humble. Along the nar- [94 J TWO EDENS OF ESTRAMADURA row halls, roofed with cork, cork doors just large enough to frame a human form admit to the narrow cells. At each angle stands an altar of Talavera tiles, blue and yellow with Persian-like bird-panels on a pale greenish ground. Half-effaced portraits of monks and abbots, grim and ascetic, and a few gruesome religious pictures, form the sole decoration of the walls. But the woods all about are enlivened with charm ing features — some recent, others dating from times long ago: crystal fountains gushing from fern-grown glens; rock grottoes, dripping with veil-like water falls, in whose caverns palms and rare tropical plants thrive as in a hothouse; seats of stone mosaic, ivy- grown ruins, and a scala santa which you ascend be tween cascades and varied cryptogamia. Bussaco's beauty baffles both pen and pencil, for it resides chiefly in the vast extent of its glorious woods, and how picture the variety of these stately avenues, the deep of the cedar groves, and the thick, flat canopies of its cypresses spread like green velvet parasols to screen the sun? [95] V NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS WE left this Eden one afternoon, as the clouds were lowering and rain threat ened at any moment, and, as we coasted down the steep decline in the hotel's motor, our sadness at departure was somewhat tempered by the thought of a change in the weather. And surely enough, when we next saw the great ridge from the train as we left Pampilhosa, the clouds had descended about it, and were drifting thicker, while showers from time to time obscured even the lower spurs. The country that we traversed, especially upon such a day, made us think of Holland. It was, in deed, the direct antithesis to that we had just left. Perfectly flat open fields separated by narrow canals and bordered by long fringes of trees alternated with sand dunes. We knew the sea was near when, at length, we approached Aveiro, whose fishermen [99] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and their varinas are famous the country over, and were quite prepared to perceive the broad Atlantic just beyond the town. The leaden clouds had lifted. We had dropped in but an hour or two from the mountains to the sea, in whose immensity we watched the sun set in a halo of glory, like one of Claude's great golden can vases. The villas and bathing resorts of Granja, suburban in character, told us we were nearing an important city, and presently, just before entering the station at Villa Nova de Gaia, we caught our first glimpse of Oporto, sitting proudly on its hills, its tiers of win dows throwing back the last rays of the sun. As we waited the dusk darkened into night. But when we did finally cross high above the Douro upon the airy bridge that spans its deep ravine, profound as at Niagara, the picture was superb. Far below the river wound in a silver bow, the boats upon it mere specks; chains and festoons of lights revealed the city silhouetted against a steel- colored sky, and followed the irregular lines of the streets, starring them like the firmament, white above, and golden far down by the water's edge. [100] The Gorge of the Douro at Oporto NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS Slowly we crossed the dizzy heights and rumbled through a tunnel and into the station. We slept that night in a bit of France, lost in this far corner of Portugal. Madame at the desk, mon sieur in the dining-room; the food, the good beds and the comfortably furnished room — all recalled the best type of French provincial hotels. Oporto has been surnamed the "Laborious," and I think it deserves the appellation. It is preemi nently a commercial city, so its main arteries teem with life. The abrupt slopes that rise from the river bank make its streets exceptionally steep and irregular. Yet almost all the burden of its com merce is carried in odd boat-shaped baskets upon the heads and shoulders of its citizens who plod up and down the hills bearing incredible loads. Horses are few, and are reserved for carriages and lighter vehicles. All the heavy hauling is done by the ox-teams that are the most distinctive feature of its thoroughfares. The oxen, of a big strong type, have an enormous spread of horns. The carts are as primitive as in the day of Celt or Roman and the yokes are unique. Four or five feet in length, they stand almost up- [101] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL right like pictures upon easels, carved with intricate pierced patterns sometimes suggesting Moorish de signs, sometimes enriched with saints and angels, An Ox-Team, Oporto and often painted in the same gay colors as the carts in Palermo. The master of the team walks behind it, or sits upon the load, while the big patient animals are led by a boy or girl who precedes them armed with a goad. The sight of the girls especially — [ 102 ] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS mere slips of creatures of the tender age that most needs protection — walking barefoot in the dirty streets, tugging and hauling at the great beasts whose horns often graze their slender bodies, stirs the stranger's heart to pity. The life of the common people centres in the Praga de Ribeira, an irregular little square, foul and dust-swept, down by the river front. Here ox-teams and longshoremen come in contact and take up their burdens. Here one may best study the strange rigs of the boats — the picturesque hulls of the barcos de tolde shaped like gondolas, the flat-bottomed punts, and, most characteristic of all, the high-pooped bar- cos rabello, the great boats that bring their precious cargoes of port wine through shoals and sand-bars, down the turbid Douro to the warehouses of Oporto. Colliers from England, coasting-ships from Bor deaux and Galicia, and native vessels from the Azores, complete the background. The larger liners no longer pass the treacherous bar, but anchor in stead in the new artificial harbor at Leixoes a few miles away. The broad quay that skirts the river reflects this cosmopolitan life and recalls picturesque Santa [ 103] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Lucia in the heyday of its squalor and activity. The city wall that borders it is honeycombed with the troglodytic shops of ship chandlers, sailors' retreats A Wine-Boat on the Douro and evil-smelling barrooms; the houses that over look it flaunt drying linen and pots of gaudy flowers to the sun; the motley throng that crowd its gran ite quay are sturdy seafolks bronzed and weathered by wind and sun. The houses rise abruptly, one [104] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS above another, topped at last by the huge bulk of the bishop's palace, rising at the end of the airy bridge, the Ponte de Don Luiz Primeiro, that leaps the Douro from bank to bank on the daring sweep of its single skeleton arch. The streets that lead from the quay to the upper town are quite mediaeval in character — dark tor tuous lanes overshadowed by tall houses and further shaded by projecting balconies. In their open shops cobblers and carpenters, saddlers and bookbinders, ply their trades, using tools and implements of cen turies ago. I especially remember one dark lane filled with smithies, in which was such a din of ham mers beating on brass, copper and zinc, reverberat ing, thrown back and forth from wall to wall, that my senses were bewildered. Yet children played peacefully in the gutters, while housewives hung out their linen on the balconies overhead quite ob livious and seemingly content. The most unusual of these streets is the Rua das Flores, where the goldsmiths and silversmiths dis play their extraordinary wares — glittering cases of jewelry for the rich peasants of the Minho, made for the most part in the village of Gondomar. Crucifixes [105] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL of elaborate filigree; great earrings, eight to nine inches long; massive pectoral hearts engrossed with leaves and tendrils set with precious stones that stand almost free from the golden background; mas sive chains and lockets; English sovereigns and gold pistoles and doubloons set as watch charms form the most amazing exhibition of peasant jewels that I have ever seen. In other streets near by the country folk buy their costumes, and the shop fronts are gay with colored sashes for the men, and with bright kerchiefs and petticoats for the women. As most of these are illiterate, quaint picture-signs dangle in the air, designating the shop whose name would otherwise be illegible. The streets of the upper town are cleaner and more modern in appearance, and meet here and there in spacious squares laid out with beautiful gardens. But one finds walking or driving in them rather fatiguing, for all the pavements are of granite. In fact, Oporto is a city of granite. Every church and palace, all its embankments, even the door and window-frames of its humblest houses are made of this enduring stone, whose stubbornness of surface [106] ¦-¦r The Cathedral, Oporto THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL has restrained the use of ornament, so that the city's architecture in the main is dignified and simple. This is the note of its principal monument. The cathedral, though disfigured by late alterations, is a grave, austere pile, like most of the very early churches of this northern country, and so is the huge bishop's palace that adjoins it. This latter is now unoccupied, so the monumental staircase of noble design, but tawdry decoration, echoes no foot step; the long suites of chambers are denuded, and the private chapel despoiled. As we walked through these empty rooms, one after another, our soldier guide opening each door with a key, we came at length to one in which a gorgeous cardinal's robe, ermine-trimmed, hung sunning over a chair by the window, mute evocation of the holy man who used to sit there and gaze hence over vine-clad pergolas and pottery roofs, plunging one below the other to the crowded shipping of the quays below. These views of Oporto from the heights are highly picturesque, and one may enjoy them from several points of vantage. From the Passeio das Fontain- has, for instance, you stand between the two bridges, that of the railway and the foot-bridge, both remark- [108] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS able feats of engineering. Upon the opposite shore rises the conspicuous church of the Serra do Pilar, whence Wellington directed his famous crossing of the Douro, and from which his cannon bombarded the city. But the view from the far end of the Ponte de Dom Luiz is, I think, the best. Here you face the city that rises like a wall from the water's edge. At the bottom are the granite quays I have described, alive with moving crowds, the light-col ored waists and bundles of the women splashing white spots against the dark-gray stone. Skiffs crowd about the landing-steps; the tall white sails of the wine-boats go floating by like stately swans; sombre groups of coal-barges clustered about the custom-house form intricate patterns upon the yellow-green water, and now and then a steamer or a tug comes slowly up the deep gorge from the sea. Tiny wherries, rowed by men standing upright, dart from shore to shore bearing business men back and forth to the warehouses that stretch in long lines along the south bank, where the wealth of the coun try and the mainspring of its activities — those rare old port wines, the precious Muscatel de Jesus, the rich white Malmsey, the sweet Bastardo and all the [109] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL sorts and varieties of Tintas — lie mellowing and ripening.Nobth of the Douro lies a rich province of vine yards — a land where the peasants are self-respecting, happy, frugal, and often wealthy; where the granite terraces have stood for centuries; where the forms of the old ox-carts1 have never changed; where the husbandmen use the same ploughs and farm im plements that one sees graven upon the Celtic stones of Citania. To visit this country we set out by train one morning for Guimaraes. The road from Oporto lies through a smiling land where every house is smoth ered in grape-vines, where the little Leca, sung by Sa de Miranda, flows gurgling through a narrow val ley, setting in motion numerous water-wheels, div ing under ivy-grown bridges, and polishing great granite boulders that shine resplendent in the sun. Finally, Guimaraes appears lying amid its vine yards and still guarded by its ancient castle, the cradle of the Portuguese monarchy. The city has a fine old aristocratic air — that of an impoverished nobleman — with its stately palaces flaunting their [110] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS many quarterings on escutcheons above their en trances; its substantial houses and its venerable paving-stones now worn rutty by hundreds of years of footsteps. The Town Hall, Guimaraes Upon a picturesque square, arcaded and irregular in shape, front the main church and the old Town Hall, a curious edifice that straddles the praga on a series of stumpy arches. The bad taste of a later [HI] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL generation has remodelled its upper story and decked it with Manueline spheres and with a strange knight in nondescript armor, a burlesque figure fit to grace a Louis XIV ballet. The Church of Our Lady of the Olives is a grave and sombre pile, dating from the first period of the country's history. In its granite cloister grows an olive-tree that recalls the story from which the old church takes its name — a tradition of the time of the Visigoths. Wamba was ploughing his fields when envoys from Toledo came to tell him that he had been elected king of the Gothic peoples. In credulous, he cried in jest that he would be king when his goad blossomed into leaf. So saying, he thrust his long olive staff into the ground, when lo, leaves burst from it; amazed, he attempted to pull it from the earth, but found it firmly rooted. Wamba was king ! From this church a long winding street, spanned here and there with arches, and lined with ancient habitations, mounts gradually to the Castle. This I have called the cradle of the Portuguese monarchy, for here Affonso Henriques was born, and here he was baptized in a little chapel still standing, that once was enclosed within the outer walls. [112] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS The old fortress remains quite intact, owing to its solid construction, for it is built of well-fitted blocks of granite exceptionally large for a building of its date. You may still walk its entire chemin des rondes, whose battlements and stairways, towers and bastions, and even the curious pyramidal mer lons, a legacy of the Moors, are still in place. The view from the ramparts is charming: sanctuaries on the surrounding hills, the green valley, the old town, the fields through which we were to drive on the morrow, veiled by their screens of vines, com bining to make a lovely panorama. I awoke early next morning to the sound of bells — chimes merry and gay, jingling tunes knocked out with a hammer on sweet-toned bells, and as I looked out of the window the black-robed women were going to mass (for it was a festival day), some afoot and one or two in old-fashioned landaus that accorded well with the time-worn palace fronts. But before the hotel a carriage was waiting for us, and while the air was still fresh and crisp we set forth for Braga. The road lay through a land of vineyards, not the close-cropped vineyards that we know, but screens of vines that gaily mount aloft on oaks, poplars, and [113] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL cherry-trees — uveiras, the Minhotos call them — twenty or thirty feet in air, sunning themselves as they did in the days of ancient Rome — ulmisque adjungere vites. So they grow in the fields, but in the villages they are cultivated de ramada, trellised over tall stone-posts or trained on pergolas and ar bors that span the narrow streets. In their shade sit old women with distaffs, and the click of the looms issues from the sturdy houses built of solid blocks of granite. At Taipas we were tempted to turn off the road and visit the ruins of Citania, whose curious stones had so intrigued us in the museum at Guimaraes. But, being seekers for the picturesque and not archaeologists, and being quite incapable of solving riddles that have puzzled all Celto-Iberian scholars, we gave up the expedition and proceeded to climb the Falperra Range. We ascended through pines and chestnuts to open pastures, where herds of oxen graze among purple granite boulders, mighty isolated monoliths that the Cyclops might have hurled after fleeing Ulysses. Near Santa Marta in Cima we topped the pass and quickly descended until Braga lay disclosed, sunning itself in the clear morning air. [114] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS The women washing by the river looked up as we rattled over the bridge and through a narrow street, "Whose Jalousies Recall the Days of Moorish Occupation crowded with ragged urchins; then we rumbled into a square, the Campo Santa Anna, and with a crack of the whip drew up at the hotel. [115] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL We first visited the cathedral, as that seemed the proper thing to do, for does not Braga claim to be the oldest see in the peninsula, and does not its archbishop claim primacy of all the Spains? The church seems modest for these pretensions, but in the streets about it cluster a number of shops that add to its ecclesiastical atmosphere — shops that cater to the wants of the numerous clergy who visit the primatial palace near by. Some of them display vestments of damask and brocade, others hangings of rich silks. In one we watched a white-haired artisan polish a pair of silver-gilt candlesticks, while on shelves behind him pyxes and monstrances, crosses and reliquaries stood ready for delivery; in another a brown-bearded sculptor who looked like a monk showed us a life-sized Christ that he was carving from a block of cedar-wood brought from far Nicaragua. In these same by-streets are houses whose jalousies recall the days of Moorish occupation, and old churches, like Sao Joao, that are strange architec tural medleys, mixtures of every known style. The beggars of Braga deserve a niche to them selves, fit subjects as they are for a Rembrandt or [116] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS a Callot. Such tatterdemalions, such ragamuffins, I have seldom if ever seen — mere bundles of rags and patches. One boy I shall never forget, whose shirt consisted solely of a neckband and a single strip of cloth, that hung down in front, his own naked body, brown and dirty, showing everywhere else, except where covered by a ragged coat. He wore a pair of man's trousers, also in tatters, and cut off above the knees, and held in place by an ancient solitary string that threatened at any instant to break. Though Braga itself is interesting, I should ad vise any one who proposed to spend more than a day or two in its vicinity to make his headquarters at Bom Jesus do Monte, a sanctuary perched upon a hill near by, where there is a comfortable hotel kept by the same proprietor as the one in town. And what a view you enjoy from your window ! These face upon a terrace bordered by a curtain of trees, beyond which the mountain drops sheer a thousand feet or more to a level of rolling hills cov ered with vineyards that stretch like Persian car pets, whose curving patterns are outlined with feathery, vine-clad trees that soften the landscape and give it the atmospheric effect of finely woven [117] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL tapestry. The long line of Braga's winding street leads off to the city spreading itself on a hill crest, its pink roofs framed in green. Chapels, churches, crosses mark other hill-tops that recede one beyond another, till far away a long silver thread of the Cavado River marks the bottom of the valley, beyond which a line of purple mountains screens the sea. Toward sunset the effects are magical and the sweet-toned voices of Braga's many bells come faintly to your ears in drowsy chimes. In the daylight hours you may wander in the woods that surround the sanctuary, not as extensive as those at Bussaco nor as beautiful, but lovely pleasure-grounds, nevertheless, where redwoods and oaks, ilex and chestnuts grow side by side, and long avenues of twisted cork-trees recall Fragonard's "Allee Ombrageuse." We enjoyed several days of this peaceful quiet, then waited impatiently for the end of the week, for we especially wanted to see a great romaria that was then to take place. Most visitors to Portugal miss these romarias altogether by coming either too early in the spring or too late in the autumn. Yet they are the most [118] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS characteristic expression of the soul of the people that one can see, and I should say the most typical merrymakings left in Europe to-day. All the latent Church of Sao Joao, Braga happiness repressed during the winter and the long work-days of early spring, then bursts into flower and intoxicates itself with light and color, movement and life. The girls put on their gayest attire (and gay it is, [ H9 ] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL indeed); the young men don their Sunday raiment; the hamlets empty themselves and young and old in joyful bands, singing and dancing as they go, set forth for the place of pilgrimage. The golden dust rises from the powdery road kicked by the feet of the romeiros in rhythmic measure while viola answers guitar and the girls' throats fling their shrill falsetto notes into the air. What matters who is the patron — whether he be Our Lord of the Stone at Espinho or Our Lord of the Sailors at Bom Jesus? What matters the distance — the leagues to be cov ered ? There is music at the end and life and gaiety and wine; flags fluttering from tall mastheads, foguetes bursting like bombs in the air and an il luminated church, drowsy with incense, resplendent with a thousand candles. Romarias of Portugal! Who that has seen you would ever forget your charm — relic of Hellenic festivals, feasts of color, and the joy of human com radeship ! During our stay in Portugal we saw three of these pilgrimages, including the celebrated one at Mat- tozinhos. But the one I like best to remember was certainly this at Bom Jesus do Monte. The back- [120] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS ground alone is admirable, and its distance from any considerable city makes it a true peasant affair. The day before, as early as dawn, ox-wains began to arrive, toiling up the steep mountain, their wooden axles creaking like hurt dogs. Some brought rude collapsible booths; others tables and benches for the outdoor kitchens; others again awnings and trinkets to be sold — but the most brought casks of wine. These were backed into place, the casks remaining upon the rude carts, whose spokeless wheels recalled remotest antiquity; then cask and cart alike were decked with oak boughs or grape-vines and earthen jars stuck upon poles to serve as drinking-vessels. The preparations continued apace. Hammers tapped everywhere; garlands of lights were ar ranged before the great church and in the woods about it; flags and banners were hung on tall poles. Finally, the roadways were cleared of dead leaves and swept up, so that by evening all was in readi ness for the morrow. At daybreak the peasants began to arrive. They came in little troops of a dozen or more, the women gay in yellows and reds, the men in sombre colors or [121] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL black. All sang as they walked, accompanying each other with viola or tambourine, and every few min utes the women would break into a dance, rhythmic and cadenced, snapping their fingers and bending their waists in time to the spirited music. Troop after troop arrived, some issuing from the woods behind the church, some coming by the roads that curved up from the valley and others mount ing the monumental scala, a wilderness of stairs that forms the main approach for pilgrims. On its steps they would pause on each of the landings and peer into the chapels where the story of the Passion is depicted by life-sized wooden figures colored and gilded that recall Gaudenzio Ferrari's terra-cottas at Varallo — some of them remarkably life-like with settings of growing plants placed against a painted background. At each chapel the men removed their hats, and with their women pressed their faces against the gratings in rapt attention, some lighting small can dles, others dropping coppers into boxes provided for that purpose. They stared too at the curious Fountains of the Senses, and at the stone statues of saints and martyrs, blotched with lichens that make [122] The Monumental Scala, Bom Jesus NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS this calvary so fantastic. At length they reached the great church whose bells had been calling since early morning. By ten o'clock the crowd became dense and the shuffle of thousands of feet filled the air with a fine golden dust. The chimes now pealed a great bob- major and the church filled — hushed and quiet in contrast to the movement outdoors, the women kneeling on the stone floor, the men standing rever ently in the background, while clouds of incense veiled the myriad candles. Brocades and damasks hung from the drum of the dome. The pilasters were twined with garlands, the altar rails graced with growing plants. By noon mass was finished. The crowds, in the open air again, singing and danc ing, joking and laughing, made for the big booths, where in camp kitchens stews were steaming and fish were frying. Here at long tables, crowded to overflowing, they munched their coarse bread, their potatoes and fruits, washing them down with maduro verde, the tart little wine of the country. The wine- casks on the ox-wagons were tapped, their bung- holes became purple, and their contents went sizzling down dry throats hoarse with singing. [123] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Itinerant booksellers vaunted their cheap wares hap-books and pamphlets, lurid tales of adven ture, "Lovers' Treasures," fairy stories and bits of cheap philosophy in the form of rhymed dialogues. The varied types passed by — people who have been called "the finest peasantry in Europe to-day" — clean-cut youths larking with pretty girls; handsome women straight as caryatides balancing amphorae on their heads; beggars in tatters with the manners of hidalgos who bow low to you even though you refuse the cinco reis they so humbly ask. The mountains of coarse rye bread grow lower. The air is filled with the sound of voices and of laughter, with the scent of roasting chestnuts and frying oil. The animation becomes intense, rhythmic strains of guitar and viola, accordion and tambour ine are ever present, and everywhere groups are dancing. How different these dances from those of northern climes ! In the northlands people dance from the hips down, holding the body more or less rigid, as in the jig, the reel, and hornpipe. , Agility is the chief characteristic. In the south the dances are an ex pression of emotion and poetry, the body, head, [124] Corner of a Romaria NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS arms, and hands playing quite as much a part as the feet. Here in North Portugal they dance the modas da roda — rounds where the man pursues the woman in a variety of graceful steps, she bending away from him, snapping her finger, he buzzing round her hke a bee round a rose. Sometimes the measure is lively, as in the boleros, sometimes grave, as in the malhao triste, but always full of a rhythm difficult to withstand. During these dances you may admire the beauty of the women's costumes — their brilliant petticoats ornamented with colored borders, their velvet aprons trimmed with jet, their embroidered bodices and the fringed kerchiefs that they wear knotted round their heads and folded across their breasts. On these they display their wealth of jewelry — the elaborate and costly goldsmith's work that we had admired in the Rua das Flores — chains and crosses, lockets and hearts in glittering array. All their wealth is in vested in these golden trinkets, passed from genera tion to generation, and, though a young woman may be barefoot, five golden chains may hang about her neck and two huge pairs of earrings dangle to her shoulders. [125] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL The prettiest costumes come from the neighbor hood of Barcellos and Vianna de Castello, made en tirely by hand and trimmed with elaborate patterns. Dainty slippers, handsome handkerchiefs, and an aljibeira, or embroidered purse, complete the details of one of the most becoming peasant costumes that I know. The wealthy young farmers and vineyard- ists also attract attention. They wear short jackets trimmed with braid, with silver-linked buttons at the wrist, and sometimes all the way up to the elbow. Their trousers are tight-fitting, but flare at the ankle, their hats are felt and very wide of brim, and they carry long spades, chosen with great care for their strength and pliability. Among these young men the spirit of the trouba- dores still persists, for they love to sing and to match each other in desgarrados a viola, an interesting fea ture of these romarias — improvisations accompanied by violin, in which they throw back answer and reply, keeping their company in high spirits as each tries to outdo the other in a tournament of wits. Then, when tired, they adjourn again to the wine- casks, and before the sign "vinho particular," that is, "from my own vineyard," cool their parched throats. [126] NORTH PORTUGAL AND ITS ROMARIAS The wine and the warm summer sun heat their heads. The dancers step to a livelier measure; the f6te in full swing reaches its climax. Then the shadows begin to steal across the ter race. They lengthen and the evening brings quiet. The crowds slip away. The vast terrace is almost deserted and soon the shadows of night bring still ness and repose. Romarias of Portugal ! Who that has seen you will ever forget your charm, — your savor of rustic landscape, of smiling valleys and cottages where happy children play in the shade of blossom ing orange-trees, scenes that remind us, as I have said, of the bacchanalias of ancient Greece, with their suave pagan choruses, half hymn, half song — floating in the clear, calm air ? [127] VI AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA WE had departed from Oporto at noon, and, having left the vine-clad banks of the Douro behind us, had traversed the bleak and treeless highlands that separate Portugal from Spain, so that it was close to ten o'clock at night when we finally reached Salamanca. We were, I think, the only passengers to alight there, and when we issued from the station, after collecting our lug gage in the blackness of the night, the one carriage that had been waiting was disappearing down the road toward the lights of the city that twinkled dimly in the distance. There was, however, a dilapidated old diligencia standing dejectedly before the station, and into this we clambered and told the driver — a swarthy des perado, capped with a broad sombrero, and wearing a kerchief loosely knotted round his neck, and a short jacket that bellied in the wind — to drive us to the best hotel in town. He muttered something or other under his breath, and his companion, the [131] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL guardia, an equally sinister-looking personage, slammed the door and climbed upon the back step of the omnibus, where he stood, peering in at us through the little window. We entered the town by the Porta de Zamora, and rattled down the street of the same name until we drew up at the Hotel del Comercio. The look of it was ominous, for, gathered before it on the side walk, sat or stood chattering groups of people, stout duefias with their daughters or nieces and young men and their fathers talking animatedly in the warm June evening air. The corridors of the hotel were also filled to overflowing, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I finally made my way to the desk to ask for a room. The clerk looked at me pityingly and told me that not only had he no room to offer me, but that every hallway was filled with cots, for we had arrived at the moment of the examinations at the university, and that the relatives and friends of the students had all come to town for the commencement exer cises. He doubted indeed if we could find a room in the city, and this, we found, was what the driver of the omnibus had mumbled at the station. Visits [132] AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA to several other hotels confirmed these predictions, so, behind the dejected mules, we rumbled into a corner of the stately Plaza Mayor and drew up near the Despacho Central. A policeman came up and made some inquiries, and the guardia went off to try some fondas and posadas that he knew of, while we waited patiently in the omnibus. Several good citizens and boys also interested themselves in our behalf, but reports from scouts grew less and less hopeful, for it seemed that, besides the parental hordes, a body of some two thousand pilgrims on their way to northern Spain were spending the night in the city, and had preempted every bed in town. It really began to look as if we might have to pass the remainder of the night in the diligencia in the corner of the Plaza Mayor. At last, however, the guardia returned triumphant. He had found a friend who would give up his own bed to us. So he led us off, accompanied by the po liceman, through some dark alleys, to a tiny square in one corner of which lights gleamed in a modest wine-shop. We entered and found it filled with men smoking [133] ^ THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and drinking. Behind a counter lay a row of bar rels from which a man was dispensing wine. Long strands of garlic hung from the ceiling; the walls were plastered with flamboyant posters of bull-fights, while perched upon the stairs that ascended to the upper floors of the house were parrots of gorgeous plumage and birds in gaily painted cages. A buxom woman who was cooking at a charcoal- stove in a corner advanced to greet us, and led us down a long passage into a high-ceilinged room or, rather, a sort of covered courtyard, whitewashed, and lighted and ventilated only by a couple of small windows, not more than a foot square, cut in the wall high up near the ceiling. Down the centre of the room ran a long table, still decorated with odds and ends of fruit, with cut cheeses, with emptied bottles and other relics of a feast that had regaled some of the pilgrims, who now lay asleep up-stairs, and whose shoes decorated the stairway that I have described. From this courtyard there opened an alcove, un- lighted and unventilated, but very clean, and closed only by a pair of glass doors. In this alcove stood a monumental bed which our kindly hostess described [134] AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA as her cama de matrimonio, or marriage-bed, and this she offered us for the night. She asked for time to change the linen, so we went off into the Plaza Mayor again, where we sat down at a cafe. The prospect of a night in the stuffy alcove, per meated with the odors of wine and cookery and by the sounds of talking and the strumming of guitars, was none too alluring, so we decided to stay as long as we could in the cafe, watching the students at the tables or walking arm in arm under the broad arcades of the vast plaza outside, one of the finest in Spain, surrounded as it is with harmonious build ings and decorated with palms and formal gardens. In the small hours of the morning we returned to our fonda, retired to the alcove, and climbed into the billowy feather-bed that heaved like the waves of the sea each time that one moved an arm or a leg. Loud voices and sounds of laughter still came from the wine-shop, but presently these subsided, the street door closed, and the rasp of the great lock told us that the last guest had departed and that the house would soon be wrapped in slumber. I heard slippered feet in the courtyard, and then a deep and regular breathing told me that our host [135] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL was sleeping on the long table instead of in the bed that we were occupying. Very early in the morning the pilgrims departed, their noisy leave-takings waking us after only a few hours' rest. Later, when we were partly dressed, there was a gentle tap on the glass door, and we were told that a room up-stairs was now cleared and at our disposal. It was indeed a very comfortable room, light and airy, and quite unlike the one that we had just left, with a large double window opening upon a balcony that overlooked the plazuela or little square upon which the wine-shop fronted. It was, too, nicely furnished, but the things that immediately arrested the attention were the multitudinous objects with which it was decorated. On the centre-table, amid a profusion of artificial flowers and ornate blue vases, stood a porcelain bull, glazed in nature's colors, with a wreath of roses round his neck. The lower walls of the room were hung with photographs, mostly autographed and dedicated, of illustrious matadors and simpering ladies in mantillas, and in at least a dozen of them we recognized our host. The upper walls were hung [136] AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA with bright chromos of religious subjects, while over the bed hung a crucifix and a benitier filled with holy water. Between the pictures, crossed swords and banderillas were placed, and it did not take much perspicacity to tell us that we were in the home of a bull-fighter. The wife now appeared bearing a tray with our breakfast spread upon it, and this she placed on a table by the open window. In a moment she re turned with Loretta, a gorgeous parrot that she placed on the balcony rail just over the demijohn that told the passer-by that we sold wine in our house. Then the cats appeared and after them the dogs, among these latter a tiny white spaniel, " muy precioso," we were informed, that wheezed and coughed and finally curled up upon a deerskin rug and there fell asleep. When we asked seflora about her husband, "Ah, yes," she said, "he is a lidiador de toros, and between his journeys to the bull-rings of Spain, he dispenses wine in this house, which I keep during his absences." After breakfast we went out to see the city, the seat of the oldest university in Spain, one of the most venerable in Europe, ranking, as early as the [137] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL thirteenth century, with Bologna, Paris, and Ox ford as one of the four great universities of the world. Several of my forebears had held professorships at this ancient seat of learning, so it was with a cer tain amount of curiosity that we directed our steps toward it. The University of Salamanca fronts on the quiet little Plazuela de la Universidad, that, surrounded as it is by collegiate buildings, is almost like a "quad." In its centre rises a simple monument to the ecclesiastical poet Fray Luis de Leon, who, with Cervantes and Cardinal Ximenes, ranks as one of the most distinguished students that the university has produced. Along the south side of the square stand the Escuelas Menores, or lesser schools, while upon its east side rises the beautiful fagade of the Escuelas Mayores, one of the most brilliant examples of the plateresque style in Spain. Above the cen tral door-jamb appear the busts of its builders, Ferdinand and Isabella, and it is further adorned with medallions, armorial bearings, and a profusion of rich detail, until its surface is harmoniously fretted with a somewhat excessive richness, relieved, how ever, by the plainness of the stone walls behind it. [138] Fagade of the University of Salamanca THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL The lecture-rooms of the university surround a spacious courtyard, plain and cloister-like in ap pearance, that, in the sixteenth century, swarmed with the seven thousand students that flocked to it from all the countries of Europe. Now it counts but a sixth of that number. The excitement attendant upon the commence ment exercises of even these few students had, how ever, quite upset the ordinary decorum of the place, and our visit was, in a measure, a disappointment, for the library, with its rare manuscripts and papers, was closed and the usual atmosphere of the ancient institution was gone. Our next visit (being good Americans) was to the old Dominican convent that adjoins the church of San Esteban, in a room of which, called the Salon de Profundis, Christopher Columbus tried in vain to convince the professors of the university of the feasibility of his plan to discover a new route to India. These learned doctors, however, pronounced his scheme "vain, impracticable, and resting on grounds too weak to merit the support of govern ment." Their opinion was not shared by the head of the convent, Fray Diego de Deza, who remained [140] AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA the constant friend and supporter of Columbus, and in gratitude to him the great discoverer named the first land he sighted Santo Domingo, and used the first virgin gold that he brought back with him from the New World to gild the retablo behind the high altar of San Esteban, the Dominican's church, where its fire still smoulders under the dark arch of the coro. The remainder of the day we spent in and around the new and old cathedrals. The old cathedral is particularly strong and fortress-like in appearance. Its walls are exceedingly massive and thick and are decorated only with the severe ornament of the Romanesque style. Above them rises the beautiful Torre del Gallo, an octagonal lantern with a crock- eted spire and a scalloped roof, that will immediately recall to most Americans H. H. Richardson's tower of Trinity Church in Boston, for which it served as a model. The old cathedral as we see it to-day is practically the work of Fray Geronimo, comrade-confessor of The Cid, he who supported the body of the great Campeador on its last ride from Valencia to its final resting-place in the grim convent of Cardena. The [141] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Cid's body, clad in shining armor, with the re doubted sword Tisona clasped in his dead hand, mounted upright upon his charger, Bavieca, who, according to the legend, wept bitter tears at the death-bed of his master, was borne across the up lands of Old Castile to the spot selected by Rodrigo as his final burial-place: A San Pedro de Cardefia Mando que mi cuerpo Uevan, and there interred. Geronimo lies buried in a chapel behind the high altar of the new cathedral, in which also hangs "El Cristo de las Batallas," the bronze crucifix that The Cid always carried in his battles. The new cathedral was begun early in the six teenth century, when the old cathedral seemed no longer adequate for the needs of proud Salamanca. It was designed in a florid Gothic style that was still prevalent in Spain, though it had been superseded in most other countries by the Renaissance. The west front, especially the vast central portal, is ex cessively rich in design. Niches and canopies, orna mented with a profusion of detail, shelter a multi tude of saints and prelates; the magi, the adoring [142] AN ADVENTURE IN SALAMANCA shepherds, the crucifixion, and a number of other religious scenes are carved within its arches. The massive tower that dominates it is one of the few really creditable works of Churriguera, who, a native of Salamanca, did so much to debase the already too fantastic ornament of the architecture of Spain. The interior of the new cathedral is lofty and im posing, but despite the ambition of its builders the old cathedral remains the more interesting building of the two. Late in the afternoon we returned to our fonda, and just before dinner-time there was a rap on the door, and to our surprise our host appeared dressed in all the glory of his toreador's costume. He was a small man with an agile and well-knit figure, a square jaw and straight firm mouth, and eyes that were always blood-shot, with something of the ani mal in them. About his low forehead the hair was planted strong and brushed forward over the ears. In his hand he carried his banderillas, whose scarlet tissue-paper coverings only partly concealed the cruel steel dart at the end. As we admired him, he told us of his adventures, [143] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and brought out a large book, profusely illustrated —a "Manual of the Bull," I think it was called- in which the virtues and qualities of these furious animals were extolled and discoursed upon at length. He showed us posters of bull-fights in which he had participated and pointed out with pride his name, Cuchareta, printed in large type upon them. He seemed, indeed, to possess all the vanity that one would naturally expect in one of those flattered favorites of the populace. In a special room up under the roof he kept his dozen or more torero cos tumes, and up to this room he led us and undid their varicolored wrappings and put them on and struck poses, tightening the capa round his waist as he hummed the march of the salida, or throwing his arms above his head as he called the bull, with his left foot poised on its toe ready to plant the banderi llas that he held in his hand. And he asked, "Are you going to see me next Sunday in the ring here?" We had not intended to stay quite that long, but he looked so eager that we weakly said "Yes." The old city well repaid us for this decision, and we spent several days in exploring its byways and [ 144 ] Patio of the Casa de las Conchas THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL picturesque corners, its market-places and curious shops. Its churches, it is true, are not as interesting as those in some of the other Spanish cities. From the purist's point of view, they would be classified as second-rate. Built as they were in the heyday of Salamanca's prosperity, in the late sixteenth century, they show only too plainly the exuberances and inexhaustible fantasy of the school of Ber- ruguete. But to the lover of the picturesque they afford many a sketchable angle, with their belfries and buttresses, their pinnacles and statued portals. Their interiors, too, are warm and mellow in tone, and enriched with gilded carvings, with elaborate ironwork, and huge retablos that sometimes cover the whole choir-wall with their painted statues and rich architecture. Among the palaces of Salamanca there are sev eral of exceptional beauty. One of these is the so- called Casa de las Conchas, or House of the Shells, that derives its name from the thirteen rows of scal lop-shells that decorate its fagade. Its rejas, or ornamental screens that enclose some of its windows like the moucharabis of the Moors, are especially noted examples of Hispanic ironwork. They and [146] AN ADVENTURE LN SALAMANCA the escutcheon over the main doorway bear the armorial device of the Maldonados, one of the oldest and most influential families of the city, many mem bers of which sleep in the church of San Benito, in stately tombs with recumbent effigies clad in full armor. Their rivals were the Monterreys, who also built a great palace, still standing, three stories in height, with its top floor pierced by open galleries and sur mounted by an elaborate parapet. At the ends and in the centre of the long fagade rise square towers with open loggias and decorative chimneys. The Casa de las Salinas, erected by the Fonsecas, is per haps the best example of the plateresque of them all, its front being embellished with sculpture of a high order of merit: cherubs' and angels' heads, caryatides, and whimsical grotesques carved on the columns of the door-jambs. Its patio as well as that of the Casa de las Conchas are notable examples of the beauty of Spanish courtyards. The principal gate on the south side of the city, the Porta del Rio, or River Gate, leads out to the banks of the Tonnes, a broad, turbid river that is here spanned by a long stone bridge, the Puente [147] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Romano, a venerable structure of twenty-seven arches, the fifteen nearest the city being of Roman origin. This bridge commands the best near view of the city, which, in its ensemble, is not particularly pic turesque, lying as it does on a barren plain with only a very distant view of the Sierras to add va riety. But its little houses, with their pottery roofs and stuccoed walls, pile up charmingly dominated by the imposing mass of the new cathedral that, built of a dark yellowish-brown sandstone, to which time has imparted a golden patina like a rich amber varnish, towers boldly against the clear, harsh sky of the Spanish plateau. On Sunday morning we were again favored by a visit from our host, who brought me his photograph, duly signed and dedicated to his gran amigo (for such I had evidently become), and he said: "You must watch for me this afternoon, especially at the entrance of the third bull." We asked sefiora if she were going and she replied, "No, I have no de sire to see my husband in the ring. I have never seen him and I do not want to. It is too painful." Though the bull-ring of Salamanca is one of the [148] Palace of the Monterreys THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL largest in Spain, one must not expect to see in it fights such as one sees in Seville, Madrid, or Bar celona. The municipality is too poor and great matadors are too expensive. But the broad avenue that leads out through the Porta de Zamora to the Plaza de Toros was gay that Sunday afternoon, alive with a motley crowd of students, of charros and charros in their holiday attire (one of the most picturesque costumes left in Spain to-day), of girls in bright calicoes — all these afoot — and with a few aristocrats in antiquated carriages drawn by docile old horses. The great ring, vast as a Roman amphitheatre, was only about half filled, but the aficionados made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers. At four o'clock the discordant blare of the municipal band rang out; the cuadrilla entered with that dash and dazzle that make a bull-fight the most brilliant sight to be seen in the world of sport to-day; the alcalde threw the key into the ring; an alguacil picked it up, opened the door of the toril, and the first bull rushed forth into the arena. It is certainly not my intention to describe a Spanish corrida, nor is it my purpose to apologize [150] 4 Salamanca from the Puente Romano THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL for watching one. One must take it as the Spaniard takes it. To him it represents the noblest sport, "a conclusive proof of the vast superiority in the qualities concerned of both the human and the taurine species in Spain." He understands the dangers that beset the agile toreros, he knows and weighs the risks they run, and it is this knowledge of their danger, of the unexpected that may happen at any moment, that keeps him thrilled, constantly on the alert, strained to a high nervous tension, fascinated not, as some writers would have us believe, by a bloody spectacle, but by an absorbing game that, though played over and over again, is never twice alike, affording always unlooked-for variations, unsuspected possibilities. And the toreadors know how to enhance this sus pense by adding endless variety of incident, tempt ing the bull and evading his mad rush by the narrowest possible margin, adroitly turning on their heels at the critical moment, leaping between his horns, or nimbly vaulting over his back with a pole. The first two bulls, that summer afternoon, were disposed of in the usual way. There was a scarcity of horses for economic reasons — and this was a bless ing for us, though it raised some protest from the [152] = V^.-^-^Wff^-.-.-T 5-=.-" i.V 1. ig™BMBwiBFyBi'i7Tn' I 'The Matador, too, Was a Competent Fellow" THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Salamancans. Our friend Cuchareta acted as one of the banderilleros and placed his barbed darts with precision and address. The matador, too, was a competent fellow, slight and sinewy as he stood and eyed the big brute before him, despatching him finally with a neat estocada that brought a storm of applause from the benches and a shower of cigars and hats about him. Then there was a pause and a moment of quiet, for the programme announced at this point a "suerte de Tancredo" performed by Cuchareta, whose name here appeared in very large type. Just what a "suerte de Tancredo" was, I did not at that time know. The ring was carefully resanded. Into this spot less arena our friend stepped, advanced swiftly toward the alcalde's box, bowing low before him, then turned and asked the public to remain per fectly still during the performance of his trick. A chulo brought out a box and placed it in the exact centre of the ring. Cuchareta stepped upon this box, wrapping himself in his blood-red capeo, that he drew tightly about him, standing thus immov able. [154] AN ADVENTURE LN SALAMANCA A blast of the bugle, the gate opened, and a great black bull rushed forth, then stood for a moment dazed, blinded by the glaring sunlight after the dark ness of the toril. In an instant, however, he recov ered his senses, and, seeing only the flaming-red object in the middle of the arena, with a snort he made a dash for it, rushing toward the motionless figure at a furious rate of speed. And then, when but a few feet from it, he suddenly stopped short, sniffed the air, his tense muscles relaxed, his fury seemed to abate as if by magic, and taking a last look at the immovable figure on the box, he turned away and trotted off. Wild applause greeted the success of Cuchareta's exploit as, stepping down from his pedestal, he bowed again and again as he walked swiftly, with one eye on the bull, toward the barriera, which he lightly vaulted, and disappeared among an admiring throng. This curious act was originated by a Mexi can, Tancredo (whence its name), who lost his life at last in performing it, for the bull turned upon him as he left his pedestal, and, as sometimes hap pens, gored him mortally before he could reach the barrier. [155] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL After witnessing Cuchareta's daring, we no longer wondered why his placid, buxom wife did not care to see her husband in the ring. [156] VII TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE AVILA OUR windows in the Fonda del Ingles (why Ingles we could never discover, for we saw no Englishmen nor heard one word of our native language while in the house) were a constant source of pleasure. They faced the Cathedral whose castellated west front rose just opposite, massive, square, and for tress-like, obscuring the sun till midday. Its hetero geneous architecture, thoroughly characteristic of Spain, displays a Romanesque portal capped with a Gothic arch, in whose spandrils popes sail on barocco clouds; all this in turn being surmounted by a course of niches with Renaissance saints. At each side of the doorway queer, hairy "wild men" — relics of the earliest builders — stand guard. They are aided in their work by quaint old stone lions crouching on [159] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL pedestals and securely fastened by means of heavy iron chains to the tower buttresses, doubtless to pre vent them from running away. The fagade itself is solemn and severe. High atop of it, we watched with interest the hab itation of the bell-ringer, whose windows, enlivened with flowers and hung with neat white curtains, fill the interstices of the battlements. On the unfin ished south tower he has arranged a spacious per gola, where he may tranquilly enjoy the freshest breeze in all the township. How often do his old rheumatic legs descend those endless steps to tread the pavements of the city? Not many times a moon, I'm sure. For life seems cosey away up there above the city's noise, with the smoke curling from the little chimney and the washing drying under the Spanish tiles. And the bells must be gay com pany, swinging over and over, pealing and chiming every half-hour or so for the countless cathedral masses. The plaza in front of the church is neatly paved in tessellated stone with a broad walk leading up to the main portal. To the left a house of modernish appearance blocks the way, but to the right an [160] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE ancient palace, retaining all its mediaeval features, never ceased to hold our fancy. Its few windows, placed high above the ground and even then enclosed with stout iron grilles, and its great, donjon-like tower forming a buttressed corner, give it the air of reclusion and safety from attack needful to a feudal dwelling. In the arch above its door a great stone knight in pourpoint and doublet, spear in hand, with his helmet on one side and his shield upon the other, looks down upon the passer-by. The great doors themselves stand always closed, defying intrusion, studded as they are with huge iron nails, but furnished with three ponderous knock ers, two above for equestrians — the most frequent visitors these — and one on a smaller postern-gate below for pedestrians. Nor do the upper knockers remain to-day merely for show. Many a time we watched a horseman approach, strike the knocker, and then wait. Presently the great door would swing quietly open and horse and rider disappear within. And if you should enter with him you would find yourself in a sort of big stone antechamber, common to every Castilian casa solar or town house of the nobles, and you would see [161] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL the rider dismount at a stepping-block, while a groom took his horse and led it down an inchne into the stables in the cellar below. The visitor would then mount a few steps and disappear within the house. This mediaeval atmosphere lingers in every corner of Avila. You will find it in the narrow, twisting streets, with their primitive shops filled with rude potteries, with coarsely woven basket-ware, with big sleeping- blankets and trappings for mules and donkeys. It pervades the calm cloisters of Santo Tomas where the Dominican Fathers walk in silence, and it per meates the half-abandoned Romanesque churches with their naive statues and crumbling tombs of saints. It haunts the palaces round the Plaza de la Fruta: the home of the Abrantes, with mounted knights and vassal wild-men carved above the en trance, the home of the Conde de Crescenti with battlemented tower and fine old plateresque court, whose staircases of stone are hung with rare tapes tries and whose rooms are furnished as befits so historic a pile. You will find it, too, in every external aspect of [162] "Massive Walls and Towers That Girdle It Without a Breach" TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE the city, for, from every point of view, the town settles itself behind massive walls and towers that girdle it without a breach. Even its people have retained their ancient air. Sit on a Sunday afternoon in El Rastro and watch the types go by: the red-cheeked country lasses in groups, with their hair braided across the backs of their heads, decked with huge earrings and wearing bright shawls and kerchiefs, saffron, purple, and sapphire, their hoops padded with numberless petti coats reaching just to the ankle, and watch them coquette with the young men tightly modelled in short jacket and trousers, their swarthy faces shaded by broad sombreros. Then, too, observe the shep herds in black velvet hats and leather apron-breeches, draped in cloaks and leaning on their staffs; the bold gypsy women in reds and yellows; the dark sil houettes of donkeys and horses, gaily harnessed, cut against the sunny shimmer of the golden city walls. And once in a while, among the wagons, there will pass a mule-cart (last descendant of the travelling- coach), with a woven worsted covering of black and ochre, alive with trembling pompoms. Inside, you will discover women and men and children lounging [163] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL on big mattresses among shawls and blankets and pillows, off for their mountain homes in the Sierras leagues away. And look behind you out over the open valley and the same spirit pervades the scene — a landscape such as Patinir depicted, broad yet filled with in finite detail, the silver Adaja winding its flowing loops between soft willows; the dazzling roads, flanked by tall poplars, leading away to distant vil lages whose pink roofs can dimly be discerned perched on rocky eminences or sheltered in warm hollows; cypresses standing like grim sentinels on craggy hill- slopes, and far away the blue Sierras, serrated and cloud-swept, dim and romantic like vision-mountains of the sky. We arrived in Avila for the Sunday after Corpus. On that holiday, a Thursday, there had been a vio lent storm, so the processions had been adjourned till Sunday. In the morning from our window we watched men sprinkle ochre-colored sand before the cathedral — this for the clergy to walk upon — and then strew it with masses of wild lavender and rose leaves. At the windows and on all the balconies surrounding [164] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE the Plaza maids appeared to poner or hang out the bright, rich stuffs that are used to decorate the house fronts on festive occasions. Soon the clergy of the different parishes began to appear with their standards, crosses, and carved figures of patron saints carried on stalwart shoulders. The great doors of the cathedral swung open, a carriage drove up, and from it stepped the bishop in his gorgeous purple robes, received at the portal by the monsignori and by the principal officers of the garrison. Inside the church, the sombre majesty of the choir was all aglow with countless candles and fragrant with incense, the pillars and walls richly dressed with old-rose brocade. Before carved choir- screens peasants knelt devoutly upon the pavement in picturesque groups, and in dim chapels and by the sacristy door men could be seen with bowed heads, among them knots of officers whose decora tions glowed hke jewels upon their coats. The mystic ceremony proceeded behind the glow ing screens. The richly vested clergy, shrouded in clouds of incense, could be dimly seen moving about against the golden shimmer of Berruguete's retablo among figures of saints and evangelists. A great [165] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL wagon on golden wheels was now brought forth, decorated with silver temples placed one upon an other and enriched with angels and cherubim and all aglow with candles. The host was put upon it. The clergy fell into their allotted places; the organ notes swelled to their grandest diapasons; the pro cession formed and from the gloom of the church emerged with its crosses and banners, its saints and flowers and golden vestments and palio, into the dazzling southern sunshine, while the people fell upon their knees as it took its way through the city streets. As the shadows lengthened on this Sunday after noon we wandered down to Santo Tomas outside the city walls. A ring at the cloister gate and soon we were seated quietly talking to Brother Eugenio, whom we had known before — talking of New Or leans and New York, where he had visited. Just before high mass he took us to the convent church and found us good places on the few benches placed within the nave. As I entered its gloom from the bright sunlight of outdoors I blinked for several minutes before I could distinguish anything. Then, out of the depth [166] Interior of the Cathedral, Avila TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE of shadow, figures took shape; women of the sister hoods in black with white straps across their shoul ders; peasants squatted upon the pavement in the ample circles of their skirts; men leaning on canes with bowed heads, and groups of children trying to keep quiet and only partially succeeding. Above them groined arches met in dim perspective. No one crowded nearer than the transept rail within whose sacred precinct Fancelli's marble monument to Prince John, only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, gleamed white and ghostly, the calm effigy, hands clasped, and occupying the very centre of the church, lying in eternal peace facing the high altar, guarded by angels. Here were buried the dearest hopes of the Catholic kings, just as their boy had been knighted and prepared with such care for his royal work before the Conquest of Granada. Then, breaking the silence from the coro alto above the west door, came the peal of men's voices, and, turning, we distinguished in shadowy gothic stalls six-score Dominican brothers, in white and black, chanting and praying in unison. Later they left the choir and disappeared, only to appear again in the space about the tomb of Prince John. Two by two [ 167 ] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and followed by their bishop (a Dominican mis sionary in the Far East) they then formed a pro cession and, leading a reverent crowd, walked out into the cloisters. Here Brother Eugenio was again awaiting us, and together we watched the solemn procession make its tour of the three beautiful cloister-courts emblazoned with the arms of the Cathohc kings, founders of the convent. The pavements were carpeted with wild lavender, and at each corner stood a rustic "sta tion" before which the procession halted, while the brothers, dropping upon their knees in their long white robes, seemed actually a part of the cowled figures on the mediaeval tombs. A few days later we were treated to quite a dif ferent scene. This was the feria, or animal fair, held twice a year just outside the city walls. To the southward of Avila the country is as I have described it from the Rastro. But quite dif ferent is the view to the northward. As you leave the gate of San Vicente, with its massive crenellated towers spanned by a high, bridge-like parapet, you turn sharply to an eminence on the left and there dominate an extensive upland plateau stretching [168] TWO HELL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE northward for many a league — a barren, rocky wil derness, practically treeless and almost devoid of grass, a veritable plain of Old Castile. From the base of the towering city walls, here seen to splendid advantage — their great cubos or towers aligning themselves with martial precision — the land drops rapidly downward, intersected at different levels by roads leading up to the various city gates. On this declivity, since sunrise, the country people had been gathering from far and wide, bringing with them their animals. And what an array it was ! Up under the very shadow of the walls or nestled in rocky foundations of the towers, and straggling thence down the stony heights, were herds of goats and flocks of sheep, huddled in compact masses, broken here and there by the silhouettes of shep herds bargaining with traders from town. Below, more sombre masses of horses, mules, and donkeys were tethered in the shade of a few lime-trees planted along the roads; while lower still, on flatter levels, great droves of cattle cut huge patterns against the sun-baked rocks. Trains and caravans of ani mals kept coming in, under the watchful eye of [169] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL shouting drovers, assisted by boys heading off strag glers and having no end of trouble keeping the herds together. Impromptu booths had been erected here and there, where blankets and bags, harness and saddles, whips and rope were sold, and one or two queer mushroom tents sheltered temporary fondas where the well-to-do could eat. The poorer people had brought their own food with them and could be seen sitting in picturesque groups munching their bread and cheese. And such quaint costumes! Not the gay colors of Andalusia, to be sure, nor the reds, yellows, and greens that one is accustomed to associate with Spanish pictures, but dark, sombre, and tragic, black and dull blue predominating, costumes be fitting the hardy peasants that struggle incessantly for a livelihood in these inhospitable regions. Most of the men wore berets and short smock-frocks bound round and round the waist from armpit to hips (though it was June) with fold upon fold of black flannel — reminders of the icy winds that prevail in winter and sweep these treeless plateaux. Their feet are wrapped in cloths which are bound to the [170] TWO HELL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE legs with leather thongs. Almost all carry over their shoulders heavy plaided blankets in which they sleep at night, either out-of-doors or in the posada courts, and which they throw about them in statuesque folds when the cool wind springs up at eventide. For three days this busy scene went on. Then came the grand stampede for home. Droves that had come in from the country went off cityward; drovers who had come in with cattle went away with pockets well lined; long trains of animals and hurrying flocks of sheep could be seen in all direc tions, raising clouds of golden dust along the sun baked roads as they briskly trotted off to their stables in the Sierras or on the cool upland plateaux, and the big ochre walls of Avila looked down upon deserted plains once more. [171] II SEGOVIA jlS you stand upon the terrace of the royal /\ palace in Madrid, you look out over a broad A. V. expanse of varied landscape and follow the meanderings of the Manzanares, a river that winds off through lovely groves and gardens to a line of lofty mountains — the Guadarramas — whose sum mits, blue and snow-capped, close the limits of the background just as they do in the Velasquez portrait of the Infante Don Carlos. Among these mountains nestle old towns and castles, and on one of their northern spurs clamber the mediaeval walls and houses of Segovia. As long as fortresses were neces sary or as men hved in feudal cities girdled by walls and towers, Segovia was a prosperous and power ful city of Old Castile, but when the Moor had been driven forever from Spain the mission of these war rior hill towns was fulfilled, and since that time Segovia, little by little, has sunk into a peaceful slumber, retaining, with its neighbor Avila, the [172] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTLLE charm and glamour of a bygone age, the mournful beauty of a city whose decay has made it ever more precious to the dreamer of dreams and the lover of the picturesque. The railroad station, as so often is the case in Spain, lies somewhat apart from the town, making it a necessity to use the rattle-trap omnibus that stands drawn up before it. Three mules, harnessed abreast, with their skins stretched tight as drum heads over their dry old bones and their leanness hidden under jangling bells and scarlet pompoms, leaped forward under the driver's lash as we started toward the city. Luckily we had taken seats on the berlina, and I say luckily advisedly, for, had we sat inside, I verily believe we might have lost our hear ing even in those few moments. Some turbulent imp of mischief seemed to impel the driver to speed, for we entered the Madrid Gate at a gallop, clattered on at the same wild pace through the twisting streets, and proceeded thus through the town to the accompaniment of urging cries to the mules, the fierce cracking of the whip and the rattle and bang of the dozen coach-windows crackling hke pistol-shots about our ears. As we [173] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL tore through the narrow lanes, people fled in every direction at our approach, or rushed from doorways to grab up errant children, or popped out upon bal conies to see what in the world was the matter. We caught fleeting glimpses of weather-worn houses tottering on wriggly stilts; of dingy posadas before which groups of overladen donkeys mournfully hung their heads; of beflowered balconies and gaily painted house-fronts; then we plunged into the gloom of a lane narrower than all the rest, where our wheel-hubs grazed the walls on either hand, only to emerge at last into the brilliancy of the sun baked Azoquejo. Could anything be imagined more replete with character than this quaint old market-place ? Vener able houses straddle its squat arcades and enclose it on every hand, while across its very centre, vault ing from hill to hill, piled high with red-tiled roofs, strides the colossal puente like some prehistoric monster with a hundred legs. But a glance at this aqueduct, vast and simple as a work of nature, is needed to tell that it is of Roman origin, for who but Roman builders could have reared such mighty stones? For nearly two thousand years it has car- [174] The Roman Aqueduct, Segovia TWO HELL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE ried upon its countless arches the pure, clear waters of the Sierras to fill the fountains of the city and the great reservoirs of the Alcazar, the favorite home of Alfonso the Wise. With its three tiers of mighty arches it remains the most important work that the Romans left in Spain — so extraordinary, indeed, that the peasants prefer to believe, and always will believe, I dare say, that his Satanic Majesty, in love with a beautiful Segovian maiden, built it in a single night to win her favor and spare her the trouble of going down the hill to fill her water-jug at the spring ! In its very shadow we spied the hotel that we were seeking; so, picking our way through the clutter of the market — a litter of pottery, baskets, and blan kets — we soon had chosen a cool little apartment that faced the square and, having caught the Spanish custom, spent most of that Saturday afternoon hang ing over the railing of our balcony. At one hand, towering high into the heavens and framing a niche of blue in each of its countless arches, the giant aqueduct arose, and around its bases the peasants bartered and gossiped and chattered. On the other hand the land sloped sharply away down [175] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL toward the valley of the Eresma, cut in two by the main road to Pedraza, broad, white, and dusty. Vehicles of every description — covered carts, gigs, coaches, and lumbering farmers' wains drawn by patient oxen, kept arriving by this road (for Satur day is market-day), varied by trains of slim-legged donkeys trotting under inconceivable loads. And every once in a while a stage-coach with four or six horses would rumble up with a grand flourish and a prodigious cracking of whips and deposit its load of sweltering humanity before our fonda : peasants in kerchiefs or queerly plaited straw hats; priests, crimson-cheeked and apoplectic; or tired-looking commercial travellers with wilted collars and dusty clothes. But we were the only tourists in the dining-room that evening, or, in fact, on any of the evenmgs of our stay there. At the various tables there were but few women. There were some sturdy farmers, a few officers, a priest or two, and a travelling barrister or doctor, but the women were left at home — doubt less a survival of Moorish custom, for the Spanish lady, though prone enough to attract attention on her afternoon promenade, still shrinks from showing herself in provincial hotels. [176] yy\ fi L H / -F fw r-s /I /-\ ' / ''¦' "¦-|^f// J Sat --¦' , — *--«/ / f^ZQI/ Tfe Peasants Bartered and Gossiped TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE A large table of honor at one end of the room was occupied by a mess of artillery cadet-officers, for in Segovia the artillery school of Spain is located. They were a good-looking group of young fellows, with clear-cut features and whitish skins, most of them indubitably titled, and one at least might have been a cousin to the King, with his wide mouth and ponderous protruding chin. This table alone was enough to keep busy the single waiter and his over worked assistant, for from it proceeded a continual rapping of glasses and calls for wine, for food, for papers and ink, for a messenger, or for coats and caps. And what lusty appetites they had ! The fruits, the nuts, the cakes upon the table all disappeared with the soup or, at latest, with the fish. And when I chanced to remark to the proprietor one day that doubtless he was glad to have such steady patrons in his establishment, he remarked, with a grunt and a shrug: "Oh, that — that doesn't bring much gain to the house." Dinner was late, usually at nine rather than at eight, so that, when we went upstairs that first evening, the streets were dark and deserted, and no one was stirring except the sereno, or night-watch man, who, with lantern and spear, wandered about [177] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL calhng the hour. In his belt he carried a number of house-keys, and in his hand some tapers, and when the people came home late at night, he unlocked their doors for them and handed them a taper to light them up the stairs — an antiquated custom that still subsists even in as big and cosmopolitan a city as Madrid. Next morning we found that the bulk of the city lies up the hill from the Azoquejo. The Calle del Carmen leads up to it, affording from time to time, through gaps in its houses, glimpses out over the pottery roofs of the suburb of San Millan with the Piedad and its stations of the cross in the distance. Just at the summit of the hill you come upon the singular Casa de los Picos, each stone of whose fagade is cut in facets like a diamond, giving it a warlike aspect like a porcupine bristling for battle. It was the home of the corregidor, or mayor of the city, and in it the town council used to assemble to greet the sovereign when he came on a visit, and see that he duly took his oath to respect the fueros, or privileges of the city. The old streets and byways of Segovia are as pic turesque and as replete with character as any in [178] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE Spain. Hidden away in them you will find ancient house-fronts diapered with rich patterns in stucco, relics of the Moorish occupation, and Gothic fagades five centuries old, while in the smaller squares you will come upon palaces whose stout masonry and heavily grilled windows have withstood every as sault of man and time — palaces whose grim fagades, with their massive scutcheoned doorways, hide be hind their ruggedness warm patios, sun-baked, deco rated with tiles and ornate balustrades, and planted with palms and flowering shrubs. It is in these streets of Segovia that Quevedo lays the scenes of his masterpiece, "El Gran Tacaiio," a classic that the Spaniards rate only second to Cer- vantes's immortal story. Piece of realism that it is, with its biting sarcastic philosophy hidden under a cloak of broad humor, it might have been signed by any of the realists of to-day, so true to life do its pictures remain. And, as you walk about these streets and watch the people in them, you will still find his types extant and will fancy Cabra's school shut up behind some grim fagade, or Don Pablo's uncle, the executioner, living in one of the noisome alleys; or, in some passer-by, proud though dressed [1791 THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL in well-brushed, threadbare clothes, you will recog nize old Don Torribio, the penniless hidalgo, who, existing by his flattery and his wit, gravely bows to the ladies in their black mantillas as they pass on their way to church. And one morning, as I wan dered in the dirty Calle de la Neveria, but a step from the Plaza Mayor, I came upon this sign over the door of a barber-shop: Felipe, Pkacticante en Cirujia — for all the world Don Pablo's father, barber and surgeon in one ! And so I always think of Segovia as Don Pablo's town (the French translation of Quevedo's work bears as its title "Don Pablo de Segovie"), and see in its streets the backgrounds of Daniel Vierge's unequalled drawings, to my mind the greatest mas terpieces of modern illustration. Segovia has further claims to artistic laurels. Its craggy hill-slopes, its austere buildings, its far- reaching horizons have tempted the greatest modern Spanish painter, Ignacio Zuloaga, to leave his na tive town Eibar and take up his residence in it. For years he wandered over the rugged face of Spain in quest of the picturesque, then made up his mind that, of all the Spanish cities, matchless Segovia [180] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE best suited his aesthetic liking. There he maintains two studios, one being the Canon jia, a noble casa with great walls such as I have before described and windows that overlook the endless plains of Old Castile; the other the nave of the primitive church of San Juan de los Caballeros, an old Romanesque structure that has been abandoned for more than three hundred years. These early Romanesque churches of Segovia are of a particularly pure and beautiful type. During the wars against the Moors, Segovia changed hands several times, and when the infidels were finally driven from the city, and retired to their fastnesses at Toledo, the Christians who crowded into Segovia after them, fired with religious zeal, began to con struct a number of parochial churches in the style then prevalent, the purest Romanesque. These churches thus mark the period of the town's greatest prosperity and coincide in date with the building of its palaces and its Alcazar, a perfect type of feudal castle. Later, when the Moors were driven from Toledo and retreated still farther south, Segovia ceased to be important as a frontier town, and since then its churches, except those in its more populous [181] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL districts, have sunk more and more into disrepair, have been shorn one by one of their inestimable treasures, until now they remain mere empty shells from which the pearls have been stolen. But these abandoned churches, some quite intact, others more or less fallen to decay and ruin, still decorate the squares and street-corners, where their cloisterlike arcades, their well-proportioned bell-towers, and their airy loggias borne aloft on slender colonnades, add the key-notes to the general picturesqueness of the city. But, if you wish to obtain a true idea of the pecu liar beauty of this grand old Castilian burg, you should do as we did one sunny Sunday afternoon — walk around it. We descended from the Azoquejo to the faubourg of San Lorenzo; then went on past the Santa Cruz and along the steep road that de scends from the Puerta da San Cibrian to the Ala meda, which half-abandoned promenade, bordering the banks of the gurgling Eresma, is one of the most romantic pleasaunces that I know. Its loneliness, its grass-grown walks shaded by rows of venerable trees, stimulate the imagination and make of it a sort of poet's retreat or lovers' paradise. And, be- [182] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE sides this sylvan charm, it commands a number of striking views of the city that piles high above it, girt by its mighty walls and bartizaned towers, cut The Alcazar Bristling with Barbacan and Battlement with gates and punctuated here and there with the belfries of its churches. Beyond the Alameda, on a hill, perched high amid vine arbors and trellisses, stands the an- [183] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL cient monastery of El Parral, at one time known as "a terrestrial paradise," now but a ruin set in ruinous gardens. From here on the road becomes more and more picturesque. Beyond the Moneda, the only mint in Spain until a hundred years ago, you come upon the highway that descends precipitously from the castellated gateway of San tiago, a road enlivened with gypsy women, with men in faded smock-frocks goading cream-colored oxen, with deformed and tattered beggars and all the riff-raff that gathers in the dust of Spanish post- roads. Above the evil-smelling lanes of San Mar cos the church of Vera Cruz stands alone, twelve- sided, built by the Templars in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre, upon their return from the Holy Wars. Farther down the river looms the sinister Pena Gra- jira or Crow's Cliff, from whose top criminals used to be flung to death. It is from this point that, as you look back, you realize the justice of the comparison that likens Segovia to a ship sailing toward the setting sun, as, behind a swinging bend of the Eresma, it towers high above the two rivers that have cleft it from the surrounding plateaux, its Alcazar, bristling with bar- [184] "The City Piles Up Grandly from This Side, too'' THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL bacan and battlement, looming hke the giant fore castle of some mediaeval galleon sailing the southern seas. It was growing late in the afternoon as we re turned by the other side of the city up the narrow valley of the Clamores, deeply embedded between wooded hills. Had you been spending July as we had been, on the sun-baked plains of Old Castile — treeless, shadeless, seared and scorched — you would have felt as we did that Sunday afternoon as we breathed the moisture-laden air and heard the wind sighing in the poplar leaves overhead and looked into the shadows where children played among the willows. The city piles up grandly from this side too with its walls and towers, its tiled roofs and buttressed garden-walls, culminating in the fretted mass of the cathedral whose west front seemed ablaze in the sunset. Down among the trees by the river a little f6te was in progress. In one corner, near a refresh ment booth, the centre of an admiring crowd of peasants, stood two musicians of a bygone day, a drummer and a piper, belted with fajas and clothed in sheepskins. Anything more weird or primitive [186] TWO HILL-TOWNS OF OLD CASTILE than the lilt and quaver of their music — strange and Oriental as one might hear in Tunis or in Tan gier — could scarcely be imagined, nor did this sur prise me, for almost all the Spanish melodies that I have heard among the people — their dances, their folk-songs, and their love-songs as well — are im pregnated with this same relic of the Moors. Even in Seville Cathedral, at the solemn moment of the elevation of the host, I detected the same strange note in the improvisations of the master who evolves such wondrous harmonies from his pealing organ. As we came into the paseo upon our return to the city we found a military band playing, and, tired with our long stroll, we were well content to sit down and amuse ourselves by watching the citizens and their Sunday raiment. The men talked over their affairs; the women sat gossiping in groups, their daughters glancing askance at the well-groomed cadets of the artillery school; the children rolling hoops or playing "toro," mounted on each other's shoulders as picador, charging with banderilla or giving the coup de grace as espada to the poor little bull-boy, just as Goya depicted them years ago in his tapestries in the Escorial. [187] VHI SOME SPANISH GARDENS SOME SPANISH GARDENS THE GARDENS OF SOUTHERN SPAIN HOW comparatively little we know, in Amer ica, of the charm of the Spanish garden ! Yet the exuberant quintas of Valencia, the gay tiled courts and fountains of Seville, the hang ing gardens of the Alhambra, the romantic and melancholy groves of Aranjuez, and the majestic vistas of La Granja might well serve as models for the settings of our country homes in Florida or in California or in the growing Southwest, so Hispanic both in color and in character. The gardens of Spain, with a few notable excep tions, were not laid out on the grand scale of those of the Italian villas near Rome nor of the more mag nificent of the French chateaux, but they have a romantic flavor of their own and a charm that is quite unlike that of any other European gardens — a charm that, in no small measure, can be directly traced to the influence of the Moorish occupation. This Moorish influence is particularly apparent [191] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL in the gardens of southern Spain (and they, after all, are the most characteristic) where the vegetation is semitropic in character, and where palms and myrtles and thickets of citron and orange-trees give a truly African quality to the landscape. Perhaps as characteristic as any of these southern gardens are the Jardines del Alcazar in Seville. Of the original Alcazar, a huge fortress that formed the main military bulwark of the city, little or nothing remains. It had been built in the twelfth century by the Sultan Abu Yakub Yusuf, the same enlightened monarch who had caused the great mosque to be erected, of which the Court of Oranges and the world-famed Giralda Tower alone remain. Upon the re-conquest of Seville by the Christians, the Alcazar was almost entirely destroyed and was rebuilt by the Spanish sovereigns of the fourteenth century and their successors. Their architects, however, were either Morescoes or Spaniards in spired by the Mudejar architecture that they saw about them, this influence still being plainly seen in the diapered wall panels, the cusped arches and ajimez windows of the Patio de las Doncellas that was built as late as the reign of Charles V. [192] SOME SPANISH GARDENS The Alcazar gardens, as we see them to-day, were laid out under this same Emperor, and they exhibit • '5^ Gardens of the Alcazar, Seville the same tendency to borrow ideas from the Moors, so that, in them, we see Mudejar fountams fraterniz- [193] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL ing with Churrigueresque archways and tiled Moor ish seats built along walls that might have been de signed by Berruguete. These gardens are usually entered through the long, dark, corridor-like apeadero, from which you emerge with blinking eyes into a dazzling white courtyard with a wealth of flowers and potted plants ranged along its balustrades. From this court you descend a few steps, revetted hke the seats that ad join them, with beautiful azulejos or tiles. Hence, a cave-like entrance admits you to the vaulted Bafios, where, according to tradition, Maria de Padilla used to bathe while her admirers gallantly drank the water she had used for her ablutions. Opposite these baths, an archway leads to the outer gardens which are a perfect riot of light and color. They are laid out in a series of rectangular compartments enclosed by clipped hedges and planted with patterns in box, and further embel lished with a profusion of flowering shrubs and plants: laurels, azaleas, jessamine, and roses. At the intersections of the paths, the corners have been cut off so as to form octagons in which are placed fountains set on octagonal bases made of tiles, mostly [194] Pavilion of Charles V, Alcazar Gardens, Seville THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL blue and white but with occasional dashes of a rich yellow. In a far corner of the garden, stands a little colonnaded pavilion or pleasure-house, erected by Charles V, also in the Moorish style — a gem of an edifice whose walls as well as the seats that surround it, are all faced up with brilliant tiles. Behind it, is a mesquita or little mosque, whose image is re flected in a deep blue pool of water, so that, in this end of the garden, at least, one would fancy oneself in Tunis or in Fez or in some villa in the outskirts of Tangier. But the walls that surround these gardens are truly Spanish, topped as they are with fantastic copings and enlivened with gateways of capricious design, supported by baroque buttresses and sur mounted by broken pediments capped with obelisks and vases. Along their northern side, the gardens are bordered by the varied structures of the Alcazar itself, while along their eastern end they are shut in by highly colored walls, finished with stalactic rustica and adorned with statued niches, with grot toes, and with arcades whose white arches gleam dazzlingly against the lapis-colored sky. Palm-trees of great height and luxuriance, varied [196] SOME SPANISH GARDENS with an occasional cedar of Lebanon or some other dark evergreen, project the only bits of shadow upon its glittering pathways so that the beholder, on a sunny day, is struck with an overpowering sense of brilliancy and splendor, of color and perfume and rich southern exuberance. This same sense of tropic brilliancy is character istic of the patios for which Seville has long been famous. They too are a heritage from the Moors, with their tiles and their fountains, their arcades and bright-colored tondos or awnings to protect them from the sun. Evert Spanish city has its favorite Alameda or Paseo. Seville is no exception to this rule and the Paseo de las Delicias that leads to the Parque Maria-Luisa is a typical example of these shaded promenades, planted with sycamores or hndens, under whose cool vaults the people love to saunter at ease and take the air on the long summer evenings. But the most beautiful of these Alamedas that I know is the one that leads from Granada up through the Valle de la Assabica to the gates of the Alham bra. It is planted with elms brought from England [197] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL by the Duke of Wellington in 1812 — trees that now, centenarians, rear their mighty boles aloft like the pillars of some vast cathedral, while their branches, meeting high aloft, intertwine to form a verdant roof, impenetrable even at midday, that excludes the rays of the summer sun and breaks the winds, leav ing the floor of the valley cool, still, and shadowy. Three fountains decorate its leafy aisles that are constantly murmuring with the sound of running water that gushes from countless springs in the hillside, as well as from the Acequia del Rey that brings them down from the snows of the Sierras above the Generalife. To add to the charm of this mystic grove, the air is filled with the songs of night ingales that, attracted by the cool shadows and the calm atmosphere, nest by hundreds in its dense foliage. These beautiful groves lead us, at last, to the Moorish Palace of the Alhambra, which contains three small gardens that are usually neglected by the tourist in his interest in the palace itself. Two of them are really only courtyards laid out with gar den features, but even to these the designers have been able to impart a singular charm and show how [198] SOME SPANISH GARDENS much can be done with a very small space. The best known of these is the Garden of Linderaja in the very shadow of the Peinador de la Reina. From its centre rises the exquisite alabaster fountain whose praises have been sung by Washington Irving in his "Alhambra." About it, the symmetrical beds are confined by thick hedges of box and shaded by orange-trees and cypresses, while from above, between the high protecting walls, falls a powdery, sifted light hke that from a studio skylight, that lends to this little garden a very peculiar charm. The second of these Alhambra gardens, known as the Jardin del Cuarto de Machuca, lies at the west ern end of the palace. It also is laid out in geometric patterns with clipped hedges and rose arbors while, through breaks in its massive walls you catch glimpses of the Albaicin opposite, with its church towers silhouetted against the sky and its red-tiled roofs descending the hill, pell-mell, in picturesque confusion, to the gorge worn by the Darro far down beneath you. But it is the third garden, the Jardin de los Adar- ves, or Garden of the Ramparts, that is the most characteristic and the most beautiful of the three. As its name implies, it lies imbedded within the very [199] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL walls of the old Moorish stronghold in the shadow of the Alcazaba or keep of the fortress. But even within these restricted confines it manages to con tain a world of pretty features: fountains enclosed in box-hedges; pathways made of little rounded rocks; roses of Castille clambering in profusion over trellises of iron, whose arches frame fascinating views of the city, and the Vega lying far below with the mountains of Elvira and the Albaicin rising opposite. It is to the choice of such spots upon the heights that the Granada gardens owe a large portion of their peculiar charm. For in them, shut off from the world and embowered in flowers, you feel an intimate solitude, a quiet sense of retirement as if you were secluded in a well-furnished room, yet when you look out of your window, so to speak, through an opening in the wall, cunningly devised so as to command a certain prospect, you have the feeling that all the world lies spread out at your feet for you to gaze upon and wonder at, while to your ear there mounts the creak of a cartwheel, the bark of a dog, or the cries of children in the Albaicin to stimulate your imagination. And it is at night that the magic of these gardens / [ 200 ] — ~-ac.fi rco\\e The Garden of Linderaja, Alhambra THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL is most potent. This Garden of the Ramparts will always remain connected in my mind with a certain enchanted night in May, when, at his invitation, we met the governor of the Alhambra and another friend of ours to make a visit to the towers by moonlight. We crossed the Plaza de los Aljibes to the Alcazaba which the conservador opened with a ponderous key. As we entered the Garden of the Ramparts we found its rose arbdrs and thickets of myrtle and hornbeam tipped with silver, while in them the nightingales sang exultantly. Almost on tip-toe, so as not to break the spell, we crossed it and clambered up steep steps of the Torre de la Vela, the highest of all the Alhambra towers, until we reached its roof-terrace, where we found that chairs had been set out for our reception and cushions to lean upon had been disposed along the parapets. The roses in the gardens down below and the flowers placed in pots along the castle walls, seemed to exhale a stronger perfume than by day. Far beneath us lay the city, gleaming with its countless lights, the streets about the Puerta Real shedding forth a mellow glow. Opposite us rose the Al baicin, with scattered lights shining upon its pale [202 ] SOME SPANISH GARDENS white walls — a fairy city bathed in moonlight en chantment, while from its caves and houses the faint click of castanets and the strumming of guitars reached our ears and told us that the gypsies were dancing. Above our heads rose the Espadafia, a turret con taining a great bell that tolls every fifteen minutes throughout the night and regulates the opening and shutting of the sluices, dating from the days of the Moors, that irrigate the farms of the Vega. A young girl rang this bell, a girl we had passed upon the steps. No one else lived in the tower or any where near it, and over its silent terrace there lay a magic spell. The Alhambra hung like an enchanted palace against the hills, its silver towers restored by the pale moon's rays to all their pristine beauty, "Forteresse, aux creneaux festonnes et croulans Ou l'on entend la nuit de magiques syllabes." The nightingales trilled their richest carols; the lights on the Albaicin went out one by one, and the air grew more ethereal, quieter and cooler, until one [203] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL seemed to forget the body and live in a beatific state, hung between earth and sky in the spell of some strange enchantment. There are a number of other gardens in and around Granada that deserve the attention of the traveller. There are, for example, those of the Carmen de Arratia and the Villa de los Martires, situated on top of the Monte Mauror. The latter consists of three gardens placed one above the other. The highest garden is wedged between the house and the hillside, and is embellished with a grotto to be used on hot days and a lake in which is set a rocky wooded island. The middle gardens are enclosed by walls of roses and planted with palm-trees ranged round a circular basin, while the old-fashioned lower garden is surrounded with dark, dense hedges, clipped close, against which a profusion of brilliant flowers detach themselves like fireworks against a midnight sky. Perched high above the Alhambra, clinging to a spur of the Cerro del Sol, hangs the Djennat-al-'Arif (Garden of 'Arif), corrupted into the word Generalife, by which name this summer home of the Moorish sultans is known. [204] ^s^-f-^y^Mc. Copper Garden of the Generalife, Granada THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL To me the Generalife is a palace of enchantment, the most beautiful of the gardens of southern Spain. Restricted in area, overcrowded with features, some what confused in plan, it nevertheless possesses a potent fascination that makes it a delight to the lover of gardens. From the entrance one steps at once into the main court, the beautiful Patio de la Acequia, traversed in its entire length by the Alhambra aqueduct, that throws aloft a multitude of sprays and jets to nour ish the myrtle hedges and orange-trees of the court. This aqueduct, built by the Moors, brings the water from the eternal snows of the Sierras to cool and freshen the Generalife Gardens; then to play in fountains and in runlets through the courts of the Alhambra and sparkle in its gardens, and at last to course merrily down the hill-slopes through the beautiful groves that I have described bordering the Alameda of the Assabica. And even then its mis sion is not fully completed, for it still flows on to fill the cisterns of the city and water the rich farms of the Vega. At the far end of the Patio de la Acequia rises the palace itself, now, alas, much fallen to decay and [206 ] SOME SPANISH GARDENS spoiled by tasteless restorations. The gardens, how ever, have preserved their Moorish aspect to a re markable degree. They lie both to the east and west of the palace, that to the west being but a broad terrace, planted with venerable yew-trees, that adjoins what used to be the main entrance to the villa. The principal gardens lie above the main court to the eastward. They are laid out in terraces one above another, and becoming smaller and smaller as they ascend the hill. Each terrace is enlivened with busts or grottoes, with arbors or clipped hedges or fountains. They are connected with each other by flights of steps divided into sections by platforms, on each of which a fountain plays, while down the balustrades, in channels made of inverted tiles, course little streams of water that gurgle pleasantly and impart a delightful sense of coolness to the steep ascent. Perched on the topmost terrace stands a mirador or belvedere, that commands a far-reaching panorama of the Alhambra, with its many towers, of the City of Granada and its surrounding hills and mountains. These Generalife Gardens, hung high upon their [207] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL hillside, cool, fanned by the Sierra breezes, still con vey to us a perfect picture of Moorish life — a life filled with a love for small things, but highly finished and exquisitely wrought; a life filled with intellectual quietude and a love for calm retreats where one might meditate, removed from the world, yet look ing out over wide prospects and great expanses of varied landscape. All these qualities I felt as I sketched in these de lightful gardens. In one court played beside me an alabaster fountain standing in a basin filled with goldfish; in another, walls of Bankshire roses hemmed me in, their beauty reflected in the turquoise waters of a quiet pool; white butterflies flitted from flower to flower, and the sound of running water was con stantly in my ear, lulling the senses by their quiet murmuring. Aside from this, no other sound broke the utter silence, save once in a while the sound of the gardener's foot crunching the gravel walk, or the voice of a rare visitor, or, as on Sunday, when the bells of the city would wake to life and the chorus of their voices would rise to my ears, at first faint, then swelling deep and sonorous to a mighty diapa son, then dying down again, fainter and fainter, till [208 ] SOME SPANISH GARDENS the jangle of a tardy bell would sound the final note. . . . There are many Spanish gardens in the south that I might mention, but they all bear at least a family likeness to those already described. [209] II ARANJUEZ AND LA GRANJA A S one goes north in Spain, however, the aspect /\ of the country changes, and with it the A. V. character of the gardens. The landscape becomes bleak and arid. North of Cordova the Moor left little trace of his stay, and the gardens of the northern provinces laid out under the Hapsburg or the Bourbon kings, show no Moorish influence. The two most important of these are Aranjuez and La Granja. Aranjuez lies south of Madrid in the rocky valley of the Tagus. After traversing the sun-baked pla teaux of Castile, dry and denuded of all vegetation, save where some little watercourse gives sustenance to a few stunted trees and shrubs, it is indeed a surprising transition to alight from the local train and penetrate the deep bosky groves and densely wooded parks of Aranjuez. A series of bends in the Tagus makes this verdure [210] SOME SPANISH GARDENS possible. In one of these bends lies an island, cut off from its surroundings by a little stream, la Ria, that is controlled by a presa or weir. This island has been occupied for centuries, first, by a convent of the Order of Santiago, then by a favorite summer abode of Isabella the Cathohc, and lastly by the present palace of the Hapsburg Kings, whose impress is plainly written on the romantic Garden of the Island, sombre as the thoughts of the pietistic Philip II, who built the Escorial; mysterious and gallant as the pleasures of Philip IV. The trees that shade its leafy aisles are for the most part those of the northern climes — poplars, lindens, oaks, and elms — brought over from England by Philip's wife, Queen Mary, but, in this southern climate, grown to prodigious size, with their roots tapping the waters of the Tagus. The broad Av enue of the Cathohc Kings, bordered by a quadruple row of giant plane-trees, skirts the river itself and leads into the depths of this mysterious Jardin de la Isla, where fountain after fountain, dedicated to Venus, to Neptune, to Jupiter, and other gods and goddesses and decorated with their statues, fling their jets of water high into the air, or trickle streamlets [211] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL from basin to basin adorned with sculptured orna ment. The tinkhng of these fountains, the innu merable dim vistas, the half hght — one might almost say the obscurity — of these dark groves, even at mid day, the songs of the nightingales that nest by hun dreds in their leafy arches, induce, as a Spanish author puts it, an "agradable melancolia," or agree able melancholy, that has inspired many a Spanish poet, hke Calderon or Garcilasso, to sing its praises, and that induced Schiller to choose it as the scene of his "Don Carlos." The other gardens of Aranjuez are less romantic. The Jardin de las Estatuas dates also from the time of Philip IV, but the other gardens were laid out at a much later period under the Bourbons and are in accord with the taste of the great palace itself that vaguely recalls Versailles or Marly. Immediately about the palace are formal gardens and parterres laid out with patterns in broderick and decorated with numerous fountains and statues. Two of the best of these fountains, the Fuente de las Conchas and the Fuente de los Tritones (a painting of which by Velasquez adorns the Prado), were taken away from Aranjuez about fifty years ago and set up in [212] The Fountain of Apollo, Aranjuez THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL the Royal Palace Gardens in Madrid, where they are now to be seen. The fountains that have taken their places are bad, and for better taste one must look elsewhere and walk over to the Jardin del Principe, that lies hemmed in between the Tagus and the Calle de la Reina, a superb avenue of mighty trees that remains quite as Velasquez painted it, when it sat to him for its portrait centuries ago. The Prince's Garden contains the Casa del Labra dor, that bears the same relation to the palace that the Petit Trianon does to Versailles. This so-called "Laborer's Cottage" is cold and formal in design and character, its rooms being decorated with elabo rate paintings and marble mosaics, hung with silk brocades and crystal chandeliers and furnished with malachite tables and gilded chairs, the gifts of Emperors and Kings. But its gardens are less formal in character, though they too have their vistas and avenues and foun tains. In their general aspect, however, they resem ble an English garden, with their winding pathways and watercourses in which stand pavilions of fan tastic shapes, a certain portion of their area being [214] SOME SPANISH GARDENS also reserved for the cultivation of the excellent fruits and vegetables — strawberries, peaches, aspar agus, and the hke — that grace the royal tables as early as the month of January. The Jardin del Principe has a perimeter of nearly four miles, and much of it borders the swift-running Tagus, whose eddying waters are confined by stone embankments decorated with pots of flowers. If the Gardens of Aranjuez already have a north ern character compared to those of southern Spain, the vast Gardens of La Granja, surely the most extensive and elaborate in the Iberian peninsula, have even more of this septentrional character. For they are situated north of Madrid in a fold of the Guadarrama Mountains nearly four thousand feet above the sea. They were laid out under Philip V, who built this summer palace up in the mountains that is still the official summer residence of the Spanish King. Philip, first of the Spanish Bourbons, was naturally thinking of Versailles when he built it, and to lay out the gardens he called in a Frenchman, Boutelet, who sought to impose upon these mountain solitudes in the Guadarramas, where the granitic hills are covered with dark forests of [215] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL coniferae, all the artificiahties and regularities of the Le N6tre Garden and subject nature in her wild est mood to the rule of the T-square and confine her with symmetrical lawns and hedges reflected in circular or rectihnear pools and basins. The result, if not congruous, is highly impressive. For in no other gardens that I know can one have such imposing vistas of towering mountain forms at the end of noble avenues, nor the sight of such masses of water disporting themselves in stupendous fountains. Here at La Granja, instead of the la borious pumping systems that are usually neces sary to supply fountains with water, a great lake, El Mar, situated high above the gardens, yet fed by numerous mountain springs and streamlets, provides an inexhaustible water supply, and the pressure is so great that some of the jets rise to a height of more than a hundred feet and are plainly visible from Segovia, seven miles away. La Granja made us think of another garden far away in Parma, with its pleached alleys and parterres in the old French manner, laid out also by the same Elizabeth Farnese who married Philip V, and held such sway over her weak husband, and who was [216] SOME SPANISH GARDENS responsible for so many of the costly features of these La Granja gardens. At first sight many of these features will undoubt edly be disappointing. One who knows Versailles or Vaux-le-Vicomte will be inclined to criticise the ornate and overdone Baths of Diana or the Foun tain of the Frogs, so obviously copied from the Basin of Latona, and to remain somewhat cold before the Parterre de la Fama or the New Cascade, with their frigid and formal atmosphere. But even in these fountains, the vast water-supply affords a possibil ity for superb effects that, as far as I know, are un surpassed anywhere, and I defy any one to remain unmoved when first he beholds the fairy-like per spectives of the Old Cascade or Carrera de Caballos, for one is charmed beyond words at the sight of these basins — grander than any at Versailles — mounting one above another, filled with careering horses at tended by Nereids and Tritons and spouting water from their nostrils and from vases and sea-shells. Avenues of oaks and elms, bordered by hedges of hornbeam, rise with the terraced fountains, mount ing higher and higher toward the dark blue moun tains that girdle this terrestrial paradise. [217] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL For it is a paradise, this Garden of La Granja — ¦ a garden as it should be, fed by countless springs, whose crystal waters rush down its rose-colored terraces, and through its murmuring channels in a constant flow. But no one sits to watch their eddies. White nymphs, petrified in graceful attitudes, are its sole inhabitants. For the greater part of the year, the royal palace sleeps silent in the sunshine, and the gardens seem lulled to slumber as if enchanted by a magician's wand. One day — one of the very first I spent there — I was sketching in a quiet avenue, when, of a sudden, the smihng heavens darkened, the mountains grew black and inky and, again as if by magic, the trees shuddered, and the smooth faces of the fountains quivered into innumerable ripples. Then a great blast of wind came rushing down from the Guadar ramas; the trees bowed their heads and bent before its breath; the rain poured down in torrents into the boiling basins and the mountains resounded, echoed and re-echoed with peal after peal of thun der. Then, as if the sorcerer's anger was appeased, all was over as quickly as it had begun. The [218] SOME SPANISH GARDENS shadows lifted, the heavens grew serene again, the rain ceased, and the sun burst forth. The Carrera de Caballos, La Granja But the air remained chilled as I walked up to El Mar, and looked out over the retaining walls into the surrounding pinewoods. Little patches of [219] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL snow still lay in the hollows under the trees, and it seemed strange, with this Alpine picture before me and the chilly wind fanning my cheek, to fancy my self in Spain in the month of June. But it is this very Alpine quality of the atmos phere that renders La Granja so agreeable a retreat from the burning sunshine of Madrid, and for this reason it remains a favorite resort of the Spanish King and court. Alfonso arrived a few days after we had come to see his royal domain, and with him came his brilliant cavalry who took up their quarters in the big cuartel or barracks just behind our hotel. There was music in the plaza every evening and each day the pink bloom from the chestnut-trees, late in this altitude, was carefully swept up in great piles and carted away. Several times we passed the little Infantas in the gardens, and one day saw the King himself come out of the palace on foot, dressed very democratically in a straw hat and outing clothes, and cross the square to the stables to give some sugar to his favorites. How different from the gloomy Spanish pomp of other days ! [220] IX IN CATALONIA IN CATALONIA THE CATALANS AND THEIR CHURCHES SITUATED in the remote northeastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, Catalonia evolved, centuries ago, a type, a language, an art tradi tion, and a general culture of its own. Seated astride the Pyrenees through all the Middle Ages, it drew most of its laws, and to a large extent its language, from the Rousillon, for the Catalan dialect, even now, is much more closely allied to the old Provengal than it is to the Castilian. In politics also, the Cat alans have held aloof from the remainder of Spain, and of late years this political cleavage has become so pronounced that the press and a large proportion of the people are boldly asserting their right to in dependence, and the King of Spain has not shown himself in the streets of Barcelona, the metropolis and richest city in his kingdom, for many and many a year. [223] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL This separatist movement has also been apparent in the art of the country. To-day, the Catalan painters, with Anglada at their head, look askance upon the art of Zuloaga and the traditions of Madrid, and are seeking their own vigorous modern formulae. The poets are expressing themselves in the old Catalan tongue, to our ears rough and un couth, but to theirs filled with sweet music, and they recite their poems at the jochs floral or floral games, held after the manner of the ancient jeux ¦floraux of Provence and Languedoc, each year, in early May, in the Lonja at Barcelona. And I have met and known at least one of the laureates to whom was awarded the title of " Mestre en Gay Saber" (Master of the Gay Science) given for proficiency in Catalan poetry. Its architects, too, long ago, developed a character istic style of their own and in Tarragona, Barcelona, Camprodon and Gerona, notable examples of their work, both in domestic and ecclesiastical architecture, may be seen. Early in the Gothic period they broke away from the traditions of their French masters — traditions that had produced the Cathedrals of Leon and Toledo, and the lace-like spires of Burgos — and [224] "The Lace-like Towers of Burgos THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL had evolved a special type of church remarkable for several important features not to be found elsewhere in Gothic cathedrals. Havelock Ellis, in his admirable chapter on "San ta Maria del Mar," * has ably traced the develop ment of this Catalan type of church, which, he does not hesitate to declare, possesses such a "fine and original sense of architectural beauty " that it makes of Catalonia and Valencia "the main focus of vital feeling" for Hispanic church architecture. And certainly, the great cathedrals of Tarragona, Barcelona, and Gerona, with their vast naves of most unusual width, their highly developed internal buttress systems, and their restraint in the use of window openings, due to a desire to shut out rather than to admit the dazzling sunshine of this favored corner of Spain, differ greatly from the northern churches and make a profound impression upon the beholder. I have mentioned these three buildings in their chronological order. In Tarragona cathedral the Catalan characteristics have only begun to manifest themselves, but already evince, notably in the su- * "The Soul of Spain," by Havelock Ellis. [226] Cathedral of Tarragona THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL perb sculptures of the cloisters (to my mind, the finest and most interesting in Spain), the extreme vigor and extraordinary fertility of the Catalan's in ventive genius. The cathedral of Barcelona is the next step, and the vast proportions of its nave, the unusual grouping of its chapels, the indifference to the effect of its exterior, that was left unfinished and neglected, while all the wealth of the architect's tal ents were expended upon the dark interior, that, veiled in a dull penumbra, only reveals its soaring vaults and shadowy details, when the eye has be come accustomed to the deep-toned half-light, are all distinctively Catalan. But of the great churches of Catalonia, the cathe dral of Gerona is the fullest flower. The evolution of the aisleless nave, with its seventy-three foot span, is complete, the hardihood of Boffiy's design being such that the Chapter hesitated long before adopt ing it. It is filled, too, with manifold and unusual treasures, which we visited in company with one of its canons, a brilliant young man whose future in the Church is assured, but I shall not attempt to de scribe the beauty of what we saw for fear that I may seem to dwell unduly, in the limits of this [228] IN CATALONIA short chapter, upon the churches of Catalonia. Yet I think one may be excused for doing even this, when one reahzes how closely they are knitted to the daily hfe of the people and what an integral part Gerona from the Banks of the Ona of that life they are. The humblest look upon them as their home. Hohdays are not merely holy days, but are festivals as well. The noble and the beggar; the army, the clergy, and the civic functionaries; the schools, the tradesmen — all join together in the [229] "San Feliu's Truncated Spire" THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL rehgious processions that mark the many festivities of the year. In Gerona we witnessed one of these curious pro cessions, that which closed the week of Corpus. We were walking in one of the narrow streets beyond the cathedral, when we noted a sudden excitement among the children, followed by cries of "Los Gi- gantes !" And up the street came a strange cortege: first, queer figures, about life-size, but with enor mous, grotesque heads (los cabezudos), followed by two gigantic personages (los gigantes), some ten or twelve feet high, mediaeval in aspect and costume, a king, carrying his scroll and sceptre and accompa nied by his queen, with her fan, her lace handker chief, and her nosegay of fresh flowers. Behind these appeared a huge gilded eagle, with a hve white dove in its mouth, and carried by four young men, lineal descendants of those who had carried this great bird, the city emblem, for centuries. All these strange figures ranged themselves at the base of the vast staircase that mounts to the cathe dral. Music was heard down the street; the police and firemen appeared, followed by the mayor and the town council, at whose passage all the figures [231 ] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL gravely bowed in token of respect — all except the King and Queen, who owing to their great height, could not bow, but solemnly pirouetted round and round upon their tiny feet. The officials mounted the steps, at whose summit the clergy awaited them, and all disappeared together into the church. If, however, you want to see the real mystic spirit of the Catalan peasant and realize the true part his religion plays in his life, you should climb to the sacred pilgrim shrine of Montserrat. [232] n MONTSERRAT MONTSERRAT is to Spain what Lourdes is to France or what Oropa and Varallo are - to Northern Italy. But its natural setting is incomparably finer than any of these, for the Montserrat is one of the most spectacular, one of the most amazing and unusual mountains imagi nable. I shall never forget our first view of it, when, as the train from Barcelona rounded a curve, there ap peared, above the intervening pine groves and red brick villages, this extraordinary vision in the sky, blue, faint, crested with clouds and fantastic as a dream. Nor did this illusion dispel itself as we ap proached, for, when next we saw it, the Montserrat loomed nearer, with its gray pinnacles, jagged and sharp as the teeth of a saw, and shaped like obehsks or castles or skyscrapers, wreathed in clouds or tipped with vapory filaments, inexplicable, phantas magoric, silhouetted against a livid sky shot with [233] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL gold. No wonder that all through the Middle Ages legend had it that, concealed among its rocky fast nesses, lay hidden the Holy Grail. The country all about it is as wild as in Colorado. The red earth is of the color of rusted iron. Deep barrancas cut the bare hills that have been patiently terraced here and there with olive orchards. At Monistrol we changed to a little rack-and-pinion railway that took its way off and across the turgid Llobregat toward the cliffs that now towered mightily above our heads. A long climb, with the earth falling away beneath us, the olive groves becoming more and more like contour maps, with their stone terraces marking the different levels, the Llobregat winding farther and farther away between its ruddy walls, the houses and farms becoming mere specks upon the land scape, the dizzy abysses yawning ever deeper and deeper, until, with a final snort, the engine stopped at the little terminal station. We quickly made arrangements for our stay, were given the key to a neat room in one of the aposentos, where free lodgment is given to strangers, who, how ever, must make their own beds and draw their [234] ^rt^a^..***^ Montserrat THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL own water, and then walked over to the famous monastery, the most noted pilgrim shrine of Cata lonia, nay, I think I may say of all Spain. If the architecture of these monastic buildings had been equal, for example, to Juvara's fagade and portico at Oropa, the Monastery of Montserrat would have been the most impressive that I know. And even in its unfinished ineffectiveness, the place makes a profound impression owing to its unique situation. The interior of the great church too, the core and kernel of the group, dark and myste rious like the other Catalan churches, leaves a deep and solemn impress on the mind, and one can readily understand the awe of the simple peasants who come by the tens of thousands to pray in its devotional atmosphere before the image of the Blessed Virgin, that is ensconced, robed in gold brocade and glit tering with diamonds and other precious stones, under a canopy far up above the high altar, where her niche may be reached by the faithful, and where her hand, polished by the homage of cen turies, may be reverently kissed. The people who frequent this shrine are a study in themselves. There are Catalan mountaineers in [236] The Monastery Buildings, Montserrat THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL short coats and black small-clothes with white stockings and primitive shoes tied round their feet; there are families who come with their cooks and servants, to stay and live as they would at home; there are ill people and pilgrimages with their crosses and banners and seminarists from all the colleges of Spain. And at meal times all these pil grims, like the inhabitants of a small town, pour forth from archway and stairway, talking and sing ing, and wend their way to the restaurants where meals are served to fit the purse of rich and poor alike. But when all is said and done, it is the mountain itself that is the chief attraction of Montserrat: "La Montanya era un penyal, i ara es un coral que floreix i esclata; sa nuesa es un jatde hont vespre i mate rossinyols hi canten."* It was early May when we were there and spring was just budding. Every rock crevice was a tiny * "Balada de Montserrat," a popular Catalan song. [238] IN CATALONIA garden. Wild roses, crocuses, hyacinths; the white- starred clematis, the fragrant yerba santa flowered among the boulders; while the rocky walls that rose above our heads were clothed with blackberry vines, with masses of glistening ivy and holly; with per fumed honeysuckle and blossoming laurel. The evergreens that found footing in the rocks were putting forth their new young leaves and the decidu ous trees were bursting into green. And the bird- notes were everywhere. And when I raised my eyes from these enchant ing foregrounds, along the road to Los Degotalls, and looked out over illimitable space, I could see Monistrol and the country round about it laid out like a map at my feet, like a view from an air plane, two thousand feet below. The rugged hills were dotted with tiny villages and spotted with cloud shadows that diminished in perspective one beyond another, becoming bluer and fainter until they merged into the purple Pyrenees, that, their summits glistening with snow-fields, bounded the far horizon. The walk to La Cueva has quite a different aspect. A broad foot-path, partly stepped, partly a steep, [239} THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL rocky road, but wide enough to permit pilgrims to walk in procession, follows the edge of a precipice, an abyss yawning on the one hand and the gaunt pinnacles of rock towering high above your head upon the other. Along it, at frequent intervals, are monuments, mostly in execrable taste, to be sure, but in such extraordinary surroundings that one is apt to forget and pardon their artistic defects and remember only the intention. Some are strangely realistic, as, for example, a Resurrection, with an empty tomb and the weeping Marys in a cave, while the Risen Christ, unusually life-like, is fast ened to the cliff above. Upon these heights, the weather is often cloudy and the cliffs appear and disappear with disconcert ing and often startling effect. Filaments of vapor rise from the valley below and, rushing upward, join the clouds overhead. These again close in and blot out the heights that then reappear at intervals like visions in the sky. At the end of this La Cueva road, is a small cruciform chapel closely attached to the hillside and protecting the sacred cave in which, according to legend, the miracle-working image of the Virgin [240] IN CATALONIA was first discovered. The intention was to carry this sacred image to Manresa, but when it reached the spot where the Monastery now stands, it sud denly became so heavy that it could be carried no further, so there its shrine was built. There are numerous other delightful walks upon the mountain. You may go to the various chapels, scattered here and there upon its flanks, to San Miguel or to Santa Cecilia, that command most beautiful views, or to the curious caves, "La Espe- ranza," "El Camarin," hung with stalactites and dripping with water that rusts their walls and floors until they resemble the tiles of the Moors in their gorgeous colorings; and, above all, you may visit the hermitages, dedicated to a variety of saints and lived in, during all the Middle Ages, by holy men who, forsaking the trials and tribulations of this mundane sphere, took up their abode upon these mountain heights, and from their airy crags looked down upon the troubles of the world. The Hermitage of San Jeronimo is built upon the highest point of all, and from its dizzy height your eye embraces, not only all of Catalonia, but part of Aragon and Valencia as well, and on very clear [241] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL days, when the wind has swept the sky as clear and hard as brass, even the dim forms of the Balearic Islands may be descried far off at sea. [242] X MALLORCA MALLORCA IF you want to forget your cares and leave be hind you for a while the hurry and the bustle of modern hfe, go down some evening to the port of Barcelona, and take one of the immaculate little steamers that ply to these Balearic Islands, the Islas Doradas or Golden Isles of the ancients. Next morning at daybreak, you will see the purple headlands of Mallorca rise from the sea, sheer and precipitous, and these cliffs will rise higher and higher as you approach them, cutting their varied silhouettes against the glory of the rising sun, until, as you round the Dragonera, they disappear from view as you begin to see the golden promontories of the south coast stretch out before you. The boat on which we embarked was, very ap propriately, named the Don Jaime I, for the youth ful King of Aragon who, in the early part of the thirteenth century, had set forth with a proud fleet and an army of seventeen thousand men to wrest the islands from the Moors. We were steering prac tically the same course that he had taken and, as [245] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL we passed the Bay of Santa Ponza, we could see where his ships had first dropped anchor while his scouting parties went ashore; and, later, as we rounded Cape Calafiguera, and the broad blue Bay of Palma opened out before us, we watched for the spot where the bulk of his army had landed at Por- rasa to give battle to the Moors drawn up before Porto Pi. The morning sun had now risen sufficiently to gild the shores with a magic glow and, as we entered the harbor itself, the houses of El Terreno, pink, blue, and green, as well as the ancient castle on the hill above them, were suffused in a bath of golden light that, reflected in the still waters of the bay, took on a surface like translucent enamel or like those majohcas for which the island was famous, and which, indeed, took their name from Majorca. Beyond the mole, seen above the lateen sails of the fishing-smacks, and through the rigging of a steamer or two, the city of Palma, girdled by its massive walls, lay clustered thick about the golden mass of its cathedral, its close-packed houses, white or pale in color, still preserving the aspect of a North African city. [246] I',// ".M f tit Rj?(JfRS> y i THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Drawn up upon the mole was a swarm of 'little carriages that, somehow, with their light wooden frames and rounded canvas covers, made me think of the boats that huddle together in the harbors of Lake Como. Into one of these we clambered and rattled up the Calle de la Marina and the Borne to the Grand Hotel that stands in the Plaza Weyler, named for the general who commanded in Cuba on the eve of our Spanish War. Here we ate our first ensaimada and never after, during our stay upon the island, did we miss having one for breakfast. To write of Mallorca without mentioning its ensaimadas would be, to a Spaniard, like writing of Rome without mentioning the Pope ! Their origin is lost in remotest antiquity, but whether invented by Moor or Christian, by bishop or monk, a good ensaimada is fit for the gods, being in fact something like a doughnut, but a doughnut without a hole, pale and golden in color and light and fluffy as a dream, absorbing in its tender coils, your coffee or your chocolate to melt deliciously in your mouth. From the Plaza Weyler, you mount to the older quarters of the city, by streets and alleys that are [248] MALLORCA so steep that, for the most part, they are laid out in steps and so narrow that only a slit of sky ap pears between the cornices above your head. The houses that border the thoroughfares of the upper town are high, but gay and bright in color, and plen tifully provided with those miradors or balconies enclosed in glass and shaded by Venetian blinds behind which you are so often conscious that pairs of eyes are watching you. These balconies, borrowed from the moucharabis of the Moors, give a touch of the Orient to the nar row streets, and this impression is intensified by the flights of steps, faced up with glazed tiles, that ascend steep as ladders to the upper stories of the houses as well as by the aspect of the httle shops that stand open to the streets with goldsmiths, cob blers, or basket-weavers plying their trades before your eyes. Descendants of Iberians, of Carthaginians and Romans, of Vandals and of Moors, the Mallorcans are a mixed race and, though truly meridional in temperament, with their quick gestures and vi vacious ways, they are what we call "insular," that is, none too fond of the stranger and a little jealous [249] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL of their own beautiful island. They speak a vigor ous but rather harsh patois that is a derivative of the Catalan and the Provengal, that fascinating language of the troubadours. Their national cos tume has almost disappeared except in the remote districts, its only vestige remaining being the rebo- cillo still worn by many of the women — a sort of cap and shoulder cape combined, but even it has shrunk to the smallest possible dimensions. The first visit we paid in Palma was to the cathe dral that stands facing the palace of the King on the highest point of the town. Its exterior, especially the mighty buttresses ranged along its sides to sup port the thrust of its soaring vaults, make it a worthy companion to the great Hispanic churches, but its interior does even more than that. Like all the cathedrals of Catalonia, its nave is unusually wide and is separated from the aisles by only fourteen piers, seven on each side and each a hundred feet in height, so that the space enclosed seems and is singularly vast and impressive. Many of its tall windows have been walled up to exclude the blind ing hght of the southern sea, so that now its vaults and pillars, the gilded retablos of its chapels, the [250] MALLORCA carved stalls and tapestries of the choir and the curious baldachin that hangs suspended over the high altar, all melt together in a dim penumbra that imparts a peculiarly devotional atmosphere to the place. Thus it is with blinking eyelids that one emerges through the south portal into the blinding glare of the terraces which surmount the city ramparts over hanging the sea. To the east, atop the upper walls, rises the great bulk of the Bishop's Palace; to the south stretch the broad blue waters of the bay, while to the westward lie the terraces and palm gar dens of the Royal Palace, that still retains its old Arab name, the Almudaina, and from whose towers the Emir Abu Yahye watched the soldiers of Don Jaime land near Porrasa down the bay. This Al cazar, now the official residence of the captain-gen eral of the Balearic Islands, has lost, through succes sive restorations, much of its ancient character, so that it is to other palaces in Palma that one must turn in search of interesting interiors. Flights of steps descend from these terraces to the Marina, where stands the Lonja, or Exchange, a building whose harmonious proportions and exqui- [251] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL site detail stamp it as a little masterpiece of Gothic architecture, while its interior, with its groined roof held aloft by tall, slender, twisted columns that rise like the boles of palm-trees from the floor, testify to the taste as well as to the wealth of the mediaeval traders who built it and who prospered here in Palma, when the city was an important seaport of the Mediterranean. Beyond the Lonja, the Marina ends in the suburb of El Terreno, above which rises the Castle of Bell- ver. To reach this feudal stronghold you must climb through fragrant pine groves until, through the interlacing branches, you perceive its walls and moated keep towering above you — a perfect evoca tion of the middle ages. Fortress, residence of kings, prison for political exiles, it has witnessed and been part of many historic episodes. From its moats that girdle it intact rise its mighty walls and towers to enclose a vast circular courtyard that seems as if it should still resound with the tread of men-at- arms. Yet its vaulted chambers are bare and empty. But from their windows one catches pre liminary glimpses of the wonderful panorama that unfolds itself from the broad, flat roof, that, circu- [252] MALLORCA 15t> The Almudaina and the Calle de la Seo, Palma lar in form, like the central platform of the dioramas of our childhood, commands an uninterrupted view in every direction. [253] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Immediately below, yet mirrored in the still waters of the inner bay, lies Palma, beyond which stretches the broad, flat vega, rich, well-tilled, and dotted with farms and fincas, dominated by the Randa, a single conical peak, and extending as far as Cape Blanco. The Mediterranean stretches glittering along the southern horizon, while to the west and north rise the mountain-ranges that are the crowning glory of the island. While all the rest of this broad land scape lay flooded with sunshine, their summits stood wreathed in clouds and bathed in thunder-showers. These were the mountains we had seen from the sea, and as we looked at their cool, mysterious heights, that one by one, as the sun neared its setting, bared their heads to the evening breeze, their appeal be came too potent to resist, and we decided forthwith to start out and explore their woods and valleys, their villages and ancient convents. So early next morning, in a light open carriage, we set out across the vega for Valldemosa. The dusty white road that ran between low walls over which clambered hedges of prickly pear and cactus; the houses, with their walls shaded by deep colon nades and marked in almost every case by one or [254] MALLORCA two tall palm trees; the olive groves; the acacias and fig-trees and sycamores that bordered the road, com- Carthusian Monastery of Valldemosa bined to make a truly African landscape; while the acequias, or water-courses, hollowed in the tops of the walls to irrigate the thirsty fields, as well as the primitive water-wheels turned by blindfolded don- [255 ] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL keys, made me think continually of the country round Tunis or Tangier. Gradually the mountains drew nearer, and as we approached them looked gray and bald and dry. But when we came closer we could see little gardens hiding among the rocks, hedged in with myrtle, car peted with moss and bright with wild flowers. Higher and higher we climbed through the foot-hills, steeper and steeper grew the deserted road, until, at an altitude of about fourteen hundred feet, we de scried far above us a village with a church tower and a great pile of ancient buildings, long and irregular in form, set upon terraces and marked by venerable towers: the old Carthusian monastery of Valldemosa. We drew up at the inn and were shown to a room of the utmost simplicity, but neat as a pin, with whitewashed walls and a glazed-tile floor. This cleanliness, we found later, was quite characteristic not only of Valldemosa but of most of the villages of Mallorca, thus differentiating this island from many of its Mediterranean sisters. Valldemosa is set upon terraces planted with olive and almond-trees and rising one upon another like the gradients of a huge Greek theatre whose stage is formed by the hills that only partly conceal the valley, opening just [256 ] MALLORCA enough to reveal the vega and Palma lying far below on the edge of its turquoise bay. We had come to Valldemosa with the prospect of a double pleasure, for beside our enjoyment of the natural beauties of the place, we knew that a wel come awaited us from the family who occupied the oldest portion of the monastery, the part that had been the palace of King Sancho. Many well-known people — Ruben Dario, Sargent, Sorolla — had been their guests, and their library, in an old tower that Jovellanos had occupied during his exile, was filled with rare books and manuscripts, so we hoped that we should be plunged at once into the romantic atmosphere of the valley. This hope indeed came true, for no sooner had we arrived than an evening was planned in our honor. A score of young men from the village, with their mandolins and guitars, sang songs for us, especially an ancient type of bolero called El Parado (The Stop), a queer minor melody, reminiscent of the Orient, echoed by the chorus from a solo voice: "In the middle of the Borne* (In the middle of the Borne) The moon has fallen down, (The moon has fallen down) * The principal promenade of Palma. [257] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL And has broken into four pretty parts Of which thou art one. "From the City of Valencia, (From the City of Valencia) Four great painters have arrived (Four great painters have arrived) To limn the Holy Virgin of the Sorrows." In between these quaint old songs, each having many verses, the daughters of the family, dressed in the picturesque native costumes of fifty years ago, danced the varied and charming steps of the boleros of Mallorca, while at other times (O rare contrast!) the musicians played "Hindoostan" and the young people from Palma danced two-steps and fox-trots ! Among the guests were several who occupied cells in the monastery. When I say "cells," you must not imagine the anchoretic abodes, four by seven feet in size, in which certain hermits used to pass their lowly lives. For, when Don Sancho's palace was given over to the Carthusians, the monks began the construction of a great monastery (never quite completed) planned upon so vast a scale that a stately church, two cemeteries and [258] MALLORCA several cloister courts were enclosed within it. Each "cell" consisted of three vaulted chambers of goodly dimensions, one of which was the monk's kitchen and work-room, the second his place for meditation and prayer, and the third his bedroom. His food was passed to him through a wicket that gave upon the main corridor, for the Carthusians were, I believe, only allowed to see or speak to each other one day in the week. All three of his rooms opened upon his garden, placed on top of a long terrace and separated from those of his neighbors by high stone walls but com manding a vast view of the valley, so that when he stepped from his cell he looked into unhmited space upon a prospect that any poet might envy, filled with infinite variety and multitudinous detail: mon ti des topped with pilgrim-chapels, rocks of strange and varied forms, and terraces of almond, peach, and lemon trees that descended hke giant steps to the narrow opening in the mountains through which Palma and the curve of its shore could be seen. Good air, good water, good fruit; a sea full of fish and woods full of game — what more could be de sired by monk or man ! [259] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL And so it is that these comfortable cells are now occupied as country houses by certain Mallorcan families who appreciate the charm of Valldemosa. To one of them attaches a particularly romantic history, for in it, strange to relate, Frederick Chopin spent a winter with George Sand, who, accompanied by her two children, made a voyage to Mallorca in 1838 in search of new sensations. As de Musset had accompanied her a few years before to Venice, so, on this occasion, the young, blond Polish pianist was her chosen companion. Soon after their arrival, Chopin fell ill with the first symptoms of the malady that was to carry him off in the full prime of his life. This illness, com bined with their irregular situation, created very serious difficulties for them in Palma and, after vainly searching for shelter, they at last were com pelled to come up to this then abandoned monastery and install themselves in one of its cells. Here both went to work, Chopin on his Preludes and his Noc turnes, of which the thirteenth, notably, bears the imprint of the place, with its groans of anguish alternating with the chanting of the monks. The strange spot made a deep impression upon his ro- [260] MALLORCA mantic nature and its cold vaults, accustomed only to monastic chants, must have been surprised at the passionate sounds of his piano. George Sand describes their life and their troubles in Valldemosa in her "Un Hiver a Majorque" which little-known book is usually bound in the same volume of her works that contains her "Spiridion," which, she also tells us, "a ete ecrit en grande partie el termine dans la Chartreuse de Valldemosa, aux gemissements de la bise dans les cloitres en ruines." And who indeed that has read that book and who knows Valldemosa will fail to recognize, in the de scription of the hermitage of St. Hyacinth, the hermitage of the Trinity and, in the description of the sea seen from the heights, the abyss at the bottom of which hes the httle fishing-port of Vallde mosa. To both of these places we went to spend the day with friends. Soon after our arrival, we were asked to go on a picnic and were driven for a mile or two to the foot of a steep hill where we got out and chmbed through dense pines and hemlocks, high up through the rocks. The road was quite shut in and we had no idea where we were going, until, [261] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL at a turning, we suddenly found ourselves above a sort of terrace suspended in mid-air, as it were, between sea and sky. High above our heads the mountains still towered, while below the eye plunged down two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly, to the sea that stretched, calm and deep and blue, to the limits of the far horizon. The effect of this sudden apparition of the Medi terranean, which we had not as yet seen from this side of the island, was most astonishing, and our surprise was further heightened by discovering, hid den among the rocks at our right, a little hermitage — a rude and simple group of buildings, with a chapel, a cemetery set in dark cypresses, and a dozen cells for the monks. For in this Hermitage of the Holy Trinity, the brothers dwell in poverty just as they did in the middle ages, cultivating their garden, fasting as they say their prayers, and sleeping on rude pallets of straw with a single woollen cover. But when, once in a while, a stranger comes to their gate, he is well received. At our approach, one of the bearded brothers came forth to meet us and led us toward a table placed upon the terrace overlooking the sea and set out with the preserved [262] MALLORCA capers, the wild sea-fennel, and the green olives that the hermits cure themselves. Our friends then greeted us and we sat down to our picnic lunch. Instead of the frugal meal that we expected, the servants who had preceded us now began to bring forth, from the humble monastic kitchen, dish after dish, cooked to a turn and piping hot: rice a la marinara, a succulent fish, vegetable pies, a roasted leg of mutton, and delectable fruits and pastries all moistened with varied and appropriate wines from our host's own vineyards, so that this outdoor meal became a long succession of agreeable savors. Our picnic to the port we made with the young couple, a Spanish artist and his wife, who own the very cell that George Sand once occupied. In their country carriage, driven by their faithful old Mallor- can servant, we reached the edge of a precipice that drops off sheer to the sea; then, slowly, by a long succession of zigzags, we descended the face of this cliff to a little cove or bight where a dozen fisher men's huts face the sea, houses of the most primitive description, with a single room hung with nets and tackle and containing only a wooden couch, a bench, and a rude hearth on which the man cooks his fish [263] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL and rice, and by which he eats his frugal meals, liv ing to-day just as the fishermen did in the days of the Bible. And yet, as on the other occasion, from one of these humble abodes, thanks to the minis trations of the servant who had driven us, a similar succession of Mallorcan dishes was served to us as we sat upon a little terrace, shaded by a shelter of pine-boughs, overlooking the shimmering sea. It was in this cove that the Barbary pirates used to land, and, scaling the cliffs, fall unawares upon the villagers above,- killing the men, plundering the houses and carrying off the women into captivity, and it was in the glen above the port that Raymond Gual de Mur, lying in ambush with a few brave men, routed an entire expedition as it returned to its boats, drunk and laden with plunder and cap tives. Even to-day the coast-guards come down at night with their carbines and lie wrapped up in blankets on the cliffs, watching for contraband, for the little haven is a perfect smuggler's cove. Each day of our stay in Valldemosa we made some charming excursion. Sometimes it was to one of the romantic villas or fincas near by: Sa Coma, with its thickets of golden-rain and its terraces [264] MALLORCA planted with cypress hedges ahve with the songs of nightingales; Son Gual, where Raymond Gual lived and where Saint Vincent Ferrer preached, using for his pulpit the trunk of an old olive-tree that stood until quite recently; Son Moragues, set in myrtle hedges and ilex groves, with cypress-trees that mount to a pink grotto, and a circular reservoir that re flects the golden cliffs of the Teix, the highest moun tain in the vicinity. Sometimes we would climb a lonely monticle and from the chapel on its summit watch the sun go down in a golden glory, as in some serene land scape by Claude Lorraine; or, again, we would walk among the gnarled olive groves where the sheep grazed tended by their silent shepherd. Strange as are the shapes that olive-trees can take, nowhere have I seen them contorted, twisted, and distorted as they are in these groves of Vallde mosa. Tenacious of life to the last degree, they have lived for many centuries and in their old age have grown deformed and misshapen, affecting the forms of creatures neither animal nor human, yet resembling both, goblins of uncouth shape, monsters and toads and crocodiles, beasts enlaced as if in [265] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL mortal combat, until, as one looks at their twisted shapes, one is tempted to cry, with the painter Ru- sifiol, "Stop; if it costs you such pain to bear your olives, pray bear no more!" But I think that of all these walks, the ones we loved the best were those to the wooded heights of Miramar. Perched on a rocky ledge high above the sea, yet dominated by gigantic cliffs that rise per pendicularly above it, Miramar hangs suspended in mid-air, enjoying, though from a slightly lower ele vation, the same incomparable panorama as the Hermitage of the Holy Trinity. Circlets of white foam outline the varied contours of the coast, but everywhere else the surface of the Mediterranean lies undisturbed, calm, polished, and radiantly blue. It has its storms, to be sure, but we never chanced to see one, and it was only when the fogs drove in toward sunset, blotting out cliff after cliff with their ghostly fingers, that the blue- ness of the waters vanished, engulfed by the silent mists. Despite the steepness of the cliffs and their apparent aridity, the flora of Miramar is wonderful. Deep forests of pine-trees stretch their branches toward the sea, and groves of evergreens — live-oak, [266] MALLORCA carobs, and ilexes — clothe its hillsides with their shade, while from every crack and cranny of the rocks spring wild flowers of infinite variety. Miramar was appreciated by the Moors and I' ^ I V [ 4, ' - v"«Vv».>. Miramar formed part of the farm of Haddayan. Soon after the conquest, it was granted by Jaime II to that great mediaeval mystic and philosopher, Raymond Lull. Son of a nobleman who came to Mallorca with the Conqueror, Raymond Lull, as a young [267] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL man, lived the life of the dissolute courtiers of his time, until one day, as he was rhyming a couplet to his inamorata, he beheld, in a vision of terrible reality, the Saviour on the Cross. This vision was repeated five different times and made such an im pression upon the youth that he renounced the world and its joys, and began a series of pilgrimages to all the shrines and places of learning in southern Eu rope. Returning to Palma, Lull began the study of Arabic so as to be able to argue with and convert the Moors, and he conceived the idea of founding a college for the study of the Oriental languages so as to be able to accomplish by argument what the Crusaders had failed to do by the sword. With the aid of the Abbot of Montpellier, he induced the King to grant him the tract of Miramar for this purpose and established upon it a college for thir teen friars, the very first of the chain of such colleges for missionaries, antedating by three centuries and a half the great Roman Institution for the Propaga tion of the Faith. So, in this mountain solitude, Raymond Lull took up his abode and lived a life of contemplation and [268] MALLORCA self-abnegation. Here, "enfre la vinya el fenollar amor m ha pres, fent Deu amar entre sospirs e plors estar," as he expresses it in his old Catalan, "be tween the vine and the fennel, love took hold of me; I felt the love of God enfold me between sighs and tears." Here, as he recounts in his "Libre de Amich a Amat," rising in the middle of the night, he opened the casement of his cell that he might behold the sky and stars, and here he wrote his monumental "Libre de Contemplatio en Deu," that remains one of the great pieces of mediaeval literature. His learn ing became prodigious. He went to Paris and pro fessed at the Sorbonne; he went to Rome and argued with the Pope; he visited the Holy Land, Germany, and many other lands. But Miramar is the beloved name that recurs in all his poems and in his deeper thoughts, and the college that he founded there grew famous. In it, only twenty-five years after the discovery of print ing, a press, the first upon the island, was set up, and I have held in my hand the "Set Estaciones e Horas," printed "en la casa de trinitat o mira mar de la Vila de Vol de Musse en la maior ilia Balear" in 1487 ! [269] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL The spirit of Raymond Lull seems ever-present at Miramar; at every step some souvenir evokes his image. Here are the grotto — still marked with a cross — where he spent long periods of time alone in contemplation and the spring at which he drank and whose praises he sings in his poems; there the oratory and the Casa de le Trinitat, where he estab lished his college. These latter buildings were reconstructed, after centuries of obhvion, by Louis Salvador, Arch duke of Austria, who bought for a song the domain of Miramar from the peasant into whose hands it had fallen. To it he added the adjoining fincas : Son Galceran, with its watch-tower that spied the approach of the Moors; Son Gallart, with its tor tured olive-trees; Son Marroig, commanding, from its little temple, a view of the entire coast down to the Dragonera, until he had in his possession one of the most beautiful sea-fronts in the Mediterranean. During his hfe-time not a tree was allowed to be cut from its forests, but through their dehcious umbrage he caused footpaths to be made, leading from one mirador or belvedere to another, some placed high, others lower, but always so as to command the most [270] MALLORCA entrancing views of the mountains and of the sea that lies below, so pure, so crystalline, that even from these heights the rocks upon its bottom are plainly visible. Louis Salvador died a few years ago, but his villa, still filled with the ancient furniture that he col lected, stands quite as he left it, only a few paces from the road that leads along the coast from Vall demosa to Soller. So that when, after a fortnight's sojourn, we finally departed from Valldemosa in a two-wheeled carreton, drawn by a lively mule, we took a last look at lovely Miramar and continued on to Deya, a pic turesque old town built upon a conical hill, and dat ing from the time of the Moors. The road beyond Deya is as beautiful as can well be imagined, and tempted us again and again to stop and enjoy the bold profiles of the headlands, the luxury of the vegetation, and the charm of the villas and villages that we passed. Finally we be gan a long descent, the air came to our nostrils laden with the scent of orange and lemon blossoms; palms, pomegranates, bamboos, loquats, and yuccas gave to the gardens a tropic look, as we dropped down [271] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL to the warm sea level and entered the streets of Soller. Soller lies in a valley that might have been the crater of some extinct volcano, and in its rich, allu vial deposits the vegetation grows most luxuriantly. Every good Mallorcan, when he goes forth to Amer ica, North or South, or to France, as many of them do, to seek his fortune, dreams that some day he will return rich and build a villa in Soller. Unfor tunately for Soller, many of these dreams have come true, and the valley fairly bristles with just the sort of houses that one would expect to find under these circumstances. The town, therefore, presents little of artistic interest. Its circular port, shut in from the sea, is very pretty, to be sure, reminding one of the smihng lakehke coves on the Itahan Riviera, but Soller itself did not tempt us to linger, so, the follow ing morning, we boarded a diminutive train and, in an hour or so, were back in Palma. There we spent some days, enjoying the city and its surroundings and driving out to some of the fincas, hke Raxa, that stands against a background of conical hills — an evocation of the beautiful Italian villas, with its monumental staircase, adorned with [272] MALLORCA statues and vases; its fountains and grottoes and terraces overlooking the olive orchards of the vega. Thanks again to the kindness of friends, we visited also some of the great palaces of Palma, the exist ence of which the stranger would scarcely suspect, so hidden are their high fagades, vast in scale but very simple, in the narrow labyrinths of the old city. Yet as soon as you pass their portals and enter the spacious courtyard, the elegance and dignity of these noble demesnes are at once apparent. Their patios, built upon the grand scale so characteristic of Span ish architecture, are paved with flagstones and sur rounded by columns or colonnades that support vaulted loggias decorated with handsome ironwork, the most elegant of them being, I think, that of the Casa de los Marqueses Sollerich. In their interior arrangement the Palma palaces resemble each other to a marked degree. Mounting the courtyard staircase, whose steps are freshly sanded each morning for the visitor, you ring a bell and are ushered into a vast vestibule with a lofty beamed ceiling and whitewashed walls hung with family portraits or with great dark pictures of the school of Ribera or Zurbaran. From this hall you [273] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL enter a succession of rich salons that seem to con tinue forever: a salon of red brocade, a tapestry salon, a green salon, and so on. Thus, in the Casa of the Marques de Vivot, you find these salons extending across several streets and terminating in a beautiful library painted in Chinese vermilion; in the Casa Oleza whole rooms are cov ered with verdure tapestry, while in the Casa del Marques de la Cener the salons are hung with pic tures of great value, notably a Greco of his best period and a full-length portrait by Murillo, sober in color and restrained in execution, that is worthy to rank with the master's most important works. But the finest of all these palaces, to my mind, is that of the Marquese de Casa Desbruill. Not only are its rooms beautifully proportioned and decorated with rare good taste, but they are still filled with their old furniture and hung with tapes tries and with the silken curtains and brocades woven in Mallorca many years ago. In several of the salons, below the rich tapestries that cover the upper walls and just above the chair rail, are friezes depicting landscapes with small figures painted for the most part by a Mallorcan of the eighteenth [274] TBME Patio of the Casa Sollerich, Palma MALLORCA century, Gabriel Flaminia, that give a charming and quite unusual effect to the rooms. The furniture of these Palma palaces is equally interesting. Whether because of traditions handed down from the Moors or because of their close rela tionship with France, the Mallorcan workmen im parted a finish to their work and a restraint to their designs that are uncommon in the more flamboyant products of other Spanish artisans, so that their tables, whose legs are bound together with spindles of ornamental iron; their chairs, covered with leather or with old red velvet and studded with beautiful nails; and their jewel cabinets, supported upon Carl- ist eagles and embellished with numerous compart ments of tortoise-shell and brass, may well serve as models for our designers of to-day. There was one other spot in Mallorca that we wanted to see before we left the island — a painters' paradise of which we had heard, called Pollensa. So, one morning, we took the train to Inca, a town of some importance, and thence a big motor-bus up to the extreme northwest corner of the island, thun dering along over the hills until we saw the red roofs of the town spreading themselves in the sunshine. [275] THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Pollensa neither possesses the romantic charm of Valldemosa nor does any particular historic event attach to it. It has always been, as it is to-day, a primitive village whose inhabitants make their living by plying their humble trades or netting the fish of the sea. But it is exactly this that gives the place its peculiar charm and makes it a spot beloved by artists. In every open doorway, an aged granny sits spinning on her distaff, or a child is busily making brooms, or women chatter in groups as they weave or embroider on linen, and, as you pass, you catch glimpses of a cobbler or a wheelwright or a cabinet maker at work in shops centuries old, using the same implements that their forefathers had used many years ago. Women carrying amphorae shaped like those of ancient Greece go back and forth to the fountains; down by the bridge that spans the dry river-bed, the life is as primitive as it was in the days of the Pharaohs. Goatherds and shepherds bring in their flocks; pigs squeal as they are goaded along the road; the two-wheeled country carts re turn from the fields laden with singing harvesters, while every once in a while there passes an old man, [276] « s &3 THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL his long gray locks covered with a broad felt hat, and dressed in the wide, baggy trousers and the beflowered vest of other days. The interiors of the houses, many of which date from the Gothic period, are no less interesting. The walls of the rooms, rough plastered and white washed, form a clear background to the furniture, which is highly characteristic, and most of the houses are provided with the curious kitchens that one sees so frequently in Mallorca, with a group of high- backed settles, covered with sheepskins, ranged round the fireplace so as to form a smaller inner room, as it were, in which the family can sit in the wintertime, clustered round the genial glow of the hearth. Above the town, an ancient calvary stands guard upon a hill, with the stations of the cross marked upon its slopes by crosses flanked by cypress-trees. A long flight of steps leads up to it, also bordered by cypresses, the whole composition resembling a page from some mediaeval missal. From the terraces about this calvary, one commands entrancing views in every direction — views that embrace not only the wild mountains to the north and west that terminate [278 ] Ascent to the Calvary, Pollensa THROUGH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL in the rugged cliffs of Cape Formentor, below which, nestled in its circular cove, lies the Puerto de Po llensa, but also the broad silvery expanse of the Bay of Alcudia that stretches far off to the eastward. Later on, we explored these smiling shores. We visited the Puerto and the wonderful Calle de San Vicente, quite the most spectacular little haven that I can remember, its wall-like, porous cliffs, hundreds of feet in height, and fretted by wind and weather into a thousand curious forms, dropping sheer and perpendicular into the placid waters of the sea, that here, owing to their exceptional limpid ity, take on a variety and a purity of color that is quite beyond belief. Sorolla and many another painter has worked here; and here, in the coves around the Puerto, Anglada passes most of his time painting the shimmering pools that lie like marvellous aquaria in the hollows of the rocks. We returned to Palma just in time for the festival of the Corpus, and my last impressions of the city centre round that important fete, when the high mass at the cathedral, owing to the exceptional width of the nave and the absence of the usual coro, took on an amplitude and a splendor that I have [280] MALLORCA seldom seen equalled; while the afternoon proces sion, with its confraternities carrying their gilded saints, its corporations and religious associations, its chevaliers of the nobility; its Paulist, Capucin, and Franciscan monks; its officers in their brilliant uniforms, followed by the numerous clergy of the cathedral with the bishop carrying the host in a cloud of incense, gave a color and an atmosphere to the narrow streets that recalled the faded old pic ture of the burial of Raymond Lull that hangs on the walls of the Ayuntamiento. [281]