Four Months Afoot in Spain (2024)

COPYRIGHT 1911, BY THE CENTURY CO. ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. A 'Tweendecks Journey

2. Footpaths of Andalusia

3. The Last Foothold of the Moor

4. The Banks of the Guadalquivir

5. The Torero at Home

6. Tramping Northward

7. Spanish Roads and Roadsters

8. On the Road in La Mancha

9. The Trail of the Priest

10. Shadows of the Philips

11. Crumbling Cities

12. Wildest Spain

13. The Land of the Basque

14. A Descent into Aragon

15. Emigrating Homeward

FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN

CHAPTER I

A 'TWEENDECKS JOURNEY

Not the least of the virtues of the private schoolsof New York City is the length of theirsummer vacations. It was an evening late in Maythat I mounted to my lodgings in Hartley Hall,rollicksome with the information that I should soonbe free from professional duties a full four months.Where I preferred to spend that term of freedomwas easily decided. Except for one migratory"year off," I had not been so long outside aclassroom since my fifth birthday; and it seemed fullyas far back that I had begun to dream of trampingthrough Spain. If the desire had in earlier daysbattened on mere curiosity, it found more rationalnourishment now in my hope of acquiring greaterfluency in the Spanish tongue, the teaching of which,with other European languages, was the source ofmy livelihood.

There was one potent obstacle, however, to myjubilant planning. When I had set aside thesmallest portion of my savings that could tide me overthe first month of autumn, there was left a starkone hundred and seventy-two dollars. The briefestof mathematical calculations demonstrated that sucha sum could cover but scantily one hundred andtwenty days. Yet the blithesome project would notbe put to rout by mere figures. I had been wellschooled at least in the art of spending sparingly;with a long summer before me I was not averse toa bit of adventure, even the adventure of fallingpenniless in foreign lands. A permanent strandingwas easily averted--I had but to leave in trust asum sufficient for repatriation, to be forwarded towhatever corner of the globe insolvency mightoverhaul me. Which, being done, I pocketed in expresschecks and cash the remainder of my resources--to-wit,one hundred and thirty-two dollars--tossedinto a battered suit-case a summer's supply of smallclothes and a thread-bare costume for ship wear, andset out to discover what portion of the Iberianpeninsula might be surveyed with such equipment.

Thus it was that on the morning of June first Iboarded the "L" as usual at One Hundred andSixteenth street; but took this time the west sideexpress instead of the local that screeches off atFifty-third into the heart of the city. A sergesuit of an earlier vintage and double-soled oxfordswere the chief articles of my attire, reduced alreadyto Spanish simplicity except for the fleckless collarand the cracked derby I had donned for the flightthrough exacting Manhattan. As for the suitcasethat rocked against the platform gate as we roaredsouthward, it was still far from a pedestrian's scrip.For with the ambitious resolution to rectify duringthe long sea voyage before me some of the sins ofomission, I had stuffed into it at the last moment adozen classic volumes in Sixth-avenue bindings.

"Christ'fer!" croaked the guard.

I descended to the street and threaded my wayto the ferry. Across the river Hoboken wasthronged with luggage-laden mankind, swarthy sonsand daughters of toil for the most part; an eddyingstream of which the general trend was toward agroup of steamship docks. With it I was borne intoa vast two-story pier, strewn below with everythingthat ships transport across the seas and resoundingabove with the voice of an excited multitude. Nearthe center of the upper wharf stood an isolatedbooth bearing a transient sign-board:

"SCHNELLDAMPFER.
PRINZESSIN ----."

Within, sat a coatless, broad-gauge Teuton, puffingat a stogie.

"Third-class to Gibraltar," I requested, stoopingto peer through the wicket.

The German reached mechanically for a pen andbegan to fill in a leaf of what looked like a largecheck-book. Then he paused and squinted out uponme:

Ah--er--you mean steerage?"

"Steerage, mein Herr; to Gibraltar."

He signed the blue check and pushed it towardme, still holding it firmly by one corner.

"Thirty dollars and fifty cents," he rumbled.

I paid it and, ticket in hand, wormed my wayto the nearer of two gangways. Here I wasrepulsed; but at the second, an officer of immaculateexterior but for two very bleary eyes, tore off acorner of the blue check and jerked a thumb overhis shoulder toward the steamer behind him. As Iset foot on her deck a seaman sprang up suddenlyfrom the scuppers and hurled at my chest a tightlyrolled blanket. I caught it without a fumble, havingonce dabbled in football, and, spreading it out on ahatch, disclosed to view a deep tin plate, a hugecup, a knife, fork and spoon of leaden hue, and ared card announcing itself as "Buono per unarazione."

A hasty inspection of the Prinzessen ----confirmed a suspicion that she would not offer theadvantages of the steamers plying the northern route.She was a princess indeed, a sailor's princess, suchas he may find who has the stomach to search in thedives along West street or down on the lowerBowery. At her launching she had, perhaps,justified her christening; but long years have passedsince she was degraded to the unfastidious southernservice.

The steerage section, congested now withdisheveled Latins and cumbrous bundles, comprised theforward main deck, bounded on the bow by theforecastlehead and aft by an iron wall that rose a sheereight feet to the first-class promenade, above whichopened the hurricane deck and higher still thewheelhouse and bridge. This space was further limitedby two large hatchways, covered with tarpaulins, ofwhich a corner of each was thrown back to disclosetwo dark holes like the mouths of a mine. By theseone entered the third-class quarters, of which theforward was assigned to "single men" and theother to any species of the human race that does notfall into that category. I descended the first by aperpendicular ladder to a dungeon where all bututter darkness reigned. As my eyes accustomedthemselves to this condition, there grew up about merow after row of double-decked bunks, heaped withindistinct shapes. I approached the nearest andwas confronted by two wolfish eyes, then anotherpair and another flashed up about me on every side.My foresighted fellow-passengers, having preëmptedsleeping-space, were prepared to hold their claims byforce of arms--and baggage.

Every berth seemed to be taken. I meandered inand out among them until in a far corner I foundone empty; but as I laid a hand upon its edge, acadaverous youth sprang at me with a plaintivewhine, "E mío! è mío!" I returned to the centralspace. A sweater-clad sailor whom I had not madeout before was standing at the edge of an openingin the deck similar to that above.

"Qui non ch' è più," he said; "Giù!"

I descended accordingly to a second bridewellbelow the water-line and lighted only by a feebleelectric bulb in the ceiling. Here half the bunks wereunoccupied. I chose one athwartships against theforward bulkhead--a wooden bin containing aburlap sack of straw--tossed into it blanket andbaggage, and climbed again to daylight and fresh air.

At eleven the sepulchral bass of the steamersounded, the vast pier, banked with straining facesand fluttering handkerchiefs, began slowly to recede,sweeping with it the adjoining city, until allHoboken had joined in the flight to the neighboringhills. We were off. I pitched overboard thecracked derby and crowded with a half-thousandothers to the rail, eager for the long-anticipatedpleasure of watching the inimitable panorama ofNew York grow smaller and smaller and melt awayon the horizon. But we were barely abreast theBattery when three officers, alleging theimpossibility of checking their human cargo on the opendeck, ordered the entire steerage community below.When, long after, it came my turn to be released,my native land was utterly effaced, and the deck wasspattering with a chilling rain before which weretreated and frittered away the remnant of the daywith amical advances and bachelor banter.

In the morning the scene was transformed.Almost without exception my fellow-voyagers hadchanged from the somber garb of America to thepicturesque comfort of their first landing in theWestern world. The steerage deck, flooded withsunshine, resembled the piazza of some Calabriancity on a day of festival. Women in many-huedvesture and brilliant fazzoletti sat in groups on thehatches, suckling their babes or mirthful over theirknitting. Along the rail lounged men in bag-liketrousers and tight-fitting jackets of velveteen, withbroad scarlet sashes. Jaunty, deep-chested youthsstrolled fore and aft angling for glances fromwinsome eyes. Unromantic elders squatted in circlesabout the deck, screaming over games of mora; inand out among them all raced sportive bambini.High up on a winch sat a slender fellow Turkishfashion, thumbing a zither.

Though there was not one beside myself to whomthat tongue was native, English was still thedominating language. Except for a handful of Greeks,the entire 'tweendecks company hailed from southernItaly or her islands. But force of habit orlinguistic pride still gave full sway to the slang-strewnspeech of east New York or the labor camp. Therewere not a few who might have expressed themselvesfar more clearly in some other medium, yet when Iaddressed them in Italian silence was frequently theresponse. The new world was still too close asternto give way to the spell of the old.

But it was in their mother tongue that Iexchanged the first confidences with three young menwith whom I passed many an hour during thejourney. The mightiest was Antonio Massarone, avociferous giant of twenty, whose scorn wasunbounded for those of his race who had pursuedfortune no further than the over-peopled cities of oureastern coast. Emigration had carried him to themines of Nevada, and it was seldom that he refrainedfrom patting his garnished waistband when tales ofexperience were exchanging. But the time had comewhen he must give up his princely wage of threedollars a day and return for years of drudgery anddrill at as many cents, or forever forfeit the right todwell in his native land. When his term was endedhe would again turn westward; before that glad daycomes what a stalwart task confronts certain officersof the Italian army!

Nicolò, too, expected to return. In fact, of allthe steerage community a very few had resolved toremain at home, and for each of these there were ascore who had emigrated a half-dozen times in theface of similar resolutions. Nicolò was a bootblack,proud of his calling and envious of no other.Already there hovered in his day dreams a three-chair"parlor" in which his station should be nearest thedoor and bordering on the cash-register. Conscriptioncalled him also, but he approached the day ofrecruiting light of heart, knowing a man of fourfeet nine would be quickly rejected.

As for Pietro Scerbo, the last of our quartet, hishome-coming was voluntary, for the family obligationto the army had already been fulfilled by two olderbrothers. Pietro had spent his eighteen monthskneading spaghetti dough in the Bronx at sevendollars a week; and he physically quaked at thesarcasm of 'Tonio on the subject of wages. Still hewas by no means returning empty-handed. "To besure, I am not rich with gold, like 'Tonio," heconfessed one day, when the miner was out of earshot,"but I have spent only what I must--two dollarsin the boarding-house, sometimes some clothes, andin the winter each week six lire to hear Caruso."

Thirty dollars a month and the peerless-voiced anecessity of life! I, too, had been a frequent"standee" at the Metropolitan, yet had as oftencharged myself with being an extravagant youngrascal.

The steerage rations on the Prinzessin were in noway out of keeping with her general unattractiveness.Those who kept to their bunks until expelled by theseaman whose duties included the daily fumigationof the dungeons, were in no way the losers for beingdeprived of the infantile roll and the strangeimitation of coffee that made up the European breakfast.Sea breezes bring appetite, however, especially on afaintly rippling ocean, and it was not strange that,though the dinner-hour came early, even raciallethargy fled at its announcement. Long beforenoon a single jangle of the steward's bell cut shortall morning pastimes and instantly choked thepassages to the lower regions with a clamorous, jocosestruggle of humanity as those on deck dived belowfor their meal-hour implements and collided with theforesighted, fighting their way up the ladders.Once disentangled, we filed by the mouth of theculinary cavern under the forecastlehead, toreceive each a ladleful of the particular pièce derésistance of the day, a half-grown loaf of bread, anda brimming cupful of red wine. Thus laden, eachsquirmed his way through the multitude and madetable of whatever space offered,--on the edge of ahatch, the drum of a winch, or on the deck itself.Unvaryingly day by day boiled beef alternated withpork and beans. Then there was macaroni, notalternately, nor yet moderately, but ubiquitously,fourteen days a week; for supper was in no waydifferent from dinner even in the unearthly hour of itsserving. It was tolerably coarse macaroni, butotherwise no worse than omnipresent macaroni mustbe when boiled by the barrel under the watchful eyeof a rotund, torpescent, bath-fearing, tobacco-loving,Neapolitan ship's cook. For the wine we weresupremely grateful; not that it was particularlygood wine, but such as it was not even the pirates inthe galley could make it worse.

The ensembled climax of this daily extravaganza,however, had for its setting the steerage"washroom," an iron cell furnished with two asthmaticsalt-water faucets. To it dashed first the longexperienced in the quick-lunch world, and on theirheels the competing multitude. The 'tweendecksstrongholds housed six hundred, the "wash-room"six, whence it goes without saying that the minoritywas always in power and the majority howling foradmittance and a division of the spoils. Yetdissension, as is wont, was rampant even among thesovereign. From within sounded the splashing ofwater, the tittering of jostled damsels, or theshouting for passage of one who had resigned his postand must run the gauntlet to freedom through avociferous raillery. In due time complete rotationin office was accomplished, but it was ever a latehour when the last gourmand emerged from thealleyway and carried his dripping utensils below.

The Prinzessin plowed steadily eastward. Gradually,as the scent of the old world came stronger toour nostrils, the tongue of the West fell into disuse.Had I been innocent of Italian I must soon have lostall share in the general activities. As it was, I hadthe entrée to each group; even the solemn socialists,seated together behind the winch planning thedetails of the portending reversal of society, did notlower their voices as I passed.

How little akin are anticipation and realization!Ever before on the high seas it had been my partto labor unceasingly among cattle pens or to bearthe moil of watch and watch; and the unlimitedleisure of the ticketed had seemed always fit objectfor envy. Yet here was I myself at last crossingthe Atlantic as a passenger, and weary already ofthis forced inactivity before the voyage was wellbegun. The first full day, to be sure, had passeddelightfully, dozing care-free in the sun or stridingthrough the top-most volume in my luggage. Butbefore the second was ended reading became a bore;idling more fatiguing than the wielding of acoal-shovel. On the third, I sauntered down into theforecastle more than half inclined to suggest to oneof its inmates a reversal of rôles; but the watchbelow greeted me with that chill disdain accordedmere passengers, never once lapsing into themasculine banter that would have marked my acceptanceas an equal. As a last resort I set off on longpedestrian tours of the deck, to the astonishment ofthe lounging Latins, though now and then someyouth inoculated with the restlessness of the West,notably 'Tonio, fell in with me for a mile or two.

It was the miner, too, who first accepted mychallenge to a bout of hand-wrestling and quicklybrought me undeserved fame by sprawling prone onhis back, when, had he employed a tithe of science,he might have tossed me into the scuppers. Fromthe moment of its introduction this exotic pastimewon great popularity. Preliminary jousts filled themorning hours; toward evening the hatches weretransformed into grandstands from which theassembled third-class populace cheered on the pantingcontestants and greeted each downfall with acannonade of laughter, in which even the vanquishedjoined.

More constant and universal than all else, however,was the demand for music. The most diffidentpossessor of a mouth-organ or a jew's-harp knewno peace during his waking hours. Great was thejoy when, as dusk was falling on the second day out,a Calabrian who had won fortune and corpulenceas a grocer in Harlem, clambered on deck, strainingaffectionately to his bosom a black box withmegaphone attachment.

"E un fonógrafo," he announced proudly; "apresent I take to the old madre at home." Hewarded off with his elbows the exultant uprising anddeposited the instrument tenderly on a handkerchiefspread by his wife on a corner of the hatch. "Fora hundred dollars, signori!" he cried; "Madre diDío! How she will wonder if there is a little manin the box! For on the first day, signori, I do nottell her how the music is put in the fonógrafo,ha! ha! ha! not for a whole day!"--and the joke cameperilously near to choking him into apoplexy longbefore its perpetration.

A turn of the key and the apparatus struck up"La donna è móbile," the strikingly clear tonesfloating away on the evening air to blend with thewash of the sea on our bow. A hush fell over theforward deck; into the circle of faces illumed by theswinging ship's lantern crept the mirage of dreams;a sigh sounded in the black night of the outskirts.

"E Bonci, amici," whispered the Calabrian as thelast note died away.

The announcement was superfluous; no one elsecould have sung the sprightly little lyric with suchperfection.

Bits of other operas followed, plantation melodies,and the monologues of witty Irishmen; but alwaysthe catholic instrument came back to "La donna èmóbile," and one could lean back on one's elbows andfancy the dapper little tenor standing in person onthe corner of the hatch, pouring out his voice to hisown appreciative people.

Thereafter as regularly as the twilight appearedthe Calabrian with his "fonógrafo." The forwarddeck took to sleeping by day that the eveningmusicale might be prolonged into the small hours.Whatever its imperfections, the little black box didmuch to charm away the monotony of the voyage,in its early stages.

But good fortune is rarely perennial. One nightin mid-Atlantic a first-class passenger of the typethat adds, by contrast, to the attractiveness of thesteerage, his arms about the waists of two damselsold enough to have known better, paused to hangover the rail. Bonci was singing. The promenadersurveyed the oblivious multitude below in silence untilthe aria ended, then turned on his heel with a snortof contempt. The maidens giggled, the affectionatetrio strolled aft, and a moment later the cabinpiano was jangling a Broadway favorite. When Iturned my head the Calabrian was closing his instrument.

"No, amici, no more," he said as protest rose;"We must not annoy the rich signori up there."

Nor could he be moved to open the apparatusagain as long as the voyage lasted.

Amid the general merriment of home-coming washere and there a note of sadness in the caverns ofthe Prinzessin. On a hatch huddled day by day, when,the sun was high, a family of three, doomed to earlyextinction by the white-faced scourge of the north.Below, it was whispered, lay an actress once famousin the Italian quarter, matched in a race with deathto her native village. A toil-worn Athenian, onlife's down grade, who had been robbed on the veryeve of sailing of seven years' earnings of pick andshovel, tramped the deck from dawn to midnightwith sunken head, refusing either food or drink.Now and again he stepped to the rail to shake hisknotted fist at the western horizon, stretched his armson high, and took up again his endless march.

Then there were the deported--seven men whoseberths were not far from my own. One had shownsymptoms of trachoma; another bore the mark of abullet through one hand; a third was a veryHercules, whom the port doctors had pronouncedflawless, but who had landed with four dollars less thanthe twenty-five required. With this singleexception, however, one could not but praise the judgmentof Ellis Island. The remaining four were dwarfishNeapolitans, little more than wharf rats; and thebest of Naples bring little that is desirable. Yetone could not but pity the unpleasing little wretches,who had risen so far above their environment as tosave money in a place where money is bought dearly,and whose only reward for years of repression ofevery appetite had been a month of misery andfrustration.

"Porca di Madonna!" cursed the nearest, pointingto three small blue scars on his neck; "Fornothing but these your infernal doctors have made me abeggar!"

"On the sea, when it was too late," whined hiscompanion, "they told me we with red eyes shouldnot go to New York, but to a city named Canada.Madre dí Dío! Why did I not take my ticket to thisCanada?"

"You will next time?" I hinted.

"Next time!" he shrieked, dropping from hisbunk as noiselessly as a cat. "Is there a next timewith a book like that?" He shook in my face thelibretto containing a record of his activities sincebirth, lacking which no Italian of the proletariatmay live in peace in his own land nor embark foranother. Across every page was stamped indeliblythe word "deported."

"They ruined it, curse them! It's something inyour maledetta American language that tells thepolice not to let me go and the agenzia not to sellme a ticket. My book is destroyed! Sonoscomunicato! And where shall I get the money for thisnext time, díceme? To come to America I haveworked nine, ten, sangue della Vergine! how do Iknow how many years! Why did I not take theticket to this Canada?"

On the morning of June seventh we raised theAzores; at first the dimmest blot on the horizon, apoint or two off the starboard bow, as if the edgeof heaven had been salt-splashed by a turbulent wave.Excited dispute arose in the throng that quicklymustered at the rail. All but the nautical-eyedsaw only a cloud, which in a twinkling the hystericalhad pronounced the forerunner of a howling tempestthat was soon to bring to the Prinzessin the dreadedmal di mare, perhaps even ununctioned destruction.One quaking father drove his family below andbarricaded his corner against the tornado-lashed nightto come.

An hour brought reassurance, however, and withit jubilation as the outpost of the eastern world tookon corporate form. Before sunset we were abreastthe island. An oblong hillside sloped upward to acloud-cowled peak. Villages rambled away uptortuous valleys; here and there the green was dottedwith chalk-white houses and whiter churches.Higher still the island was mottled with duodecimofields of grain, each maturing in its own season;while far and near brilliant red windmills, less stolidand thick-set than those of Holland, toiled in thebreeze, not hurriedly but with a deliberate vivacitybefitting the Latin south. Most striking of all wasa scent of profoundest peace that came even to thepassing ship, and a suggestion of eternal summer,not of burning days and sultry nights, but of earlyJune in some fairy realm utterly undisturbed by theclamorous rumble of the outer world.

Two smaller islands appeared before the day wasdone, one to port so near that we could count thecottage windows and all but make out the featuresof skirt-blown peasant women standing firm-footedin deep green meadows against a background ofdimming hills. As the night descended, the housesfaded to twinkling lights, now in clusters, now astone's-throw one from another, but not once failingas long as we remained on deck.

For two days following the horizon was unbroken.Then through the morning mists of June tenth roseCabo San Vicente, the scowling granite corner-stoneof Europe, every line of its time-scarred features adefiance to the sea and a menace to the passerby.Beyond stretched a wrinkled, verdureless plateau,to all appearances unpeopled, and falling into theAtlantic in grim, oxide-stained cliffs that hereadvanced within hailing distance, there retreated tothe hazy horizon. All through the day the world'scommerce filed past,--water-logged tramps crawlingalong the face of the land, whale-like oil tanksshowing only a dorsal fin of funnel and deck-house,East Indiamen straining Biscayward, and all thesmaller fry of fishermen and coasters. A rumor,rising no one knew where, promised that earlymorning should find us entering the Mediterranean. Isubsidized the services of a fellow-voyager dexterouswith shears and razor and, reduced to a tuft offorelock, descended once more to the lower dungeon.

Long before daylight I was awakened by thecommissario, or steerage steward, tugging at a legof my trousers and screeching in his boyish falsetto,"Gibiltèrra! Make ready! Gibiltèrra!" It wasno part of the commissario's duties to callthird-class passengers. But ever since the day he hadexamined my ticket, the little whisp of a man whonever ceased to regard me with suspicion, as if hedoubted the sanity of a traveler who was bound fora land that was neither Italy nor America. Of latehe seemed convinced that my professed plan wasmerely a ruse to reach Naples without paying fullfare, and he eyed me askance now as I clamberedfrom my bunk, in his pigwidgeon face a sterndetermination that my knavery should not succeed.

Supplied with a bucket by a sailor, I climbed ondeck and approached the galley. The cook wassnoring in a corner of his domain; his understudywas nowhere to be seen. I tip-toed to the hot-waterfaucet and was soon below again stripping off my"ship's clothes," which the obliging seaman, havingbespoken this reward, caught up one by one as theyfell. The splashing of water aroused the encirclingsleepers. Gradually they slid to the deck andgathered around me, inquiring the details of myeccentric plan. By the time I was dressed in the bestmy suitcase offered, every mortal in the "single"quarters had come at least once to bid me a dubiousfarewell.

The commissario returned and led the way insilence along the deserted promenade to the deckabaft the cabins. The Prinzessin lay at anchor. Ahalf-mile away, across a placid lagoon, towered thehaggard Rock of Gibraltar, a stone-faced citystrewn along its base. About the harbor, glintingin the slanting sunlight, prowled rowboats, sloops,and yawls, and sharp-nosed launches. One of thelatter soon swung in against the starboard ladderand there stepped on deck two men in whiteuniforms, who seated themselves without a word at atable which the commissario produced by some magicof his own, and fell to spreading out impressivedocuments. A glance sufficed to recognize themEnglishmen. At length the older raised his head with aninterrogatory jerk, and the commissario, with theair of a man taken red-handed in some rascality,minced forward and laid on the table a great legalblank with one line scrawled across it.

"T 'ird classy maneefesto, signori," he apologized.

"Eh!" cried the Englishman. "A steerage passengerfor Gibraltar?"

The steward jerked his head backward toward me.

"Humph!" said the spokesman, inspecting mefrom crown to toe. "Where do you hail from?"

Before I could reply there swarmed down thecompanionway a host of cabin passengers, in port-of-callarray, whom the Englishman greeted with baredhead and his broadest welcome-to-our-city smile;then bowed to the launch ladder. As he resumed hischair I laid my passport before him.

"For what purpose do you desire to land inGibraltar?" he demanded.

"I am bound for Spain--" I began.

"Spain!" shouted the Briton, with such emphasisas if that land lay at the far ends of the earth."Indeed! Where are you going from Gibraltar,and how soon?"

"Until I get ashore I can hardly say; in a day orso, at least; to Granada, perhaps, or Málaga."

"Out of respect for the American passport,"replied the Englishman grandiloquently, "I amgoing to let you land. But see you stick to thisstory."

I descended to the launch and ten minutes laterlanded with my haughty fellow-tourists at a bawling,tout-lined wharf. An officer peeped into myhandbag, and I sauntered on through a fortress gateunder which a sun-scorched Tommy Atkins marchedunremittingly to and fro. Beyond, opened anarrow street, paralleling the harbor front and peopledeven at this early hour with a mingling of races thatgave to the scene the aspect of a temperate India, ora scoured and rebuilt Egypt. Sturdy Britishtroopers in snug khaki and roof-like tropicalhelmets strode past; bare-legged Moors in flowingbournous stalked by in the widening streak of sunshinealong the western walls; the tinkle of goat-bellsmingled with the rhythmic cries of their drivers,offering a cup fresh-drawn to whomever possesseda copper; now an orange woman hobbled by, chantingher wares; everywhere flitted swarthy little menin misfit rags, with small baskets of immensestrawberries which sold for a song to all but the touristswho tailed out behind me.

Suddenly, a furlong beyond the gate, asignboard flashed down upon me, and I turnedinstinctively in at the open door of the "Seaman'sInstitute." I found myself in a sort of restaurant,with here and there a pair of England's soldiers attable, and a towsled youth of darker tint hangingover the bar. I commanded ham and eggs; whenthey were served the youth dropped into the chairopposite and, leaning on his elbows, smiled speechlesslyupon me, as if the sight of an unfamiliar facebrought him extraordinary pleasure.

"Room to put me up?" I asked.

"Nothin' much else but room," sighed the youth,in the slurring speech of the Anglo-Spanishhalf-cast, "but the super 's not up yet, an' I 'm onlythe skittles."

I left my baggage in his keeping and, roamingon through the rapidly warming city to the AlamedaGardens, clambered away the day on the blisteredface of the great Rock above.

The "super," a flabby-muscled tank of anEnglishman, was lolling out the evening among hisclients when I reëntered the Institute. My requestfor lodging roused him but momentarily from hislethargy.

"Sign off here?" he drawled.

"Left the Prinzessin this morning," I answered,suddenly reminded that I was no longer a seamanprepared to produce my discharge-book on demand.

"A.B., eh?"

"Been before the mast on the Warwickshire, Glen--"

"All right. A bob a night is our tax. But nosmoking aloft," he added, as I dropped a coin onthe table before him.

"'Ow ye like Gib?" asked the half-cast, leadingthe way up a narrow stairway.

"Like it," I replied.

"Yes, they all does," he mourned, "for one day.But 'ow if you 'ad always to bask on the stewin'old Rock, like a bally lizard? Saint Patrick! Ifonly some toff 'ud pay me a ticket to America!"

He entered a great room, divided by thin woodenpartitions into a score of small ones, and, trampingdown a hallway, lighted me into the last chamber.Opposite the cot was a tall window with heavywooden blinds. I flung them open and leaned outover the reja; and all at once, unheralded, the Spainof my dreams leaped into reality. Below, to oneside, flowed the murmuring stream of Gibraltar'smain thoroughfare; further away the flat-roofedcity descended in moonlit indistinctness into theMediterranean. From a high-walled garden a pebble-tossaway and canopied with fragrant fruit-trees,rose the twang of a guitar and a man's clear voicesinging a languorous air of Andalusia. Now andagain a peal of laughter broke on the night anddrifted away on the wings of the indolent sea-breeze.I rolled a cigarette and lighted it pensively, not incontempt for the "super's" orders, but becausesome transgression of established law seemed theonly fitting celebration of the untrammeled summerthat was opening before me.

CHAPTER II

FOOTPATHS OF ANDALUSIA

Gibraltar rises early. Proof of theassertion may be lacking, but certainly not even a"Rock lizard" could recompose himself for anothernap after the passing of the crashing military bandthat snatched me at daybreak back to the wakingworld. With one bound I sprang from cot towindow. But there was no ground for alarm; ingorge-like Waterport street below, Thomas Atkins, aregiment strong, was marching briskly barrackward,sweeping the flotsam of civilian life into the nooksand crannies of the flanking buildings.

According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse ofMorocco was next in order. But with the absurdityof things inanimate and Oriental both the Tangierssteamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor.When "Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels,I drifted aimlessly out into the city. But theold eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon upon me,heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleamingacross the bay. The harbor steamer would havelanded me there a mere peseta poorer. Instead, Isauntered through the Landport gate and awayalong the shifting highway which the Holder of theRock has dubbed, in his insular tongue, the "Roadto Spain."

It led me past the double rank of sentry boxesbetween which soldiers of England tramp everlastingly,and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniardin rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from thefirst stone hovel, but, finding me empty-handed, assilently withdrew. I turned westward through thedisjointed town and out upon the curving shore ofthe bay.

Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, wereeach Spanish minute tagged with a Broadwayprice-mark, the peseta would have been dearly saved, forthe apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but atricking of the eye. Hour after hour I waded onthrough seashore sand, halting now and then in theshadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of thedeparted Moor, before me such a survey of theshimmering sea to the very base of the hazy Africancoast as amply to justify the setting of an outlookon this jutting headland.

The modern guardian of the coast dwells morelowly. Every here and there I came upon a bleachedand tattered grass hut just out of reach of thelanguid surf, and under it a no less ragged and listlesscarabinero squatted in Arabic pose and tranquillity,musket within reach, or frankly and audibly asleepon his back in the sand. Yet his station, too, waswisely chosen. The watch and ward of to-day is setfor no war-trimmed galley from the rival continent,but against petty smugglers skulking along the rimof the bay. Nor could the guard better spend hisday than asleep: his work falls at night.

It was the hour of siesta when I shuffled up asandy bank into Algeciras. Except for a cur or twothat slunk with wilted tail across the plaza, the townlay in sultry repose. I sat down in a shaded cornerof the square. Above me nodded the aged city tower,housing the far-famed and often-cursed bell ofAlgeciras. Recently, which is to say some timeduring the past century, it was cracked from rim tocrown; and the city fathers have not yet taken upthe question of its replacement. Meanwhile, itcontinues afflictingly faithful to its task. Atquarter-hourly intervals it clanked out across the bay like thesuspended hull of a battleship beaten with the buttof a cannon, a languid sigh rose over the drowsingcity, and silence settled down anew.

As the shadows spread, life revived, slowly andyawningly at first, then swelling to a contrastingmerry-making that reached its climax towardmidnight in the festooned streets beyond the plaza.Algeciras was celebrating her annual feria.Somewhere I fell in with a carpenter in blouse and hempsandals, whose Spanish flowed musically as awoodland brook, and together we sauntered out theevening among the lighted booths. The amusem*ntmongers were toiling lustily. Gypsy and clown,bolerina, juggler, and ballad-singer drew each hislittle knot of idlers, but a multitude was massed onlyaround the gambling tables. Here a hubbub ofexcited voices assailed the ear; an incessant rain ofcoins fell on the green cloth, from the ragged andthe tailored, from quavering crones and littlechildren. The carpenter dived into the fray with hisonly peseta, screaming with excitement as the wheelstopped on the number he had played. Within anhour a pocket of his blouse was bulging with silver.I caught him by the sleeve and shouted a word in hisear. Wild horses could not have dragged him away,nor the voices of sirens have distracted his eyes fromthe spinning trundle. A half-hour later he did notpossess a copper.

"If you had listened," I said, when we had reacheda conversational distance, "you would not have lostyour fortune."

"What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost,señor, is one peseta, and had an evening of a lifetime."

I caught the morning steamer to Gibraltar and anhour later was pitching across the neck of theMediterranean on board the Gebel Dersa. Third-classfare to Africa was one peseta; first-class, ten; andthe difference in accommodation about forty feet,--towit, the distance from the forward to the afterdeck.One peseta, indeed, seemed to be the fixedcharge for any service in this corner of the world.My evening meal, the night's lodging, the boatman'sfee for setting me aboard the steamer had each costas much. It would be as easy to quote a fixedselling-price for mining-stocks as to set the value of thatdelusive Spanish coin. The summer's average,however, was close upon sixteen cents for the peseta, ofwhich the céntimo is the hundredth part. There areat large, be it further noted, a vast number ofhome-made pesetas worth just sixteen cents less, whichshow great affinity for the stranger's pocket untilsuch time as he learns to emulate the native and soundeach coin on the stone set into every counter.

It was while we were skirting the calcined town ofTarifa that I made the acquaintance of AghmedShat. The introduction was not of my seeking--butof the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need saynothing, known as he is by every resident of ourland. At least I can recall no fellow-countrymanwhose visiting-card he did not dig up from theabysmal confusion of his inner garments.

To that host of admirers it will bring grief tolearn that Aghmed was most unjustly treated aboardthe Gebel Dersa on that blistering thirteenth day ofJune. Yet facts must be reported. It chanced thatthe dozen Anglo-Saxons sprawled ungracefullyabout the after-deck composed, at such times ascomposure was possible, a single party. As all theworld knows, it is for no other purpose than tooffer the protection of his name and learning to justsuch defenseless flocks that the high-born Moroccangentleman in question has been journeying thriceweekly to the Rock these thirty years. Yet thebellwether of the party, blind to his opportunity, hadchosen as guide an ignorant, vile, ugly, utterlyunprincipled rascal whose only motive was mercenary.True, Aghmed and the rascal were outwardly asalike as two bogus pesetas. But surely any manworthy the title of personal conductor should beversed in the reading of character, or at least ableto distinguish between genuine testimonials from theworld's élite and a parcel of bald forgeries! Worstof all, the leader, with that stiff-neckednesscongenital to his race, had persisted in his error evenafter Aghmed had recounted in full detail the rascal'scrimes. Small wonder there was dejection in theface of the universally-recommended as he crossedthe pitching plank that connected the first-class withthe baser world, his skirts threshing in the wind, histurban awry.

At sight of me, however, he brightened visibly.With outstretched hand and a wan smile he minuettedforward and seated himself on the hatch beside mewith the unobtrusive greeting:

"Why for you travel third-class?"

The question struck me as superfluous. But it isas impossible to scowl down Aghmed's spirit ofinvestigation as to stare him into believing anAmerican a Spaniard. By the time the valleys of theAfrican coast had begun to take on individuality, Ihad heard not only the full story of his benevolentlife but had refused for the twentieth time hisdisinterested offer of protection. Nature, however, madeAghmed a guardian of his fellow-man, as she hasmade other hapless mortals poets; and her commandsmust be carried out at whatever sacrifice. Gradually,slowly, sadly, the "souvenir" which "americanogentlemen" were accustomed to bestow upon himwith their farewell hand-clasp fell from twentyshillings to ten, to five, to three, then to as many pesetas.It was useless to explain that I had trusted to myown guidance in many an Arab land, and been fullysatisfied with the service. When every otherargument had fallen lifeless at his slippered feet, he sentforth at regular intervals the sole survivor, cheeringit on with a cloud of acrid cigarette smoke:

"Si el señor"--for his hamstrung English hadnot far endured the journey--"if the gentleman hasnever taken a guide, this will be a new experience."

In the end the sole survivor won. What, after all,is travel but a seeking after new experience? Here,in truth, was one; and I might find out for myselfwhether a full-grown man tagging through thestreets of a foreign city on the heels of atwaddle-spouting native feels as ridiculous as he looks.

We anchored toward noon in the churning harborof Tangiers and were soon pitched into thepandemonium of all that goes to make up an Oriental moblying in wait for touring Europeans. In atwinkling, Aghmed had engaged donkeys to carry us tothe principal hotel. I paused on the outskirts ofthe riot to inform him that our sight-seeing wouldbe afoot; and with a scream of astonishment he reeledand would, perhaps, have fallen had not the streetbeen paved in that which would have made suchstage-business unpleasant.

"Pero, señor!" he gasped. "You do not--you--why,people will say you have no money!"

"Horrible!" I cried, dodging a slaughtered sheepon the head of a black urchin in scanty night-shirtthat dashed suddenly out of a slit between twobuildings. Aghmed, myopic with excitement, failed toside-step, and it was some distance beyond that hiswail again fell on my ear:

"O señor! Americano gentlemen never go by thisstreet. I cannot guide without donkeys--"

"You can perhaps run along home to dinner?" Isuggested; but he merely fell silent and pattered onat my heels, now and again heaving a plaintive sigh.

For the better part of the day we roamed in andout through the tangled city. In the confusion ofdonkeys, bare legs, and immodesty, the narcoticsmell of hashish, the sound of the harsh gutturaltongue once so familiar, memories of more distantMohammedan lands surged upon me. Yet bycomparison Tangiers seemed only a faded segment ofthe swarming Arab world set aside to overaweEuropean tourists, Arabic enough in its way, butonly a little, mild-mannered sample.

Late in the afternoon I rounded the beach and,falling upon the highway to Fez, strolled away outof sight and sound of the seaport. Aghmed stilllanguished at my heels. To him also the day hadbrought a new experience. As we leaned backagainst a grassy slope to watch the setting of thered sun, he broke a long hour's silence.

"Señor," he said, "never have I walked so much.When we had come to the Socco I was tired. Whenwe had seen all the city my legs were as two stonepillars. Yet I must keep walking."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you must be protected! Ah, señor, youdo not know how dangerous is Tangiers; and here inthe country alone you would before now be dead, orcarried off by bandits. Perhaps this much walkingwill make me sick. Or if I have been seen by myfriends or a gentleman tourist! Allah meskeen!They will say I am no longer a gentleman guide, buta donkey boy."

When her night traffic had taken on its wontedswing, my stone-legged protector called at the innfor the purpose of proving that the far-famednaughtiness of his city was no mere conceit. Thedemonstration was not convincing. Two hours ormore we ambled from wineshop to café cantante,enduring a deal of caterwauling and inane vulgarityby no means superior to a Friday-night performanceon the Bowery. The relieving shepherd's crook,moreover, being nowhere in evidence, I fled thetorture and retired to bed.

To my infinite relief, Aghmed was on hand in fullhealth next morning to bid me farewell at the endof the pier and to receive his specified "souvenir." Hewas profuse, too, with the hope that I might soonrevisit his land; but I caught no hint of a desire toadd my card to his collection.

The steamer plowed her way back to Europe, andby mid-afternoon I emerged from the Sailor'sInstitute face to face with a serious problem. The mostpatient of men, which I am not, would hardly set offon a tramp across the Iberian peninsula carrying aforty-pound suitcase, even of unread classics. Tohave dumped the books in the first alleyway wouldhave been easy, yet painful, for there runs a strainof Scotch in my veins. I dropped in on the nearestbookseller to inquire whether he could see his wayclear to accept at a bargain a batch of novels newlyimported from New York. But the eager glowquickly faded from his features as I laid the volumesbefore him.

"Why, sir!" he cried. "These be old books, outof date. I thought had you something New Yorkis reading this summer--"

In which attitude his two rivals also dismissed me,even though I sought the good will of the last bysquandering the bulk of a bright gold sovereign forBaedeker's "Spain." As I turned down to theharbor, a thought, or more exactly the sight of asergeant's uniform under the fortress gate, struck me.The wearer stiffened like a ramrod when I haltedbefore him.

"Have you a library in the barracks?"

"Ah--certainly, garrison library. But I hardlyfawncy the commander would allow--"

"Of course not," I interrupted, tossing the booksinto his arms; "but I am off for Spain and if youhave any use for a few novels--"

"Ah--er--well, thank you most kindly, sir!"bawled the officer after me.

Though the fact may never be called to hisattention, the sergeant had heard the last phrase ofEnglish that passed my lips in many a week. As apersonal experiment I had resolved not to speak a wordof my native tongue within the kingdom of Spain,even to myself; though this latter proviso, to be sure,necessitated the early acquisition of a few Spanishterms of double voltage.

The forerunner of evening was descending uponAlgeciras as I mounted through her now all butvoiceless fiesta and struck away over a grass-patchedhillock. The further slope was skirted by a dustyhighway that wound off through a billowy countrypregnant with the promise of greater heights tocome. But the trend of the road was west ratherthan north. Over the hills ahead two male voiceswere bawling a sort of dialogue of song. I mendedmy pace and had soon overtaken two peasantsrollicking homeward from the festival. When I inquiredif this were the highway to Madrid they fell suddenlysilent, after a word of greeting, and strode alongbeside me exchanging puzzled glances.

"Well, then, to Honda, señores?" I asked. "Porestacarretera?"

"No, no, señor!" they answered quickly. "Poraquí no! You must go on the railroad."

"No, I am traveling on foot."

"Perfectamente, señor; and to walk to Honda youmust take the railroad."

There was nothing in the mien of either to suggestthe practical joker. Yet so far as my experiencecarried there was not a corner of Europe where twosteps on the right of way was rated less a crime thanarson or housebreaking.

We reached the line not far beyond, the highwaydiving under by a stone-faced cutting and bearing thepeasants away with it. Over the next rise theirdove-tailed duet rang out again and, melting in volumeand rendered almost musical by distance, filtered backto me from the deepening valleys a full quarter-hourlonger.

I climbed the embankment not without misgiving.Sure enough, a track there was, beside thebroad-gauge rails, covered with cinders and scarred withmany imprints of donkey hoofs. A mile along itdemonstrated how poor a walking kit is even ahalf-empty suitcase. I sat down to take stock of thecontents. In the jumble was a blue flannel shirt pastit* prime. I fished out thread and needle and seweda Jack-Tar seam across the garment below thearmpits, amputated sleeves and shoulders with a few,slashes, and behold! a knapsack that might bear myburdens through all the kingdom of Spain, and holdits own in any gathering of shoulder-packedwayfarers. When I had stuffed my possessions into itthere was still room to spare for such odds and endsas find their way into the baggage of the leastacquisitive of travelers. Then pitching the suitcasespread-eagle over the bordering hedge, I cut a stickin a neighboring thicket and struck off again at theregular stride so indispensable to any true enjoymentof tramping.

Night fell soon after. A fall it was indeed; nohalf-hearted settling down of gloom as in ournorthern zone, but a descendant flood of obscurity thatleft the eyes blinking in dismay. To right and left,where had been rolling uplands and heathered fieldssharp-cut in smallest detail, nothing--a sea of inkyblackness; and ahead, the stony-blind unknown.The cinder path held firm, but only a foot rubbingalong the rail guided my steps, until such time assight resumed its leadership.

An hour or more I marched on into the summernight. Then out of the darkness ahead stole a feeblepoint of light, an increasing murmur of humanvoices, and the end of the first day's tramp was beforeme. Beside the way a stone building stood open, anoil torch twilighting a cobble-floored room heapedat one end with a Spanish grocer's wares. Anunshaven man of fifty, a red handkerchief boundbrigand-fashion about his head, bulked forwardthrough an inner doorway.

"You furnish lodgings?"

"Sí, señor; and your burro?"

"I am walking. Is supper to be had?"

"Claro, hombre! Choose from the baskets andthe señora shall cook it for you in a twinkling."

All through the following day the path continuedparasitic to the railway. The roadbed was thicklycovered with crushed stone, with nowhere a hint ofthe existence of section-gangs. On either handrolled away a landscape stamped with the featuresof an African ancestry, all but concealed at timesby the cactus-trees of a willow's height that hedgedthe track. At rare intervals a stuccoed stationserving some hamlet hidden among the hills foundstanding-room on the right of way. An occasional hovelbuilt of field stones frowned down from the crest ofa parched hillock. Now and again out of themeeting-place of the rails ahead came jogging a peasantseated sidewise on an ass, to swerve suddenly asideand rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing ahigh-pitched ballad of Arabic cadence. But these werebut bubbles on the surface of a fathomless solitude,though a solitude brilliant with an all-invadingsunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods.

It turned out that the railroad had not been builtfor the exclusive convenience of pedestrians anddonkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling arose outof the north, and no unconscionable time thereafterthe daily "expreso" roared by--at a rate closeupon fifteen miles an hour. The ticket collector,cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand alongthe running board, in imminent peril of losing hisfooting--and being obliged to pursue his train tothe next station. During the afternoon there passedtwo "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudalcarload of passengers. But the speed of these was morereasonable, varying from six to eight miles, withvacations at each station and frequent holidays in theopen country.

The sun was still an hour high when I reached thestation of San Pablo. This time the town itselfstood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of anoak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. Iplunged quickly down into the intervening valley.

It was a checker-board place, perhaps only acentury or two old; certainly no relic of the Moor, forthere was not a sign of shop or market in all itsextent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of oneof its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in thecenter of a bare room. He stared at me a longmoment when I halted before the immense open windowto inquire for an inn.

"San Pablo, señor," he answered at last, "is aprivate town owned by the mining company. Thereis no inn."

I was turning away when he continued:

"But step inside and we shall see what the amacan arrange for you."

He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expertemployed in the mines. The Spanish, however, inwhich he addressed the ama was faultless.

"Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "Howcan I give posada, having no license from thegovernment? And without the permission of Don José--"

"Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering inupon us, "ask Don José to have the goodness to stepover. He is manager of the mines," he continued,"and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo."

It would have been a misfortune, indeed, to havejourneyed through Andalusia without making theacquaintance of Don José. He burst in upon us amoment later; a very hippopotamus of a man,dressed in baggy trousers, slouch hat, and alpacajacket. Unfortunately his arrival coincided withmy announcement that I was walking to Córdoba--thewhole itinerary would have been too strong meatfor Latin consumption--and his native genialitywas for a time overshadowed by astonishment at myextraordinary means of locomotion. I had all butfinished the meal set for me in an adjoining roomwhen the pair entered and sat down beside me.

"Señor," began the manager, in what was meant tobe a whisper, "you cannot walk to Córdoba. It isforty leagues."

"How much money have you?" put in the Frenchman.

"Er--I have something over seven pesetas," I answered.

"Bueno! Bonísima!" cried the alcalde, pattingme on the shoulder. "Don Victor and I will add therest and I shall go with you to the station to buythe ticket--in the morning."

Great, I reflected, is the infant mortality amonggenerous resolutions in the gray of dawn, andaccordingly held my peace.

Having settled my future to his own satisfaction,Don José linked an arm in one of mine and plungedout into the night.

"Your bed is waiting for you in your own house,"he said with Spanish formality. "You have only tosay the word."

The first syllable of which I had not found time tosay before we marched full front into San Pablo'sbarrack-like café. A roar of greeting soundedthrough the dense cloud of cigarette smoke: "Buenastardes! Don José!"

"Buenas, amigos! Que le gusta!" returned mycompanion, and pushing toward a table with twovacant chairs he continued without a break, "Unponche, Don Gregario! And you, señor? Anythingyou may choose, though there is nothing equalto ponche. Verdad, Rufo?" Then as I opened mylips to express a preference, "Sí! sí! Don Gregario!Dos ponches!"

The room was filled with a hundred bronze-tintedminers over wine and cards. Don José was theindustrial autocrat of every man present, yet one wouldhave fancied him rather a brother or cousin, so freewas the intercourse from haughtiness on the onehand and servility on the other. Miner andmanager addressed each other by their given names,shouted at each other in friendly dispute, thumpedeach other fraternally on the back. Despite all whichone felt absolute assurance that when labor againcaught up its pick the manager's word wouldcommand instant obedience.

The landlord, flushed with the exertion of theirconcoction, soon set the incomparable beveragesbefore us. With the alacrity of a man who will haveno shadow of debt hanging over his head, Don Joséthrust a hand into a pocket of his alpaca and caston the table three mammoth coppers, the combinedvalue of which was close upon five cents. With thefirst sip he rolled a cigarette and pushed pouch andpapers toward me. Then having introduced me as"Señor Newyorkano," he plunged headlong into thestory of my life, addressing not merely theassembled miners but whomever else may have beenprowling within gunshot of the building. "And tothink, amigos," he concluded, "after crossing allthe sea el señor should have wandered into San Pablolooking for a posada!"

The company beat their hands on the tables andhowled with merriment. Whatever the uproarioushumor of that climax to my adventures, it lostnothing of its poignancy as long as the evening lasted,and served to top off a score of otherwise pointlesstales.

My ignorance of the Andalusian game notwithstanding,I had soon taken a hand. The alcalde, consuminguncounted cigarettes, beamed over my shouldershouting praise of my sagacity each time I caston the table the card he pointed out. As for"ponche," what the peerless libation lacked in favorwith the masses it gained in the unswerving fidelity ofits sponsor. With clock-like regularity hisreverberating voice rang out above the din of revelry: "DonGregario, un ponche!" In vain did I announce mythirst permanently abated, in vain did I "say theword" or strive at least to take advantage of thefree choice offered me. My protest was invariablydrowned in the roar of the amended order: "Sí, sí!Dos ponches, Don Gregario!"

Evening rolled into night, night into morning, andstill the clank of copper coins continued. Once Iattempted to forestall the diving into that fathomlessalpaca by thrusting a hand into my own pocket.My unquenchable host started to his feet with abellow that seemed to set the very walls vibrating:

"Strangers, señor, cannot spend money in SanPablo! We are a private town!"

The minute hand was nearing the completion ofits third lap when a general uprising, subtlyinstigated by the landlord, swept the carousers into thecoal-black night. "My house" was no such regalmansion as befitted an industrial sovereign, an alcalde,and a man of unlimited coppers rolled into one. Itwas different, to be sure, from the other bare stonedwellings of San Pablo, but only in the wild bachelordisorder that reigned within its four naked walls.In one corner was a mountainous husk mattress. Itsmate, alleged my host, lay somewhere buried in thejumble; and he verified the assertion not long afterby dragging it forth. While he was booting thisinto some resemblance to a bed, I kicked off my shoesand sank into profound slumber.

Don José, too, awoke at sunrise. His generosity,however, was but a shadow of its former self. Onthe descent from the town he listened to my objectionsto the proposed charity without once profferinga reply. In the depth of the valley he halted andstared gloomily up at the steep, sun-glazed path tothe station observing that Providence after all isthe appointed guardian of the foolhardy. I thrustout a hand. He shook it dejectedly and, biddingme go with God and remember there is no drink equalto ponche, set out to clamber his way back to thevillage.

Beyond the curve that swept San Pablo into thepast a stream brawled down out of the hills. Iclimbed a little way up the gorge and came upon atumbled boulder that had stored up a pool of justthe depth for a morning plunge. Further on therailway grew more winding with every mile. Thehills increased to mountain spurs, and soon aftercame the mountains themselves, the parched androck-tumbled Sierra de Honda, fertile only with thememory of smugglers and intricate pathways. Theroute led through many long, sombrous tunnels,entrance into which from the blazing sunshine was likethe diving into a mountain lake. Where theburrowings ended, the line became still more circuitous,leaping over abysmal, jagged gulleys by massivedry bridges.

I fasted all the day; for it was Sunday, and thefew station buildings that appeared were deserted.Yet the privation passed almost unnoticed. Werea choice to be made I would willingly sacrifice anyday's dinner for the unfailing sunshine of Spain,reinforced by the pleasure of knowing that with thenew dawn another unclouded day will begin.

My night's halt was beneath swaying palm-trees.

Down through a ravine beside the track werescattered a few rambling houses, in one of which I foundaccommodations. Its owner was a peasant, batteredwith years, who sat before his dwelling smoking inthe cool of evening with his three sons. One ofthese was a guardia civil who had seen all theprovinces of Spain, and whose language in consequencewas Spanish. His brothers, on the other hand,spoke the crabbed dialect of Andalusia. I caughtthe sense of most of their remarks only at the thirdor forth repetition, to their ever-increasing astonishment.

"Hermano," interrupted the guardia once, "youknow you do not speak Spanish?"

The speaker fell silent and listened for some timeopen-mouthed to his brother in uniform.

"Caracoles!" he cried suddenly. "I speak noother tongue than you, brother, except for the finewords you have picked up at las Cortes!"

Which was exactly the difficulty. The "fine"words were of pure Castilian, for which the ruralandaluz substitutes terms left behind by the Moor.Furthermore his speech is guttural, explosive,slovenly, more redolent of Arabic than of Spanish. Heis particularly prone to slight the S. His versionof "estes señores" is "ete señore." Which iscomprehensible; but how shall the stranger guess that"cotóa e' l' jutí'a" is meant to convey theinformation that "la justicia es costosa?"

My evening meal consisted of a gazpacho, olives,eggs, cherries, blood-dripping pomegranates, a richbrown bread, and wine; my couch of a strawmattress in a corner of the great kitchen--and myreckoning was barely twelve cents.

Afoot with the dawn, I had soon entered the vastcork forest that covers all the northern slope of thesierra. Wherever a siding offered, stood long rowsof open freight cars piled high with bales of thespongy bark; the morning "mixto" hobbled bybearing southward material seemingly sufficient tostop all the bottles in Christendom.

By rail Ronda was still a long day distant--butnot afoot. Before the morning was old I came uponthe beginning of the short-cut which my hosts ofthe night had described. It straggled uncertainlyupward for a time across a rolling sandy countryknobbed with tufts of withered grass and overspreadwith mammoth cork-trees, some still unbarked, somestanding stark naked in the blistering sun. Then allat once, path, sand and vegetation ceased, and aboveme stretched to the very heavens the grilling face ofa bare rock. I mounted zigzagging, as up the slateroof of some gigantic church, swathed in a heat thatburned through the very soles of my shoes. A mileup, two guardias civiles emerged suddenly from afissure, the sun glinting on their muskets and polishedblack three-cornered hats. Here, then, of all places,was to be my first meeting with these officiousfellows, whose inquisitiveness was reported the chiefdrawback to a tramp in Spain. But they greetedme with truly Spanish politeness, even cordiality.Only casually, when we had chatted a bit, as is wontamong travelers meeting on the road, did one of themsuggest:

"You carry, no doubt, señor, your personal papers?"

I dived into my shirt--my knapsack, and drewout my passport. The officers admired it a momentside by side without making so bold as to touch it,thanked me for privilege, raised a forefinger to theirhats, and stalked on down the broiling rock.

A full hour higher I brought up against a sheerprecipice. Of the town that must be near there wasstill not a trace. For some time longer I marchedalong the foot of the cliff, swinging half round acircle and always mounting. Then all at once theimpregnable wall gave way, a hundred white stonehouses burst simultaneously on my sight, and Ientered a city seething in the heat of noonday.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST FOOTHOLD OF THE MOOR

Ronda crouches on the bald summit of a rockso mighty that one can easily fancy it thebroken base of some pillar that once upheld thesky. Nature seems here to have establisheddivision of labor. The gigantic rock bearing aloft thecity sustains of itself not a sprig of vegetation.Below, so far below that Ronda dares even insummer to fling down unburied the mutilated carcassesfrom her bullring, spreads the encircling vega,producing liberally for the multitude above, butgranting foothold scarcely to a peasant's hovel. Beyondand round about stretches the sierra, having for itstask to shelter the city against prowling storms andto enrich the souls of her inhabitants with its ruggedgrandeur.

Travelers come to Ronda chiefly to gaze elsewhere.As an outlook upon the world she is well worth thecoming; as a city she is almost monotonous, with hersquat, white-washed houses sweltering in theomnivorous sunshine. Her only "sight" is the Tajo,the "gash" in the living rock like the mark of somepowerful woodman's ax in the top of a tree-stump.A stork-legged bridge spans it, linking two unequalsections of the town, which without this must be utterstrangers. A stream trickles along its bottom, howdeep down one recognizes only when he has notedhow like toy buildings are the grist-mills that squatbeside it pilfering their power.

Elsewhere within the town the eyes wander awayto the enclosing mountains. The wonder is not thather inhabitants are dreamy-eyed; rather that theysucceed at intervals in shaking off the spell ofnature's setting to play their rôles in life's prosaicdrama. As for myself, I rambled through herpiping streets for half the afternoon because she isSpanish, and because my supply of currency wasfalling low. Ronda boasts no bank. Her chiefdry-goods merchant, however--by what right myinformant could not guess--boasts himself a banker.I found the amateur financier at home, which chancedto be distant the height of one short stairway fromhis place of business. When I had chatted an houror two with his clerks, the good man himselfappeared, rosy with the exertions of the siesta, andexamined the ten-dollar check with many expressions ofgratitude for the opportunity.

"We shall take pleasure," he said, "in liquidatingthis obligation. You will, of course, bring persons ofmy acquaintance to establish your identity, como escostumbre in large financial transactions?"

I had never so fully realized how convincing wasmy command of Spanish as when I had succeededwithin an hour in convincing this bond-slave of"costumbre" that express-checks are designed toavoid just this difficulty. He expressed a desire toexamine the document more thoroughly and retiredwith it to the depths of his establishment. Towardevening he returned with pen and ink-horn.

"I accept the obligation," he announced, "andshall pay you fifty-seven pesetas, according toyesterday's quotation on the Borsa. But I find I havesuch a sum on hand only in coppers."

"Which would weigh," I murmured, after thenecessary calculation, "something over thirtypounds. You will permit me, señor, to express mydeep gratitude--and to worry along for the timebeing with the money in pocket."

Travelers who arraign Honda for lack of creaturecomforts can never have been assigned the quartersa peseta won me for the night in the "Parador deVista Hermosa." The room was a house in itself,peculiarly clean and home-like, and furnished notonly with the necessities of bed, chairs, andtaper-lighted effigy of the Virgin, but with table,washstand, and even a bar of soap, the first I had seenin the land except that in my own knapsack. Whenthe sun had fallen powerless behind the sierra, Idrew the green reed shade and found before mywindow a little rejaed balcony hanging so directlyover the Tajo that the butt of a cigarette fellwhirling down, down to the very bottom of the gorge.I dragged a chair out into the dusk and sat smokingbeneath the star-sprinkled sky long past a pedestrian'sbedtime, the unbroken music of the Guadalvin farbelow ascending to mingle with the murmur of thestrolling city.

To the north of Ronda begins a highway thatgoes down through a country as arid androck-strewn as the anti-Lebanon. Here, too, is much ofthe Arab's contempt for roads. Donkeys bearingsinging men tripped by along hard-beaten paths justfar enough off the public way to be no part of it.Now and again donkey and trail rambled awayindependently over the thirsty hills, perhaps to returnan hour beyond, more often to be swallowed up inthe unknown. The untraveled carretera lay inchesdeep in fine white dust. Far and near the landscapewas touched only with a few slight patches ofviridity. The solitary tree under which I tossedthrough an hour of siesta cast the stringy, waveringshade of a bean-pole.

Sharp-eyed with appetite, I came near, nevertheless,to passing unseen early in the afternoon avillage hidden in plain sight along the flank of areddish, barren hill. In this, too, Andalusia resemblesAsia Minor; her hamlets are so often of the samecolored or colorless rocks as the hills on which theyare built as frequently to escape the eye. I fordeda bone-dry brook and climbed into the tumbledpueblo. Toward the end of the principal lack of astreet one of the crumbling hovel-fronts was scrawledin faded red, with the Spaniard's innocentindistinction between the second and twenty-second lettersof the alphabet:

Once admitted to the sleepy interior, I regaledmyself on bread, cheese, and "bino" and scrambled backto the highway. It wandered more and more erratically,slinking often around hills that a bit ofexertion would have surmounted. I recalled theindependence of the donkeys and, picking up a path atan elbow of the route, struck off across the ruggedcountry.

But there is sound truth, as in all his venerable ifsomewhat baggy-kneed proverbs, in the Spaniard'sassertion that "no hay atajo sin trabajo." In thisshort-cut there was work and to spare. As long asthe day lasted the way continued stiff and stony,ceaselessly mounting or descending, with never alevel of breathing-space breadth nor a moment'srespite from the rampant sunshine. A few times Istumbled upon an inhabited heap of stones in a foldof the hills. Man, at least fully clothed, seemednever before to have strayed thus far afield. Fromeach hutch poured forth a shaggy fellow with hisdraggled mate and a flock of half-naked children,all to stare speechlessly after me as long as the crownof my hat remained in sight.

The highway had deserted me entirely. As darknesscame on, the dimming outline of the craggedhills rising on either hand carried the thoughts morethan ever back to the savage, Bedouin-skulkingsolitudes of Asia Minor. Long after these, too, hadblended into the night I stumbled on. At lengththere fell on my ear the distant dismal howling ofdogs. I pressed forward, and when the sound hadgrown to a discordant uproar plunged, stick in hand,into a chaos of buildings jumbled together on a rockyridge,--the village of Peñarruria.

The twisting, shoulder-broad channels between thepredelugian hovels were strewn with cobblestones, notwo of equal size or height, but all polished icysmooth. I sprawled and skated among them, a preyto embarrassment for my clumsiness, until myconfusion was suddenly dispelled by the pleasure ofseeing a native fall down, a buxom girl of eighteenwho suffered thus for her pride in putting on shoes.Throughout the town these were rare, and stockingsmore so.

The venta into which I straggled at last was thereplica of an Arabic khan, as ancient as the days ofTarik. It consisted of a covered barnyard courtsurrounded by a vast corridor, with rock arches andpillars, beneath which mules, borricos, and a horseor two were munching. One archway near theentrance was given over to human occupation. Theposadero grumbled at me a word of greeting; hiswife snarled interminably over her pots and jars inpreparing me a meager supper. Now and again asI ate, an arriero arrived and led his animal throughthe dining-room to the stable. I steeled myself toendure a rough and stony night.

When I had sipped the last of my wine, however,the hostess, sullen as ever, mounted three stone stepsin the depth of the archway and lighted me into aroom that was strikingly in contrast with thedungeon-like inn proper. The chamber was neatly, evendaintily furnished, the walls decorated college-fashionwith pictures of every size and variety, the tilefloor carpeted with a thick rug, the bed veiled withlace curtains. It was distinctly a feminine room; andas I undressed the certainty grew upon me that Ihad dispossessed for the night the daughter of thehouse, who had turned out to be none other thanthat maid whose pride-shod downfall had so relievedmy embarrassment. Evidently the venta ofPeñarruria afforded no other accommodations befitting aguest who could squander more than a half pesetafor a mere night's lodging.

Over the head of the bed, framed in flowers andthe dust-dry memento of Palm Sunday, was a chromomisrepresentation of the Virgin, beneath whichflickered a wick floating in oil. I was early trainedto sleep in darkness. When I had endured for along half-hour the dancing of the light on myeyelids, I rose to blow it out, and sank quickly intoslumber.

I had all but finished my coffee and wedge of blackbread next morning when a double shriek announcedthat my forgotten sacrilege had been discovered.The modern vestal virgins, in the persons of theposadera and her now barefoot daughter, chargedfire-eyed out of my erstwhile quarters and swoopeddown upon me like two lineal descendants of theGrecian Furies. I mustered such expression ofinnocence and fearlessness as I was able and listened insilence. They exhausted in time their stock ofblistering adjectives and dashed together into the streetpublishing their grievance to all Peñarruria.Gradually the shrill voices died away in the contortedvillage, and with them my apprehension of figuringin some modern auto da fé. As I was picking upmy knapsack, however, an urchin burst in upon meshouting that the guardia civil thereby summoned meinto his presence.

"Ha," thought I, "Spain has merely grown moreup-to-date in dealing with heretics."

The officer was not to be avoided. He sat beforea building which I must pass to escape from thetown; a deep-eyed man who manipulated his cigarettewith one hand while he slowly ran the fingers of theother through the only beard, perhaps, in all thedreaded company of which he was a member. Hisgreeting, however, was cordial, almost diffident. Infact, the cause of my summons was quite other thanI had apprehended. Having learned my nationalityfrom the inn register, he had made so bold as to hopethat I would delay my departure long enough togive him a cigarette's worth of informationconcerning the western hemisphere.

"I have resigned from the guardia," he said inexplanation of his un-Spanish curiosity, "and inthree months I go to make cigars in your Tampa,in la Florida. Spain can no longer feed her children."

I sketched briefly the life in the new world, notforgetting to picture some of the hardships sucha change must bring a man of the fixed habits offorty, and took leave of him with the national benediction.

For some hours I trudged on across a countrysimilar to that of the day before. The heat wasAfrican. The Spanish summer resembles an intermittentfever; with nightfall comes an inner assurancethat the worst is over, and infallibly with the newday the blazing sun sends down its rays seeminglymore fiercely than before. The reflection of howagreeable would be a respite from its fury wasweaving itself into my thoughts when I swoopedsuddenly down upon a railway at a hamlet namedGobantes. I had no hope of covering all Spainafoot. Away among the hills to the north thewhistle of a locomotive that moment sounded. Iturned aside to the station and bought a ticket toMálaga.

The train squirmed away through howling, aridmountains, abounding in tunnels and tumbledbottomless gorges; then descending headlong to theplain, landed me at the seaport in mid-afternoon.Even Malaga on the seashore suffers from the heat.Her Alameda was thick in dust as an Andalusianhighway; beneath the choking trees that borderedit the stone benches were blistering to the touch.The excursion was rewarded, however, if by nothingmore than the mighty view of the sail-fleckedMediterranean from the summit of the Gibilfaro,reached by a dripping climb through shifting rubbleand swarms of begging gypsy children. Africawas visible, dimly but unmistakably. Belowsimmered the city, unenlivened by a single touch ofgreen; to the right the vega stretched floor-level tothe foot of the treeless Alhama. Directly beneathme, like some vast tub, yawned the bullring, emptynow but for a score of boys playing at "torero,"flaunting their jackets in the face of an urchin fittedwith paper horns, and dashing in pretended terrorfor the barrier when he turned upon them. Theascent of the Gibilfaro must certainly be forbiddenon Sunday afternoons. From this height the strugglein the arena, visible in its entirety, yet purgedby distance of its unpleasing details, would be ascene more impressive than from the best seat in thetribunes.

When I reached the station next morning theplatform gate was locked and the train I had hoped totake was legally departed. A railway hanger-on, inrags and hemp sandals, however, climbed the ironpicket fence and shouted a word to the engineer.Then beckoning to me to follow, he trotted back intothe building and rapped authoritatively on the closedwindow of the ticket-office.

"Señor," he said, as the agent looked out uponus, "be kind enough to sell this caballero a ticket."

"The train is gone," answered the agent.

"Not so, señor," replied the bundle of ragshaughtily; "I am having it held that this cavaliermay take it."

"Ah, very well," responded the official; andhaving sold me the ticket, he handed to the hanger-onthe key to the platform gate. As I passed throughit the latter held out his hand, into which I droppeda copper.

"Muchísimas gracias, caballero," he said, bowingprofoundly, "and may your grace forever travelwith God."

It was noon when I descended at Bobadilla, thesand-swept junction where all southern Spainchanges cars. The train to Granada was soonjolting away to the eastward. Within the third-classcompartment the heat was flesh-smelting. The barewooden cell, of the size of a piano-crate, was packednot merely to its lawful and unreasonable capacityof ten persons, but with all the personal chattelsunder which nine of those persons had been able tototter down to the station. Between the two plankbenches, that danced up and down so like the screenof a threshing machine as to deceive the blind manbeside me into the ludicrous notion that the trainwas moving rapidly, was heaped a cart-load. Toattempt an inventory thereof would be to nameeverything bulky, unpleasing, and sharp-cornered thatever falls into the possession of the Spanish peasant.Suffice it to specify that at the summit of the heapswayed a crate of chickens whose cackling soundedwithout hint of interruption from Bobadilla to theend of the journey.

The national characteristics of third-class areclearly marked. Before a French train is well underway two men are sure to fall into some heated dispute,to which their companions give undivided butspeechless attention. The German rides in moody silence;the Italian babbles incessantly of nothing. AnEnglishman endures a third-class journey frozen-featuredas if he were striving to convince his fellowsthat he has been thus reduced for once because hehas bestowed his purse on the worthy poor. But thetruly democratic Spaniard settles down by thecompartmentful into a cheery family. Not one ofmy fellow-sufferers but had some reminiscence torelate, not a question arose to which each did notoffer his frank opinion. He who descended carriedaway with him the benediction of all; the newcomerbecame in a twinkling a full-fledged member of theimpromptu brotherhood.

Nine times I was fervently entreated to partake ofa traveler's lunch, and my offer to share my ownafternoon nibble was as many times declined withwishes for good appetite and digestion. Travelerswho assure us that this custom inherited from theMoor has died out in Spain are in error; it is deadonly among foreigners in first-class carriages andtourist hotels--who never had it. The genuineSpaniard would sooner slap his neighbor in the facethan to eat before him without begging him to sharethe repast.

We halted more than frequently. On each suchoccasion there sounded above the last screech of thebrakes the drone of a guard announcing the lengthof the stay. Little less often the traveler in thefurther corner of the compartment squirmed his wayto the door and departed. With a sigh of relief thesurvivors divided the space equitably betweenthem--and were incontinently called upon to yield it upagain as some dust-cloaked peasant flung his bag ofimplements against my legs with a cheery "buenastardes" and climbed in upon us.

Then came the task of again getting the trainunder way. The brisk "all aboard" of our ownland would be unbearably rude to the gentle Spanishear. Whence every station, large or small, holds incaptivity a man whose only duty in life seems to bethat of announcing the departure of trains. He isinvariably tattered, sun-bleached, and sandal-footed,with the general appearance of one whom life hasused not unkindly but confounded roughly. Howeach station succeeds in keeping its announcer inthe pink of dilapidation is a Spanish secret. Butthere he is, without fail, and when the council ofofficials has at length concluded that the train mustdepart, he patters noiselessly along the edge of theplatform, chanting in a music weird, forlorn, purelyArabic, a phrase so rhythmic that no printed wordscan more than faintly suggest it:

"Seño-o-o-res viajeros al tre-e-e-en."

"Gentlemen travelers to the train" is all it meansin mere words; but rolling from the lips of one ofthese forlorn captives it seems to carry with it all thehistory of Spain, and sinks into the soul like a voicefrom the abysmal past.

Among my fellow-passengers was the first Spanishpriest with whom I came into conversationalcontact. In the retrospect that fact is all but effacedby the memory that he was not merely the first butthe only Spaniard who ever declined my proffer ofa cigarette. To one eager to find the prevailingestimation of the priesthood of Spain false or vastlyoverdrawn, this first introduction to the gownaugured well. He was neither fat nor sensual:rather the contrary, with the lineaments of a mansincere in his work and beneficent in his habits. Hismanner was affable, without a hint of that patronizingair and pose of sanctity frequently to beobserved among Protestant clergy, his attitude ofequality toward the laity peculiarly reminiscent ofthe priests of Buddha.

At the station of San Francisco half thepassengers descended. The building was perched on ashelf of rock that fell away behind it into a stonygulf. Surrounding all the station precinct ran aweather-warped and blackened fence, ten feet high,along the top of which screamed and jostled fullytwo score women and girls, offering for sale everyspecies of ware from cucumbers to turkeys.Hucksters and beggars swarm down--or rather up--onSan Francisco in such multitudes that the railwaycompany was forced to build the fence for theprotection of its patrons. But the women, not to be soeasily outdone, carry each a ladder to surmount thedifficulty. As the train swung on around a pinnacleof rock, we caught a long enduring view of the sourceof the uproar--the populous and pauperous city ofLoja, lodged in a trough-like hillside across the valley.

Not far beyond there burst suddenly on the sightthe snow-cowled Sierra Nevada, and almost at thesame moment the train halted at Puente Pinos. Irecalled the village as the spot where Columbus sawthe ebbing tide of his fortunes checked by themessengers of "Ysabel la Católica"; but not so thepriest.

"One of our great industries, señor," he said,pointing to several smoke-belching chimneys near athand. "Puente Pinos produces the best sugar inSpain."

"The cane is harvested early?" I observed,gazing away across the flat fields.

"No, no," laughed the priest, "betabel (sugar beets)."

Spanish railways are as prone as those of Italy torepudiate the printed promise of their tickets. Wedescended toward sunset at a station named Granadaonly to find that the geographical Granada was stillsome miles distant. The priest had offered to directme to an inn or I should perhaps have escapedentirely the experience of riding in a Spanishstreet-car. It crawled for an hour through an ocean ofdust, anchoring every cable-length to take aboardsome floundering pedestrian. Many of these werepriests; and as they gathered one by one on eitherside of my companion, the hope I had entertained ofdiscovering more of virtue beneath the Spanish sotanathan the world grants oozed unrestrainably away.For they were, almost without exception, pot-bellied,self-satisfied, cynical, with obscenity and the evidencesof unnatural vice as plainly legible on theircountenances as the words on a printed page.

We reached at last the central plaza, where myguide pointed out a large modern building bearingacross the front of its third story the inscription,"Gran Casa de Viajeros de la Viuda Robledo." AsI alighted, a band of valets de place swept down uponme. I gave them no attention; which did not, ofcourse, lessen the impertinence with which they dancedabout me. Having guessed my goal, one of themdashed before me up the stairs, shouting to the señorato be prepared to receive the guest he was bringing.

The widow Robledo was a serene-visaged woman inthe early fifties; her house a species of family hotelnever patronized by foreigners. We came quicklyto terms, however; I was assigned a room overhangingthe culinary regions, for which, with thecustomary two and a half meals a day, I engaged to payfour pesetas.

At the mention of money, the tout, who during allthe transaction had not once withdrawn the light ofhis simian countenance, demanded a peseta for havingfound me a lodging. I reminded him of the real factsof the case and invited him to withdraw. Hefollowed me instead into my new quarters, repeating hisdemands in a bullying voice, and for the only timein my Spanish experience I was compelled to resortto physical coercion. Unfortunate indeed is thetourist who must daily endure and misjudge the racefrom these pests, so exactly the antithesis of thecourteous, uncovetous Spaniard of the working class.

I had not yet removed the outer stain of travelwhen a vast excitement descended upon Granada,--itbegan to rain. On every hand sounded the slammingof doors, the creaking of unused shutters; frombelow came up the jangling of pans and the agitatedvoices of servants. The shower lasted nearly tenminutes, and was chronicled at length next day in allthe newspapers of Spain.

From the edge of Granada city a long green aislebetween exotic elms leads easily upward to thedomain of the Alhambra. In its deep-shaded groves,so near yet seeming so far removed from the stonyface of thirsty Spain, reigns a dream-invitingstillness, a quiet enhanced rather than broken by themurmur of captive brooks. For this, too, remains inmemory of the Moor, that the waters of the Geniiand Darro are still brought to play through a scoreof little stone channels beneath the trees. There Idrifted each morning, other plans notwithstanding, toidle away the day on the grassy headland before andbelow which spreads the vastness of the province ofGranada, or distressing the guardians of the ancientpalace with my untourist-like loiterings. But for herfame the traveler would surely pass the Alhambra byas a half-ruined nest of bats and beggars. Yetwithin she retains much of her voluptuous splendor,despite the desolating of time and her prostitution toa gaping-stock of tourists. Like so much of theMussulman's building, the overshadowed palace iseffeminate, seeming to speak aloud of that luxury andwantonness of the Moor in his decadent days beforethe iron-fisted reyes católicos came to thrust himforth from his last European kingdom. In this sheresembles the Taj Mahal; yet the difference is great.For the effeminacy of the Alhambra is the unrobustnessof woman, while the Taj, like the Oriental man,is effeminate outwardly, superficially, beneath allwhich shows sound masculinity.

In the city below is only enough to be seen to givecontrast to the half-effaced traces of magnificence onthe hill. He who comes to Granada trusting to readin her the last word of the degradation of the onceregal and all powerful must continue his quest. Ofsqualor and beggars she is singularly free--forSpain. Something of both remains for him who willwander through the Albaicin, peering into itscave-dwellings, wherein, and at times before which rompbrown gypsy children garbed in the costume in whichthe reputed ancestor of us all set forth from thevalley of Eden, or occasional jade-eyed hoydens ofthe grotto sunning their blacker tresses andmumbling crones plying their bachi in conspicuous places.But even this seems rather a misery of parade thana reality, a theatrical lying-in-wait for the gullibleBusné from foreign shores.

By night there is life and movement in Granada;a strolling to and fro along the Alameda to thestrains of a military band, the droning of thewater-carriers who bring down lump by lump the ice-fieldsof the Sierra Nevada, and a dancing away of thesummer night to the clatter of the castanet. But byday--once only during my stay was the languidpulse of the city stirred during the sunlit hours. Aconscript regiment thundered in upon us, blockingall traffic and filling the air with a fog of dust thatdispelled for a time my eagerness to seek again theopen road; a dust that thick-shrouded beneath itsdrab the very color of caisson and uniform,dry-blanketing the panting horses, and streaking the facesof men and officers with figures like unto theornamental writing on the inner walls of the Alhambra.

CHAPTER IV

THE BANKS OF THE GUADALQUIVIR

Granada was sleeping a fitful Sunday siestawhen I repacked my knapsack in the CasaRobledo. In the streets were only the fruit-sellers fromthe surrounding country, still faintly chanting overthe half-empty baskets on the backs of their lollingasses. I paused to spend two "perros gordos" for asmany pounds of cherries--for he who has oncetasted the cherries of Granada has no secondchoice--and trudged away through the northern suburbleaving a trail of pits behind me.

The highway surmounted the last crest and swungdown to the level of the plain. Like a sea of heatmist diked by the encircling mountains stretched thevega, looking across which one saw at a glance nofewer than a score of villages half concealed by aninundation of sunshine so physically visible that oneobserved with astonishment that the snow lay stillunmelted on the peak of Mulhacen behind.

Yet for all the heat I would not have been elsewherenor doing else than striking across the steamingvega of Granada. In such situations, I confess, I likemy own company best. With the finest companionin the world a ten-mile tramp through this heat anddust would have been a labor like the digging of aditch. Alone, with the imagination free to take colorfrom the landscape, each petty inconvenience seemedbut to put me the more in touch with the real Spain.

Just here lies the advantage of traveling in thishalf-tramp fashion. The "personally conducted"traveler, too, sees the Alhambra; yet how slight isthat compared with sharing the actual life of theSpanish people, which the tourist catches if at all invagrant, posing fragments? To move through aforeign country shut up in a moving room, carryingwith one the modern luxuries of home, is not travel;we call it so by courtesy and for lack of an exactterm. "Il faut payer de sa personne." He whowill gather the real honey of travel must be on thescene, a "super" at least on the stage itself, notgossiping with his fellows in a box.

With all its aridity the vega was richly productive.Olive-trees hung heavy, on either hand spreadbroad fields of grain in which peasants were toilingswelteringly as if they had never heard of thecommon sense institution of Sunday. When sun andtree-tops met, the highway began to wind, leavingthe vega behind and wandering through low hillsamong which appeared no villages, only an occasionalrough-hewn house by the way. Toward twilightthere opened a more verdant valley, and a stream,rising somewhere near at hand, fell in with thecarretera and capered prattling along with it into thenight.

It was ten perhaps when I came upon a lonelylittle venta by the wayside, a one-story building olderthan the modern world, serving both for dwelling andstable. The master of the house and her husbandwere both of that light-hearted gentry to whom lifemeans nothing more than to be permitted good healthand a place to eat an occasional puchero. Withthese and a pair of mountain arrieros I gossiped untilmy eyelids grew heavy, and turned in on a huskmattress spread, like that of my hosts, on the kitchenfloor.

At the first hint of dawn I was off and had set thesun a handicap of three miles or more before hebegan to ruddy the jagged chain to the eastward. Thefamily was already at work, the arrieros wending ontheir southward way singing savage fragments ofsong; for like the Arab the rural andaluz sleepsfull-dressed and springs instantly from bed to labor.

A country lightly populated continued. At highnoon I reached a bath-inviting irrigating stream thatwound through a grove of willows offering protectionenough from the sun for a brief siesta. Soon after,the landscape grew savage and untenanted, and thecarretera more and more constricted until it passed,like a thread through the eye of a needle, througha short tunnel, built, said the inscription, by IsabelII--an example of exaggerated Spanish courtesyevidently, for history shouts assurance that theactivities of that lady were rather exclusively confinedto less enduring works. Once released, the gorgeexpanded to a rambling valley with many orchards ofapricots and plums, still walled, however, by hillsso lofty that the sun deserted it early and gave theunusual sight of a lingering twilight.

From sunset until well into the night I kept sharplookout for a public hostelry; but only a fewpeasants' hovels appeared, and with fifty-six kilometersin my legs I gave up the search and made my bedof a bundle of straw on a little nose of meadow abovethe highway. All through the night the tramp ofasses and the cursing or singing of their driverspassing below drifted into my dreams. The weatherwas not cold, yet in the most silent hour a chillinesshalf-arousing crept over me, and it was with a senseof relief that I awoke at last entirely and wandered on.

By daylight the hills receded somewhat, flatteningthemselves out to rolling uplands; the stream grewbroad and noisy in its strength. Then suddenly atthe turning of an abrupt hill Jaen rose before me, acity pitched on a rocky summit like the capping overa hayco*ck, in the center the vast cathedral; the wholeradiant with the flush of morning and surrounded bya soil as red as if the blood of all the Moorish warswere gathered here and mixed with the clay. Thehighway, catching sight of its goal, abandonedunceremoniously the guidance of the river and climbedwith great strides up the red hillside into the town.

I had been so long up that the day seemedalready far advanced. But Jaen was still half abed.I drifted into what was outwardly a little cantina,with zinc bar and shining spigots, but domesticallythe home of an amiable couple. The cantinero,lolling in the customary fat-man's attitude behind thebar, woke with a start from the first of that day'ssiestas when I requested breakfast, while his spouseceased her sweeping to cry out, "Como! Tantemprano! Why, it is scarcely eight o'clock!" Thelady, however, gave evidence of an un-Spanishadaptability by rising to the occasion. While SeñorCorpulence was still shaking his head condolingly, shecalled to the driver of a passing flock of goats, oneof which, under her watchful eye, yielded up afoaming cupful that tided me over until I sat down inthe family dining-room to a breakfast such as israrely forthcoming in Spain before high noon.

The cantina was no more a lodging-house than arestaurant. But so charming a couple was not to belost sight of, and before the meal was ended Iexpressed a hope of making my home with them duringmy stay. The landlord was taking breath to expresshis regrets when the matron, after a moment ofhesitation, admitted that even that might be possible,adding however, with an air of mystery, that shecould not be certain until toward night. I left mybundle and sauntered out into the city.

Jaen is a town of the Arab, a steep town with thosenarrow, sun-dodging streets that to the utilitarianare inexcusable but to all others give evidence of thewisdom of the Moor. Content, perhaps, with its pasthistory, it is to-day a slow, serenely peaceful placeriding at anchor in the stream of time and singularlyfree from that dread disease of doing somethingalways. Unusually full it seemed of ingenuous,unhurrying old men engaged only in watching lifeglide by under the blue sky. I spent half the daychatting with these in the thirsting, dust-blown parkin the center of the town. Their language was stilla dialect of Andalusia, a bit more Castilian perhapsthan on the southern coast, at any rate now grown asfamiliar as my own.

Each conversation was punctuated with cigarettesmoke. Nothing in Spain is more nearly incessantthan the rolling and burning of what Borrow dubbedin the days before the French word had won a placein our language "paper cigars." We of Americaare inclined to look upon indulgence in this form ofthe weed as a failing of youth, undignified at leastin old men. Not so the Spaniard. Whatever hisage or station in life--the policeman on his beat,the engineer at his throttle, the boy at his father'sheels, the priest in his gown, puff eternally at theircigarillo. The express-check cashed in a Spanishbank is swallowed up in a cloud of smoke as thickas the fog that hovers over the Grand Banks; thedirectors who should attempt to forbid smoking intheir establishment would in all probability beinvited to hump over their own ledgers. The Spaniardis strikingly the antithesis of the American in this,that his "pleasures," his addictions come first and hiswork second. Let the two conflict and his work mustbe postponed or left undone. In contrast to hisceaseless smoking the Spaniard never chews tobacco;his language has no word for that habit.

To the foreigner who smokes Spain is no PromisedLand. The ready-made cigarettes are an abomination,the tobacco a stringy shag that grows endurableonly with long enduring. Matches, like tobacco, area fabrication--and a snare--of the governmentmonopoly. Luckily, fire was long before matcheswere. These old men of Jaen one and all carriedflint and steel and in lieu of tinder a coil of fibrousrope fitted with a nickled ring as extinguisher. Fewpeoples equal the Spaniard in eagerness and abilityto "beat" the government.

I returned at evening to the wineshop to begreeted as a member of the household.

"You wondered," laughed the señora, "why Icould not answer you this morning. It is becausethe spare room is rented to Don Luis, here, who worksat night on the railroad. Meet Don Luis, who hasjust risen and given permission that you sleep in hisbed, which I go now to spread with clean sheets."

The railway man was one of nature's satisfactions,a short solid fellow of thirty-five, overflowing withcontagious cheerfulness. The libation incidental toour introduction being drained, the landlord led theway, chair in hand, to the bit of level flagging beforethe shop. As we sat "al fresco" drinking into ourlungs the refreshing air of evening, we were joinedby a well-dressed man whom I recalled having seensomewhere during the day. He was a lawyer, speakinga pure Castilian with scarcely a trace of the localpatois, in short, one whom the caste rules of anyother land of Europe would have forbidden to spendan evening in company with a tavern-keeper, aswitchman, and a wandering unknown.

"How does it happen, señor," I asked, when ouracquaintance had advanced somewhat, "that I sawyou in the cathedral this morning?"

"The domain of women, priests and tourists?"he laughed. "Because, señor, it is the one place intown where I can get cool."

Truly the heat of a summer day in Jaen calls forsome such drastic measure, for it grows estival,gigantic, weighing down alike on mind and bodyuntil one feels imperative necessity of escaping fromit somehow, of running away from it somewhere; andthere is no surer refuge than the cavernous cathedral.

This as well as the fact that the edifice containsconsiderable that is artistic led me back to it the nextmorning. But this time it was in the turmoil of apersonally conducted party. When I had takenrefuge in a shaded seat across the way, the flock pouredout upon the broad stone steps and, falling upon abeggar, checked their flight long enough to bestowupon him a shower of pity and copper coins.

The mendicant was blind and crippled, outwardlya personification of gratitude and humility, andattended by a gaunt-bellied urchin to whom mightfittingly have been applied the Spanish appellation"child of misery." Long after the hubbub of thepassing tourists had died away in the tortuous cityhis meekly cadenced voice drifted on after them:

"Benditos sean, caballeros. Que Dios se lopagará mil veces al cielo!"

A curiosity to know whether such gentleness weregenuine held me for a time in my place across theway. Silence had settled down. Only a shopkeeperwandering by to a day of drowsing passed now andthen; within the great cathedral stillness reigned.The urchin ran after each passerby, wailing thefamiliar formula, only to be as often ordered off. Atlength he ascended the steps stealthily and, creepingwithin a few feet of his master, lay down and wasinstantly lost in sleep, a luxury he had evidently nottasted for a fortnight.

The beggar rocked to and fro on his worthlessstumps, now and again uttering as mournful a wailas if his soul had lost not one but all save a scatteredhalf-dozen of its strings. Gradually the surroundingsilence drew his attention. He thrust a handbehind one of his unhuman ears and listened intently.Not a sound stirred. He groped with his left handalong the stones, then with the right and, suddenlytouching the sleeping child, a tremor of rage shiveredthrough his misshapen carcass. Feeling with hisfinger tips until he had located the boy's face, heraised his fist, which was massive as that of ahorsesho*r, high above his head and brought it down threetimes in quick succession. They were blows to haveshattered the panel of a door; but the boy utteredonly a little stifled whine and, springing to his feet,took up again his task, now and then wiping awaywith a sleeve the blood that dripped from his facedown along his tattered knees.

Before the sun had reached its full strength, Istruck off to explore the barren bluff that overlooksJaen on the south and east. Barely had I gained thefirst crest, however, before the inexorable leaden heatwas again upon me, and the rest of the day was aperspiring labor. Only the reflection that real traveland sight-seeing is as truly work as any life'svocation lent starch to my wilted spirits.

At intervals of two or three hundred yards alongthe precipitous cliff that half circles the city stoodthe shelter of an octroi guard, built of anything thatmight deflect a ray of sunlight. In the shade of eachcrouched a ragged, ennui-eyed man staring away intothe limitless expanse of sunshine. Their fellows maybe found forming a circle around every city in thekingdom of Spain, the whole body numbering manythousands. The impracticable, the quixotic characterof official Spain stands forth nowhere more clearlythan in this custom of sentencing an army of her sonsto camp in sloth about her cities on the bare chanceof intercepting ten-cent's worth of smuggling, whenthe same band working even moderately mightproduce tenfold the octroi revenues of the land.

I halted with one of the tattered fellows, whosegladness for the unusual boon of companionship wastempered by a diffidence that was almost bashfulness,so rarely did he come in contact with his fellow-man.For a long hour we sat together in the shadow of thehut, our eyes drifting away over the gray-roofed,closely-packed city below. When our conversationtouched on the loneliness of his situation the guardgrew vehement in bewailing its dreariness anddesolation. But when I hinted that the octroi mightperhaps be abolished to advantage, he sprang to his feetcrying almost in terror:

"For los clavos de Cristo, señor! What thenwould become of nosotros? I have no other tradewhatever than to be guard to the octroi."

A sorry craft indeed, this squatting out a lifetimeunder a grass hut.

The bluish haze of a summer evening was gatheringover Jaen when, returning through a windingstreet to my lodging, there fell on my ear the thrumof a solitary guitar and the rich and mellow voice ofa street singer. The musician was a blind man offifty, of burly build and a countenance brimming withgood cheer and contentment, accompanied by awoman of the same age. As I joined the little knotof peasants and townsmen gathered about him, hissong ended and he drew out a packet of hand bills.

"On this sheet, señores," he announced, holdingone up, "are all the songs I have sung for you.And they are all yours for a perro gordo."

I was among the first to buy, glad to have paidmany times this mere copper to be able to carryhome even one of those languorous ballads so filledwith the serene melancholy of the Moor and the fireof Andalusia. But the sheet bore nothing butprinted words.

"Every word is there, señores," continued theminstrel, as if in response to my disappointment. "Asfor the music, anyone can remember that or make itup for himself."

To illustrate how simple this might be he threwa hand carelessly across his guitar and struck upanother of the droning, luring melodies, that rose andfell and drifted away through the passages of thedimming city. Easy, indeed! One could as easilyremember or make up for one's self the carol of themeadow lark in spring or the lullaby of thenightingale in the darkened tree-tops.

That I might catch the five-thirty train my hostawoke me next morning at three-twenty. I turnedover for a nap and descending in the dawn by thedust-blanketed Alameda to the station two milesdistant, found this already peopled with a gathering ofall the types of southern Spain. The train was due intwenty minutes, wherefore the ticket-office, of course,was already closed. After some search I discoveredthe agent, in the person of a creature compared withwhom Caliban would have been a beauty, exchangingstories with a company of fellow-bandits on thecrowded platform. He informed me in no pleasantmanner that it was too late to buy a ticket. WhenI protested that the legal closing hour was but fiveminutes before train time, he shrugged his shouldersand squinted away down the track as if he fanciedthe train was already in sight. I decoyed him intothe station at last, but even then he refused to sella ticket beyond Espeluy.

We reached that junction soon after and I set offwestward along the main line. The landscape wasrich and rolling, broad stretches of golden grainalternating with close-shaven plains seething in thesun. Giant cacti again bordered the way. Once, inthe forenoon, I came upon a refreshing forest, butshadows were rare along the route. The line waseven more traveled than that below Honda.Field-laborers passed often, while sear-brown peasant women,on dwarf donkeys jogged by in almost continualprocession on their way to or from market.

Not once during all my tramps on the railwaysof Spain had a train passed of which the engineerdid not give me greeting. Sometimes it was merelythe short, crisp "Vaya!" more often the completeexpression "Vaya V. con Dios!" not infrequentlyaccompanied by a few words of good cheer. Here onthe main line I had occasion to test still further thepoliteness of the man at the throttle. I had rolled acigarette only to find that I had burned my lastmatch. At that moment the Madrid-bound expressswung out of a shallow cutting in the hills ahead. Icaught the eye of the engineer and held up thecigarette in sign of distress. He saw and understood,and with a kindly smile and a "Vaya!" as he passed,dropped two matches at my very feet.

It was not far beyond that I caught my firstglimpse of the Guadalquivir. Shades of theMississippi! The conquering Moor had the audacity toname this sluggish, dull-brown stream the "Wad-al-Gkebir,"the "Great River!" Yet, after all, thingsare great or small merely by comparison. To apeople accustomed only to such trickles of water as hadthus far crossed my path in the peninsula no doubtthis over-grown brook, bursting suddenly on theirdesert eyes, had seemed worthy the appellation.But many streams wandering by behind the barn ofan American farmer and furnishing the oldswimming-hole are far greater than the Guadalquivir.

I crossed it toward three of the afternoon by anancient stone bridge of many arches that seemedfitted to its work as a giant would be in embroideringdoilies. Beyond lay Andújar, a hard-baked,crumbling town of long ago, swirling with sand;famous through all Spain for its porous clay jars.In every street sounded the soft slap of the potter; Ipeeped into a score of cobble-paved courts where thenewly baked jarras were heaped high or werebeing wound with straw for shipment.

A long search failed to disclose a casa de comidasin all the town. The open market overflowed withfruit, however, stocked with which I strolled backacross the river to await the midnight train. It waspacked with all the tribes of Spain, in every sleepingattitude. Not until we had passed Córdoba at thebreak of day did I find space to sit down and drowsefor an hour before we rumbled into Seville.

I had exhibited my dust-swathed person in atleast half a dozen hotels and fled at announcementof their charges, when I drifted into the narrow calleRosario and entered the "Fonda de las QuatroNaciones." There ensued a scene which was oftento be repeated during the summer. The landlordgreeted me in the orange-scented patio, noted myforeign accent, and jumped instantly to the conclusion,as Spaniards will, that I knew no Castilian, inspite of the fact that I was even then addressing himwith unhesitating glibness. Motioning to me to beseated, he raced away into the depths of the fondacalling for "Pasquale." That youth soon appeared,in tuxedo and dazzling expanse of shirt-front,extolling as he came the uncounted virtues of his house,in a flowing, unblushing imitation of French.Among those things that I had not come to Spainto hear was Spanish mutilation of the Gaelic tongue.For a long minute I gazed at the speaker with everypossible evidence of astonishment. Then turning tothe landlord I inquired in most solemn Castilian.

"Está loco, señor? Is he insane that he jabberssuch a jargon?"

"Cómo, señor!" gasped Pasquale in his owntongue. "You are not then a Frenchman?"

"Frenchman, indeed!" I retorted. "Yo, señor,soy americano."

"Señor!" cried the landlord, bowing profoundly,"I ask your pardon on bended knee. In yourCastilian was that which led me to believe it was notyour native tongue. Now, of course, I note that ithas merely the little pequeñísimos peculiarities thatmake so charming the pronunciation of our peopleacross the ocean."

A half-hour later I was installed in a third-storyroom looking down upon the quiet little calle Rosario,and destined to be my home for a fortnight to come.During all that time Pasquale served me at tablewithout once inflicting upon me a non-Spanish word.Nor did he once suspect what a hoax I had playedon the "Four Nations" by announcing my nationalitywithout prefixing the qualification "norte."

CHAPTER V

THE TORERO AT HOME

Even though one deny the right of itsinhabitants to pity the man who must live and dieelsewhere, even he who finds it panting and simmeringin the heat of summer, will still count it nopunishment to spend a fortnight in Seville. Tranquillityand that laggard humor so befitting vacation daysreign within its precincts; yet it is a real city, neverfalling quite inert even at the hour of siesta, whichis so like the silence of the grave in other towns ofAndalusia. In the slender calle Rosario itself thestillness was never supreme, but tempered always bythe droning of a passing ajero with his necklace ofgarlic, an itinerant baker, or a blind crone hobblingby with the fifth or the tenth of a lottery ticket,crooning in mournful voice, "La lotería! Elnumero trienta seis mil quinientos cincuenta y cinco-o-o.Who will win a fortune in the lotería-a-a?" Thenabove all else the soft, quarter-hourly booming of thecathedral bells to mark the passing of the day, likemile-stones on a wandering highway.

Nor with all her languor is Seville slovenly. Outwardly,like all that carries the ear-mark of the Moor,she is bare. In the first brief survey one may fancyone's self in a city of dismal hovels. But this isbecause the houses are turned wrong-side out; aglimpse into one of the marble-paved patios, fragrantwith orange-trees and cooled by fountainsthrowing their waters high in the dry air, foreverdispells the illusion.

My first full day in Seville fell on a holidaydedicated to San Pedro which, chancing also to be mybirthday, it was easy to imagine a personal festival.In truth, the celebration of the day was marked bynothing other than a bit more indolence than usual.The real fiesta began at night in the Alameda ofHercules. There, among a hundred booths, the chiefobject of interest was a negro, the first of his race,one might fancy, who ever invaded the city.

By day, indeed, there is little else to do in Sevillethan the royal occupation of doing nothing, a strollalong the Sierpes in the morning, a retreat towardnoisy, glaring noonday to the cool and silentcathedral or those other churches that rival it as museumsof art, there to wander undisturbed among masterpiecesof Spain's top-most century. The cathedral,by the way, houses the most recent traveler in thecalendar of saints. Saint Anthony of Padua, notmany years ago, released by the dexterous knife ofan impulsive admirer, struck out into the unknownand journeyed as far as our own New York. Butthere repenting such conduct at his years or daringto venture no further when his companion found asojourn in the Tombs imperative, he returned to hisplace, and resumed it so exactly that only the sharpesteye can detect the evidence of his unseemly excursion.

A city that styles her most important street that"of the Serpents," even though it harbors no moreof the outcasts of the pavement than many anotherfamous thoroughfare, may be expected to abound inother strange names. Nor are they lacking. Howunworthy his lodging must the worldly Sevillian feelwho wanders uncertainly homeward in the small hoursto his abode in "Jesús del Gran Poder"--"PowerfulJesus street." Or with what face can the merchantturn off after a day of fleecing his fellow-man towardhis dwelling in "Amor de Dios"? Top-heavynomenclature is not confined to the streets. Thereare many windows in which one may read theannouncement of a "Media Noche de Jamón." No,it is not a new law by the cortes, but a "Middle ofthe Night of Ham," or, succinctly, the over-workedham sandwich. The uninstructed may be led at sightof a building proclaiming itself an "Academia delTiro al Blanco" into the belief that Seville isoverrun with institutions of higher learning. Not so,distinctly not so. The "Academy of the Shot atthe White" is what less extravagant and imaginativepeoples dub a shooting gallery.

The man in the street is frequently no lesscolorful in his language. Yet the crisp, trenchant wordcommon to that personage the world over is here,too, in full force, led by that never idle explosive"hombre." Dictionarically speaking, "hombre"means "man," and nothing more--which only proveshow dismally the dictionary has failed to keep upwith the times. For child, woman, or hen-peckedmale answers to the expression as readily as to hisown name. A sevillano leading a pup at the end ofa string may be frequently observed to give a jerkat the leash and cry over his shoulder, "Hombre!Vámonos!"--"Come along, man!"

Anent the man in the street, it may be assertedthat the Sevillian is usually there. Writers ofSpanish romances have for centuries sought to win oursympathy for their love-lorn heroes by stationingthem in the public way to whisper their pleadingsthrough the cold bars of a reja. The picture istrue; the lover of flesh and blood and of to-day stillstands there. But so, for that matter, does thebutcher's boy, the ol'-clothes man, and even lessreputable persons. In Spanish newspapers thenational wealth of phrase is too often overshadowed--likethe news columns--by the touching assuranceof personal announcements. Rare the page that isnot half taken up with a black-bordered insetconveying the information that:

"Señor and Señora Perez have the honor to advisetheir sorrowing friends and business associates thatlittle Willie Perez, aged six, went up to heaven at7:32 last evening."

There is nothing like being exact and punctual inthese little matters.

Toward sunset, after the siesta, it is not merelyà la mode but good sense to stroll down to the banksof the Guadalquivir by the Golden Tower and driftan hour or two back and forth along the deep-shadedAlameda. There one will be in the best company inSeville--and the worst; for all the city is there,lolling in its carriage or pattering along the gravelin its hempen sandals.

But it is only at night that Seville is wholly andgenuinely awake and approaches somewhat to thatfountain of joy her inhabitants would have the worldbelieve her. Then at last does she shake off entirelythe daytime lassitude. The noises of the day are allthere, the street-hawkers have gained a hundredfoldin volume of lung, in number, and in activity, thecathedral bells seem twice as loud. Toward nine allthe city and his wife and children and domestics aregathered or gathering in the great focal point, thepalm-fringed Plaza San Fernando. The attractionsare several. First of all is the "cinematagrafo," amoving-picture machine throwing its mirth andpuerility on a sheet suspended in the center of theplaza. Second, a military band, not a caterwaulingof strange noises that one would desire suppressedby fire or earthquake, but a company seriously andprofessionally engaged in producing genuine music,which it does from near nine till after midnight ascontinuously as any band could be expected to untilsome invention makes it possible to blow a tromboneand smoke a cigarette at one and the same time.Third, there is the excitement which the minglingtogether in crowds brings every Latin people, andthe supreme pleasure of strolling to and fro admiringone another and themselves. Fourth, if so manyexcuses are needed, there is fresh air and the nearestapproach to coolness that the city affords.

Yet with all Seville gathered the thousandroped-off chairs around the curtain are rarely halffilled; for to sit in one costs a "fat dog," as theSpaniard facetiously dubs his Lacedemonian two-centpiece. But what a multitude in the rest of thesquare! Out of doors all Spain mixes freely andheartily. Hidalgos with the right to conceal theirpremature baldness from Alfonso himself shuddernot in the least at being jostled by beggars; nay,even exchange with them at times a few words ofbanter. Silly young fops, in misfit imitation ofParisian style, a near-Panama set coquettishly over oneear, trip by arm in arm, swinging their jaunty canes.Workingmen scorning such priggishness strideslowly by in trim garments set off by bright redfajas in which is stuck a great navaja, or clasp-knifeof Albacete. Rich-bosomed majas with their blackmasses of mane-like hair, in crimson skirts oryellow--as yellow as the gown of Buddha--driftlanguorously by with restless fan. No type is missingfrom the strolling multitude. Strolling, too, it is,in spite of the congestion; for the slow tide-likemovement of the throng not only gives opportunitybut compels any lazy foreigner to walk whether hewill or not. Everyone is busy with gallantry anddoing nothing--doing it only as the Spaniard canwho, thanks to temperament, climate, and trainingknows that peerless art and follows it with pleasure,not with the air of one who prefers or pretends toprefer to be working.

The Sevillian is in many things, above all in hisamusem*nts, a full-grown child. Groups of portlybusiness men, Seville's very captains of industry, sithour by hour watching the unrolling of just suchfilms, as are shown in our "nickelodeons," shoutingwith glee and clapping each other on the shoulderwhen a man on the screen falls off a chair or abaker's boy deluges a passerby with flour. No lesshilarious are the priests, shaking their fat sides withmerriment at the pictured discomfiture of one oftheir guild in eager pursuit of some frail beauty.As interested as the rest are the policemen--and aslittle engaged in the fulfillment of their duties,whatever those may be. A poor species, a distressinglyunattractive breed are these city policemen of Spain,in their uniform closely resembling checkerboardpajamas, lacking even the Hibernian dignity of size,stoop-shouldered and sunken-chested with loungingon their spines and the inordinate sucking ofcigarette smoke into their lungs. Of the self-respectand pride of office characteristic of the nationalguardia civil they have none whatever. I recall noevening in the Plaza San Fernando that at least onepair of these wind-broken, emasculate caricatures ofmanhood did not fall to quarreling, dancing in rageand shrieking mutual curses in their smoke-ruinedvoices, while the throng dogged them on.

Families gather early in the plaza. There ensuesa moment or two of idle thrumming--for father orbrother is certain to bring his guitar--then outbursts the sharp, luring fandango; the little girls insnowy white squirm a moment on their seats, springsuddenly out upon the gravel, and fall to dancing tothe click of their castanets as rhythmically as anyprofessionals. They do not dance to "show off,"they are indeed rarely conscious of attractingattention; they dance because the fire in them compels,because they wish to--and what the Andalusianwishes to do he does then and there, gloriouslyindifferent to whoever may be looking on. Let himwho can imagine an American bringing his guitar tothe public square of a large city and, surrounded bythousands, play serenely on into the depths of thenight.

The Andalusian is one of the most truly musicalbeings on earth, in the sense that his music expresseshis real emotions. Song is almost his natural modeof expression, always spontaneous, with none of thestiffness of learned music. He has no prelude,follows no conscious rules, displays none of thatpreliminary affectation and patent evidence of technicthat so frequently makes our northern music stiltedand unenchanting. He plunges headlong into hissong, anywhere, at any time, as a countrymanunsullied by pedantry enters into conversation.

Thus wanes the night in the Plaza San Fernando,marked by the boom of the Giralda's bells, thebawling of vendors of lottery-tickets, of titbits, ofmatches, of azucarillos, of naranjeros crying theiroranges, of boys carrying miniature roulette-wheelswith a cone of sherbet as prize, that the littlechildren may be taught to gamble early in life; andsharply above all else and most incessantly thealpargata-shod water-seller, with his vessel like apowder-can slung across one shoulder, his glassesclinking musically, crying, crying always in hisvoluptuous, slovenly dialect:

"A'ua! A'ua fresca! A'ua fresca como la nieve!Quién quiere beber?"

We have street calls in the United States, but hewhose ear is daily assaulted therewith would havedifficulty in imagining how musical these may be whenfilled, like the thrum of the guitar, the street ballad,the "carol of the lusty muleteer," and the wail of therailway announcer, with the inner soul of Andalusia.

There is to-day very little left of the nationalcostume of Spain. One may except the stiff, square-cutsombrero, the alpargata of workman and beggar, thegarb of the arriero, fitting and suiting him as if ithad grown on him, the blanket which the peasantwears thrown over one shoulder, not because herealizes what a charm this adds to his appearance,but because he often sleeps out of doors or on thestone floor of public stables. Last, and least to beforgotten, is the mantilla. Except for it the womenof Spain have succumbed to the ugly creations ofParis; may that day be centuries distant when theabomination masquerading under the name ofwoman's hat makes its way into the peninsula. Yetthere is never among Spanish women that gaudyaffectation of style so frequent elsewhere. Give herthe merest strip of gay calico and the española willmake it truly ornamental; with a red flower to wearover one temple and a mantilla draped across theback of her head she is more pleasingly adorned thanthe best that Paris can offer.

There is something unfailingly coquettish aboutthe mantilla. It sets best, perhaps, with a touch ofArab blood; and in the Plaza San Fernando thisis seldom lacking. Everywhere are morisco facesframed in the black mantilla and, as if in furtherreminder of Mohammedan days, there still remains theinstinctive habit of holding a corner of the shawlacross the chin. Thus accoutered only the Castilian"ojear" can in any sense express the power giventhe andaluza by her Oriental ancestry to do or sayso much with a glance of her black eye. With thefan, too, she is an adept. The Japanese geisha isin comparison a bungler. The woman of Spain hasher fan in such fine training that it will carry onextended conversations for her without a word fromher lips, as Spanish peasants can talk from twohilltops miles apart by the mere motions of their arms.

But who of all the misinformers of humanity firstset afoot the rumor that the sevillana is beautiful?"Salada" she is, brimming over with that "salt"for which she is so justly renowned; chic, too, attimes, with her tiny feet and hands and gracefulcarriage; and always voluptuous. But one might wanderlong in the music-livened Plaza San Fernandowithout espying a woman to whom could be granted theunqualified adjective beautiful. On the other handit is rare that one meets a sevillana, unless she bedeeply marked by the finger of time, who is ugly;never, if my search was thorough, one scrawny orangular. In Spain is never that blending andmixture of all types as in our land of boundlessmigration; hence one may generalize. Salada, graceful,full of languor, above all wholly free from pose, isthe sevillana in her mantilla. Of education in thebookish sense she has little, of the striving after"culture" to the divorce of common sense nonewhatever. She may--and probably does--knownothing of the sciences, or the wrinkle-browed joysof the afternoon club. But she is brimming withhealth and sound good sense, above all she isincontestably charming; and is not this after all--whisperit not in New England--the chief duty of her sex?

The Andalusian is primarily an out-door people;not merely in the plain and physical sense, but inlife and character. He lives his life openly, frankly,setting his face in no mask of Puritanical pretensionwhen he sallies forth into the world, being himselfalways, in public or in private. All in all amongthe sincerest, he is also the most abstemious andhealthiest of peoples; not yet spoiled by luxury.His existence is reduced to simplicity; more exactlyhe has never lost touch with eternal nature. Hetakes time to live and never admits the philosophythat he must work before resting, but hinges hisconduct on the creed that he must live first, and dowhatever of work there is time left to do. In no sense ishe lazy; rather in his sound sanity he has a realappreciation of the value of life. To-day is thegreat day to him. Live now is his motto, not putoff living until he has earned enough to live, onlyto find it too late to begin. One would seek throughSeville in vain for that strained, devil-chased air sostamped on our own national physiognomy. Whateverhis vocation, or the hour of the day, the Spaniardhas always time to choose the shady side ofthe street, time to halt and talk with his friends. AsI watched him night by night in the Plaza SanFernando--and this is largely typical of all Spain--therecame the reflection that the lands of continualstriving, the lands where "culture" demands therepression of every natural emotion and enthusiasm,are dreary realms, indeed, compared with the LivingLatin South. Here is not merely animation, but life,real life everywhere, no mere feigned living.

On my second Sunday in Seville I attended mysecond bullfight. The first I had seen from thedepths of the sombra, believing the assertion thatnone but a man with Arabic blood in his veins couldendure the unshaded side of the arena. But my fearof sun-stroke had melted away; moreover, thesun-side gate keeper is most easily satisfied. I bought aticket at a corner of las Sierpes and entered the plazaas soon as the doors were opened.

Not a half-dozen had preceded me when I took aplace on the stone bank directly behind the red tablas.On my heels appeared a rabble of ragged, joyfulfellows, who quickly demonstrated that I had not, asI supposed, chosen the foremost seat, by coming toroost along the top of the barrier in front of me.One shudders to reflect what would befall individualsin an American baseball crowd who should conductthemselves as did these habitués of the Sevillian sol.But to the mercurial andaluz, accustomed always andanywhere to give his idiosyncrasies and enthusiasmsfull play, the wildest antics seem quite in place.

If, as many reputed authorities will have us believe,the Spaniard's love for "toros" is dying out, whatmust it have been before the dissolution began? Atany rate it has not yet sunk to that point where thevast plaza of Seville will hold all who would come,even to these novilladas in which the bulls are youngand the fighters not yet more famous than a memberof the cortes. From a dozen entries the spectatorspoured into the enclosure; in the blazing semicirclebronzed peasants and workmen with wine-swollenbotas, across the shimmering sand richly attiredseñoritas in the white mantilla of festival, attendedby middle-aged duenas and, at respectful distance,by caballeros of effeminate deportment. Theespañola is as ardent a lover of bulls as the men. Onemust not, however, jump to the conclusion that she iscruel and inhuman. On the contrary she is in manythings exceedingly tender-hearted. Habit and theaccustomed way of thinking make vast differences,and the fact that Spain was for seven hundred yearsin continual warfare may account for a certaincallousness to physical suffering.

The Spanish plaza de toros is the nearest modernprototype of the Roman Coliseum; when it is filledone may easily form a mental picture of the sceneat a gladiatorial combat. By four-thirty the voiceof the circular multitude was like the rumble of somedistant Niagara. Howling vendors of thirst-quenchingfruits climbed over our blistering knees; betweenthe barriers circulated hawkers of everything thatmay be sold to the festive-humored. Spain may betardy in all else, but her bullfights begin sharply ontime. At the first stroke of five from the Giraldaa bugle sounded, the barrier gates swung open, andthe game was on.

It would be not merely presumptuous, which iscriminal, but trite, which is worse, to attempt at thislate day to picture a scene that has been described ahundred times in every civilized tongue and in allthe gamut of styles from Byronic verse tocommercial-traveler's prose. But whereas every bullfightis the same in its general features, no two were everalike in the unexpected incidents that make thesport of perennial interest to the aficionados. An"aficionado," be it noted in passing, is a "fan," abeing quite like our own "rooter" except that, hisinfirmity being all but universal, he is not looked downupon with such pity by his fellow-countrymen.

Seville is the acknowledged headquarters of thetaurine art. In our modern days of migratorymixture of races and carelessness of social lines, toreroshave arisen from all classes and in all provinces--nay,even in foreign lands. One of Spain's famousmatadores is a Parisian, and one even more renownedbears the nickname of the "Mexican Millionaire."But the majority of bullfighters are still sons ofpeasants and small landholders of Andalusia ingeneral and the vicinity of Seville in particular. Thetorero touring "the provinces" is as fond ofannouncing himself a sevillano as are our strollingplayers of claiming "New Yawk" as home. Nowadays,too, the bulls are bred in all parts of Spainand by various classes of persons. But theganaderías of Andalusia still supply most of the animalsthat die in the plazas of Spain, and command thehighest prices. Among the principal raisers is theDuke of Veragua, who boasts himself--and can,it is said, make good the boast--a lineal descendantof that Christopher Columbus whose wandering ashesnow repose in the cathedral of Seville. The duke,however, takes second place to one Eduardo Miúra,whose bulls are so noted for their fury that amovement has for some time been on foot to demanddouble fees for facing animals from his pastures.

The bulls of both my Sundays in Seville were"miúras," and fully sustained the fame of theirganadero. Each córrida began with the usualcaparisoned parade, the throwing of the key, thefleeing of the over-cautious alguaciles amid the jeeringof the multitude. Is there another case in historyof a national sport conducted by the vested authoritiesof government? Perhaps so, in Nero's littlematinées in the toasting of Christians. But here therules of the game are altered and to some extentframed by those authorities. Imagine the cityfathers of, let us say Boston, debating with fieryzeal whether a batter should be allowed to run onthe third strike! Then, too, the mayor or hisrepresentative is the umpire, safely so, however, for heis securely locked in his box high above the rabbleand there is never a losing team to lie in wait for himbeyond the club-house.

It is the all but universal custom, I note inskimming through the impressions of a half-hundredtravelers in Spain, to decry bullfighting in thestrongest terms. Nay, almost without exception, thechroniclers, who appear in most cases to befull-grown, able-bodied men, relate how a sickness nighunto death came upon them at about the time thefirst bull was getting warmed up to his business whichforced them to flee the scene forever. One must, ofcourse, believe they are not posing before the gentlereader, but it comes at times with difficulty. To besure, the game has little in common with croquet ordominoes; there are stages of it, particularly thedisemboweling of helpless hacks, that give thenewcomer more than one unpleasant quarter of an hour.Indeed, I am inclined to think that had I a dictator'spower I should abolish bullfighting to-morrow, ornext Monday at least; but so, for that matter, Ishould auto races and country billboards, Salomedancers and politicians, train-boys and ticketspeculators. Unfortunately--

At any rate, I came out to this second córrida inSeville and left it with the hope of seeing severalmore. Certainly there is no other "sport" that canmore quickly and fully efface from the mind of thespectator his personal cares and problems; and isnot this, after all, the chief, if not the only raisond'être of professional sport? There is an intensityin the moment of a matador standing with steeled eyeand bared sword before a bull panting in tired anger,head lowered, a hush of expectancy in the vastaudience, the chulos poised on tiptoe at a little distance,an equine corpse or two tumbled on the sand to givethe scene reality, compared with which the third man,third strike in the ninth inning of a 0-0 contest isas exciting as a game of marbles. It is his hungerfor such moments of frenetic attention that makesthe Spaniard a lover of the córrida, not the sightof blood and the injuries to beast and man, which,in his intoxication at the game itself, he entirely losessight of.

The newcomer will long remember his first bull--certainlyif, as in my own case, the first bandarilleroslips at the moment of thrusting his barbed dartsand is booted like a soccer football half across thering by the snorting animal. Still less shall I forgetthe chill that shot through me when, with thefifth bull at the height of his fury, a gaunt andawkward boy of fifteen sprang suddenly over thebarriers and shook his ragged blouse a dozen timesin the animal's face. As many times he escaped agoring by the closest margin. The toreros did notfor a moment lose their heads. Calmly anddexterously they maneuvered until one of them drew thebull off, when another caught the intruder by thearm and marched him across the ring to the shadeof the mayor's box. There the youth, who had takenthis means of gaining an audience, lifted up amournful voice and asked for food, asserting that he wasstarving--a statement that seemed by no meansimprobable. The response was thumbs down. But hegained his point, in a way, for he was given afortnight in prison. Incidents of the sort had grown sofrequent of late in the plaza of Seville as to makenecessary a new law, promulgated in large letters onthat day's programme. Printed words, in all probability,meant nothing to this neglected son of Seville.Such occurrences are not always due to the samemotive. The impulsive andaluz is frequently notsatisfied with being a mere spectator at the nationalgame. A score of times the tattered aficionadosabout me pounced upon one of their fellows anddragged him down just as he was on the point ofbounding into the ring. Indeed, as at any spectaclethe world over, the audience was as well worthattention as the performance itself. On the blisteringstone terraces of an Andalusian sol animation andcomedy are never lacking. In his excitement at aclever thrust the Sevillian often sees fit tofall--quite literally--on the neck of a total stranger;friends and foes alike embrace each other and danceabout on the feet, shoulders, or heads of theiruncomplaining neighbors. There is a strikingsimilarity between the bantering of a famous torero bythe aficionados and the "joshing" of a favoritepitcher in an American ball park, but the good dayhas yet to come when the recorder of a home-runwill be showered in his circuit of the bleachers withhats and wine-skins, handfuls of copper coins, andtropical deluges of cigars. Nor does the mostinexcusable fumble call forth such a storm of derisionas descends upon a cowardly bull. The jibes havein them often more of wit than vulgarity, as when anaficionado rises in his place and solemnly offers theanimal his seat in the shade. The height of allinsults is to call him a cow. Through it all, theleather wine-bottles pass constantly from hand tohand. A dozen of these I had thrust upon me duringthe fight, and tasted good wine each time. Theproceeding is so antiseptic as to warm the heart of themost raving germ-theorist, for the bota is fitted witha tiny spout out of which the drinker, holding thereceptacle high above his head, lets the wine trickledown his throat. The skins so swollen when thecórrida begins are limp and flaccid when it ends.

It seems the custom of travelers to charge that theapparent bravery of the bullfighter is merepseudo-courage. Of all the detractors, however, not onerecords having strolled even once across the arenawhile the fight was on. In truth, the torero's callingis distinctly dangerous. The meanest bull that entersa Spanish ring, one for whom the spectators woulddemand "banderillas de fuego"--explosives,--isa more fearful brute than the king of a Texasranch. Their horns are long, spreading and needle-pointed;the empresa that dared turn into the ring abull with the merest tip of a horn blunted or brokenwould be jeered into oblivion. Not a year passesthat scores of toreros are not sent to the hospital.

The Spanish espada is almost invariably "game"to the last. The sixth bull of this Sunday'stournament was, as often happens, the most ferocious. Hekilled six horses, wounded two picadores, tossed achulo as high as a one-story house and, at the firstpass of Vasquez, the matador, knocked him down andgored him in the neck. A coward, one fancies, wouldhave lost no time in withdrawing. Vasquez, on thecontrary, crawled to his feet and swung half roundthe circle that all might see he was unafraid, thoughblood was streaming down his bespangled breast.The alguaciles between the barriers commanded himto retire, but it was to be noted that not one of themshowed the least hint of entering the ring to enforcethe order. The diestro advanced upon the defiantbrute, unfurled his red muleta, poised his sword--andswooned flat on the sand. The bull walkedslowly to him, sniffed at his motionless form, and withan expression almost human of disdain, turned andtrotted away.

"Palmas al toro!" bawled a boisterous fellow atmy elbow, and the vast circle burst out in a thunderof hand-clapping and cries of "Bravo, toro!" whilethe wounded espada still lay senseless in the center ofthe ring.

He was carried off by his cuadrilla, and thesobresaliente, which is to say the "jumper-over," orsubstitute, marched as boldly into the ring as ifaccidents were unknown. Once begun a córrida knowsno intermission, even though a man is killed. Thenewcomer took steady aim and drove the three-footsword to the very hilt between the heaving shoulders;then nonchalantly turned his back and strolled away.The bull did not fall, but wabbled off into the shadeto lean up against the tablas as if he had suddenlygrown disillusioned and disgusted with life, and thespectators, no longer to be restrained, swarmedhead-long into the arena. I pushed toward the animalwith the rest and just as I paused a few feet fromhim he dropped suddenly dead, his blood-smearedhorns rattling down along the barrier.

On rare occasions the matador, disobeying theunwritten law that the animal must be despatched bya thrust down through the body, places the point ofhis sword just behind the horns and with the slightestof thrusts kills the bull so suddenly that his fallsounds like the thump of a barrel dropped from aheight. Then does the spectator, the unseasoned atleast, experience an indefinable depression as if thisstriking of a great brute dead by a mere prick in theback of the neck were a warning of how frail afterall is the hold of the most robust on life.

As we poured out of the plaza, I halted inthe long curving chamber beneath the tribunes.Twenty-two horses, gaunt, mutilated things, laytumbled pellmell together in a vast heap. Brawnymen in sleeveless shirts were pawing them over.Whenever they brought to light a mane or tail theyslashed off the hair and stuffed it into sacks; whenthey dragged forth a hoof the shoe was quickly addedto the heap of old iron in a corner. The bulls weretreated with far more deference. Each lay in hisown space, and the group gathered about him worethe respectful mien of soldiers viewing the lastremains of some formidable fallen enemy. On myheels arrived the jingling mules with the last victim.Two butchers skinned, quartered, and loaded this intoa wagon from the central markets in exactly elevenminutes, the vehicle rattled away, and the week'scórrida was over.

The Spanish torero is all but idolized by the rankand file, being in this respect vastly above ourprofessional ball players. There is little society exceptthe purely bluestocking to which he has not theentrée; wherever and whenever he appears he is sureto be surrounded or followed by admiring crowds.The famous, the Bombita family, for example, whichhas given four renowned matadores to the ring--andone to each of my Sevillian córridas--Machaquitoof Córdoba, and a half-dozen others of highestrank are distinctly more popular and honored thanthe king. Nor is this popularity, however cloudedby a bad thrust, transient or fleeting. Pepete, whodeparted this life with exceeding suddenness back inthe sixties because a bull bounded after him over thetablas and nailed him to the inner barrier, is to thisday almost a national hero.

Of course every red-blooded Spanish boy dreamsof becoming a bullfighter and would not think ofbeing unfamiliar with the features, history,peculiarities, and batting av--I mean number of cogidas orwounds of the principal fighters. Rare the boy whodoes not carry about his person a pack of portraitsof matadores such as are given away with cigarettes.On the playground no other game at all rivals"torero" in popularity. There is somethingdistinctly redolent of the baseball diamond in thedialogues one is sure to hear several times on the wayhome after a córrida. A boy whom fate or thedespotism of the family woodpile has deprived ofthe joys of the afternoon, greets his inhuman fatheroutside the gates with a shout of, "Hóla! Papa!Qué tal los toros?--How goes it with the bulls--whatis the score?" To which father, anxious nowto regain his popularity, answers jovially, "Bueno,chiquillo! Tres cogidas y dos al hospital.--Fine,son! Three wounded and two in the hospital."

Having thus trod the very boards of the last act of"Carmen" and passed a splendid setting for thethird in my tramp through the Sierra de Ronda, Idecided to celebrate the otherwise unglorious Fourthby visiting the scene of the third. The greatgovernment Fábrica de Tabacos of Seville is one ofthe most massive buildings in Spain, and furnisheswell-nigh half the cigarettes and cigars smoked inAndalusia. I passed through the outer offices andcrossed the vast patio without interference. When Iattempted to enter the factory itself, however, anofficial barred the way. I asked why permission wasdenied and with a wink he answered:

"Sh! Hace calor. It is hot, and las cigarrerasare not dressed to receive visitors. Come in theautumn and I shall make it a pleasure to show youthrough the fabrica."

"But surely," I protested, "there are men amongthe employees who have admittance to the workroomseven in summer?"

"Claro, hombre!" he replied, with another wink."But that is one of the privileges of our trade."

I strolled out around the building. Back of it,sure enough, was a cavalry barracks, and any one ofa score of young troopers sitting astride chairs inthe shade of the building might have passed for DonJosé. Some of them were singing, too, in goodclear voices; though rather a sort of dreamymalagüeño than the vivacious music of Bizet. But,alas! With Don Josés and to spare, when thefactory gates opened and the thousands of cigarrerasso famed in song and impropriety poured forth, notone was there who could by any stretch of theimagination be cast for Carmencita. Sevillanas therewere of every age, from three-foot childhoodupward; disheveled gypsy girls from Triana across theriver; fat, dumpy majas; hobbling old witches;slatterns with an infant tucked under one arm; crippledmartyrs of modern invention; hollow-chested victimsof tobacco fumes; painted sinvergüenzas; above all,hundreds of hale, honest women who looked as if theyworked to help support their families and lived lifeseriously and not wantonly. But not a face or evena form that could have seduced any young recruit tobetray his trust and ruin his career. Fiction,frequently, is more picturesque than fact--and far lesspleasing in its morality.

CHAPTER VI

TRAMPING NORTHWARD

To the man who will travel cheaply, interlardinghis walking trips with such journeys bytrain as may be necessary to cover the peninsula inone summer, Spain offers the advantages of the"billete kilométrico." The kilometer ticket is soldin all classes and for almost any distance, and isvalid on all but a few branch lines. One appliesat a ticket agency, leaves a small photograph ofone's self, and comes back a couple of days laterto receive a sort of 16mo mileage-book containinglegal information sufficient to furnish readingmatter for spare moments for a week to come andadorned with the interesting likeness already noted.

I made such application during my second weekin Seville, and received for my pains a book goodfor two thousand kilometers (1280 miles) of third-classtravel during the ensuing three months. Thecost thereof--besides the infelicity of sitting to aphotographer in a sadly mosquito-bitten condition--coveringtransportation, government tax on the same,printing and the tax therefor, the photograph andthe tax for that privilege, and the government stampattesting that the government was satisfied it couldtax no more, footed up to seventy-five pesetas, orconcisely, thirteen dollars and thirty cents.

But--if there is anything in official Spain thathas not a "but" attached it should be preserved ina museum--but, I say, the kilometer-coupons areprinted in fives rather than in ones, and howeversmall the fraction of distance overlapping, it costsfive kilometers of ticket. Moreover--there isusually also a "moreover" following the "but"clause in Spanish ordinances--moreover, there arehardly two cities in Spain the railway distancebetween which does not terminate in the figures oneor six. It does not seem reasonable to believe thatthe railroads were surveyed round-about toaccomplish this result; it must be, therefore, that in thehands of Spanish railway measurers the kilometer issusceptible to such shrinkage as may be needful.At any rate--and this is the thought I had hopedto lead up to--at any rate it was very oftenpossible, by walking six or eleven or sixteen kilometers,to save ten or fifteen or twenty kilometers of ticket;and the game of thus outwitting the railway strategistswas incomparably more diverting than eithersolitaire or one-hand poker.

Thus it was that, though I planned to reachCórdoba that evening, I left Seville during themorning of July 8 on foot. In my knapsack was aday's supply of both food and drink, in the formof three-cent's worth of those fresh figs that aboundin Spain--the one fruit that is certainly descendeddirectly from the Garden of Eden. For miles theroute led across a desert-dry land as flat as awestern prairie, grilling in the blazing sunshine. Atrare intervals an olive-tree cast a dense black shadow.There was no grass to be seen, but only an occasionaltuft of bright red flowers smiling bravelyabove the moistureless soil.

Long hours the retrospect of the city of torerosremained, the overgrown cathedral bulking giganticabove all else. All the day through cream-whiteCarmona on her hilltop--a lofty island in a seaturned sand--gleamed off to the southward, visiblealmost in detail through the truly transparent airof Andalusia. I did not go to Carmona, near asshe is to Seville; I never care to, for certainly shecannot be half so bewitching in reality as she lookson her sheer-faced rock across these burning plains ofsand. To the north, beyond the brown Guadalquivir,lay the distance-blue foothills of the SierraMorena, dying away in the northern horizon.

It was twenty-one o'clock by her stationtimepiece when I descended at Córdoba from the trainI had boarded in the dusk at Tocina. A mile'sstroll brought me to the city itself, and a lodging.Poor old Córdoba has fallen on parlous times.Like those scions of nobility one runs across nowand then "on the road," it is well that she has herpapers to prove she was once what she claims tohave been. Surely none would guess her to-day aformer imperial city of the Caliphs, the Bagdadand Mecca of the West. Her streets, or rather heralleys, for she has no streets, are bordered for themost part by veritable village hovels. Most Africanin aspect of all the cities of Spain, this once centerof Arabic civilization looks as if she had beenoverwhelmed so often that she has utterly lost heart andgiven up, expending what little sporadic energy shehas left in constructing a tolerable Alameda to thestation, either that she may have always open anavenue of escape, or to entice the unsuspectingtraveler into her misery.

To the imagination the Córdoba of to-day iswholly a deception. Yet she may rest assured thatshe will not be entirely forgotten so long as her onelion, the cathedral, or more properly her chiefmosque, remains. For in spite of Christiandesecration, in spite of the crippled old women who areincessantly drawing water in its Patio of theOrange-trees, despite even the flabby, cynical priests thatloaf in the shade of the same, smoking theircigarettes, and the beggars at its doors like runningsores on the landscape, the Mesdjid al-Dijâmi ofCórdoba does not, like many a far-heralded "sight,"bring disappointment. Once in the cool stillness ofits forest of pillars one may still drift back into thegone centuries and rebuild and repeople in fancy thesumptuous days of the Moor.

This reconstruction of the past was not uninterrupted,however, on the morning of my visit. For inthe church, that heavy-featured intruder within themosque like a toadstool that has sprung up throughsome broken old Etruscan vase, mass was celebrating.I crossed before the open door and glanced in.Some thirty strapping, well-fed priests werelounging in the richly-carved choir stalls, chanting aresonant wail that was of vast solace, no doubt, tosome unhappy soul writhing in purgatory. Therewas not the shadow of a worshiper in the building.Yet these able-bodied and ostensibly sane mencroaked on through their chants as serious-featuredas if all the congregation of Córdoba werefollowing their every syllable with reverent awe.

They interfered not in the least with sight-seeing,however, being, as I have said, in the church proper,an edifice wholly distinct from the mosque and onewhich none but a conscientious tourist or a ferventCatholic would care to enter. There were,nevertheless, certain annoyances, in the persons of ahalf-dozen blearing crones and as many ragged andofficious urchins, who crowded about offering, nay,thrusting upon me their services as guides.

In time I shook off all but one ugly fellow ofabout fifteen, who hung irrepressibly on my heels.Mass ended soon after, and the priests filed out intothe mosque chatting and rolling cigarettes, andwandered gradually away. One of them, however,catching sight of me, advanced and clutching mywould-be guide by the slacker portions of hisraiment, sent him spinning toward the door.

"Es medio loco, eso," he said, stepping forwardwith a shifty smile and nudging me with an elbow,"a half-witted fellow who will trouble you no more.With your permission I will show you all that is tobe seen, and it shall cost you nothing."

I accepted the offer, not because any guidancewas necessary, or even desirable, but glad of everyopportunity for closer acquaintance and observationof that most disparaged class of Spanish society.To one to whom not only all creeds, but each of theworld's half-dozen real religions sum up to much thesame total, the general condemnation of thepriesthood of Spain had hitherto seemed but anotherexample of prejudice.

This member of the order was a man of forty,stoop-shouldered, his tonsure merging into a frontalbaldness, with the face and manners of a man-about-townand a frequenter of the Tenderloin. For threesentences, perhaps, he conversed as any pleasantman of the world might with a stranger. Then wepaused to view several paintings of the Virgin.They were images deeply revered by all trueCatholics, yet this smirking fellow began suddenly tocomment on them in a string of lascivious indecencieswhich even I, who have no reverence for them whatever,could not hear without being moved to protest.As we advanced, his sallies and anecdotes grew moreand more obscene, his conduct more insinuating.When he fell to hinting that I should, in return forhis kindness, bring forward a few tales of a similarvintage, I professed myself sated with sight-seeingand, leading the way out into the sunshine to thestone terrace overlooking the Guadalquivir, withscanty excuse left him.

A walk across the stately old bridge and aroundthe century-crumbled city walls lightened my spirits.In the afternoon, cutting short my siesta, Iventured back to the cathedral. The hour was wellchosen; not another human being was within itswalls. Unattended I entered the famous thirdmihrab and satisfied myself that its marble floor isreally worn trough-like by the knees of piousMohammedans, centuries since departed for whateverwas in store for them in the realm of houris. Freefrom the prattle of "guides," I climbed animprovised ladder into the second mihrab, which wasundergoing repairs; and for a full two hours wanderedundisturbed in the pillared solitude.

Night had fallen when I set out on foot fromCórdoba. The heat was too intense to havepermitted sleep until towards morning, had I remained.Over the city behind, in the last glow of evening,there seemed to rise again the melancholy chant, agesdead, of the muezzin:

"Allah hû Allah! There is no God but God.Come to prayer. Allah ill Allah!"

The moon was absent, but the stars that lookeddown upon the steaming earth seemed more brilliantand myriad than ever before. In spite of them thedarkness was profound. The Spaniard, however, isstill too near akin to the Arab to be wandering inthe open country at such an hour, and I heard not asound but my own footsteps and the restless reposeof the summer night until, in the first hour of themorning, I arrived at the solitary station ofArcoléa.

There I stretched out on a narrow platform bench,but was still gazing sleeplessly at the sky abovewhen a "mixto" rolled in at two-thirty. Thepopulous third-class compartment was open at the sides,and the movement of the train, together with thechill that comes at this hour even in Spain, madethe temperature distinctly cold. That of itselfwould have been endurable. But close beside me,oppressively close in fact, sat a woman to theleeward of forty, of the general form of a sack ofwheat, in her hand the omnipresent fan. Regularlyat two-minute intervals she flung this open fromforce of habit, sent over me several icy draughts ofair, and noting the time and place, heaved a vast"ay de mi!" and dropped the fan shut again--forexactly another two minutes.

I slept not at all and, descending as the night wasfading at the station of Espeluy, shouldered mybundle and set off toward the sunrise. Threekilometers more and there lay before me the great openhighway to Madrid, three hundred and seven kilometersaway. I struck into it boldly, for all mydrowsiness, reflecting that even the immortal Murillohad tramped it before me.

The landscape lay desolate on either hand, almosthaggard in the glaring sunshine, offering aloneliness of view that seemed all at once to stamp withreality those myriad tales of the land pirates ofSpain. Indeed, the race has not yet wholly died out.Since my arrival the peninsula had been ringing withthe exploits of one Pernales, a bandit of the oldcaliber, who had thus far outgeneraled even thatworld-famous exterminator of brigands, the modernguardia civil. His haunt was this very territory tothe left of me, and not a week had passed since aband of travelers on this national carretera had seenfit to contribute to his transient larder.

But his was an isolated case, a course that wassure to be soon run. The necessity of making one'swill before undertaking a journey through Spain isno longer imperative. In fact, few countries offermore safety to the traveler; certainly not our own.For the Spaniard is individually one of the mosthonest men on the globe, notwithstanding thatcollectively, officially he is among the most corrupt.The old Oriental despotism has left its mark, deepto this day; and the Spaniard of the masses askshimself--and not without reason--why he shouldshow loyalty to a government that is little more thantwo parties secretly bound by agreement alternatelyto share the spoils. Hence the law-breaker is as ofyore not merely respected but encouraged. Pernalesin his short career had become already a heroand a pride of the Spanish people, a championwarring single-handed against the common enemy.

Without pose or pretense I may say that I wouldgladly have given two or three ten-dollar checks andas many weeks of a busy life to have fallen into theclutches of this modern Dick Turpin. His retreatwould certainly have been a place of interest. Butfortune did not favor, and I passed unmolested thelong, hot stretch to the stony hilltop village ofBailen, a name almost better known to Frenchmenthan to Spaniards.

There, however, I was waylaid. I had finished alunch of all that the single grocery-store offered,which chanced to be stone-hard cheese and water,and was setting out again, when two civil guardsgruffly demanded my papers. This was the onlypair I was destined to meet whose manners were notin the highest degree polished. The screaming heatwas, perhaps, to blame. I turned aside into theshade of a building and handed them my passport,which they examined with the circ*mspection of aFrench gendarme. In general, however, it spokewell of my choice of garb that I was rarely haltedby the guardia as a possible vagrant nor yet by theofficers of the octroi as a possessor of dutiablearticles.

It would seem the part of wisdom in tramping insouthern countries to walk each day until towardnoon and, withdrawing until the fury of the sun isabated, march on well into the night. But the planis seldom feasible. In all this southern Spainespecially there is scarcely a patch of grass large enoughwhereon to lay one's head, to say nothing of thebody; and shade is rare indeed. On this day, aftera sleepless night, a siesta seemed imperative. Inmid-afternoon I came upon a culvert under thehighway and lay down on the scanty, dust-dry leaves atit* mouth, shaded to just below the arm-pits. Butsleep had I none; for about me swarmed flies likevultures over a field of battle, and after fightingthem for an hour that seemed a week, I acknowledgeddefeat and trudged drowsily on.

Soon began a few habitations and a countrygrowing much wheat. In nothing more than in hermethods of husbandry is Spain behind--or as theSpaniard himself would put it--different from therest of the world. Her peasantry has not reachedeven the flail stage of development, not to mentionthe threshing machine. The grain is cut with sickles.As it arrives from the field it is spread head-downround and round a saucer-shaped plot of ground.Into this is introduced a team of mules hitched to asled, which amble hour by hour around theenclosure, sometimes for days, the boy driver squattingon the cross-piece singing a never-ceasing Orientaldrone of a few tones. From each such threshing-floorthe chaff, sweeping in great clouds across thecarretera, covered me from head to foot as I passed.

It was some distance beyond the town of Guarramánand at nightfall that I entered a village of afew houses like dug-out rocks tossed helter-skelteron either side of the way. The dejected little shopfurnished me bread, wine, and dried fish and theinformation that another of the hovels passed for aposada. This was a single stone room, half flooredwith cobbles. The back, unfloored section housedseveral munching asses. The human portion wasoccupied by a stray arriero, the shuffling, crabbedold woman who kept the place, and by a hearty,frank-faced blind man in the early thirties, attendedby a frolicsome boy of ten. It was furnished withexactly four cooking utensils, a tumbled bundle ofburlap blankets in one corner, a smouldering clusterof fa*gots in another, and one stool besides that onwhich the blind man was seated.

This I took, reflecting that he who will see Spainmust not expect luxury. The real Spaniard livesroughly and shows himself only to those who arewilling to rough it with him. As I sat down, the blindman addressed me:

"Hot days these on the road, señor."

"Verdad es," I answered.

"You are a foreigner from the north," heremarked casually, as if to himself.

"Yes; but how do you know that?"

"Oh, a simple matter," he replied. "That youare a foreigner, by your speech. That you arefrom the north, because you only half pronounce theletter R. You said 'burro' in speaking of ourfour-legged companion there, whereas the word is'bur-r-r-ro.' You have walked many leagues."

"What tells you that?"

"Carajo! Nothing simpler. Your step is tired,you sit down heavily, you brush your trousers and athick dust arises."

Blindness, I had hitherto fancied, was an advantageonly during certain histrionic moments at theopera, but here was a man who evidently made it apositive blessing.

"Your are about twenty-five," he continued.

"Twenty-six. You will be good enough, perhaps,to tell me how you guessed that."

"What could be easier? The tone of your voice;the pace at which your words fall. It is strange thatyou, a foreigner, should be such an amateur of bulls."

"Caramba!" I gasped. "You certainly do notlearn that from the tone of my voice!"

"Ah! We cannot tell all our secrets," hechuckled; "we who must make a living by them."

Then in the night that had settled down he fellto telling stories, not intentionally, one would havesaid, but unconsciously, fascinating tales as thoseof the "Arabian Nights," full of the color and theextravagance of the East, the twinkle of hiscigarette gleaming forth from time to time and outliningthe boy seated wide-eyed on the floor at his feetwith his head against his master's knee. He wasas truly a minstrel as any troubadour that wanderedin the days of chivalry, a born story-teller all butunconscious of his gift. When after a long timehe left off, we drifted again into conversation. Hewas wholly illiterate and in compensation more filledwith true knowledge and wisdom than a houseful ofschoolmen. His calling for five and twenty yearshad been just this of roaming about Spain tellinghis colorful stories.

"Were you born so?" I asked late in the evening.

"Even so, señor."

"A sad misfortune."

"You know best, señor," he answered, with ahearty laugh. "I have no notion how useful thisfeeling you call sight may be, but with those I haveI live with what enjoyment is reasonable and find noneed for another."

The crippled old crone, who seemed neither tohave known any other life than this nor ever to havebeen attired in anything than the piece-meal ragsthat now covered her, dragged the heap of burlapfrom the corner and spread it in three sections onthe stone floor. On one she threw herself down withmany sighs and the creaking of rusty joints, thesecond fell to my lot, and the blind man and his boycurled up on the third. The arriero carried his ownblanket and had long since fallen to snoring withhis head on the saddle of his ass and his alforjasclose beside him.

There is one Spanish sentence that expresses themost with the least breath, perhaps, of any singleword on earth. It is "Madrugáis?" and meansnothing less than "Is it your intention to get upearly to-morrow morning?" In these waysidefondas it calls always for an affirmative answer, forthe bedroom is certain to be turned into the livingroom and public hall and stable exit at the firstglimmer of dawn.

I was on the road again by four-thirty. Threehours of plodding across a rising country broughtme to La Carolina, a town as pleasing in comparisonwith its neighbors as its name. Its customs,however, were truly Spanish, even though many ofthe ancestors of its light-haired populace were Swiss,and my untimely quest for breakfast did nothingmore than arouse vast astonishment in its half-dozencafés, wrecked and riotous places in charge ofdisheveled, heavy-eyed "skittles." In the openmarket I found fresh figs even cheaper than inSeville and, asking no better fare, turned backtoward the highway.

I had passed through half the town when suddenlyI heard in a side street a familiar voice, singingto the accompaniment of a guitar. I turnedthither and found the blind singer I had firstencountered in Jaen, just on the point of drawing outhis bundle of handbills. While his wife canvassedthe group of early risers, I accosted him with theinformation that I had bought one of his sheets inJaen a month before.

"Ah! You too tramp la carretera?" he replied,turning upon me a glance so sharp that for themoment I forgot he could not see.

"Sí, señor. Do you not also sell the music ofyour songs?"

"How can music be put on paper?" he laughed."It comes as you sing. Are you going far?"

"To Madrid."

"Vaya!" he cried, once more posing his guitar."Well, there is much to be enjoyed on the road--whenthe sun is not too high. Vaya V. con Dios,young man."

Beyond Las Navas de Tolosa the face of thelandscape changed, the carretera mounting ever higherthrough a soilless stretch of angular hills ofdull-gray, slate-colored rock. Above Santa Elena thesebroke up into deep gorges and mountain foothills,an utterly unpeopled country as silent as the grave.I halted to gaze across it, and all at once, reflectingon the stillness as of desolation that hangs over allrural Spain, there came upon me the recollectionthat in all the land I had not once heard the note ofa wild bird.

In the utter quiet I reached a deep slit in theflanking mountain, and even the stream, thatdescended along its bottom was as noiseless as somephantom river. It offered all the facilities for abath, however, and moreover under an overhangingmass of rock that warded off the sun had wateredto un-Spanish greenness a patch of grass of a fewfeet each way. There I spent half the afternoon inslumber. The highway shortly after plungedheadlong down into the very depths of the earth,squirmed for a time in the abyss, then clamberedpainfully upward between precipitous walls ofgloomy slate to a new level. When suddenly,unexpectedly, almost physically there rose before my eyesthe picture of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance,ambling past, close followed by thickset, hale-cheekedSancho on his ass. For I had traversed thepass of Despeñaperros; languid Andalusia laybehind me, and ahead as far as the eye could reachspread the yet twice more barren and rockytableland of La Mancha.

CHAPTER VII

SPANISH ROADS AND ROADSTERS

In the gloom of evening I espied on a dull, sterilehillside a vast rambling venta, as bare, slate-colored,and marked with time as the hills themselves.Here was exactly such a caravansary as that in whichhe of the Triste Figura had watched over his armsby night and won his Micomiconian knighthood.It consisted of an immense enclosure that was halffarmyard, backed by a great stable of which a striparound two sides beneath the low vaulted roof hadbeen marked off for the use of man; the whole dull,gloomy, cheerless, unrelieved by a touch of color.Within the building were scattered a score of mules,borricos and machos. Several tough-clothedmuleteers, with what had been bright handkerchiefswound about their brows, sauntered in the courtyardor sat eating with their great razor-edged navajastheir lean suppers of brown bread and a knuckle ofham. Even the massive wooden pump in the yardamong an array of ponderous carts and wagons wasthere to complete the picture. Indeed, this was noneother than the Venta de Cardenas, reputed the verysame in which Don Greaves passed his vigilant night,where Sancho was tossed in a blanket and MasterNicholas, the barber, bearded himself with a cow's tail.

The chance betrayal of my nationality aroused inthe arrieros a suggestion of wonder and even anoccasional question. But in general their interestwas as meager as their knowledge of the worldoutside the national boundaries. Not once did theydisplay the eagerness to learn that is so characteristic ofthe Italian. For the Spaniard considers it beneathhis dignity as a caballero and a cristino viejo to showany marked curiosity, especially concerning a foreignland, which cannot but be vastly inferior to his own.Four centuries of national misfortune and shrinkagehave by no means eradicated his firm conviction,implanted in his mind by Ferdinand and Isabel in thedays of conquest, that he is the salt of the earth,superior in all things to the rest of the human race.

Spain is one of the most illiterate countries of thecivilized world, yet also one of the best educated,unless education be merely that mass of undigestedand commonly misapplied information absorbedwithin four walls. Few men have a more exactknowledge, a more solid footing on theeveryday earth than the peasant, the laborer, themuleteer of Spain. One does not marvel merelyat the fluent, powerful, entirely grammaticallanguage of these unlettered fellows, but at the soundbasic wisdom that stands forth in their everysentence. If their illiteracy denies them the advantageof absorbing the festering rot of the yellow journal,in compensation they have a wealth of vocabularyand a forceful simplicity of diction that raises themmany degrees above the corresponding class in more"advanced" lands.

It is of the "lower" classes that I am speaking,the common sense and backbone of Spain. Theso-called upper class is one of the most truly ignorantand uneducated on earth--though among itsmembers, be it noted, is no illiteracy. The maltreatedMiguel was adamantinely right in choosing his herofrom the higher orders; no Spaniard of the massescould be so far led astray from reason as to becomea Quixote.

It is noticeable that the Spaniard of the laboringclass has almost none of that subservience born inthe blood in the rest of Europe. Not only does eachman consider himself the equal of any other; he takesand expects the world to take for granted that this isthe case, and never feels called upon to demonstratethat equality to himself and the rest of the world byinsolence and rowdyism. Dissipation he knows not,except the dissipation of fresh air, sunshine, and aguitar. Nowhere in Christian lands is drunkennessmore rare. Like the Arab the hardy lower-classSpaniard thrives robustly on a mean and scanty diet;he can sleep anywhere, at any time, and to thecreature comforts is supremely indifferent. One canhardly believe this the country in which Alfonso Xfelt it necessary to enact stern laws against theserving of more than two dishes of meat at a meal or thewearing of "slashed" silks. Yet the Spain ofto-day is not really a cheap country; it is merely thatwithin its borders frugality is universal and held inhonor rather than contempt.

When the evening grew advanced, my fellow guestslay down on the bare cobble-stones of the venta,making pillows of the furniture of their mules, and weresoon sleeping peacefully and sonorously. For me,soft-skinned product of a more ladylike world, wasspread a muleteer's thick blanket in the embrasureof a wooden-blinded window, and amid the munchingof asses and the not unpleasant smell of a Spanishstable I, too, drifted into slumber.

From dawn until early afternoon I marched onacross the rocky vastness of Spain, where fields haveno boundary nor limit, a gnarled and osseous countryand a true despoblado, as fruitless as that sterile neckof sand that binds Gibraltar to the continent. It isin these haggard, unpeopled plateaus of the interiorthat one begins to believe that the population of thepeninsula is to-day barely one-third what it was inthe prosperous years of Abd er-Rahman.

At length, across a valley that was like a lake ofheat waves, appeared Santa Cruz, a hard, colorlesstown where I was forced to be content with the usualbread, cheese and wine, the former as ossified as thesurrounding countryside. In the further outskirtsof the place I found a potter at work in a large openhovel and halted to pass the most heated hour withhim. In one end of the building was a great troughof clay in which a bare-foot boy was slowly treadingup and down. Now and again he caught up a lumpof the dough and deposited it on a board before thepotter. This the latter took by the handful and,placing it on his wheel, whirled it quickly into avessel of a shape not unlike a soup-bowl. I inquiredwhat these sold for and with a sigh he replied:

"Three small dogs apiece, cocidos (cooked)"--pointingat the kiln--"y cuantos--how manybreak in the glazing! It is no joyful trade, señor."

Once he left his work to munch a crust and to offerme a cigarette and a drink from his leather bota, butsoon drifted back to his task with the restless,harassed look of the piece-worker the world over. AsI sat watching his agile fingers a bit drowsily, therecame suddenly back to memory the almost forgottendays when I, too, had toiled thus in the gloomy,sweltering depths of a factory. Truer slavery therenever was than that of the piece-worker under ourmodern division of labor. Stroll through a factoryto find a man seated at a machine stamping strips oftin into canheads at two cents a hundred by a fewsimple turns of the wrist, and his task seems easy,almost a pastime in its simplicity. But go away fora year, travel through half the countries of theglobe, go on a honeymoon to Venice and the Grecianisles, and then come back to find him sitting on theself-same stool, in the self-same attitude, stampingstrips of tin into canheads at two cents a hundred bya few simple turns of the wrist.

Three blazing hours passed by, and I foundmyself entering a rolling land of vineyards, heraldingwine-famous Valdepeñas. The vines were low shrubsnot trained on sticks, the grapes touching the ground.A dip in an exotic stream reduced the grime andsweat of travel, and just beyond I came again uponthe railway. A half-hour along it brought me faceto face with the first foreign tramp I had met inSpain,--a light-haired, muscular youth in tattered,sun-brown garb, his hob-nailed shoes swung over oneshoulder and around his feet thick bandages ofburlap. He was a German certainly, perhaps a modernBenedict Moll whose story would have been equallyinteresting in its absurdity. But he passed me withthe stare of a man absorbed in his personal affairsand accustomed to keep his own counsel, and stalkedaway southward along the scintillant railroad.

I halted for a drink at the stuccoed dwelling of atrack-walker. In the grassless yard, under the onlyimitation of a tree in the neighborhood, slept aroadster. Now and again the chickens that scratchedin vain the dry, lifeless earth about him, marcheddisconsolately across his prostrate form.

"Poor fellow," said the track-walker's wife at thewell, "he has known misery, more even than the restof us. Vaya como duerme!"

I sat down in the streak of shade that wascrawling eastward across him. He wore a ten-day beardand the garb of a Spanish workman of the city, setoff by a broad red faja around his waist. In onebulging pocket of his coat appeared to be all hisearthly possessions.

There was no evidence of overwhelming "miseria"in the cheery greeting with which he awoke, and asour ways coincided we continued in company. Hewas a Sevillian named Jesús, bound northward ingeneral and wherever else the gods might lead him.

"For a long time there has been no work inSeville for nosotros, the carpenters," he explained,though with no indication of grief. "This half yearI have been selling apricots and azucarillos in thebullring and on the Alameda. But each day more ofSeville comes to sell and less to buy. I should havegone away long ago, but my comrade Gáspare wouldnot leave his amiga. Gásparo is a stone-polisherand had work.

"Then one day I am taken by the police for Iknow not what. When after two weeks I come out,Gásparo is gone. But he has come north andsomewhere I shall run across him."

Jesús had just passed through a marvelous experience,which he proceeded to relate in all his Latinwealth of language--though not in the phraseology,of a graduate roadster:

"Mira V., hombre! Two nights ago, when myfeet are worn away with more than ten leguas ofwalking on the railroad, I come to Baeza. It is dark,and I wander along the track to find a soft bank tosleep. On the short railroad that is at each stationthere is waiting a train of merchandise. Suddenlya great idea comes to me. 'Sh! Jesús,' I whisper,'what if you should hide yourself away somewhereon this train of merchandise? It would perhapsbring you to the next station.'

"With great quiet I climb a wagon and hidemyself between bales of cork. Screech! Brrr!Rboom! The train is off, and all night I amriding--without a ticket. But at Vilches the man that goeswith the train with a lantern comes by and it is mycurse to be making some noise, moving to roll acigarette. 'Ya te 'pia!' (I spy you!) he cries. Vacaque soy! So of course I must get down. But mira,hombre! There I have traveled more than twelvemiles without paying a perrito!"

I had not the heart to disillusion him with a yarnor two from the land of the "hobo."

In the telling we had come within sight ofValdepeñas. It was a "valley of rocks" indeed, thougha city of good size and considerable evidence ofindustry, abounding with great bodegas, or winewarehouses. As we trudged through the long straightstreet that had swallowed up the highway, we passedthe taller of a marble-cutter.

"It is in a place like this that Gásparo works,"sighed Jesús, wandering languidly in at the opendoor. I was strolling slowly on when a whoop as ofa man suddenly beset by a band of savages broughtme running back into the establishment. Jesús wasshaking wildly by both hands a stockily-built youngfellow in shirt sleeves and white canvas apron, whowas rivaling him in volubility of greeting. Gásparowas found.

Still shouting incoherently, the two left the shopand squatted in the shade along the outside wall.

"Hombre!" panted Jesús, when his excitement hadsomewhat died down. "I have told myself that byto-morrow we should be tramping the carretera together."

But Gásparo shook his head, sadly yet decisively.

"No, amigo. Jamás! Nunca! Never do I taketo the road again. I have here a good job, the finestof patrons. No. I shall stay, and send for theamiga--or find another here."

With the dignity of a caballero, Jesús acceptedthe decree without protest, and wished his erstwhilecomrade luck and prosperity. Then that they mightpart in full knowledge, he launched forth in the storyof his journey from Seville. Gásparo listenedabsently, shaking his head sadly from time to time.When the episode of the amateur hoboing began,he sat up with renewed interest; before it was endedhe was staring at the speaker with clenched fists, hiseyes bulging, the cigarette between his lipsstone-dead. From that great epic Jesús jumped withoutintermission to a hasty survey of the anticipated joysthat lay between him and Madrid. Suddenly Gásparosprang into the air with an explosive howl, landingon his feet.

"By the blood of your namesake!" he shouted."How can a man stay always in one place? Thisdaily drudgery will kill me! I will throw the job inthe patron's face, and get my wages this very minute,amaguito, and we will go to Madrid together. JesúsMaria! Who knows but we can hide ourselves onanother freight train!"--and crying over hisshoulder some rendezvous, he disappeared within theestablishment.

We sauntered on to the central plaza. It was utterlytreeless and paved with cobble-stones; nor couldwe find a patch of grass or a shaded bench in all theneighborhood.

"Look here, señor!" cried Jesús, suddenly rushingtoward a policeman who was loitering in the shade ofa bodega. "Don't you have any parks or Alamedasin this val de penas of yours? You call this a city!"

"Señor," replied the officer in the most apologeticof voices, "we are not a rich city, and the rain soseldom falls in La Mancha. I am very sorry," andtouching a finger respectfully to his cap, he strolledslowly on.

Though the sun was low it was still wiltingly hotin the stony streets. Jesús, as I knew, was penniless.I suggested therefore that I would willingly pay thescore of two for the privilege of retreating to thecoolness of a wineshop.

"Bueno!" cried the Sevillian. "The wine ofValdepeñas is without equal, and of the cheapest--ifyou know where to buy. Vámonos, hombre!"

He led the way down the street and by someCastilian instinct into a tiny underground shop that wasostensibly given over to the sale of charcoal. Thesmudged old keeper motioned us to the short ricketybench on which he had been dreaming away theafternoon and, descending still lower by a dark hole in thefloor, soon set before us a brown glazed pitcherholding a quarto--about a quart--of wine, for whichI paid him approximately three and a half cents.

In all western Europe I have drunk the commontable wine in whatever quantity it has pleased me, andsuffered from it always the same effect as from somuch clear water. It may be that the long trampunder a scorching sun and the distance from my lastmeal-place altered conditions. Certainly there wasno need of the seller's assurance that this was genuine"valdepeñas" and that what had been sold uselsewhere as such was atrociously adulterated. Beforethe pitcher was half empty, I noted with wonder thatI was taking an extraordinary interest in the oldman's phillipic against the government and itsexorbitant tax on wine. Jesús, too, grew in animation,and when the subterranean Demosthenes ended with athundering, "Sí, señores! If it wasn't for the cursedgovernment you and I could drink just such wine asthis pure valdepenas anywhere as if it was water!" Iwas startled to hear us both applaud loud and long.A scant four-cents' worth had seemed so parsimoniousa treat for two full-thirsted men that I had intendedto order in due time a second pitcherful. But thisstrange mirth seemed worthy of investigation. Isipped the last of my portion and made no movementto suggest a replenishing. A few minutes later theold man had bade us go with the Almighty, and wewere strolling away arm in arm.

The sun was setting when we reached the plaza.We sat down on the cathedral steps. The Sevillianhad suddenly an unaccountable desire to sing. Hestruck up one of the Moorish-descended ballads ofhis native city. To my increasing astonishment Ifound myself joining in. Not only that, but forthe first and last time of my existence I caught thereal Andalusian rhythm. An appreciative audienceof urchins gathered. Then the sacristan stepped outand politely invited us to choose some other stage.

Across the square was a casa de comidas. Weentered and ordered dinner. The señora served usabout one-third of what the bill-of-fare promised,and demanded full price--something that had neverbefore happened in all my Spanish experience. Iprotested vociferously--another wholly unprecedentedproceeding. The policeman who had apologizedfor the absence of parks sauntered in, and Ilaid the case before him. The señora restated it stillmore noisily. I declared I would not pay more thanone peseta. The lady took oath that I would paytwo. The policeman requested me to comply withher demand. I refused to the extent of commandinghim to take his hand off the hilt of his sword. Heapologized and suggested that we split the difference.This seemed reasonable. I paid it, and we left.Dark night had settled down. We marched aimlesslyaway into it. Somewhere Gásparo fell in withus. Somewhere else, on the edge of the city, wecame upon a heap of bright clean straw on athreshing floor, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE ROAD IN LA MANCHA

It was Sunday morning, the market day ofValdepeñas, when I returned alone to stock myknapsack. The plaza that had been so deserted andpeaceful the evening before was packed from casa decomidas to cathedral steps with canvas booths inwhich the peasants of the encircling country wereselling all the products of La Mancha, and amongwhich circulated all the housewives of Valdepeñas,basket on arm. The women of the smaller cities ofSpain cling stoutly to their local costumes, apingnot in the least the world of fashion. These ofValdepeñas were strikingly different from theAndalusians, considering how slight the distance thatseparates them from that province. They were almostGerman in their slowness, with hardly a suggestionof "sal"; a solemn, bronze-tanned multitude who,parting their hair in the middle and combing it tightand smooth, much resembled Indian squaws.

From the northern edge of the city the highwayran straight as the flight of a crow to where it waslost in a flat, colorless horizon. The land wasartificially irrigated. The first place I stopped forwater was a field in which an old man was driving roundand round a blind-folded burro hitched to a noria,a water-wheel that was an exact replica of theEgyptian sakka, even to its squawk, jars of Andújar beingtied to the endless chain with leather thongs. Theman, too, had that dreamy, listless air of theEgyptian fellah; had I had a kodak to turn upon him Ishould have expected him to run after me crying for"backsheesh."

Ahead stretched long vistas of low vineyards. Theonly buildings along the way were an occasional bareuniform stone dwelling of a peon caminero, orgovernment road-tender. At one of these I halted toquench my thirst, and the occupant, smoking inSabbath ease before it, instantly pronounced me a"norte americano." I showed my astonishment, forhardly once before in the peninsula had I been takenfor other than a Frenchman, or a Spaniard fromsome distant province.

The peon's unusual perspicacity was soonexplained; he had been a soldier in Cuba during theSpanish-American War. I readily led him intoreminiscences. Throughout the war, he stated, hehad fought like a hero, not because he was of thatrare breed but because every member of the troophad been filled with the belief that once captured by"los yanquis" he would be hanged on the spot.

"And are you still of the opinion?" I asked.

"Qué barbaridad!" he laughed. "I was takenat Santiago and carried a prisoner to your country.What a people! A whole meal at breakfast! Welived as never before, or since.

"You were quite right, vosotros, to take theisland. I do not blame you. It was competición, justcompetition, like two shop-keepers in the city. I amglad the miserable government lost their Cuba."

So often did I hear exactly this view from Spaniardsof the laboring class that it may be consideredtypical of their attitude toward the late disagreement.The strange question has often been asked whetherit is safe so soon after the war for a North Americanto travel alone in the interior of Spain. For answerwe have only to ask ourselves whether a Spaniardtraveling alone in the interior of the United Stateswould be in any imminent danger of having histhroat cut--even had we been defeated. In Spainthere is vastly less, for not only is the Spaniardquicker to forgive and far less belligerent than heis commonly fancied, but there exists in thepeninsula not one-tenth the rowdyism and hoodlum"patriotism" of our own country.

I stayed long and left with difficulty. Gregariousis man, and on Sunday, when all the worldabout him is at rest, even the pedestrian finds it hardto exert himself. A league beyond I came uponthe Sevillians lolling in the shadow of anotherisolated peon dwelling in what seemed once to have beena village.

Jesús in his eleven-day beard hailed me from afar;moreover, the Sunday languor was still upon me. Istretched out with them in the shade of the building,but the flies prevented us from sleeping. We crawledinto a peasant's cart under the shed--but the fliesquickly found us out. We crossed the road to theruin of a church, split almost exactly through themiddle of tower and all, and one side fallen. Withinit was a grassy corner where the sun never fell, andeven a bit of breeze fanned us. But the flies hadmade this their Spanish headquarters. We decidedto go on.

In that only were we unanimous, for the Sevillianswished to follow the railroad, a furlong away, and Ithe carretera. I had all but won them over when afreight train labored by.

"Ay! Ay! Los toros!" shouted the two in chorus.

"Where?" I asked, seeing no such animals in sight.

"En las jaulas, hombre! In the cages!" criedJesús, pointing to a flat-car on which, set closetogether, were six tightly-closed boxes each just largeenough to hold a bull.

"We go by the railroad!" shouted Gásparo,decisively. "Alma de Dios! Who knows but we maybe able to hide ourselves on a train that is carryingtoros to the córrida!"

We separated, therefore, and struck northward,though we marched side by side within hailing distanceuntil we were all three swallowed up in the cityof Manzanares.

The bare-faced, truly Manchegan town was half-deserted,though the reason therefor was not hard toguess, for the bullring in the outskirts was howlingas I passed. For all its size the place did not seemto boast an eating-house of any description. At lastI halted before an old man seated in a shaded cornerof the plaza, to inquire:

"Señor, what does a stranger in your town dowhen he would eat?"

"Vaya, señor!" he replied, with the placiddeliberation of age, and pointing with his cane to theshops that bordered the square. "He buys a perritoof bread in the bakery there, dos perros of ham inthe butchery beyond, fruit of the market-woman--"

"And eats it where?" I interrupted.

"Hi jo de mi alma!" responded the patriarchwith extreme slowness and almost a touch of sarcasmin his voice. "Here is the broad plaza, all butempty. In all that is there not room to sit downand eat?"

I continued my quest and entered two posadas.But for the only time during the summer theproprietors demanded my cédula personal. I explainedthat Americans are not supplied with these governmentlicenses to live, and showed instead my passport.Both landlords protested that it was not in Spanishand refused to admit me. One might have fanciedone's self in Germany. It was some time after darkthat I was directed to a private boarding-house thatalmost rewarded my long search. For the supperset before me was equal to a five-course repast in theCasa Robledo of Granada, and for the first time sinceleaving Seville I slept in a bed, and not in my clothes.

In the morning an absolutely straight road laybefore me across a land treeless but for a few stuntedshrubs, a face of desolation and aridity and solitudeas of Asia Minor. From the eastward swept a hot,dry wind across the baked plains of La Mancha thatrecalled all too forcibly the derivation of its namefrom the Arabic manxa--a moistureless land.

At fifteen kilometers the highway swerved slightlyand lost from view for the first time the immensecathedral of Manzanares behind. On either hand,miles visible in every direction, huddled stone townson bare hillsides and in rocky vales, each inconspicuousbut for its vast overtowering church. "Si lademeure des hommes est pauvre, celle de Dieu estriche," charges colorful Gautier; which, if the churchof Spain is truly the "demeure de Dieu," is sternlytrue. City, town, village, hamlet, a church alwaysbulks vast above it like a hen among her chicks--ratherlike some violent overpowering tyrant with aclub. To the right of the turn one might, but fora slight rise of ground, have espied a bare twelvekilometers away immortal Argamasilla itself.

During the day there developed a hole in my shoe,through a sole of those very "custom-made"oxfords warranted by all the eloquent Broadwaysalesman held sacred--whatever that may have been--toendure at least six months of the hardestpossible wear. Sand and pebbles drifted in, as sandand pebbles will the world over under suchcirc*mstances, and for some days to come walking was notof the smoothest.

Almost exactly at noonday I caught sight of thefirst windmills of La Mancha, three of them slowlytoiling together on a curving hillside, too distinctlyvisible at this hour to be mistaken by the mostromance-mad for giants. The few peasants I fell inwith now and then were a more placid, somber peoplethan the Andaluz and, as is commonly the case invillages reached by no railway, more courteous tothe roadster than their fellows more directly in touchwith the wide world.

It was that hour when the sun halts lingeringabove the edge of the earth, as if loath to leave it,that I entered the noiseless little hamlet of PuertoLápiche. It contained no public hostelry, but thewoman who kept its single shop cooked me a supper,chiefly of fried eggs, which I ate sitting on a stoolbefore the building. The fried eggs of Spain!Wherein their preparation differs from that in otherlands I know not, but he who has never eaten themafter a long day's tramp cannot guess to whatEpicurean heights fried eggs may rise. How, knowingof them, could Sancho have named cow-heel for hischoice?

The evening was of that soft and gentle texturethat invites openly to a night out-of-doors. On theedge of the open country beyond, too, was athreshing-floor heaped with new straw that would certainlyhave been my choice, had not the village guardiabeen watching my every movement from across theway. When I had returned the porcelain frying-panto its owner, I strolled boldly across to theofficer and inquired for a lodging.

"With regret, señor," he replied, raising his hatand offering me the stool on which he had beenseated, "I am forced to say that we are a smallvillage so rarely honored by the presence of travelersthat we have no public house. But--" he hesitateda moment, then went on "--the weather is fine,señor; the night is warm, the pure air hurts no one;why do you not make your bed on the soft, clean strawof the threshing-floor yonder?"

"Caballero," I responded, with my most Spanishsalute, "a thousand thanks--and may your graceremain with God."

For the first time during my journey the heat wastempered next morning, though by no means routed,by a slightly overcast sky. The wind continued.The highway led on through a seared brown country,for the most part a silent, smokeless, unpeopled land.The windmills of La Mancha were numerous nowon either hand as the road sank slowly down to a gapin the low, gaunt mountains of Ciudad Real. Atlast it reached them and, picking its way throughthe narrow pass of Lápiche, strode off again acrossa still hotter, drier region, unmitigated even by thewind, which had stopped short at the mountainbarrier--a land flowing not even with ditch-water. Ihalted but briefly at the large village of Madridejos,peopled by a slow, dreamy-eyed, yet toil-callousedpeasantry, as if their world of fancy and the hardstony life of reality never quite joined hands.

Hot, thirsty and hungry, I came in mid-afternoonto an isolated ramshackle venta in a rockywilderness. An enormous shaggy man of a zoölogical castof countenance, and a male-limbed girl were harnessingmules in the yard. No other living thing showeditself. I offered a peseta for food. The man glaredat me for a time in silence, then growled that hesold nothing, but that I should find a posada not farbeyond. He was evidently the champion prevaricatorof that region, for not the suggestion of a hovelappeared during the rest of the afternoon. But hewould be a fellow with Sancho indeed, who could notoverrule a few hour's appetite in thinking of higherthings, and no fit traveler in this hard, toilsome landwhere overeating is not numbered among thevices.

The setting of the sun was perhaps an hour offwhen the highway, swinging a bit to the left andsurmounting a barren, rocky ridge, laid suddenlybefore me an enthralling prospect. Below, far downon a distinctly lower level, a flat, ruffled country stillmisty with rising waves of heat, stretched away tothe uttermost endless distance. The whole, glintingin the oblique rays of the setting sun, was scored inevery direction with dull rock villages huddledcompactly together, while on every hand, like signal fireson a western prairie, rose from a hundred threshing-floorscolumns of chaff straight and slender into themotionless air to an incredible height before breakingup. The road descended with decision, yet inno unseemly haste and, marching for an hour acrossa country traveled only by an occasional donkeyloaded with chopped straw, led me at nightfall intothe scene of Sancho's labors in the wheat-piles--thevillage of Tembleque.

In its immense fonda, but for the undergroundstables one single, vast, cobble-paved room, avacant-eyed old man, a girl, and a leviathan of a woman satamong the carts, wine-casks, and heaps of harnesses,the latter knitting. In strictest Castilian theestablishment was no fonda, but a parador, from parar,to stop; and certainly it could not with honesty havelaid claim to any more inviting name, for assuredlyno man in his senses would have dreamed of choosingit as a staying-place. When I asked if lodging wasto be had, the woman replied with a caustic sneer thatshe had always been able thus far to accommodate anywho were able and willing to pay.

"And can one also get supper?" I inquired timorously.

"How on earth do I know?" snapped the woman.

I stared with a puzzled air at the old man and hein like manner at the knitter, who turned out to behis wife, espoused in budding maidenhood when hismarch in life had well begun.

"How can I cook him supper if he has none withhim?" snarled the no longer maidenly.

"Er--what have you brought to eat?" asked thepreadamite in a quavering voice.

"Nothing to be sure. What is a fonda for?"

"Ah, then how can la señora mía get you supper?Over the way is the butcher, beyond, the green-grocer,further still the panadero--"

I returned some time later with meat, bread,potatoes, garbanzos, and a variety of vegetables,supplied with which the señora duly prepared me asupper--by sitting tight in her chair and issuing avolley of commands to the girl and the old man. Forthis service she demanded two "fat dogs," and collectedat the same time an equal amount for my lodging.

When I had eaten, the mistress of the housemumbled a word to the dotard. He lighted withtrembling hand a sort of miner's lamp and led theway downward into the subterranean stable and forwhat seemed little short of a half-mile through greatstone vaults musty with time, close by the cruppersof an army of mules and burros. Opening at last adoor some three feet square and as many above thefloor, he motioned to me to climb through it into abin filled with chaff. This was to all appearancesclean, yet I hesitated. For in these endless vaults,to which the outer air seemed not to have penetratedfor a century, it was cold as a November evening.I glanced at the old man in protest. He blinked backat me, shook his ever-quaking head a bit moreforcibly, and turning, shuffled away through theresounding cavern, the torch casting at first weird,dancing shadows behind his wavering legs, thengradually dying out entirely. I stood in blackestdarkness, undecided. Before, however, the last faintsound of his going had wholly passed away, thescrape of the veteran's faltering feet grew louderagain and in another moment he reappeared,clutching under one thin arm a heavy blanket. When Ihad taken it, he put a finger to his lips, cast hissunken eyes about him, whispered "sh!" with alabored wink, and tottered once more away. Iclimbed into the bin and slept soundly until thecursing of arrieros harnessing their mules aroused meshortly before dawn.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRAIL OF THE PRIEST

The people of Tembleque had been just certainenough that none but an arriero could followthe intricate route thither, and that no man couldcover the distance on foot in one day, to cause me toawaken determined to leave the Madrid highway andstrike cross-country to Toledo. The first stage ofthe journey was the road to the village of Mora,which I was long in finding because at its entranceto--which chanced also to be its exit from--Temblequeit split up like an unraveled shoe-string. Igot beyond the loose ends at last, however, and set asharp pace--even though the hole in my shoe hadenlarged to the size of a peseta--across a scarredand weather-beaten landscape that seemed constantlyreminding how aged is the world.

Twenty-four kilometers brought me to Mora, asturdy town of countrymen, in time for an early andstinted dinner and inquiries which led me off in anew direction up a steadily mounting region toMascargne. There, at a still different point of thecompass, a ruined castle on a hilltop ten kilometers awaywas pointed out to me as the landmark of ElMonacail; to which village a rugged and sterile roadclambered over a country hunch-backed with hills. It wassiesta-time when I arrived, the sun scorching hot, aburning wind sweeping among the patched andmisshapen hovels that made up the place. There wereno inhabitants abroad, which argued their goodsense; but in the shadow of the only public buildinga trio of soldiers were playing at cards. They leeredat me for some time when I made inquiry, then burstout in derisive laughter.

"Claro, hombre!" answered one of them sarcastically."You can walk to Toledo la Santa if youknow enough to follow a cow-path."

I stumbled into it just beyond, a cow-path indeed,though too little used to be clearly marked, andmeandering in and out with it for twenty kilometersthrough rocky barrancas and across sandy patches,gained as the day was nearing its close thewind-bitten village of Nambroca. A few miles morethrough a still greater chaos of rocks and I came outunexpectedly on the crest of a jagged promontorythat brought me to a sudden halt before one of themost fascinating panoramas in all Spain.

A still higher rise cutting off the foreground, therebegan a few miles beyond, the vast, wrinkled,verdureless plateau of Castile, rolling away and upward likean enormous tilted profile-map of the world, sea-bluewith distance and heat rays, all details blendedtogether into an indistinctness that left only anundivided impression like a Whistlerian painting.I pushed forward and at the top of the next ridgegasped aloud with new wonder. From this summitthe world fell pell-mell away at my feet into abottomless gorge; and beyond, two or three miles away,the culminating point in a tumultuous landscape ofravines, gulleys and precipitous chasms, sat anOriental city, close-packed and isolated in its rockysolitude, the sun's last rays casting over its domesand minaret-like spires a flood of color that seemedsuddenly and bodily to transport the beholder intothe very heart of Asia. My goal was won; beforeme lay the ancient capital of the Goths, history-rich Toledo.

I sat down on the crest of the precipice overhangingthe Tajo, almost beneath the enormous iron crossset in a rock to mark Toledo as the religious centerof Spain, and remained watching the city across thegulf, full certain that whatever offered within itswalls could in no degree equal the view from thisfacing hilltop. Richly indeed did this one sight ofher reward the long day's tramp across the chokinghills, even had there not been a pleasure in thewalk itself; and upon me fell a great pity for thosethat come to her by railroad in the glare of day andthe swelter of humanity.

As I sat, and the scene was melting away into thedescending night, a voice sounded behind me and aragged, slouching son of fortune proffered theaccustomed greeting and, rolling a cigarette, sat downat my side. He was a "child of Toledo," and of hisnative city we fell to talking. At length he raisedhis flabby fist and, shaking it at the twinkling lightsacross the Tajo, cried out:

"O Toledo, my city! Gaunt, sunken-belliedToledo, bound to your rock and devoured by thevulture horde of bloated churchmen while your childrenare starving!

"Señor," he continued, suddenly returning to aconversational tone, "let me show you but one of athousand iniquities of these frailuchos."

He rose and led the way a little further along thepath I had been following, halting at the edge of ayawning hole in the rocks, like a bottomless well, theexistence of which I was thankful to have learnedbefore I continued my way.

"Señor," he said, "no man can tell how manyhave died here, for it lies, as you see, in the verycenter of the trail over these hills. For ahundred years, as my grandfather has known, it hasstood so. But do you think yon cursed priests wouldspend a perrito of their blood-sweated booty tocover it?"

It was black night when I picked my way downinto the valley of the Tajo and, crossing theAlkántara bridge, climbed painfully upstairs into Toledo.Even within, the Oriental impression was not lost,though the Castilian tongue sounded on every side.With each step forward came some new sign torecall that for half the past eight hundred years Toledowas an Arab-ruled and Arabic-speaking city. Thusit is still her Eastern fashion to conceal her wealth bybuilding her houses inwardly, leaving for publicthoroughfare the narrow, haphazard passagewaysbetween them, and giving to the arriving stranger thesensation of wandering through a haughty crowd ofwhich each coldly turns his back.

Her medley of streets was such as one might findin removing the top of an ant-hill, an ant-hill inwhich modern improvements have made littleprogress; her pavements of round, century-polishedcobble-stones, glinting in the weak light of an occasionalstreet-lamp, were painful indeed to blistered feet.Ugly and barn-like outwardly, like the Alhambra, henhouses frequently resemble that ancient palace, too,in that they are rich with decoration and comfortwithin. It was an hour or more before I was directedto a casa de huéspedes in the calle de la Lechuga, orLettuce street, a gloomy crack between two rows ofbuildings. The house itself was such as only a manof courage would have entered by night in any othercity. I ventured in, however, and found the familyout-of-doors--lolling in the flower and palm-grownpatio beneath the star-riddled sky, the canvas thatformed the roof by day being drawn back. Even thewell was in the patio, on which opened, like the others,the room to which I was assigned, presenting towardthe street a blank, windowless wall.

It was late the next forenoon before I had slept theforty hot and rocky miles out of my legs and salliedforth to visit a shoemaker. As he lived only twostreets away, it was my good fortune to find him inless than an hour, and as Toledo is the last city in theworld in which a man would care to run about in hissocks, I sat on a stool beside his workbench forsomething over three hours. His home and shop consistedof one cavernous room; his family, of a wife whosewed so incessantly that one might easily havefancied her run by machinery, and of a daughter ofsix who devised more amusem*nt with a few scrapsof leather than many another might with all the toysof Nürnberg. The shoemaker was of that old-fashionedtribe of careful workmen, taking pride in theirlabor, whom it is always a joy to meet--though notalways to sit waiting for. He, too, hinted at themisery of life in Toledo, but unlike the specter of thenight before, did not lay the blame for the sunkencondition of his city on the "frailuchos," chargingit rather to the well-known perverseness of fate,either because he was of an orthodox turn of mindor because his wife sat close at hand. When he hadfinished, having sewed soles and nailed heels on myshoes that were to endure until Spain was left behind,he collected a sum barely equal to forty cents.

In striking contrast to him--indeed, the two wellillustrated the two types of workmen the worldharbors--was the barber who performed the nextservice. He was a mountain of sloth who rose withalmost a growl at being disturbed and, his mindelsewhere, listlessly proceeded to the task before him.Though he was over forty and knew no other trade,he had not learned even this one, but haggled andclawed as that breed of man will who drifts throughlife without training himself to do anything. Thereflective wanderer comes more and more to respectonly the man, be he merely a street-sweeper, who doeshis life's work honestly; the "four-flusher" is evera source of nausea and a lowerer of the tone of life,be he the president of a nation.

While I suffered, a priest dropped in to have histonsure renovated and gloriously outdid in thescrofulousness of his anecdotes not only this clumsywielder of the helmet of Mambrino, but exposed poortimorous Boccaccio for a prude and a Quaker.

Packed away down in a hollow of the congestedcity is that famous cathedral surnamed "la Rica." "TheRich"--it would be nearer justice to dub herthe Midian, the Ostentatious, for she is so overburdenedand top-heavy with wealth that one experiencesat sight of her a feeling almost of disgust, as fora woman garish with jewelry. We of the UnitedStates must see, to conceive what shiploads of richesare heaped up within the churches of Spain by thesuperstitions of her people and the rapacity of herpriests, who, discovering the impossibility of layingup their booty hereafter, agree with many groans tostack it here.

"The Spanish church," observes Gautier, "isscarcely any longer frequented except by tourists,mendicants, and horrible old women." If one choosethe right hour of the afternoon even these vexationsare chiefly absent, entirely, perhaps, but for a poorold crone or two kneeling before some mammoth dolltricked out to represent the Virgin and bowing downnow and then in true Mohammedan fashion to kissthe stone flagging. The Iberian traveler must visitthe cathedrals of the peninsula, not merely becausethey offer the only cool retreat on a summer day, butbecause they are the museums of Spain's art andhistory. But even the splendor of the setting sunthrough her marvelous stained-glass windows cannotovercome the oppressiveness of "la Rica."

As he stands before the wondrous paintings thatenrich the great religious edifices of Spain, thematter-of-fact American of to-day is not unlikely to beassailed by other thoughts than the pure esthetic.There comes, perhaps, the reflection of how false isthat oft-repeated assertion that the world's truly greatartists exercised their genius solely for pure art'ssake. Would they then have prostituted their yearson earth to tickling the vanity of their patrons, indepicting the wife of some rich candle-makerwalking arm in arm with the Nazarene on the Mount ofOlives, or the absurdity of picturing Saint Fulano,who was fed to Roman lions in A.D. 300, strollingthrough a Sevillian garden with the infant Jesus inhis arms and a heavenly smirk on his countenance?How much greater treasures might we have to-dayhad they thrown off the double yoke of contemporaneoussuperstitions and servility to wealth andpainted, for example, the real Mary as in theircreative souls they saw her, the simple Jewish housewifeamid her plain Syrian surroundings. Instead ofwhich they have set on canvas and ask us to accept astheir real conception voluptuous-faced "Virgins"who were certainly painted from models of a verydifferent type, and into whose likeness in spite of thepainter's skill has crept a hint that the poser'sthoughts during the sitting were much less on herassumed motherhood of a deity than on the comingevening's amours.

Horror, too, stands boldly forth in Spanish painting.The Spaniard is, incongruously enough, asrealist of the first water. He will see thingsmaterially, graphically; the bullfight is his greatdelight, not the pretended reality of the theater.Centuries of fighting the infidel, centuries ofcourting self-sacrifice in slaying heretics, the reactionagainst the sensuous gentleness of the Moor, have allcombined to make his Christianity fervid, savage,sanguinary. Yielding to which characteristic of hisfellow-countrymen, or tainted with it himself, manya Spanish artist seems to have gloried in depictingin all gruesome detail martyrs undergoing torture,limbs and breasts lopped off and lying bleeding closeat hand, unshaven torturers wielding their drippingknives with fiendish merriment. These horrors, too,are set up in public places of worship, where littlechildren come daily, and even men on occasion. Itis strange, indeed, if childhood's proneness toimitation does not make the playground frequently thescene of similar martyrdoms. How much better totreat the tots to a daily visit to the morgue, wherewhat they see would at least be true to nature--andfar less repulsive.

There are other "sights" in Toledo than thecathedral for him who is successful in running themdown in her jungle of streets. Each such chase iscertain sooner or later to bring him out into theZocodover, that disheveled central plaza in which thesunbeams fall like a shower of arrows. The infernointo which he seems plunged unwarned chokes atonce the rambler's grumble at the intricacies of thecity and brings him instead to mumble praises of theArabs, who had the good sense so to build that thesun with his best endeavors rarely gets a peep into thedepth of the pavement; and the time is short indeedbefore he dives back into the relief of one of theradiating calles.

As often as I crossed the "Zoco" my eyes weredrawn to a ragged fellow of my own age, with asix-inch stump for one leg, lolling prone on thedirt-carpeted earth in a corner of the square, mumbling fromtime to time over his cigarette:

"Una limosnita, señores; qué Dios se lo pagará."

There was in his face evidence that he had beenborn with fully average gifts, perhaps specialtalents; and a sensation of sadness mingled with angercame upon me with the reflection that through all theyears I had been living and learning and journeyingto and fro upon the earth, this hapless fellow-mortalhad been squatting in the dust of Toledo's Zocodover,droning the national lamentation:

"A little alms, señores, and may God repay you."

Just another was he of her thousands of sonsthat Spain has wantonly let go to waste, until evenat this early age he had sunk to a lump of livinghuman carrion that all the powers of earth or fromElsewhere could not remake into the semblance of a man.

Try though one may, one cannot escape theconviction that the fat of Toledo goes to the priesthood,both physically and figuratively. High or low,the churchmen that overrun the place have all a sleek,contented air and on their cynical, sordid faces anall too plain proof of addiction to the flesh pots;while the layman has always a hungry look, not quitealways of animal hunger for food, but at least forthose things that stand next above. Nowhere canone escape the cloth. Every half-hour one is sure torun across at least a bishop tottering under afortune's-worth of robes and attended by a bodyguardof acolytes, pausing now and again to shed hisputative blessing on some devout passer-by. Of lesserdignitaries, of cowled monks and religious mendicantsthere is no lack, while with the common orgarden variety of priest, a cigarette hanging from acorner of his mouth, his shovel hat set at a rakishangle, his black gown swinging with the jauntinessof a stage Mephistopheles, ogling the girls in streetor promenade, the city swarms. Distressingly closeis the resemblance of these latter to those creaturesone may find loitering about the stage-door towardthe termination of a musical comedy.

I sat one afternoon on a bench of that brokenpromenade that partly surrounds Toledo high abovethe Tajo, watching the sun set across the westernvega, when my thoughts were suddenly snatched backthrough fully a thousand years of time by thesix-o'clock whistle of the Fabrica de Armas below.When my astonishment had died away, there cameover me the recollection that not once before in allSpain had I heard that sound, a factory whistle.Agreeable as that absence of sibilant discord is tothe wanderer's soul, I could not but wonder whetherjust there is not the outward mark of one of the chiefreasons why the Spain of to-day straggles where shedoes in the procession of nations.

I descended one afternoon from Lettuce street tothe sand-clouded station on the plain and spent theensuing night in Aranjuez, a modern checker-boardcity planted with exotic elms and royal palaces. Itwas again afternoon before I turned out into thebroad highway that, crossing the Tajo, struck offwith business-like directness across a vega fertilewith wheat. Before long it swung sharply to theright and, laboring up the scarified face of a cliff,gained the great central tableland of Castilla Nueva,then stalked away across a weird and solemnlandscape as drear and desolate as the hills of Judea.

The crabbed village that I fell upon at duskfurnished me bread and wine, but no lodging. I ploddedon, trusting soon to find a more hospitable hamlet.But the desolation increased with the night; neitherman nor habitation appeared. Toward eleven I gaveup the search and, stepping off the edge of thehighway, found a bit of space unencumbered with rocksand lay down until the dawn.

The sun rose murky. In twenty kilometers thedeserted carretera passed only two squalidwineshops. Then rounding in mid-morning a slighteminence, it presented suddenly to my eyes a smoky,indistinct, yet vast city stretching on a higher planehalf across the desolate horizon. It was Madrid.I tramped hours longer, so uncertainly did thehighway wander to and fro seeking an entrance,but came at last into a miserable outskirtvillage and tossed away the stick that had borne myknapsack since the day I had fashioned thatconvenience in the southern foothills of Andalusia.Two besmirched street Arabs, pouncing upon italmost as it fell--so extraordinary a curiosity wasit in this unwooded region--waged pitched battleuntil each carried away a half triumphant. I pushedon across the massive Puente de Toledo high abovethe trickle of water that goes by the name of theriver Manzanares and, mounting through a city asdifferent from Toledo as Cairo from Damascus,halted at last in the mildly animated Puerta del Sol,the center of Spain and, to the Spaniard, of theuniverse.

CHAPTER X

SHADOWS OF THE PHILIPS

A day or two later I was installed for afortnight in a casa de huéspedes in the calle SanBernardo. In such places as one plans to remainfor any length of time there are few cheaperarrangements for ample fare in all Europe than theseSpanish "houses of guests." My room, which wastemporarily on the second-floor front, but solemnlypledged to be soon changed to the third-floor back,was all that an unpampered wanderer could haverequired. Breakfast was light; a cup of chocolate anda roll--no self-respecting traveler ventures tosample Spanish coffee more than once. But onesoon grows accustomed and indeed to prefer theEuropean abstemiousness at the first meal. Incompensation the almuerzo and comida, at twelve andseven, were more than abundant. A thick soup,not unseldom redolent of garlic, was followed by asalad, and that by a puchero, which is to say anentire meal on one platter,--in the center a squareof boiled beef flanked like St. Peter's amid the hills ofRome by seven varieties of vegetables, thegarbanzos--bright yellow chickpeas of the size ofmarbles--with the usual disproportion granted thatrobust comestible in Spain, overtowering not onlyevery other eminence but carpeting the interveningvalleys. That despatched, or seriously disfigured,there came a second offering from the animal world,--acocido or an olla podrida, after which therepast descended gradually by fruit, cheese, andcigarettes to its termination. Through it all a commonwine flowed generously.

Even on Friday this sturdy good cheer knew noabatement. Centuries ago, in the raging days ofthe Moor, the faithful of Spain were granted fortheir Catholic zeal and bodily behoof this dispensation,that they might nourish their lean frames onwhatever it should please Santiago, their patron, tobring within bowshot of their home-made crosspieces.The Moor has long since removed his dusky shadowfrom the land, but the dispensation remains.Indeed, there is left scarcely a custom the inobservanceof which betrays the non-Catholic; or if onethere be at all general it is this: when heyawns--which he is not unwont to do even at table--thedevout Spaniard makes over his mouth the sign ofthe cross, to keep the devil from gaining a footholdtherein--an exorcism that is not always successful.

There is yet another custom, quite the oppositeof religious in result at least, which the guest at acasa de huéspedes must school himself to endure. Itgrows out of the Spaniard's infernal politeness.Figure to yourself that you have just returned froma morning of tramping through sweltering Madridon the ephemeral breakfast already noted, and sitdown at table just as a steaming puchero is served.With a melodious and self-sacrificing "Serveyourself, señor," the addle-pated Spaniard across theway pushes the dish to his neighbor; to which theneighbor responds by pushing it back again with a"No! Serve yourself, señor," followed in quicksuccession by "No! No! Serve yourself, señor;" "No!No! No! señor! Serve yourself!" "No! No! No!No! serve--" and so on to the end of time, or untila wrathy Anglo-Saxon, rising in his place, picks upthe source of dispute and establishes order.

Our household in the calle San Bernardo consistedof a lawyer, a "man of affairs"--using thelatter word in its widest signification--of two youngGermans, "Don Hermann" and "Don Ricardo,"for some time employed in the city, and of the familyitself. Of this the husband, a slouching, toothlessfellow of fifty, and the grandmother were meresupernumeraries. The speaking parts were taken bythe wife and daughter, the former an enormous,unpolished woman with a well-developed mustacheand the over-developed voice of a stevedore.Indeed, a stentorian, grating voice and a habit ofspeaking always at the tiptop of it is one of thechief afflictions of the Spanish women of themasses--and of their hearers. Is it by chance due to thecustom of studying and reciting always aloud andin chorus during their few years of schooling? Quiénsabe? There was presented during my stay inMadrid the play, or more properly playlet--zarzuela--"LevantarMueros--Raising the Dead"; but Idared not go lest it turn out to be a dramatizedsewing circle.

But it remains to introduce the star member of thecast, the center of that San Bernardo universe aroundwhich revolved mother, supernumeraries, and guestslike planets in their orbits--the daughter. I fullyexpect to wander many a weary mile before I againbehold so beautiful a maid--or one that I shouldtake more pleasure in being a long way distant from.She was sixteen--which in Spain is past childhood--aglorious, faultless blonde in a land whereblondes are at high premium, her lips forming whatthe Spaniard calls a "nido de besos"--a nest ofosculatory delights--and-- But why drive theimpossible task further? Such radiant perfectionsin human form must be seen at least to be appreciated.It is sufficient, perhaps, to mention that herlikeness was on sale in every novelty shop in Madridand found more purchasers than that of Machaquito,King of the Toreros. In short, a supreme beauty--hadshe been captured early and suitably polishedinstead of remaining at home with mother until shehad acquired mother's voice, and mother's roughshodmanners, and a slothful habit of life that wasdestined, alas, in all probability to end by reproducingher mother's bulk and mustache.

There are two things worth seeing in howling,meeowling, brawling, blistering Madrid--heroutdoor life and the Prado museum. It was the latterthat I viewed by day, for when relentless August hassettled down the capital is not merely hot, it isplutonic, cowering under a dead, sultry heat without therelief of a breath of air, a heat that weighs downlike a leaden blanket and makes Seville seem bycomparison a northern seaport. A saying as old as itsfoolish founder's grave credits the city with threemonth's invierno and nine months' infierno, acharacterization that loses much in symmetry, thoughgaining, perhaps, in force by translation. It wasmy fortune to have happened into the place whenthe lowest circle of the latter region was having itsinning.

Wherefore I went often to the Prado; and came asoften away more physically fatigued than after afour-hour watch in a stokehole, and with my headin a bewildered whirl that even a long stroll in theBuen Retiro only partly reduced. It is like theirrationality of man to bring together thesethousands of masterpieces, so close together that notone of them can produce a tenth of its proper effect.Of the pictures in the Prado the seeing alone wouldrequire two years of continuous work, the attempt todescribe, a lifetime; pictures running through allthe gamut of art from the fading of the pre-Raphaelitesdown to Goya, that plain-spoken Goya whoseems to have stood afar off and thrown paint bythe bucketful at his canvas--with marvelousresults. A pandemonium of paintings, not one ofwhich but off by itself would bring daily inspirationto all beholders. It is the tendency of all things tocrowd together--wealth, art, learning, work, leisure,poverty; man's duty to combat this tendency byworking for a sane and equitable distribution. ThePrado collection would be a treasure, indeed, hadthose who exerted themselves to bring these paintingstogether given half that exertion to spreading themout. Then it might be that in a land as rich withart as Spain one would not find daubs andbeer-calendars hung in the place of honor in the homesand fondas of "the masses." When the good daycomes that the accumulation of the Prado isdispersed I shall bespeak as my share the "Borrachos"or "Vulcan's Forge" of sturdy Velazquez.

center of the universe]

Those who are curious may also visit, atseasons and with permissions, the unpleasing royalpalace, about the outer walls of which sleep scoresof fly-proof vagrants in the shade of half leaflesstrees, and sundry other government buildings, all ofwhich--except the vagrants--are duly and fullydescribed in the guide-books. There is, too, the dailyjuego de Pelota, imported from the Basque provinces,a sort of enlarged handball played in a slate-walledchamber in which the screaming of gamblersfor bids and their insults to the players know nocessation. Wandering aimlessly through her streets, asthe sojourner in Madrid must who cannot daily sleepthe day through, I found myself often pausing toadmire the splendid displays in the windows of hertailors. Spain has no wool schedule, and as I gazeda deep regret came over me that I could not alwaysbe a dweller in Madrid when my garb grows threadbareor a tailor bill falls due. But there was sureremedy for such melancholy. When it grew acuteI had but to turn and note the fitting of thesesplendid fabrics on the passer-by, and the sadnesschanged to a wonder that the madrileño tailor hasthe audacity to charge at all for his services.

So bare and uninviting are her environs--and shehas no suburbs--that Madrid never retiresoutwardly as other cities for her picnics and holidays,but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro.The congestion is greatest about the EstanqueGrande. The largest body of water the normalmadrileño ever sees is this artificial pond of about thearea--though not the depth--of a collegeswimming-pool. On it are marooned a few venerablerowboats, for a ride in which most of the residents ofMadrid have been politely quarreling every fair daysince they reached a quarrelsome age. Small wonderdwellers in the capital cry out in horror at the ideaof drinking water. One might as sanely talk ofburning wood for fuel.

Obviously no untraveled native of "las Cortes"has more than a vague conception of the sea.Indeed, the ignorance on this point is nothing shortof pathetic, if one may judge from the popular seanovel that fell into my hands during my stay. Thewriter evidently dwelt in the usual hotbox thatconstitutes a Madrid lodging and had not the remotest,wildest notion what thing a sea may be, nor theability to tell a mainsail from a missionary's mule.But he was a clever man--to have concocted such ayarn and escaped persecution.

Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comesthoroughly to life only with the fall of night.Occasionally a special celebration carries her populaceto some strange corner of the city, but the fixedrendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broaderAlameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulenceof shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-highbeneath the trees. There is nothing hurriedabout the congregating. Dinner leisurely finished,the madrileño of high or low degree begins to driftslowly thither. By nine the public benches are taken;by ten one can and must move only with the throngat the accepted pace, or pay a copper to sit inhaughty state in one of the now unstacked chairs.Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in fromthe four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette,languidly unlimbers its instruments, and near elevenfalls to work--or play. About the same time therecome wandering through the trees, as if drawn hereby merest chance, five threadbare blind men, eachwith a battered violin or horn tucked tenderly underone arm. During the opening number they listenattentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians.Then as the official players pause to roll newcigarettes the sightless ragamuffins take their stand nearat hand and strike up a music that more than onecity of the western world could do worse thansubsidize. Thereafter melody is incessant; and with itthe murmur of countless voices, the scrape of leisurelyfeet on the gravel, the cries of the hawkers of allthat may by any chance be sought, and louder andmore insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--agedforty to sixty and of both sexes--"El País!""El Heraldo!" "La Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!"

Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in theafternoon in Madrid. The concert does not end untilthree and half the babies of the city are playing inthe sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when themusicians leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Evendid one feel the slightest desire to turn in there isnot the remotest possibility of finding one's roomless than a sweatbox. The populace shows littleinclination to disperse, and though many saunterunwillingly homeward for form's sake, it is not tosleep, for one may still hear chatting and the muffledtwang of guitars behind the blinds of the openwindows. As for myself, I drifted commonly after theconcert into the "Circo Americano" or a zarzuela,though such entertainments demonstrated nothingexcept how easily the madrileño is amused. Yet eventhese close early--for Madrid; and ramblinggradually into my adopted section, it was usually myfortune to run across a "friend of the house"--ofwhom more anon--to retire with him to the nearestJuego de Billar, or billiard-hall, there to play thenight gray-headed.

The doors of Madrid close at midnight, and neitherthe madrileño nor his guests have yet reached thatstage of civilization where they can be entrusted withtheir own latch-key. But it is easy for all that togain admittance. One has only to halt before one'sdoor, clap one's hands soundly three or six or nineor fifteen times, bawl in one's most musical andtop-most voice, "Ser-r-r-r-reno!" not forgetting to rollthe r like the whir of a broken emery-wheel, andthen sit calmly down on the curb and wait. Withina half-hour, or an hour at most, the watchman isalmost sure to appear, rattling with gigantic keys,carrying staff and lantern, and greeting the exilewith all the compliments of the Spanish season,unlocks, furnishes him a lighted wax taper, wishes hima "good night" and a long day's sleep, andgracefully pockets his two-cent fee.

Theoretically the sereno is supposed to keep order--orat least orderly. But nothing is more notedfor its absence in Madrid by night than order. Thesereno of the calle San Bernardo showed great likingfor the immediate neighborhood of our casa dehuéspedes--after I had been admitted. Rare thenight--that is, morning--that he did not sit downbeneath my window--for my promotion to the third-floorback was postponed until I left the city--with apair of hackmen or day-hawks and fall to rehearsingin a foghorn-voice the story of his noble past.Twice or thrice I let drop a hint in the form of whatwater was in my pitcher. But the serenos of Madridare imperturbable, and water is precious. On eachsuch occasion the romancer moved over some twofeet and serenely continued his tale until the risingsun sent him strolling homeward.

"Don Ricardo," of our German boarders, aspiredto change from his stool in a banking-house to thebullring. He had taken a course in Madrid'sEscuela Taurina and was already testing his prowesseach Sunday as a banderillero in the little plaza ofTetuan, a few miles outside the city. In consequence--for"Ricardo" was a companionable youth forall his ragged Spanish--our casa de huéspedesbecame a rendezvous of lesser lights in the taurineworld. Two or three toreros were sure to drop ineach evening before we had sipped the last of ourwine, to spend an hour or two in informal tertulia.I had not been a week in the city before I numberedamong my acquaintances Curdito, Capita deCarmona, Pepete, and Moreno de Alcala, all men whosenames have decorated many a ringside poster.

There appeared one evening among the "friendsof the house" a young man of twenty, of singularlyattractive appearance and personality. Clear-eyed,of lithe yet muscular frame, and a spring-likequickness in every movement, he was noticeableabove all for his modest deportment, having barelya touch of that arrogant self-esteem that is sofrequently the dominating characteristic of theSpaniard. His speech was the soft, musical Andalusian;his conversation quickly demonstrated him a man ofa high rate of intelligence.

Such was Faustino Posadas, bullfighter, alreadya favorite among the aficionados of Spain, though itis by no means often that a youth of twenty findshimself vested with the red muleta. Son of thespare-limbed old herder who has been keeper formany years of the Tabladas, or bull pastures, ofSeville, he had been familiar with the animals andtheir ways from early childhood. At sixteen he wasalready a banderillero. A famous espada carriedhim in his caudrilla to Peru and an accident to afellow torero gave him the opportunity todespatch his first two bulls in the plaza of Lima. Hereturned to Spain a full-fledged "novillero" andwas rapidly advancing to the rank of graduateespada, with the right to appear before bulls of any age.

Once introduced, Posadas appeared often in thecalle San Bernardo; much too often in fact to leaveany suspicion that either his friendship for "DonRicardo" or the charms of our conversation was thechief cause of his coming. A very few days passedbefore it had become a fixed and accepted customfor him to set out toward nine for the Paseo withthe radiant daughter of the house--thoughmother waddled between, of course, after the dictatesof Spanish etiquette. Within a week he wasreceived by the family on the footing of a declaredsuitor; and of his favor with the señorita there wasno room for doubt.

There was always a long hour between the terminationof supper and the time when Madrid beganits nightly promenade, during which it was naturalthat our conversation should touch chiefly uponaffairs of the ring.

"Don Henrico," asked Capita one evening--forI was known to the company as "HenricoFranco"--"is it true that there are no bullfightsin your country?"

"Vaya que gente!" burst out Moreno, when Ihad at length succeeded in making clear to themour national objections to the sport. "Whatrubbish! What does it matter if a few old hacks thatwould soon fall dead of themselves are killed tomake sport for the aficionados? As for thebull-- Carajo, hombre! You yourself, if you were in sucha rage as the toro, would no more feel the thrust of asword than the pricking of a gadfly."

Posadas, on the other hand, readily grasped theAmerican point of view. He even admitted that hefound the goring of the horses unpleasant and thathe would gladly see that feature of the córridaeliminated if there were any other way of tiringthe bull before the last act. But for the bullhimself he professed no sympathy whatever.

"What would you have us do?" he cried inconclusion. "Spain offers nothing else for a son ofthe people without political pull than to becometorero. Without that we must work as peasants onblack bread and a peseta a day."

"As in any other trade," I inquired, "I supposeyou enter the ring without any thought of danger,any feeling of fear?"

"No, I don't remember ever being afraid,"laughed the Sevillian, "though when Miúra furnishesthe stock I like to hear mass before the córrida."

"What are the secrets of success?"

"I know only one," answered Posadas, "and thatis no secret. Every move the bull makes showsfirst in the whites of his eyes. Never for aninstant do I take my eyes off his. So it has beenmy luck not to be once wounded," he concluded,making the sign of the cross.

"Cogidas!" cried Capita, passing a hand overa dull brown welt on his neck. "Caramba! I havefive of them, and every one by a cursed miúra. No,I never felt pain, only a cold chill that runs downto your very toes. But afterward--in thehospital! Carajo!"

One would suppose that men engaged in soperilous a calling would take extreme bodily care ofthemselves. Not a torero among them, however,knew the meaning of "training" as the word isused by our athletes. They drank, smoked--evenduring the córrida--ate what and when theypleased, and more commonly spent the nightstrolling in the Paseo with an "amiga" or carousingin a wineshop than sleeping. Whether it is aleaving of the Moor or native to this blear, rockyland, there is much of the fatalist in the Spaniard,especially the Andalusian. He is by nature agambler; be he torero, beggar, or senator, he isalways ready and willing to "take a chance."

"If a man is marked to be killed in the ring hewill be killed there," asserted Pepete. "He cannotchange his fate by robbing himself of the pleasuresof life."

Posadas was engaged to appear in the plaza ofMadrid on the first Sunday of our acquaintance.When I descended to the street at three the citywas already drifting ringward, a picador in fulltrim now and then cantering by on his Rozinante--asight fully as exciting to the populace as thecircus parade of our own land. I had reached theedge of the Puerta del Sol when I heard a "Hola,amigo!" behind me and turning, beheld none otherthan Jesús the Sevillian bearing down upon me withoutstretched hand. He had found work at his tradein the city--though not yet a barber apparently.

"And Gásparo?" I asked.

"Perdido, señor! Lost again!" he sighed."Perhaps he has found a new amiga. But I muchmore fear he has fallen into the fingers of thepolice. Mira V., señor. In all the journey wehave not been able once to hide ourselves on afreight train. At last, señor, in Castillejo,Gásparo goes mad and swears he will ride once fornothing. With twenty people looking on he climbsa wagon. A man shouts 'thief!' and around thestation comes running a guardia civil. I have notbeen able to find Gásparo since. Señor, I havecome to think it is not right to ride on therailroad without a ticket. Gásparo, perhaps, is inprison. But we will meet again when he comes out,"he concluded cheerfully, as I turned away.

At the plaza fully twelve thousand weregathered. The córrida was distinguished particularlyfor its clumsiness, though the fighters, while young,were not without reputation. Falls and bruises wereinnumerable and the entire performance a chapterof accidents that kept the aficionados in an uproarand gave no small amount of work to the attendantsurgeons. Of the three matadores, Serenito, ahulking fellow whose place seemed last of all inthe bullring, was gored across the loins by his firstbull and forced to abandon his task and fee to thesobresaliente. Then Platerito--"Silver-plated"--amere whisp of a man, having dedicated to the populaceas is the custom in Madrid the death of the fifthbull, gasconaded up to the animal, fell immediatelyfoul of a horn, whirled about like a rag caught ona fly-wheel, and landed on his shoulders fully sixtyfeet away. To the astonishment even of the aficionadoshe sprang to his feet as jaunty as ever and dulydespatched the animal, though not over handily.

The misfortunes of his fellows served to bring outby contrast the skill of Posadas. Not only did hepass the day unscathed, but killed both his bulls atthe first thrust so instantly that the thud of their fallmight be heard outside the plaza, how rare a featonly he knows who has watched the hacking andbutchering of many a "novillero." Indeed, sopleasing was his work that he was at once engaged,contrary to all precedent, to appear again on theensuing Sunday.

By that time I had learned enough of the "finepoints of the game" to recognize that the Sevillianwas approaching already true matador "form,"and as I took leave of him next day it was withthe conviction that success in his chosen careerwas as sure as the certainty of soon winning hismost cherished reward.

"Vaya, Don Henrico," he laughed as we shookhands. "We shall see each other again. Someday when I go to Mexico or the Americas of thesouth I shall come by New York and you shall showme all you have told us of."

There are few countries in which it is more difficultto lay out an itinerary that will take in theprincipal points of interest without oftendoubling on one's track than Spain. By dint oflong calculation and nice adjustment of details Isketched a labyrinthian route that my kilometer-book,together with what walking I should have timefor, would cover. As for my check-book there wasleft exactly three pesetas a day for the remainderof my time in the peninsula.

So one cloudy morning in early August I tooktrain at the Estación del Norte and wound awayupward through the gorges of the Guardarrama toSegovia. Only there did I realize that the rumbleof Madrid had been absolutely incessant in my ears;the stillness of the ancient city was almost oppressive,even more than in Toledo one felt peculiarly outof the world and a sensation that he must not remaintoo long lest he be wholly forgotten and lose hisplace in life's procession.

In the morning I set off by the highway thatfollows for some miles the great unmortaredaqueduct, that chief feature of Segovia, a thing indeedfar greater than the town, as if a man's gullet, orhis thirst should be larger than himself, so difficultis it for a city to obtain water in this thirstyland. Where the road abandoned the monument itcontinued across a country brown and sear, withalmost the aspect of an American meadow inautumn, steadily rising all but imperceptibly.Well on in the morning I entered a forest, at aside road of which I was joined by two guardiasciviles, who marched for an hour with me exchanginginformation and marveling that I had wanderedso far afield. It has been my lot to becomewell, nay, intimately acquainted with the police ofmany lands, and I know of none that, as a body,are more nearly what police should be than thesecivil guards of Spain, to whom is due thesuppression of all the old picturesque insecurities of theroad. They have neither the bully-ism of our ownclub-wielders nor the childishness of Asiatic officers.Except in blistering Bailen the bearing of everypair I met--they never travel singly--was suchas to win at once the confidence of the strangerand to draw out of him such facts as it is theirduty to learn so naturally that it seemed but amutual exchange of politenesses. There are, nodoubt, petty corruptions in so large a body, but inthe presence of almost any of them one has aconviction that their first thought is their duty.

The highway ended its climb at noon in La Granja--TheGrange--residence of the king in springand autumn, a town little Spanish in aspectseated in a carefully cropped forest at the base ofa thickly wooded mountain. I roamed unchallengedfor half the afternoon through the royalpark, replete with fountains compared with whichthose of Versailles are mere water-squirts;playthings that Philip the half-mad accused ofcosting three million and amusing him three minutes.I was more fortunate, for they cost me nothing andamused me fully half an hour.

After which I picked up the highway again and,winding around the regal village, struck upward intothe mountains of Guardarrama. At the hamletof Valsain I had just paused at the public springwhen the third or fourth tramp I had seen on theroad in all Spain swung around a bend ahead,marching doggedly northward. As I stooped to drink,a moan and a thud sounded behind me. I turnedquickly around to behold the roadster writhing inthe middle of the highway, the gravel of which hadcut and gashed one side of his face. The simplevillagers, swarming wide-eyed out of their houses,would have it at first that he was my companion andI to blame for his mishap. He bore patent signsof months on the road, being burned a tawny brownin garb and face by the sun that was evidently theauthor of his misfortune. For a time the villagestood open-mouthed about him, the brawnyhousewives now and then giving vent to their sympathyand helpless perplexity by a long-drawn "ay demi!" I suggested water, and a dozen women,dashing away with the agility of middle-aged cows,brought it in such abundance that the victim wasall but drenched to the skin before I could drivethem off. He revived a bit and while a womanclumsily washed the blood and gravel from his face,I addressed him in all the languages I could muster,for he was evidently no Spaniard. The onlyresponse was a few inarticulate groans, and when hehad been carried to a grassy slope in the shade,I went on, knowing him in kind if awkward hands.

A half-perpendicular hour passed by, and Iseemed to have left Spain behind. The road wastoiling sharply upward through deep forests ofevergreen, cool as an Alpine valley, opening nowand then to offer a vista of thick treetops and aglimpse of red-tiled villages; a scene as differentfrom sterile, colorless, sunken-cheeked Castille ascould well be imagined. Nor did the dusk descendso swiftly in these upper heights. The sun hadset when I reached the summit at six thousand feetand, passing through the Puerto de Navacerrada,started swiftly downward in the thickening gloom;but it was some time before the night had settleddown in earnest.

I had marched well into it when I was suddenlystartled by a sound of muffled voices out of thedarkness ahead. I moved forward noiselessly, forthis lonely pass has many a story to tell. A dimlight shone through what appeared to be a window.I shouted for admittance and a moment later foundmyself in the hovel of a peon caminero.

Within, besides the family, were two educatedSpaniards, one indeed who had been a secretary inthe American Legation up to the outbreak of therecent war. When he had been apprised of mymode of travel and my goal, he stared wonderinglyat me for a moment and then stepped out with meinto the night. Marching a few paces down thehighway until we had rounded some obstruction, hepointed away into the void.

"Do you see those lights?" he asked.

Far away and to the right, so far and so highin the heavens that they seemed constellations,twinkled three clusters of lights, almost in a rowbut far separated one from another.

"The third and farthest," said my companion,"is El Escorial; and your time is well-chosen, forto-morrow is the day of Saint Lawrence, her patronsaint."

We returned to the hut, where the wife of the peonwas moved to cook me a bowl of garbanzos andspread me a blanket on the stone floor. In themorning the sharply descending highway carried mequickly down the mountain, and by sunrise I wasback once more in the familiar Castille. It wasverging on noon when, surmounting a sterile rise,I caught sight of the dome and towers of theEscorial. A roadside stream, of which the water waslukewarm, removed the grime of travel, and Iclimbed sweltering into the village of Escorial deArriba, pitched on a jagged shoulder of the calcinedmountain high above the monastery.

Spain is wont to show her originality and indifferenceto the convenience of travelers, and on this, theanniversary of the grilling of him in whose honorit was built, the great monastery was closed for theonly time during the year. I experienced no regret,however, for the vast gloomy structure against itsbackground of barren, rocky hills had far too muchthe aspect of some dank prison to awaken any desireto enter. Least impressive of famous buildings, theEscorial is certainly the most oppressive. Thereis poetry, inspiration in many a building, in the TajMahal, the Cathedral of Cologne; but not in theEscorial. It suggests some frowning, bulkybourgeois of forty whose mother thinks him and whowould fain believe himself one of the most poeticand spiritual of men.

I wandered away the day in the town, driftingin the afternoon down into the village "de Abajo."There, in the multitude about the stone-pile of abullring, I ran across Curdito in festive garb. Hewas scheduled to kill all three bulls of the day'scórrida, but in spite of his urgent invitation I feltin no mood to sit out the blistering afternoon ona bare stone slab of this rough-and-tumble plaza.

El Escorial was so overrun with visitors to herannual celebration that not a lodging of any sortwas to be had in either the upper or the lowervillage. The discovery brought me no shock, fora night out of doors I neither dreaded norregretted. But as I sauntered at dusk down past thegreat building into the flanking "woods ofHerrera," I could not but wonder how thosetravelers who bewail the accommodations of the "onlypossible hotel" would have met the situation.

Behind the monastery extends a broad, silentforest, not over thick, and beneath the trees squatbushes and brown heather. I spread the day's copyof the Heraldo between two shrubs and, stretchingout at my ease, fell to munching the lunch I hadbought in the village market. Let the circ*mstancesbe right and I know few more genuine joysthan to sleep the night out of doors. Lie down inthe open while a bit of daylight still lingers, orawaken there when the dawn has come, and there is afeeling of sordidness, mixed with the ludicrous, asense of being an outcast prone on the commonearth. But while the night, obscuring all details,hangs its canopy over the world there are fewsituations more pleasing.

When I had listened a while to the panting of theAugust night I fell asleep. For weeks past I hadbeen viewing too many famous spots, perhaps, hadbeen delving too constantly into the story of Spain,My constant use of Castilian, too, had borne fruit;English words no longer intruded even on my innermeditations. Was it possible also that the marketlunch had been too heavy, or the nearness of thegloomy monastery too oppressive? At any rateI fell to dreaming.

At first there passed a procession of allSpain,--arrieros, peasants, Andalusian maidens, toreros,priests, Jesús the tramp, a chanting water-seller,merchants and beggars; close followed by twoguardias civiles who looked at me intently as theypassed. Then suddenly in their place Moors ofevery garb and size were dancing about me. Theyseemed to be celebrating a victory and to bepreparing for some Mohammedan sacrifice. A mullahadvanced upon me, clutching a knife. I started tomy feet, a distant bell boomed heavily, and thethrong vanished like a puff of smoke.

Away off above, in a hollow in the gauntmountain, I made out gradually the form of a mansitting pensive, elbows on knees, gazingdark-browed down upon me. He was in royal robes, andall at once he seemed to start, to grow in size,and a line across his breast expanded to the letters"Felipe II." Larger and larger he grew until heovertowered the mountain itself; then slowly,scowlingly he rose and strode down upon me. Awomen joined him, a scrawny woman who laid ahand inertly in his, and I recognized Bloody Mary,who seemed thus in an instant to have leaped overthe seas from her island kingdom to join her gloomyhusband.

In rapid succession new figures appeared,--Herrerafirst, a torpid, lugubrious man strangelylike the building he has left behind; then quicklya multitude, through which strolled a man whosecrown bore the name "Pedro," running his swordwith a chuckle of devilish laughter through anythat came within easy reach, young or old, asleepor awake. Of a sudden there stalked forth fromnowhere a lean, deep-eyed man of fifty, a hugeparchment volume under one arm, an almostcynical, yet indulgent smile on his countenance; andas if to prove who he was there raced down overthe mountain a man not unlike him in appearance,astride a caricature of a horse, and behind him adumpy, wondering peasant ambling on an ass. Thecavalier sprang suddenly from his hack and fellaffectionately on the shoulder of the parchment-bearer,then bounding back into the saddle hecharged straight for Felipe, who, stepping to oneside, flung, backhanded, Mary his wife far out ofsight over the mountain.

A sound drew my attention to another side.Across the plain was marching with stately treada long file of Moors, each carrying in one hand hishead, by the hair.

"Los Abencerrajes!" I seemed to shout; andalmost before it was uttered there remained onlyFelipe and behind him a score of indistinct forms.He waved a hand toward me and turned his back,and the company moved down upon me unlimberinga hundred instruments of torture. Distant bells weretolling mournfully. A priest advanced holdingaloft a crucifix and chanting in sepulchral voice:

"The hour of heretics sounds."

Louder and funereally rang the dismal bells; thetorturers drew near; I struggled to rise to myfeet--and awoke.

The bells of the monastery were booming outover the night.

CHAPTER XI

CRUMBLING CITIES

It was well along in the next afternoon that Idescended at the station of Avila and climbeda long dusty mile into the city. A scent of the dim,half-forgotten past hovered over the close-walled,peculiarly garbed place. When I had made acircuit of her ancient wall, through which her noless time-worn cathedral thrusts its hips, I drifteddown into the dusty vega below, where in the churchof Santo Tomás sleeps the dead hope of "los reyescatólicos." If the sculptor be trustworthy theprince would have been an intelligent, kindly lad,even though his martial valor might never haverivaled that of his stout-hearted mother. Returnedto the city, I strolled for an hour along the loftyPaséo del Rastro, watching the sun sink red behindthe serrated jumble of mountains on the far westernhorizon, beyond which lay my next stopping-place;and so to bed in the Posada de la Estrella amid themunching asses and snoring arrieros.

Avila is connected with Salamanca by rail, but theroute forms a sharp angle with its apex many milesto the north. I had decided, therefore, to walk.Swinging down through the western city gate andacross the babbling Adaja by the aged stonebridge, I clambered again upward to where a hugestone cross invites to a rest in its shade and a finalretrospect of crumbling Avila and her many-turreted,constraining wall. An easy two-days' walklay before me. For had not Heir Baedeker, soseldom in error as to plain facts, announced thedistance as thirty-five miles?

As I wended on up the hillside, however, I wassuddenly stricken profane by a stone sign-postrising before me with the dismal greeting:

"Salamanca 99 kilómetres."

Herr Baedeker was wrong by a little matter ofthirty miles.

But I had set the time of my entrance intoSalamanca; delay would bring havoc to my delicatelyadjusted itinerary. I doubled my pace.

The way led through a country as savage ofaspect as any in Spain, waterless, dusty, glaring,overspread with huge rocks tumbled pell-mell as ifthe Mason of the universe had thrown here thematerials left over from His building. Byafternoon a few lean farms began to crowd their wayin between the rocks, now and then a sturdy, thick-settree found place, and over all nature hoveredgreat clouds of locusts whose refrain reminded howeuphonious is the Spaniard's name for what we dub"dog days,"--"canta la chicharra--the locustsings." The inhabitants of the region seemedsomewhat more in fortune's favor than the restof the peninsula. Passing peasants, though rare,had none a hungry look; their carts were fancifullycarved and painted both on body and wheels,while the trappings of their cattle were decorativein the extreme.

All a summer day I tramped forward over hilland hollow toward the great jagged range, thehardy trees dying out, the fields growing in size andnumber, but the sierra seeming to hold ever as faraloof. Beyond a small withered forest in whichwere roaming flocks of brown goats, I climbed asteady five miles to a summit village exhibiting everyoutward sign of poverty and most fittingly named"Salvadios--God save us." The keeper of itsone quasi-public house deigned after long argumentto set before me a lame excuse for supper, butloudly declined to furnish lodging. I withdrew,therefore, to a threshing-floor across the way,heaped high with still unbroken bundles of wheat,and put in a shiveringly cold night--so great isthe contrast between the seething plains by day andthis hilltop bitten by every wind--not once fallinginto a sound sleep for the gaunt, savage curs thatprowled about me.

At dawn I was already afoot and three hourslater entered the city of Penaranda, in theoutskirts of which a fine plaza de toros was building,but within all the confines of which was no evidenceof school, library, nor indeed of restaurant. Icontented myself with a bit of fruit and trudged on.This may not, perhaps, have been the hottest dayof all that Spanish summer, but it bore certainly allthe earmarks thereof. The earth lay cracked andblistered about me, the trees writhing with the heat,the rays rising from the rocky soil like a densestage-curtain of steam. In a shriveled and parchedpueblo of mud huts, exactly resembling the villagesof Palestine, I routed out a kindly old woman fora foreshortened lunch; and then on again in theinferno, choking fields of grain and vineyards soonbecoming numerous on either hand. The wisehusbandmen, however, had sought refuge, and in allthe grilling landscape was not a human being tobe seen, save and except a sweat-drippingpedestrian from foreign parts straining along thescorching highway.

This swung at length to the right, swoopeddown through a river that had not a drop of water,and staggering to the top of an abrupt knoll,showed me far off, yet in all distinctness, a richreddish-brown city gathered together on a lowhilltop and terminating in glinting spires. It wasSalamanca; and of all the cities I have come thusupon unheralded and from the unpeopled highwaynone can rival her in richness of color, like ripe oldwine, a city that has grown old gracefully and withincreasing beauty. So fascinating the sight thatI sat down beneath the solitary tree by the way togaze upon it--and to swing half round the circuitof the shrub as the sun drove the scanty shadowbefore it.

But I was still far off the golden-brown city and,setting slowly onward in the descending evening, Iall but encircled the place before the carretera,coming upon the ancient puente romano, clamberedupward into its unrivaled Blaza Mayor.

Just back of this, four stories above the Plazade la Verduga, or Place of the Green Stuff, livesa widow whose little spare chamber is let in thewinter season to some unpretentious student of thenow unpretentious university. I engaged this,together with what of physical nourishment shouldbe reasonable, at three pesetas a day. As I tookpossession, the daughter of the hostess, a muchachaof eight, peered in upon me hugging a doll underone arm.

"Qué muñeca más bonita!" I hazarded, whichturned out to be unwise, for the homage soovercame her diffidence that she came in not only tooffer the information that my complexion strangelyresembled that of a lobster in the salmantinomuseum, but such a fund of further information thatit was long before I had inveigled her outside thedoor and, throwing myself on the bed, slept theclock round.

As in many another city it had been my fortuneto reach Salamanca on the eve of one of her greatfestivals. Indeed, that must be a foresightedtraveler who can journey through Spain withoutbeing frequently caught up in the whirlpool of somelocal fiesta. The excuse this time was AssumptionDay. The festivities within the city walls offerednothing of extraordinary, being chiefly confined toa band concert in the central plaza. Richer by farwould be the richest city of the earth could shepurchase and transplant into her own midst thePlaza Mayor of Salamanca, with its small forestof palms, the rich brown medallioned façades andsurrounding colonnades beneath which thesalmantino is wont to stroll, la salmantina on his arm,while the band plays in the flower-shrouded standin its center. Salamanca might sell, too, in spiteof her boast that it is the finest in Spain, beingpoorer than the proverbial church mouse, were shenot also Spanish and prouder than she is poor.

The real fiesta, however, took the form of abullfight that had a character all its own.Salamanca, as I have hinted, is no longer a city ofwealth. Indeed, those occasions are rare in thesemodern days when she can indulge in a round ofthe national sport, even though she possesses oneof the largest bullrings in Spain. On this greatholiday, however, the city fathers had decided thatnothing within the bounds of reason was too goodfor the recreating of Salamanca's long unfeastedchildren. A full-sized bullfight would, to be sure,have far overstepped the bounds above mentioned.But after long debate and deep investigation it hadbeen concluded that a córrida with four bulls, nohorses, one real matador, and seats of all shades anddistinctions at one peseta each might be conceded.

With this unlimited choice of vantage-points atmy own price I went out early to the plaza andpicked my place in the sombra in what was evidentlya section reserved for the guardia civil; for beforelong the guards, in full uniform and theirthree-cornered hats, began to gather about me, first inpairs, then in groups, then in swarms, until I waswholly, shut in and surrounded by guardias civileslike a dandelion in the center of a bed of tulips.Far from resenting my intrusion, however, if suchit was, they initiated me into their order with botasand cigarettes and included me in their conversationand merriment during the rest of the day.

The entertainment began at four. With thatexception, however, it had few points of similaritywith the regulation córrida. The processionentered, fully six men in torero garb--though thatof two or three of them fitted like amateur theatricalcostumes--followed by two horsem*n, two, intheir shirt-sleeves, as was also señor el alcalde inhis box. The key thrown, the fight began; withthe elimination of the one unquestionablyunpleasant feature,--the killing of horses. Evenaged hacks cost money and, as I have already morethan once suggested, money is a rare commodity inSalamanca. When the bull had been worried a bitwith the cloaks, the banderilleros proceeded at onceto plant their darts. The professional matador, ayoung man rejoicing in the name ofTrueno--"Thunder"--had, therefore, a far more difficulttask than usual, for more than anything else it isthe venting of his rage and strength on theblindfolded steeds that tires the bull, and on thisoccasion it was a still wild and comparatively freshanimal which the diestro was called upon to face.He despatched his three allotted bulls, however,without accident and to the vociferous satisfactionof the audience, which filled even at the low priceonly a bit more than the shaded section. It wasnot, as the guardia beside me was at some painsto explain, that there were not salmantinos quitesufficient to pack the plaza to overflowing, but that therewere not pesetas enough in town to go round. Inthe throng, too, were no small number of peasantsfrom all the widely surrounding country, some inthe old dress with knee breeches.

But to touch upon the unusual features of thecórrida. As a part of the worrying of the secondbull a chulo placed a chair in the ring and,standing upon it with neither weapon nor cloak, awaitedthe charge. When the bull had all but reached himhe sprang suddenly into the air, the animal dashedunder him and, falling upon the unoffending articleof furniture, dissolved it thoroughly into itscomponent parts and scattered them broadcast about thearena.

The most nerve-thrilling performance, however,that it was my privilege to see in all the devil-may-careland of Spain was the feat that followedimmediately on the death of the chair-wrecker. Itwas the "star attraction" of the day and wasannounced on the posters in all the Spaniard's richnessof superlatives--and he is a born and instinctivewriter of "ads." Clinging as closely as possible tothe eloquent phraseology of the original theannouncement may be set forth in near-English asfollows:

"Various are the chances (tricks) which areexecuted in the different plazas of Spain insidethe taurine art, but none that has more calledattention than that which is practised by JOSÉVILLAR son of the memorable matador (killer,murderer) of bulls Villarillo who"--not fatherIllo, who has left off all earthly sport, but sonJosé--"locating himself in the center of the arena andplaced with the head towards below and the feet byabove imploring the public to maintain the mostimpressive silence during the risk (fate) consummatesthe trick (chance) of Tancredo; very well, thisManagement not reflecting on (sparing) eitherexpense or sacrifice has contracted with him in orderthat he shall fulfill (lift, pull off; sic.) this trick(risk) on the third bull to the end that the salmantinosshall know it, with which program this Managementbelieves to have filled to the full the desires ofthe aficionados (rooters, fans, amateurs)."

The second bull, therefore, having been ignominiouslydragged to oblivion and the butcher-shop, andthe blood patches of the arena resanded, there salliedforth from the further gate a small, athletic manof thirty-five or so, hatless--and partly hairless--dressedfrom head to foot in the brightest red, of amaterial so thin that the movement of his everymuscle could be plainly seen beneath it. He wasentirely empty-handed. He marched with sprightlystride across the ring and, bowing low to the alcaldein his box above, addressed to the public a warningand an entreaty to maintain the utmost silence duringthe "consummation of the risk." An assistant thenappeared, carrying a small wooden box with a piece ofgas-pipe six feet long fixed upright in the top of it.This Villar placed exactly in the center of the ring,a hundred yards or more in every direction from thebarrier. Across the gas-pipe, near the top, hefastened a much shorter piece, thus forming a cross.On the box he placed a circular roll of cloth, stood onhis head thereon, hooked his toes over the cross-piece,waved a hand gaily to the public, and folded his arms.Every other torero stepped outside the ring, and thetoril gate swung open.

A wild snort, and there plunged into the arena aspowerful and savage a brute as it had ever yet beenmy lot to see. For an instant he stood motionless,blinking in the blinding sunlight. Then suddenlycatching sight of the statue flaming with the hatedcolor, he shot away toward it with the speed of anexpress-train--a Spanish express at least--until,a bare three feet from it, he stopped instantlystone-still by thrusting out his forelegs like aWestern broncho, then slowly, gingerly tiptoed up to themotionless figure, sniffed at it, and turned andtrotted away.

The public burst forth in a thunderclap ofapplause. Villar got right end up as calmly andgracefully as a French count in a drawing-room, laid ahand on his heart, and smiling serenely, bowed once,twice, th---- and just then a startled roar went upfrom the tribunes, for the bull had suddenly turnedand, espying the man in red, dashed at him withlowered horns and a bellow of anger.

There is nowhere registered, so far as my investigationscarry, the record of José Villar, son of Villarillo,in the hundred-yard dash. But this muchmay be asserted with all assurance, that it has in itnothing of that slow, languid, snail-like pace of theten-second college champion. Which was well; forsome two inches below his flying heels, as he set a newrecord likewise in the vaulting of barriers, themurderous horns crashed into the oak plank tablas with thesound of a freight collision and an earnestness thatgave work to the plaza carpenters for some twentyminutes to come.

Therein Villar was more fortunate than theMexican Tancredo, inventor of the "suerte," and forwhom it was named. Tancredo, like Dr. Guillotin,was overreached by his own invention, for while hisrecord for the hundred was but a second or two lessthan that of Villar, it was just this paltry marginthat made him, on the day next following his lastprofessional appearance, the chief though passiveactor in a spectacle of quite a different character.

The "Suerte de Tancredo" has never won anyvast amount of popularity in Spain, except with thespectators. Toreros in general manifest a hesitationakin to bashfulness in thus seeking the plaudits ofthe multitude. By reason of which diffidence amonghis fellows, José, son of Villarillo, memorable matadorde toros, pockets after each such recreation a sumthat might not seem overwhelming to an Americancaptain of industry or to a world-famous tenor, butone which the average Spaniard cannot name in asingle breath.

Salamanca's day of amusem*nt did not, however,by any means end here. Beneath the name of"Thunder," the professional matador, there wasprinted with equal bombast that of FERNANDOMARTÍN. Now Fernando was quite evidently asalmantino butt, a tall gawky fellow whose place inthe society of Salamanca was apparently verysimilar to that of those would-be or has-been baseballplayers to be found vegetating in many of oursmaller towns. Like them, too, Fernando was in allprobability wont to hover about the pool-rooms anddispensing-parlors of his native city, boasting of hisuntested prowess at the national game. That histalents might not, therefore, forever remain hiddenunder a wineglass, and also, perhaps, because hisservices might be engaged at five hundred pesetas lessthan the five hundred that a professional sobresalientewould have demanded, the thoughtful city fathers hadcaused him to be set down on the program,likewise in striking type, as "SUBSTITUTE WITHNECESSITY (CON NECESIDAD) TO KILL THE FOURTH BULL."

It was this "necesidad" that worked the undoingof Fernando Martín. When the customary by-playhad been practised on the fourth animal, enterFernando with bright red muleta, false pigtail, glintingsword, and anything but the sure-of-one's-selfcountenance of a professional espada. He faced thebrute first directly in front of the block of guardiasciviles, and the nearest he came to laying the animallow at the first thrust was to impale on a horn andsadly mutilate a sleeve of his own gay and rentedjacket. The crowd jeered, as crowds will the worldover at the sight of a man whose father and motherand even grandfather they have known for yearstrying to prove himself the equal of men importedfrom elsewhere. Fernando advanced again,maneuvering for position, though with a peculiarmovement of the knees not usual among toreros, andwhich was all too visible to every eye in the hootingmultitude. Trueno, the professional, stuck close athis side in spite of the clamorous demand of thepublic that he leave the salmantino to play out hisown game unhampered. Martín hazarded two orthree more nerveless thrusts, with no other damage,thanks to the watchful eye and cloak of Trueno, thanone toss of ten feet and a bleeding groin. By thistime the jeering of his fellow-townsmen had soovershadowed the tyro's modicum of good sense that heturned savagely on his protector and ordered him toleave the ring. Fortunately Trueno was not of thestuff to take umbrage at the insults of a foolish manin a rage, or the population of Salamanca wouldincontestably have been reduced by one before thatmerry day was done.

The utmost length of time between the entrance ofa professional matador for the last act and the deathof the bull is four or five minutes. FernandoMartín trembled and toiled away ten, twenty, thirty,forty. Slowly, but certainly and visibly his bit ofcourage oozed away; the peculiar movement of hisknees grew more and more pronounced. No longerdaring to meet the bull face to face, he skulked alongthe barrier until the animal's tail was turned and,dashing past him at full speed, stabbed backwardat his neck as he ran, to the uproarious merrimentof the spectators. Trueno saved his life certainlya score of times. At last, when the farce had runclose upon fifty minutes, a signal from the alcaldesent across the arena the sharp note of a bugle, twocabestros, or trained steers were turned into the ring,and the bull, losing at once all belligerency, trotteddocilely away with them. The star of FernandoMartín, would-be matador de toros, was forever set,and if he be not all immune to ridicule his nativecity surely knows him no more.

It is law that no bull that has once entered thering shall live. Curious to know what was to be thefate of this animal, I sprang over the barrier andhurried across to the gate by which he haddisappeared. There I beheld a scene that foreverdispelled any notion that the task of the matador is aneasy one, however simple it may look from thetribunes. The bull was threshing to and fro within asmall corral, bellowing with rage and lashing the airwith his tail. It required six men and a half-hour oftime to lasso and drag him to the fence. With ahundred straining at the rope his head was drawndown under the gate, a man struck him several blowswith a sledge, and another, watching his opportunity,swung his great navaja and laid wide open theanimal's throat.

It was late when, having mingled for some timewith the country folk dancing on the sandy plainbefore the plaza, I returned to the city for mybundle and repaired to the station. A twelve-hourride was before me. For I had decided to explore aterritory where even the scent of tourists isunknown,--the northwest province of Galicia.

The train that I boarded at eleven was crowdedwith countrymen returning from the day's festival,a merry but in no sense intoxicated company, inwhich I saw my first wooden-shod Galicians. Thecar was, for once, of the American pattern--thoughof Spanish width--with thirty seats eachlarge enough for three persons. The brakeman,too, who stood lantern on arm in the open door,bore an unusual resemblance to an American "shack."

A dozen men were standing in the aisle, but to mysurprise one seat near the center of the car seemedto be unoccupied. When I reached it, however, Ifound a priest stretched out on his back, his handsclasped over his paunch, snoring impressively. Icarried a protest to the brakeman and with a snorthe swooped down upon the sleeper. At sight of him,however, he recoiled.

"Carajo!" he cried. "Es un padre! I could n'tdisturb his reverence."

I stooped and touched the monopolist on theshoulder, being in no mood to remain standing allnight. Moreover, I had long been curious to knowthe Spaniard's attitude toward a man who shouldtreat a priest as an ordinary human being. "Hisreverence" grunted. I touched him again. Hissnore lost a beat or two and began once more. Ishook him more forcibly. He opened his blood-shoteyes, snorted "Huh!" so much like a certainmonopolist of the animal kingdom that even the passengersabout me laughed at the resemblance--and fell againto snoring. I sat down gently on his fat legs and,when he kicked me off, confiscated a place. He satup with the look of a man whose known world hassuddenly crumbled about his ears and glared at mewith bulging eyes a full two minutes, while over thefaces of the onlookers flitted a series of winks andsmiles.

He was just huddling himself up again in the two-thirdsof the seat that remained to him when the dooropened and Trueno, the matador, his little coletapeeping out from beneath his hat, his sword-caseunder one arm, entered and, spying the extra place,sat down in it with scant ceremony. We fell totalking. The torero was a jovial, explosive,devil-may-care fellow who looked and dressed his characterwell. The priest slunk off somewhere in the thickesthours and his place was taken by a peasant who hadbeen standing near me since leaving Salamanca.When he found opportunity to break into theconversation he addressed me with an amused smile:

"You are not then a Catholic, señor?"

"No."

"Ah! A socialist!" he cried with assurance.

For to the masses of southern Europe socialistand non-Catholic are synonymous.

"I doubt, señor," I observed, "whether youyourself are a Catholic."

"Cómo, señor!" he cried, raising his hands in acomical gesture of quasi-horror. "I, a cristinoviejo, no Catholic!"

"Do you go to church and do what your cura commands?"

"What nonsense!" he cried, using a still moreforcible term. "Who does? My wife goes nowand then to confession. I go to church, señor, tobe baptized, married, and buried."

"Why go then?"

"Caramba!" he gasped. "How else shall a manbe buried, married, and baptized?"

Toward morning I fell into a doze, from which Iwas awakened by the extraordinary sensation offeeling cold. Dawn was touching the far horizon. Thetrain was straining upward through a sharply risingcountry. As the sun rose we came in sight ofAstorga, standing drearily on her bleak hilltop, and inmemory of Gil Blas and for the unlimbering of mylegs I alighted and climbed into the town. It provedas uninteresting as any in Spain, and before themorning was old I was again riding northwestward.Soon there came an utter change of scene; tunnelsgrew unaccountable, the railroad winding its waydoggedly upward through a wild, heavily woodedmountain region that had little in common withfamiliar Spanish landscapes. In mid-afternoon Idismounted at the station of Lugo, the capital of Galicia.

CHAPTER XII

WILDEST SPAIN

Nearest of all the Iberian peninsula to ourown land, the ancient kingdom of Galicia isas well-nigh unknown to us as any section of Europe.As far back as mankind's memory carries it has beenSpain's "last ditch." Up into this wild mountaincorner of the peninsula retreated in its turn eachsubdued race as conqueror after conqueror sweptover the land,--the aboriginal Iberians before theCelts, the Celtiberians before the coast-huggingPhoenicians and Carthaginians, these before theomniverous Romans, followed as the centuries rolledon by Vandal, Suevi, Goth and Moor. Furtherthey could not flee, for behind them the world fallsaway by sheer cragged cliffs into the fathomlesssea. Here the fugitives melted together into aracial amalgam, an uncourageous amalgam on thewhole, for in each case those who reached thefastnesses were that remnant of the race that preferredlife to honor, those who "fought and ran away,"or who took to their heels even earlier in the proceedings.

Yet it was a long two centuries after Hannibalhad followed his father Hasdrubal into the Stygianrealms of the defeated, after Rome had coveredthe rest of the peninsula with that network of roadsthat remains to this day, that the power of theoutside world pushed its way into this tumbledwilderness. But for the necessity of loot to pay thegambling debts of his merry youth the conqueror indeedmight never have appeared. Yet appear he did,--ayoung Roman just beginning to display acrownal baldness, known to his legions as Caesar andanswering to his friends of the Roman boulevardsand casinos to the name of Julius. He conquered;and when he, too, had written his memoirs andpassed his perforated way, that lucky heir of allRoman striving caused to be built in these hismountains a city that should--like all that sprouted orgrew under his reign--bear his name,--"LucusAugusti--Gus's place."

To-day it is Lugo, a modest city ensconced in thelap of a plain near a thousand feet above the railwaystation that bears its name. Politically Spanish, itis so in little else. The last traces of the Arab, soindelible in the rest of the peninsula, havedisappeared. The racial amalgam, now the gallego, isclose akin to the Portuguese, like all long dominatedpeoples docile, unassertive, born to be a servantto mankind. He is the chief butt, the low comedianof the Spanish stage, slow, loutish, heavy of mindand body, without a suggestion of the fire of thatbubbling child of enthusiasm, the Andaluz; none ofthe native dignity and consciousness of personalworth of the Castilian, not even the dreaminess of theManchegan. He is fitted to be what he is,--thedomestic, the server of his fellow-countrymen.

From the posada at the city gate I climbed toLugo's chief promenade and Alameda, the top ofher surrounding wall. This is some forty feet high,of flat, irregular slabs of slate-stone on Romanfoundations, with a circuit of nearly a mile and ahalf. The town within and below is of the samematerial, the dull gray or drab so predominatingas to give the place the somberness of a stone villageof Wales. The inhabitants, moreover, have little ofthe Spaniard's love of color, being as sober in garbas in demeanor. It is noteworthy that thosecommunities that are least embellished by nature are mostprone to garb themselves in all the colors of thespectrum. The Venetian above his muddy waterhas been noted in all times as a colorist; thepeasants of the Apennines barely a hundred miles awayhave very little brightness of dress.

So the Lugense; for if the town itself is sombergray, the moss and vines that overrun the low,leaden houses, the gardens scattered among them,the flowers that trail from the windows of thedwellings built medieval-fashion into the walls make thescene gay even within. While outwardly it isunsurpassed. From the wall-top promenade the eyecommands an endless vista of richest green landscape,a labyrinth of munificent hill forms and mountainridges dense-wooded with veritable Alpine forestsrolling away on every side to the uttermost horizon.

In the town itself is almost nothing of what thetourist calls "sights"; which is, perhaps, a chiefreason why his shadow almost never falls within it.There is only the dull, bluish-stone cathedral, andan atmosphere wholly individual; nothing exciting,nothing extraordinary, though one amusing detailof life is sure to attract attention. Like manytowns of Spain, Lugo obtains her water through themouths of stone lions in her central plaza. But herethe fountain spouts are for some Gallegan reasonhigh above the flagging, far out of reach. Whencethe plaza and the streets of the city are at all hoursoverrun with housewives and domestics carrying notmerely pitchers but a tin tube some ten feet longthrough which to conduct the water into theirreceptacles. In nothing does the town differ fromfamiliar Spain more than in temperature. Herclimate is like that of Bar Harbor. A change in afew hours as from Florida in August to MountDesert brought quickly home to me the fact that mygarb was fitted only for perpetual summer. Almostwith the setting sun I fell visibly to shivering, andby dark I was forced to take refuge in bed.

I had come into Galicia proposing to strike acrosscountry to Oviedo, capital of the Asturias, in thehope of getting wholly and thoroughly "off thebeaten track." Therein I seemed fully to havesucceeded. Inquiries in Lugo elicited the informationthat Oviedo was reputed to lie somewhere to theeastward. Nothing more; except some nebulousnotion of a highway beginning at the base of thecity wall leading for a day or two in that direction.For which uncertainty I was in no sense sorry,delighted with the prospect of exploring by a route ofmy own that wooded wilderness of mountains thatspreads endlessly away from Lugo's promenade,certain of finding a land and a people unsullied bytourists.

Dinner over on the day after my arrival, Idescended from the city of Augustus by the unpavedroad that was to set me a little way on my journey.It was soon burrowing through dense, scentedforests, broken by scores of little deep green meadowsalong the way; so many and so inviting that itrequired a strong tug of the will to keep from lyingdown for a nap in each of them, in memory of themany grassless, siestaless, fly-bitten days in the restof the peninsula. Truly the good things of thisworld are unevenly distributed. In fact, only bya dead lift of the imagination could onecomprehend that this also was Spain. Switzerland,perhaps, but never a part and portion of the samecountry with the sear, deforested uplands of Castille, thesandy stretches of Andalusia, with osseous and allbut treeless La Mancha. The division line betweenEurope and Africa was meant surely to be thePyrenees and this Cantabrian range rather than theMediterranean.

When darkness settled down I halted at a jumbledstone hamlet, where payment was refused except forthe few cents' worth of peasant fare I ate. For mybed, was spread in an open stable a bundle of newlythreshed wheat-straw that was longer than myself.A half-day's tramp had not left me sleepy. Thenight lay cool and silent about me, and I sank intothat reverie of contentment that comes most surelyupon the wanderer when he has left the traveledworld behind and turns his face care-free toward theunknown, that mysterious land across whichbeckons the aërial little sprite men name Wanderlust.For the joy of travel is not in arriving but in settingforth, in moving onward; how fast matters little,where, even less, but ever on and on, forgetting, forthe supremest satisfaction, that there is a goal toattain. Let a man wander away into unknown landssmiling with summer, his journey's end little morethan conjecture, his day of arrival a matter ofindifference, and if he feel not then the joy of theopen road he may know for a certainty that he isa hug-the-hearth, and no gipsy and a vagabond.

In the morning continued a roadway hobble-skirtedby forests, a country as pleasing as Caruso'svoice, as soothing to the traveler from stony Spainas McDowell's music. To enumerate the details oflife and landscape here is merely to tell by contrastwhat the rest of Spain is not. The inhabitants werein the highest degree laconic, as taciturn as thecentral and southern Spaniard is garrulous,self-conscious to the point of bashfulness, a characteristicas uncommon in the rest of the country as amongthe Jews or Arabs; a heavy-handed, unobservingpeasantry that passed the stranger unaccosted,almost unnoticed. Such conversation as exchangedmust be introduced by the traveler. The cheering"Vaya!" was heard no more, the stock greetingbeing a mumbled "Buenos."

In appearance, be the inspection not too close, thismountain people well deserves the outworn epithet"picturesque." The women young and old woreon their heads large kerchiefs of brilliant red, andmost of them a waist of the same color, offeringstriking contrast to the rich green background, as thelatter was sure to be. As footwear, except thoseunpossessed of any, both sexes had wooden shoespainted black and fancifully carved, which,scraping along the highway, carried the thoughts quicklyback to Japan. At nearer sight, however, somethingof the picturesqueness was lost in the unfailingevidences of a general avoidance of the bath andwashtub.

Of least interest were the dwellings of thispeasantry,--villages neither frequent nor large, moreproperly mere heaps of gray huts built withoutorder or plan of the slate-stone of which theprovince itself is chiefly formed, as was seen whereverthe outer soil had been stripped away and theskeleton of the mountain laid bare. For all thecharacter of the country abundance of rain and apains-taking agriculture gave good crops. Galicia indeedsupports, though in poverty, the densest populationof the peninsula. Wheat, Indian corn, and hayabounded. The former was stacked, and threshedwith flails--two customs unknown in Spain, as thelatter products are entirely. The maize was sown.A species of cabbage on a stalk some two feet longwas among the most common of the vegetables.

All these products grew, not on the level, but inlittle isolated, precipitous fields in which it seemedimpossible that the laborers, male and female withsickles or mattocks, could stand upright. Flocks ofsheep and goats were many, and as the final changefrom the Spain that I had hitherto known there wasnowhere silence. The forests on either hand werevocal with the songs of birds. Mountain streamscame plunging, headlong down the ravines, orbrawled along through stony channels beside thewinding way. The water was of the purest andclearest, which may, perhaps, have led the inhabitantsto give most of their mundifying attention tothe vessels in which it was carried,--great oakenbuckets each with three wide hoops scoured spotlessand shining as a Hindu's lota.

But most unfailing breakers of the silence andmost characteristic of all the features of the provincewas its vehicles. The Phrygian peasants whodragged their produce into Troy before the siegehad certainly as up-to-date a conveyance. Thetraveler's first encounter with one of these Homericcontrivances is sure to be startling. There is only oneword that exactly expresses their sound from afar,--theFrench bourdonner--the noise of the bumblebee.Indeed, when first I heard it I fell tothreshing about my ears, sure that one of thoseinsects was upon me. Slowly the sound grew to themeowling of a thousand cats, and around a turn ofthe forest-hedged road came a peasant's cart drawnby little brown oxen--they are as often cows--muchlike our Jerseys in appearance, a great sheepskinthrown over their heads, to the horns of whichthe yoke was fastened. The unwieldy edifice,wabbling drunkenly as it came, consisted of littlemore than two solid disks of wood like cistern coversturning on a wooden axle, the whole having aboutit neither an ounce of iron nor a smell of axle-grease.Its pace certainly did not exceed a mile an hour,the oxen see-sawing from side to side of the road,twisting their burdened heads to stare at me withcurious, sad eyes. As it passed, my ears literallyached with its scream. I doubled my pace to flee thetorture. But there was no entire escape; hardlyonce thereafter was I out of sound of a cart or two,now screaming by, now "bourdonning" away acrosssome valley, buzzing at times even after the nighthad settled down.

Early on this second day, which was Sunday, thereappeared a far more precipitous and rocky countrythrough which the road began to wind its wayupward amid a chaos of rugged tumbled valleys,gaining by early afternoon an elevation above the lineof vegetation. For two hours I kept lookout for abit of level space for a siesta, without finding a patchof flat ground as large as my knapsack. I steppedover the edge of the highway and lay down on abank so sheer that I was obliged to brace my stickagainst the small of my back to keep from pitchingdown the thousand-foot slope into a brook; and evenas it was I awoke to find I had shifted some tenfeet down the hill.

The ascent thereafter grew still sharper, thesurrounding world being at last wholly enveloped in adense cloud. From out of this I heard, at what Ifancied must be toward sunset, sounds of revelry, bywhich, marching onward, I was soon encompassed,though still unseeing and unseen. Suddenly therecame waltzing toward me out of the fog a couple ineach other's arms, disappearing again as anotherpair whirled forth out of the unknown. Wanderingon through a merry but invisible multitude I ran allbut into the arms of two guardias civiles leaning ontheir muskets. They greeted me with vast surprise,welcoming me to their mountain-top town ofFonsagrada and, far from demanding my papers,offered to find me a partner that I might join thevillage in its Sunday celebration on the green. Ideclined such hilarity, but for an hour stood chattingwith them while the dancers whirled unseen about us.

Fonsagrada has no regular accommodations forstrangers. The peregrinating band of musicians,however, furnishing the day's melody, was to becared for in a sort of grocery, to which I repairedwith them when the dance was over. Havingpartaken of a substantial supper in which the far-famedbacalao--cod preserved in great chunks in barrelslike salt pork; a main staple in this region--madeits initial appearance, I laid my case before theproprietor. He was a Yankee-like man in the middlethirties, of modern business methods even though heknew next to nothing of the world outside hiscloud-bound village. Notwithstanding, therefore, thatthere was no "costumbre" to sanction it, he bademe spend the night under his roof--which I did alltoo literally, for when I had left off swapping yarnswith the melodious nomads my host led the way tothe garret, half-filled with straw, where in the midstof a too realistic dream I rose up suddenly and allbut shattered my head on the roof in question.

In the morning the clouds were still wandering likelost souls through the streets of Fonsagrada. Amist that barely escaped being a rain was fallingwhen I set off in an attempt to follow the voluminousdirections of the dubious village. According to these,when I had passed the "Mesón de Galo," a lonelystone tavern a few miles out, I left the road, whichwas bending toward Gijón on the north coast, andfell into a descending mountain path. A tang of thesalt sea was in the air. All the day through Iclimbed, slipped, and scrambled over jagged mountainslopes and through deep, rocky barrancas. Theredevelops with much wandering an instinct to followthe right fork of a mountain trail, slight hints thatcould not be explained, but without the half-unconsciousnoting of which I must have gone a score oftimes astray. Twice or thrice I stumbled into ahamlet in some wrinkle of the range, a village of five orsix hovels huddling in the shadow of an enormous,overtowering church, all built of flat field stones andswarming with huge white dogs.

At Grandas, a bit larger village overhung bymassed up mountains, I was at length so fortunateas to get after much search an intangible imitationof a meal. From there I panted a long time upwardand came out at last above a seemingly bottomlessgorge, a gorge so deep that I had scrambled nearlya half-hour along its brink before I noted that fardown in its depths was a town, encircled by verticalvineyards, like embroidery on the lower skirts of itsoverhanging mountains. My path lay plainly visibleon the opposite slope, only a long jump away, but ajump for Pegasus or the princess of the Rosstrappe,and I, mere mortal, was forced to wind a long hourand a half to and fro on the rubbled face of themountain before I entered the town below, called Saline.

Before me lay the most laborious task of all mySpanish journey. A mountain as nearly perpendicularas man could hope to ascend, without a breakor a knoll in all its slope, rose, a sheer wall, certainlyfour thousand feet above. The gorge seemed someboundary set by the gods between two worlds. Upthe face of the cliff a path had been laid out withmathematical precision, every one of its score of legsa toilsome climb over loose stones, with the sun,untempered by a breath of wind, pouring down its furyupon my back. It was hot as Spain in the depth ofthe canyon; it was chilling cold when I reached thesummit heavily crested in clouds and threw myselfdown breathless on my back. Darkness was comingon, and I fell soon to shivering in the biting mountainair and must rise and hurry forward. It was notstrange that in the fog and darkness instinct failedand that when finally I reached a village of eight ornine hovels and inquired its name the inhabitantsreplied "Figuerina," not in the least like the "LaMesa" I had expected.

Of a brawny, weather-beaten girl milking a cowby the light of a torch in what passed for theprincipal street, I asked:

"Is there a posada in town?"

"No sé, señor," she answered.

"Don't know! When your town has only nine houses?"

But she only stared dully at me through the gloom,and I carried my inquiry elsewhere. With nobetter result, however, for each one I asked returned thesame laconic, "I don't know." I had sat down on aboulder in the center of the hamlet to puzzle overthis strange ignorance when a strapping mountaineerapproached through the darkness and led me withfew words to the house of the head man. The latterwas in bed with a broken leg, having had themisfortune to fall off his farm a few days before. I wastaken before him as he lay propped up with pillowsand, after a few brief questions, he commanded hisfamily to make me at home.

Only at a distance are these mountain hamlets ofnorthern Spain inviting. For the good people live,indoors and out, in peace and equality with their pigsand chickens, not because they are by nature unclean,but because they know no other life than this, nor anyreason why their domestic animals should not betreated as equals. The wife of the village chief ledme into the living-room and kitchen. I knew it wasthat, for she said so. The place was absolutelydark. Since leaving Lugo I had not seen a pane ofglass, and lamps of any sort appear to be unknownin these hamlets of the Sierra de Rañadoiro.There was, to be sure, a bit of fire in one corner,but it gave not the slightest illumination, only athick smoke that wandered about looking for an exit,and unsuccessfully, for there was nothing whatever inthe way of chimney, and the door had been closedas we entered. Smoker though I am, I began toweep and did not once leave off while I remained inthe room.

The mustiness of a dungeon assailed the nostrils;the silence was broken by a continual droning. Thefloor was stone. In the room were six or eight menand women, as I discovered little by little from theirvoices. Supper was announced, and a match Istruck showed an indistinct group of which I was apart humped over a steaming kettle in the center ofthe floor. Into this all began to dip their bread.I hung back, which the wife discovering by someinstinct, she made an exclamation I did notunderstand and soon after there was thrust into my handsa private bowl of the concoction.

It turned out to be a "caldo gallego"--an allbut tasteless thick soup of which the chief ingredient,besides water, is the long-stemmed cabbageindigenous to the region. A spoon was then handed me.It was of wood, homemade, and flat as a canoe-paddle.What most aroused my wonder was the bread.A glimpse I had caught of it in the flicker of mymatch seemed to show a loaf of about the size of alarge grindstone--though I charged this to opticalillusion--from which wedges were cut, one of thembeing laid in my lap. It was coarse as mortar, yetas savory, and proved later to be as sustaining abread as I have yet run across on the earth. Thisand the caldo being no match for a mountain-climbingappetite, I asked the privilege of buying a bowl ofmilk. From my unseen companions arose manyejacul*tions of wonder that I could afford such aluxury, but a bowl of it was soon put in my hands.A better milk I never broke bread in.

Still I was at a loss to account for the incessantdroning in the room, like the croak of a distantox-cart. Since my entrance, too, I had been struck athousand times lightly in the face, as with breadcrumbs or the paper-wads indigenous to the oldcountry schoolhouse. When it occurred to me to putthe two mysteries together both were solved. Theflies were so thick in the room that they made thissound in flying blindly back and forth.

But once upstairs the dwelling assumed a newrating. Here was, it is true, no luxury; but therough-fashioned chamber, partly store-room andpartly spare bedroom, was capacious and clean, ofthe rough, unused sort of cleanliness of a farmer's"best room," opened only on extraordinary occasions.The one sheet of the massive bed was as stiffas any windjammer's mainsail, the blanket as roughas the robe of a Cistercian monk. Among a score ofmultiform articles stored in the room was a stack ofbread such as I had eaten below, some forty loaveseach fully as large as a half-bushel measure. It isbaked from four to six months ahead, twice or thricea year, and has a crust hard and impervious as aglazed pot, which keeps it fresh and savory for analmost unlimited period.

As I bade farewell to my host next morning I heldout to him two pesetas. He resented the offer as anArab or a Castilian might have, but being of thoseaccustomed to express themselves less in words than inactions, did so laconically. When I offered it againhe rose half up on his elbows and bellowed "No!" Hisgruffness was in no sense from anger, but merelyhis mode of speaking emphatically, and a way ofhiding that bashfulness so common to mountaineers,who are usually, as here, a shy and kindly people withmuch more genuine benevolence than grace ofmanner. I protested that I should at least be permittedto pay for my extravagance, the milk, arguing thateven a wanderer on his feet was better able to spare apeseta than a village chief on his back. But heroared "No!" again, and furthermore commandedhis wife to cut me a wedge of the longevious bread,"to carry me over the day."

Once escaped from the tangle of inhabited stone-piles,I strode away down rock-jumbled ravines, oneclose succeeding another and carrying me all butheadlong downward. In the depths of the third Irisked a plunge into a mountain brook, though thewater was icy and the air still almost wintry cold.The day was warming, however, by the time Idescended upon the hamlet of Berducedo, where I gotfried eggs and a new highway.

To chronicle the vagaries of the latter during therest of the day would be a thankless task. For milesit wound around and upward, ever upward on the faceof bare stony mountains like a spiral stairway toheaven. Then suddenly from each giddy height itdived headlong down into deep-wooded, fertilevalleys; then up again round and round anothermountain shoulder far beyond the last stunted shrub.Later in the day it took to rounding these peaksalmost on the level, coming a score of times so closeto itself that I could all but toss my bundle across,only to buckle back upon itself for miles around somenarrow but apparently bottomless gulley.

Somewhere during the previous afternoon I hadcrossed the unmarked boundary between Galicia andthe still more rugged kingdom of Asturias, to-daythe province of Oviedo. A new style of architecturegradually became prevalent. The buildings were oftwo stories, the lower, of stone, housing the animals,while the dwelling proper was of wood and percheda foot or more above the lower story on fourcone-shaped cornerstones, like some great awkward birdready to take flight.

But for this peculiarity the village in which nightoverhauled me differed but little from that of theevening before, except in being many hundred feetnearer sea level. It was called San Fecundo. Asbefore, my inquiry for an inn was each time answeredby a terse "I don't know." I found the head man ingood health, however,--a stalwart fellow little pastthirty who was shoveling manure in his front yard.Yet so local is the dialect of every village in thisregion that I tried for some time in vain to makeknown my wants to him.

"Can't you speak Spanish, señor?" I cried out.

"No, señor," he replied like the report of a gun,and apparently angered at the allegation. Wemanaged nevertheless by patience and repetition toestablish communication between us, and I found outat last why my inquiry for a posada had evoked sosurprising an answer. Public hostelries beingunknown among them, the mountaineers understand thequestion "Is there an inn in town?" to mean "Doyou suppose any resident will furnish me accommodations?"

The head man did in this case, in spite of myunfortunate blunder in calling him a gallego. Sogreat is the sectionalism in these Cantabrian rangesthat a man from one village deeply resents even beingtaken for a resident of another a mile distant; whilethe Asturians, a blending of the aboriginal Iberianand the Goth, in whose caves of Covadonga was keptalight the last flicker of Spanish liberty andChristianity, consider themselves free and independenthidalgos infinitely superior to the submissive gallego.There were in truth some noticeable differences ofcharacter and customs, that were to increase as Iadvanced.

We spent the evening in another ventless, smoky,fly-buzzing kitchen, though this time the fireplacegave a bit of blaze and from time to time the ruggedfaces of the eight or ten men, who had gathered atthe invitation of the village leader, flashed visible.I entertained them with such stories of America asare most customary and popular on such occasions.This was no light task. Not only were there manywords entirely indigenous to the village, but suchCastilian as my hearers used would scarcely berecognized in Castille. The expression "For allà" (overthere) they reduced to "Pa cá"; "horse" was never"caballo," but either "cabalo" or "cabayo." Worstof all, the infinitive of the verb served indifferentlyfor all persons and tenses. "Yo ir" mightmean "I go," "I was going," "I shall go," "Ishould go" and even "I would have gone" and "Ishould be going."

Most taking of all the stories I could producewere those concerning the high buildings of NewYork. I had developed this popular subject at somelength when a mountaineer interposed a question thatI made out at length to be a query whether those wholive in these great houses spend all their time in themor take an hour or two every morning to climb thestairs.

"Hay ascensores, señores," I explained, "elevators;some expresses, some mixtos, as on your railroads."

A long, unaccountable silence followed. I filledand lighted my pipe, and still only the heavybreathing of the untutored sons of the hills about mesounded. Finally one of them cleared his throatand inquired in humble voice:

"Would you be so kind, señor, as to tell us whatis an elevator?"

It was by no means easy. Long explanationgave them only the conception of a train that ran upand down the walls of the building. How thisovercame the force of gravity I did not succeed inmaking clear to them; moreover there was only one of thegroup that had ever seen a train.

In the morning the head man accepted with someprotest two reales--half a peseta. The highwayagain raced away downward, describing its parabolasand boomerang movements as before, and graduallybringing me to a realization of how high I hadclimbed into the sky. On every hand rocky gorgesand sheer cliffs; now and again a group of charcoal-burnerson the summit of a slope stood out againstthe dull sky-line like Millet's figures--for the sunwas rarely visible. As I descended still lower, morepretentious, red-roofed villages appeared, and bymid-afternoon I entered the large town of Tineo.As I was leaving one of its shops a courtly youthintroduced himself as a student in the University ofValladolid, and as he knew a bit of English it waswith no small difficulty that I resisted his entreatiesto talk that tongue with him in the mile or two hewalked with me. That night for the first time sinceleaving Lugo I paid for my lodging in a publicposada.

Salas, a long town in a longer green valley, wasso far down and sheltered that figs sold--by numberhere rather than weight--nine for a cent. Beyond,the highway strolled for miles through orchards ofapples and pears, while figs dropped thick in the roadand were trodden under foot. For the first time Iunderstood the force of the expression, "not worth a fig."

In the wineshop where I halted for an afternoonlunch I got the shock of that summer's journey.Casually I picked up the first newspaper I had seenin a week; and stared a full moment at it unbelieving.The entire front page was taken up by a photographshowing Posadas lying in bed, his familiarface gaunt with pain, and about him his father, apriest, and a fellow-torero.

"Carajo!" I gasped. "What's this; Posadas wounded?"

"Más," replied the innkeeper shortly. "Killedlast Sunday. Too bad; he made good sport for theaficionados."

An accompanying article gave particulars. TheSevillian had been engaged to alternate with awell-known diestro in the humble little plaza of San Lucarde Barrameda on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir.The end of the day would have seen him agraduate matador. The bulls were "miúras" fiveyears old. As he faced the first, Posadas executedsome pass that delighted the spectators. For once,evidently, he forgot his one "secret of success"; heturned to acknowledge the applause. In a flashthe animal charged and gored him in the neck. Hetried to go on, poised his sword, and fainted; andwas carried to the little lazaret beneath theamphitheater, while the festival continued. Towardmorning he died.

All this had passed while I was climbing into thecloud-cloaked village of Fonsagrada, two weeks to anhour since I had last seen the skilful Sevillian in thering. The article ended with the vulgarity commonto the yellow journal tribe:

"We have paid the dying Posadas one thousandpesetas for the privilege of taking this picture,which is almost all the unfortunate torero left hissorrowing family."

I trudged on deep in such reflections as suchoccurrences awaken, noting little of the scene. Atsunset I found myself tramping through a warmer, lessabrupt country, half conscious of having passedGrado, with its palaces, nurse-girls, and conventionalcostumes. As dusk fell I paused to ask for an inn."A bit further on," replied the householder. Icontinued, still pensive. Several times I halted, alwaysto receive the same reply, "A bit further, señor." Beingin no sense tired, I gave the matter little attentionuntil suddenly the seventh or eighth repetitionof the unveracity aroused a touch of anger anda realization that the night was already well advanced.A lame man hobbling along the dark road gave meonce more the threadbare answer, but walked sometwo miles at my side and left me at the door of awayside wineshop that I should certainly not havemissed even without him.

The chief sources of the boisterousness within werethree young vagabonds who were displaying theiraccomplishments to the gathering. One was playingtunes on a comb covered with a strip of paper,another produced a peculiarly weird music in a highfalsetto, while the third was a really remarkableimitator of the various dialects of Spain. With thethree I ascended near midnight to the loft of thebuilding, where a supply of hay offered comfortablequarters. For an hour he of the falsetto satsmoking cigarettes and singing an endless ditty of hisnative city, the refrain of which rang out atfrequent intervals:

"Más bonita que hay,

A Zaragoza me voy

Dentro de Ar-r-r-rago-o-ón."

It was with genuine regret that I noted nextmorning the reapproach of civilization. Rough as isthe life of these mountaineers of the north theirentire freedom from convention, the contact with realmen who know not even what pose and pretense are,the drinking into my lungs of the exhilaratingmountain air had made the trip that was just endingby far the most joyful portion of all my Spanishexperiences. Not since the morning I climbed intoAstorga had I heard the whine of a beggar; notonce in all the northwest had I caught the faintestscent of a tourist. The trip had likewise been themost inexpensive, for in the week's tramp I hadspent less than twelve pesetas.

A few hours more down the mountainside broughtme into Oviedo, where I took up my abode in theCalle de la Luna. The boyhood home of Gil Blasis a sober, almost gloomy town, where the sun isreputed to shine but one day in four. Itsinhabitants have much in common with the slow-wittedLugense, though they are on the whole more wide-awakeand self-satisfied. Of window displays the mostfrequent was that of a volume in richly illustrated papercover entitled, "Los Envenenadores (poisoners) deChicago." It was, possibly, an exposé of thepacking houses, but I did not find time to read it.August was nearing its close, and there was still aconsiderable portion of Spain to be seen. Luckily mykilometer-book was scarcely half-used up; but of thejoyful days of freedom on the open road there couldnot be many more.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LAND OF THE BASQUE

My knapsack garnished, I turned my back onOviedo early on Sunday morning. Thetrain wound slowly away toward the lofty serratedrange that shuts off the world on the south. Aswe approached the mountains, the line began to tieitself in knots, climbing ever upward. In one sectiontwo stations seven miles apart had twenty-six milesof railroad between them. At the second of the twoa flushed and puffing Spaniard burst into ourcompartment with the information that, having reachedthe former after the train had departed, he hadovertaken us on foot.

Still we climbed until, at the turning of the day,high up where clouds should have been wesurmounted the ridgepole of the range and, racing,roaring downward, were almost in a moment backin the barren, rocky, sun-baked Spain of old, dustswirling everywhere, the heat wrapping us round aswith a woolen blanket, drying up the very tobaccoin my pouch; a change almost as decided as fromthe forests of Norway to the plains of India.

Arrived in León at three, I set off at oncetourist-fashion for the cathedral, with its soaring Gothictowers and delicate, airy flying-buttresses the firsttruly inspiring bit of Christian architecture I hadseen in Spain; the first indeed whose exterior wasanything. Much of the edifice, however, was glaringlynew, the scaffolds of the renovators being still inplace.

But here again "if the house of God is rich thatof man is poor," pauperous in fact. When once thetraveler has forced himself to believe that León wasnot many centuries since the rich capital of a vastempire he must surely fall sad and pensivereflecting how mutable and fleeting indeed are the thingsof earth. The León of to-day is a large village,a dried-up, dirty, dilapidated, depopulated,cobble-streeted village of snarling, meretricious-mindedinhabitants jumbled together inside a wall that withthe cathedral is the only remaining proof of formerimportance. Here once more was the beggar withhis distressing whine, his brow of bronze, and his alltoo evident injuries; not numerously but constitutinga large percentage of the population. In all Spainthe devise of insurance companies on the fronts ofbuildings is more than frequent; in León there wasbarely a hovel without one or more. Which couldnot but awaken profound wonder, for not only arethere no wooden houses within her walls to makedanger of fire imminent, but a greater blessing couldhardly be imagined for León than a general andall-embracing conflagration.

It was, perhaps, because of the unbroken miserywith which they were surrounded that the Leónesewere individually crabbed and cynical. Not acourteous word do I remember having received in all thetown, and in vitriolic remarks the keepers and guestsof the tumble-down parador where I was forced toput up outdid all others.

I was off in the morning at the first opportunity,again by train, which, passing in the early afternoonthrough a blinding sand-storm near the village ofCisneros, landed me soon after at Palencia. Thiswas a counterpart of León; a trifle less sulky anduniversally miserable, but as sprawling, sun-parched,and slovenly. Its surrounding plains were utterlyverdureless, their flanking hills ossified, its gardens,promenades, and Alameda past all hope of relief bysprinkling even had its river not long since gonedesert-dry as the rest. I left the place quickly,riding into the night and descending at length tomarch to the inspiriting music of a military bandalong a broad, thick-peopled Alameda, at the end ofwhich a giant statue of Columbus bulked massiveagainst the moonlit sky, into Valladolid.

I had come again upon a real city, almost thefirst since leaving Madrid; whence accommodations,while in no sense lacking, were high in price. Inthe course of an hour of prowling, however, I wasapprised of the existence of a modest casa etahuéspedes in a canyon-like side street. I rang thegreat doorbell below several times in vain; which wasas I had expected, for foolish indeed would havebeen the Spaniard who remained within doors onsuch a night, while the band played and the citystrolled in the Alameda. I dropped my bundle atmy feet and leaned against the lintel of the massivedoorway.

Within an hour there arrived another seeker afterquarters, a slender Spaniard in the early summer oflife, who carried two heavy portmanteaus and aleather swordcase. Almost at the opening of ourconversation he surprised me by inquiring, "You area foreigner, verdad, señor?" I commended his penetrationand, as we chatted, sought for some sign of hisprofession or place in society. All at once the long,slender swordcase caught my eye.

"Ah! Es usted torero, señor," I observed withassurance.

The youth awakened the echoes of the narrowstreet with his laughter.

"Bullfighter! No, indeed! I am happy to sayno. I am a student in the national cavalry schoolhere, just returned from my month's furlough.But your error is natural," he went on, "and myfault. I have really no right to appear in civiliangarb. It would mean a month of bread and waterat least if one of our officers caught a glimpse ofme. But carajo! The family above may not beback by midnight. We can leave our baggage withthe portier next door."

We strolled slowly back to the brilliantly lightedPlaza de la Constitutión. Suddenly the youth interruptedan anecdote of the tan-bark to exclaim in acalm but earnest voice:

"Caramba! There come my commandante andthe first lieutenant."

Two men of forty-five or fifty, in resplendentuniforms and tall red caps, their swords clinking alongthe pavement, were sauntering down upon us. Istepped quickly to the opposite side of mycompanion, being taller--and likewise curious.

"Hombre!" he protested sharply, stepping backagain. "No tenga V. cuidado. It is not our wayto hide from our officers."

With head erect and military stride he marchedstraight on before him. Luckily the officers were soengrossed in conversation that neither glanced upas they passed.

We drifted into a café and ordered "helado," thatSpanish imitation of ice-cream the calling of whichin the streets had so frequently caused me to whirlabout in astonishment, so much does it sound like our"hello." Over it we fell to discussing thingsAmerican, in which we were gradually joined by severalwell-dressed men at the adjoining marble tables. Inthe course of the evening I chanced to remark thatone of the surprises of my summer's trip had beento find so little resentment against the United States.

"Señor," said the youth, while each and all ofour companions gave signs of agreement, "nothingmore fortunate has befallen our country in a centurythan the loss of Cuba and the Philippines. Not onlyhas it taken a load off the Spanish people; it hasbrought more relief than you can guess to us ofthe army. The colonies were the dumping-groundof our profession. Once let an officer show abilityand he was forthwith shipped off to the islands todie. Now they are taken away, Spain has alreadybegun to regain her lost place among the nations.No, señor; we of the army at least think nothing butkindness to your people for the relief."

Returned to the casa de huéspedes, the studentand I were given adjoining rooms and saw much ofValladolid together before I took train the secondmorning after to Burgos. There, were regulation"sights" in abundance; on every hand memories ofthe Cid Campeador, even the spot where stood hisdwelling--all as authentic as the popular landmarksof Jerusalem. Two miles or more out along theshallow mill-race that Burgos calls a river I visitedthe nunnery of Las Huelgas, which claims for itsdistinction never in its centuries of existence to haveadmitted to the veil less than a daughter of thenobility. The stroll is pleasant, but the place, noblethough it be, unexciting--at least outwardly. Ofthe cathedral, the finest in Spain, much might besaid--that has been often said before.

It was in Burgos that I saw for the first time whatI might have seen earlier and frequently had mytastes run that way,--a Spanish cemetery. Moreexactly it was a corpse-file, a perpendicular hillsidein which hundreds of bodies had been pigeon-holedfor future reference, with the name and a charitablyindulgent characterization of the deceased on theend of his coffin. The Spaniard, with his superstitions,prefers this style of tomb for much the samereason, it seems, that the Arab seals his graves withcement,--that the emissaries from the less popularregions may not bear away the departed before theagents of the better and hence slower realm put in anappearance.

The greatest experience of my day in Burgos wasthe view from the summit of the hot, dry Cerro de SanMiguel. Not merely does it offer a mighty andcomprehensive vista of half the stony-bare face ofCastilla Vieja, but a bird's-eye view as it were of allSpain and her history. Of the city spread out atone's feet fully three-fourths the space is taken upby cathedral, churches, convents, monasteries, casasde misericordia, the vast bulk of the castle, thebarracks, the bullring,--all the countless buildings ofnon-producers; while between them in the nooks andcorners wherever a crack offers are packed andhuddled the hovels of the mere inhabitants. There, inplain sight, is Spain's malady. She is a land ofnon-producers. Ecclesiastics, soldiers, useless octroiguards, beggars rotten with the notion fostered bythe omnivorous priesthood that mendicancy is anhonorable profession, make up almost the bulk of herpopulation of productive age. Not without reasondoes nomadic Borrow lift up his clench-fisted wailagainst "Batuschca."

There is one road to redemption for Spain,--thatshe shoot her priests and set her soldiers to work.As isolated individuals the merry, dissolute fellowsof the cloth might be permitted to live on as theyhave, and suffer the natural end of such living.But as a class they are beyond reform; their pointof view is so utterly warped and incorrigible, theyhave grown so pestiferous with laziness and "graft"that there is no other remedy, "no hay otroremedio" as the Spaniard himself would say couldhis throttled mind cast off the rubbish of superstitionand cant for one clear thought. Let him whoprotests that they are teachers of the youth go once andsee what they teach,--the vapid, senseless lies about"saints" so far from truth as to be an abomination,so far above the possible aspirations and attainmentsof real humanity as to force the rising generationsfrom very hopelessness of imitation to lose heart andsink to iniquity as the priesthood has done beforethem. Or are there some who still credit them withfeeding the poor? A high praise, indeed, exactlyequal to that due the footpad who refunds his victimcarfare that he may be the more quickly rid of him.

Therein lies the chief weakness of Spain. It is notbecause she is ruled by a slender youth chosen by theaccident of birth rather than by a more portly manchosen more or less by his fellow-citizens; notbecause her religion happens to be that of Rome ratherthan the austerities of Calvin or the fatalism ofMohammed; not because her national sport is a bit moredramatically brutal than that of other lands; notbecause her soil is dry and stony and her rains andrivers slight; not because her people are decadent,her human stock run down--I have plowed in thesea in the foregoing pages if I have not made it clearthat her real manhood, the workman, the peasant, thearriero, the muscle and sinew of the nation, are ashardy, toilsome and all-enduring as the worldharbors. But in the long centuries of warfare herattention was drawn away from internal affairs, she fellamong thieves within, and the force of example, thehelplessness of the individual drove her people in theline of least resistance,--to become thieves too,nationally, officially, until madgrab-what-you-can-and-the-devil-grab-the-ungrabbinghas her by the throatgasping for life. If she is not to sink down forthe vultures of the nations to pick clean of hermeager scraps of flesh there must arise within herboundaries a man, a movement, a sweeping changethat shall cast off the burden of precedent and turnher officials to doing honestly with all their mightwhat now they do with all their might dishonestly.She must regain confidence in the necessity andprevalence of honesty. She must learn that patent yetrarely comprehended truth that work and work onlyis the real source of life; she must cease to be thesworn enemy of the innovator, thinking her waysbest and those of the rest of the world abnormal,unable to see a yard beyond her national boundaries,scorning all ideas and arguments from the outsidelike the most hide-bound of Orientals.

The next afternoon found me in Vitoria, in theland of the Basque; yet another kind of Spain.Vitoria is a city of to-day, clean, bustling, almostAmerican in her streets and architecture and thewide-awake air of the Vascongado. The boína--roundcap without visor and the end of a string fortassel--had all at once become universal, worn, like thefez in Damascus, by every age and grade of man frombootblack to mayor. So pleasing was this prosaiccity that even though her prices were high I loiteredin her shade until the next afternoon before seekingout the highway to Bilbáo.

There lay sixty-seven kilometers to the seaport, ahalf of which I hoped to cover before halting for thenight. For on the following day Bilbáo was tocelebrate in honor of the king. The way led methrough a country fertile for all its stoniness, madeso by the energy and diligence of the Basque, whosestrong features, bold curved nose, piercing eyes andsturdy form was to be seen on every hand. With thesouthern Spaniard this new race had almostnothing in common, and though as serious of deportmentas the gallego there was neither his bashfulness norstupidity. The Castilian spoken in the region wasexcellent, the farming implements of modernmanufacture and the methods of the husbandman thousandsof years ahead of Andalusia.

As the day was fading I began to clamber my wayupward into the mountains that rose high in thedarkening sky ahead. The night grew to one ofthe blackest, the heavens being overcast; but he whomarches on into the darkness without contact withartificial light may still see almost plainly. It wastwo hours, perhaps, after nightfall, and the road waswinding ever higher around the shoulder of amammoth peak, its edge a sheer precipice aboveunfathomable depths, when suddenly I saw a man, a denserblackness against the sea of obscurity, standingstock-still on the utmost edge of the highway.

"Buenos tardes," I greeted in a low voice, almostafraid that a hearty tone would send him topplingbackward to his death.

He neither answered nor moved. I stepped closer.

"You have rather a dangerous position, verdad, señor?"

Still he stared motionless at me through thedarkness. Could he be some sleep-walker? I movedquietly forward and, thrusting out a hand, touchedhim on the sleeve. It was hard as if frozen! Foran instant I recoiled, then with a sudden instinctivemovement passed a hand quickly and lightly over hisface. Was I dreaming? That, too, was hard andcold. I sprang back and, rummaging hastilythrough my pockets, found one broken match. Thewind was rushing up from the bottomless gulf below.I struck a light, holding it in the hollow of my hand,and in the instant before it was blown out I caughta few words of an inscription on a pedestal:

"ERECTED TO THE MEM--
THROWN OVER THIS PRECIPICE--
BANDITS--NIGHT OF--"

and before I had made out date or name I was againin darkness.

Over the summit, on a lower, less wind-swept level,I came upon a long mining town scattered on eitherside of the highway. I dropped in at a wineshopand bespoke supper and lodging. A dish of the nowomnipresent bacalao was set before me, but for a timethe keeper showed strong disinclination to house awandering stranger falling upon him at this advanced hour.

The young woman who served me at table andanswered the demands for wine of the half-dozenyouthful miners about me seemed strangely out of placein such surroundings. Nothing was plainer thanthat she was not of the barmaid type. One wouldhave said rather the convent-reared daughter of somewell-to-do merchant or large farmer. This surmiseturned out to be close to the truth. When thecarousing miners had drifted into the night and I, by dintof talking and acting my best Castilian, had foundmy way into the good graces of the family, I heardthe girl's story--for rightly approached theSpaniard is easily led to talk of his private affairs.Her father had been the principal shop-keeper of themining town, and had died a few weeks before. Hisdebts were heavy and when all claims had beensettled there remained to his orphaned daughter fivehundred pesetas.

"But," I cried, "five hundred pesetas! It is afortune, señorita, in Spain. You could have starteda shop, or lived well until the novio appeared."

"Jesus Maria!" cried the girl, looking at me withwondering eyes. "Do you forget purgatory? Forthe repose of my father's soul five hundred massesmust be said; no less, the cura himself told me; andeach mass costs a peseta. Then I have come to work here."

There was that in the air next morning thatreminded me, as I wound down into a wooded,well-peopled valley, that summer was drawing toward itsclose. The day grew quickly warm, however. In theknowledge that the king was sojourning in the cityupon which I was marching, I was fully prepared toendure long catechizing and examination by guardiasciviles. My wonder was not slight, therefore, whenI was suffered to pass through one, two, threevillages without being once challenged.

But the expected meeting came at last and quitemade up for the lack of others. The third villagelay already behind me when I heard an authoritativeshout and, turning around, saw a bareheaded manof thirty, dressed half in peasant, half in villagegarb, beckoning to me with a commanding gesture toreturn. Fancying him some wily shop-keeper, Iswung on my heel and set off again. He shoutedloudly, and racing after me, caught me by an arm.I shook him off with an indignation that sent himspinning half across the highway. Instead ofretreating he sprang at me again and we shouldcertainly have been soon entangled in a crude performanceof the manly art had he not cried out in a voicequaking with anger:

"Have a care, señor, in resisting the law. I ama miñón."

"Miñón!" I cried, recalling suddenly that in theBasque provinces the national guardias arereënforced by local officers thus named. "Then why thedevil don't you wear your uniform? How shall Iknow you are not a footpad?"

"I shall prove that soon enough," he replied, stillvisibly shaking with the rage of a Spaniard whose"pundonor" has been sullied.

I returned with him to the casa de ayuntamiento,in the doorway of which he halted, and, examining mefor concealed weapons, demanded that I untie myknapsack. Never before had this been more thansuperficially inspected, but the thoroughness withwhich the angry miñón overhauled it, examining evenmy letters and fingering my clothes-brush over andover as if convinced that it could be opened by somesecret spring, fully made up for any possiblecarelessness of his fellow-officers elsewhere. When hehad lost hope of finding evidence of treason hehanded back my possessions reluctantly and bade mewith a scowl the conventional "Go with God;" towhich I answered, "Queda V. con el mismisimodiablo"--but the thrust was too subtle for hisbullet-headed intellect.

Toward noon the green slopes and cool foreststurned to a cindered soil and the sooty aspect of afactory town. I mounted a last hill and descendedquickly through a smoke-laden atmosphere intoBilbáo. Here was the first entirely modern city I hadseen in Spain; one might easily have fancied one'sself in Newcastle or Seattle. The Spanish casa dehuéspedes seemed not even known by name, and inits place were only boisterous taverns, smacking ofsea-faring custom and overrun with the touts thatfeed on the simple mariner.

As I sat toward evening in one of these establishments,there entered a man something over thirty-five,dressed in boína and workingman's garb that showedbut slight wear. I noted him only half consciously,being at that moment expressing to the landlord mysurprise that the king, instead of being in Bilbáo ashe was reported by the newspapers, was ten or twelvemiles away on his yacht at the mouth of the river.The keeper, a stocky Basque of much better partsthan the average of his guild, glanced up from hisspigots and replied in a smooth and pleasant voice:

"Porque, señor, no quiere morir tan joven--Becausehe does not care to die so young."

"Y con mujer tan bella y fresca--And with a wifeso beautiful and fresh," added a thick-set fellow ata neighboring table without looking up from his cards.

Love for Alfonso is not one of the characteristicsof the masses in this section of the country.

Meanwhile the newcomer, whose eye had beenwandering leisurely over the assembly, threaded hisway half across the room to sit down at my table. Iwondered a bit at the preference, but certain he wasno tout, gave him the customary greeting. By thetime I had accepted a glass and treated in turn wewere exchanging personal information. Heannounced himself a cobbler, and even before I hadbroached the subject suggested that he could find mea lodging with an old woman above his shop. Thisworkroom, when we reached it, proved to be nothingbut a kit of tools and a few strips of leatherscattered about the small hallway at the foot of the stairs.I found above the hospitality he had promised,however, and paying two night's lodging in anunusually pleasant room, descended.

The shoemaker appeared more obliging thanindustrious, for he at once laid aside the shoe he washammering and announced that he was going to givehimself the pleasure of spending the evening withme and of finding me the best place to take in thefireworks that were to be set off in honor of the king.I explained that it was rather my plan to attend thecity theater, where I might both see that remarkablepersonage in the flesh and hear one of Molière's bestcomedies in Spanish.

"There is more than time for both," replied thecobbler, and forthwith fell to extolling the comingspectacle so highly that he came near to arousingwithin me, too, an interest in the fireworks.

At the end of an hour's stroll we found ourselveson the summit of a knoll in the outskirts, ina compact sea of Bilbaoans watching a tame imitationof a Fourth of July celebration on the slope of oneof the surrounding hills. The display was, as Ihave said, in honor of the king; though it turned outthat his indifferent majesty was at that momentdining and wining a company of fellow-sportsmen onboard the Giralda twelve miles away.

The cobbler set a more than leisurely pace back tothe city, but we regained at length the bank of theriver and, crossing the wooded Paseo Arenal,approached the theater. Before it, was packed a vastand compact multitude through which I struggled myway to the entrance, only to be informed in thecustomary box-office tones that there was not anotherticket to be had. The shoemaker was no theater-goer,and as my own disappointment was not overwhelming,we set out to fight our way back to the Paséo.

Long before we had succeeded in that venturesomeundertaking, however, there burst forth a sudden,unheralded roar of uncounted voices, the immensethrong surged riverward with an abruptness that allbut swept us off our feet, the thunder of thousandsof hoofs swelled nearer, and down upon us rode anentire regiment of guardias civiles in uniforms sonew they seemed but that moment to have left thetailor, and astride finer horses than I had dreamedexisted in Spain. Straight into the crowd theydashed, headlong, at full canter, like cowboys intoa drove of steers, sweeping all before them,scattering luckless individuals in all directions, andcompletely surrounding the theater in solid phalanx.Before I had recovered breath there arose anothermighty shout, and, some three hundred more horsem*n,with a richly caparisoned carriage in their midst,dashed through the throng from a landing-stage onthe river bank behind us to the door of the theater.I caught a fleeting glimpse of a slight figure in arakish overcoat, a burst of music sounded from thetheater, and died as suddenly away as the doors closedbehind the royal arrival. Again the cavalry charged,driving men, women and children pellmell back ahundred yards from the building and, forming a yetwider circle around it, settled down to sit their horseslike statues until the play should be ended.

When my wonder had somewhat subsided therecame upon me an all but uncontrollable desire toshout with laughter. The ludicrousness, theridiculousness of it all! A vast concourse of humanitydriven helter-skelter like as many cattle, scores ofpersons jostled and bruised, thirteen hundred of themost able-bodied men in Spain to sit motionless onhorseback around a theater late into the night, allfor the mere protection of one slight youth whoseequal was easily to be found in every town or villageof the land! Truly this institution of kingship is ashumorous a hoax as has been played upon mankindsince man was.

A hoax on all concerned. For the incumbenthimself, the slender youth inside, who must spend hisbrief span of years amid such mummery, commandsof himself a bit of mild admiration. I fell towondering what he would give for the right to wanderfreely and unnoticed all a summer's day along theopen highway. Let him who can imagine himselfborn a king, discovering as early as such notions canpenetrate to his infant intellect that hisfellow-mortals have placed him high on a pedestal, havegiven him even without the asking power, riches,and almost reverence as a superior being, when atheart he knows full well he is of quite the same clayas they; and he may well ask himself whether he wouldhave grown up even as manly as the youth who goesby the name of Alfonso XIII. Recalling thatformer kings of Spain could not be touched by other thana royal finger, we may surely grant common senseto this sovereign who dances uncondescendingly withdaughters of the middle class, who chats freely withbullfighters, peasants, or apple-women. Pleasing,too, is his devil-may-carelessness. On this samenight, for instance, after reboarding his yacht, hetook it suddenly into his mad young head to returnat once through this, his most hostile province, to hisqueen. At one in the morning he was rowed ashorewith one companion, stepped into his automobile,himself playing chauffeur, and tore away throughBilbáo and a hundred miles along the craggy coastto San Sebastian. It is not hard to guess whatmight have happened had he punctured a tire amongthose stony mountains and been chanced upon bya homing band of peasants brave with wine.

Musing all which I turned to address thecobbler and found him gone. The crowd was slowlymelting away. I sat down in the Paseo and waited anhour, but my erstwhile companion did not reappear.When I descended from my lodging next morningthere remained not a trace of his "shop" at the footof the stairs. Had the village miñón done me thehonor of telegraphing my description to the seaport,or was my road-worn garb the livery of suspicion?This only I know; when, that Sunday evening aftermy return from a glimpse of the open sea, I askedmy hostess whether her fellow renter were really ashoemaker, she screwed up her parchment-likefeatures into a smile and answered:

"Sí, señor, one of the shoemakers of his majesty."

CHAPTER XIV

A DESCENT INTO ARAGON

There was an unwonted excitement in the airwhen I boarded the train next morning for thelongest unbroken ride of my Spanish journey.Pernales, the anachronism, the twentieth-century banditof the environs of Córdoba, had fallen. Aboard thetrain newspapers were as numerous as on the NewYork "Elevated" at a similar hour. I bought oneand was soon lost like the rest in the adventures ofthis last defier of the mighty guardia civil.

The story was simple. Two evenings before,about the time I had been yawning over the king'sfireworks, Pernales had met a village arriero amongthe foothills of his retreat, and asked him somequestion about the road. The rustic gave him thedesired information, but guessing with whom he wasspeaking, had raced away, once he was out of sight,as fast as he could drive his ass before him, to carryhis suspicions to the village alcalde. The rest wascommonplace. A dozen guardias stalked theunsuspecting bandolero among the hills, and comingupon him toward sunrise, brought his unsanctionedcareer abruptly to a close.

"Our special correspondent" had dismally failedto cast over his account the glamour of romance, butin compensation had taken a reporter's care to givethe precise point in the right temple where the ballhad entered, with the exact dimensions of the orifice,as well as the life story of the hero who had boredit. Nay, with almost American haste and resourcefulnessthe paper printed a full-length portrait ofthe successful hunter--or one at least of a man whocould not have been vastly different in appearance,in a uniform that was certainly very similar. Alas!The good old days of the bandit and the contrabandistaare forever gone in Spain; the humdrum era ofthe civil guard is come. Pernales' is but anotherstory of a man born a century too late.

All day long as we toiled and twisted over theCantabrian range and descended southward, this onlywas the topic of conversation of all grades and sexesof travelers. An hour's halt at Miranda and wecreaked on along the bank of Spain's greatest river,the Ebro, talking still of bandoleros and the regretof their passing. Slowly the green tinge in thelandscape faded away and in its place came reddish cliffsand a sun-seared and all but desert country spreadingaway from either bank of the red-dyed river,sterile rolling plains relieved only by small oases offertility and isolated and in all probability bigotedvillages standing colorless on colorless hillsides. Ascentral Spain may be likened to rocky Judea, so thisresembles in some degree Egypt, with the Ebro as theNile.

It was late in the evening when I arrived inSaragossa and, crossing the broad river by the Puente dePiedra, found myself in one of the most labyrinthiancities of Spain. But so practiced had I grown insuch quest that in less than an hour I had engagedaccommodation at my own price, which by this timehad descended to two and a half pesetas.

The "sight" par excellence of Saragossa is ofcourse her "Virgen del Pilar." The story runs thatSantiago, who is none other than Saint James, whilewandering about Spain, as he was wont to ramble invarious corners of the earth, was favored one eveningby a call from the Mother of Christ, who, during alltheir little chat, stood on the top of a stone pillar.That the tale is true there seems little chance fordoubt, for they have the pillar yet; and it is over thisthat has been erected the vast cathedral to which flockthousands of pilgrims during every month of the year.

I repaired to it early, but was soon turned melancholywith the recollection of Puck's profound sayinganent the folly of mankind. The interior of theedifice is as impressive as that of an empty warehouse.Under the main dome is a large chapel screaming withriches, in the back of which, on her pillar, stands theVirgin--turned to black, half-decayed wood--dressedin more thousands of dollars' worth of goldand silver, of resplendent robes and vociferousgaudiness than god Juggernaut of India ever possessed atthe height of his influence. Before it worshipers arealways kneeling. In the back wall of the chapel is anopening through which one can touch the pillar--andfind a cup-shaped hole worn in it by such actionduring the centuries. I sat down on a bench near thefar-famed orifice, and for close upon an hour watchedthe unbroken procession file past. Beggar women,rag-pickers, ladies of wealth, cankerous old men,merchants, city sports, lawyers--Saragossa is theone city of Spain where even men go to church--everygrade and variety of Aragonese pressed closeupon the heels one of another, each bowing down ashe passed to kiss the hole deeper into the pillar. Atbottom the difference is slight indeed between thereligion of the Spaniard and that of the Hindu.

In the city swarms a hungry, ragged people, moreoften than not without shoes, yet one and all withthe proverbial haughty pride and somber mood ofAragon in face and bearing, stiff-shouldered,bristling with a touch-me-not-with-a-pole expression.Here, too, may still be found, especially among thepeasants from the further districts, the old provincialcostume,--knee breeches, a jacket reachingbarely to the waist, and a red cloth wound about the head.

Tiring of such things, there is a pleasant promenadealong the banks of the Ebro, whence one willdrift naturally through the Portillo gate where the"flying Gaul was foil'd by a woman's hand." It isstartling to find the settings of two such world-fameddramas so close together, but from the gate one hasonly to saunter a few yards along the Madridhighway to come upon the weather-battered Aljaferíaof "Trovatore" fame. To-day it is a barracks.Within its towers, through now unbarred windows,may be seen soldiers polishing their spurs andmuskets, humming now and then a snatch of popularsong; but one may wait in vain to hear some tunefulprisoner strike up the expected "miserere."

There is one stroll in Saragossa that I wouldcommend to the wanderer who finds pleasure in gainingelevations whence he may look down, as it were, onthe world. It is out along the Canal Imperial, pastthe swollen-paunched statue of its sponsor Pignatelli,and across the Huerva; then winding lazily southwestand upward the stroller comes suddenly out on thecrown of a bald hillock. There, below him in its flatvalley, spreads all Saragossa, far enough away tolose the crassness of detail, yet distinct, the twofinished towers of the Pilar rising above it likeminarets, the whole girded by the green huerta, andbeyond and all around the desert in gashed and gnarledhills like the Libyan range of another continent.Here I lounged until the setting sun, peering overmy shoulder, cast the radiant flush of evening on thecity below, which gradually fading away was atlength effaced in the night, its sounds minglingtogether in a sort of music that drifted up to me longafter the scene itself had wholly disappeared.

I descended for supper. It is the lot of man thathe has no sooner climbed to a height where he maylook down calmly on the scramble of life than he mustagain plunge down into it to eat--or to earn morebread. To-morrow I must set my face toward thefrontier, toward New York and a return to labor.

On my way to the five-o'clock train next morningI passed through Saragossa's vast covered market andhalted to lay in a last supply of figs. The cheery oldwoman who sold them grasped my fifteen céntimostightly in her hand and solemnly made with it thesign of the cross. I expressed surprise, and amisgiving lest I had unwittingly parted with copperspossessing peculiar virtues.

"Cómo, señor!" she cried, in wonder at my ignorance."It is the first money of the day. If I donot say a paternoster with it I may sit here untilnightfall without selling another perrito-worth, youmay be sure."

The train labored back along the Ebro to Castejon,where I changed cars and journeyed northward,every click of the wheels seeming to cry out that mySpanish summer was nearing its end. At high noonI descended in a dusty plain before the sheer face ofthe rock on which stands Pamplona of Navarre.When I had climbed into the city I inquired of thefirst policeman for a modest casa de huéspedes. Herubbed his head a moment and set off with me alongthe street, chatting sociably as we went. Soon wecame upon another officer, to whom the first repeatedmy question. He scratched his head a moment andfell in beside us, babbling cheerily. Fully a half-milebeyond we accosted a third officer. He rasped hisclose-shaven poll yet another moment and joined usin the quest, adding a new stock of anecdotes. Herewas courtesy extraordinary, even for Spain. Hadthe police force of Pamplona discovered in me someprince incognito, or was mine to be the rôle of therolling pancake? We rambled on, but withoutsuccess, for not another officer could we find in all ourcircuit of the city. It was certainly close upon anhour after my original inquiry, and something likea hundred yards from the same spot, that we entereda side street and mounted, still in quartet, to a cheapbut homelike boarding-house high up in an agedbuilding. The courtesy was quickly explained. Thelandlady, having expressed her deep gratitude forbeing brought a new guest, begged each of the officersto do her the favor of accepting a glass of wine.They smacked their lips over it, exchanged with thehousehold the customary salutations and banter, andsauntered back to their beats.

When I had eaten, I descended for a turn aboutthe city with the uncle of my grateful hostess, amountain-hardened Basque of sixty, in the universalboína, who had but recently retired from a lifetimeof rocky hillside farming. Of both his province ofNavarre and of himself he talked freely untilsuddenly my tongue stumbled upon some question ofmilitary conscription. He fell at once silent, his jawsstiffened, and into his face came the reflection of abitter sadness. For the Basques are by no meansreconciled to the loss of their cherished fueros, orspecial political privileges. In silence the sturdy oldman led the way half across the city to one of hergates and, climbing a knoll that gave a good viewof the surrounding fortifications, said in cheerlesstones:

"Don Henrico, we have here the strongest citywalls in Spain. But what use are they now againstthe king's modern artillery? No hay remedio. Wemust serve in his armies."

As we threaded our way slowly back to theboarding-house I halted at a money changer's to buy atwenty-franc piece. The transaction left me only ahandful of coppers in Spanish currency, and I wentearly to bed lest there be not enough remaining tocarry me out of the country.

On a glorious clear September morning I turnedmy back on Spain and set forth from Pamplona totramp over the Pyrenees by the pass of Roncesvalles,being just uncertain enough of the road to lend zestto the undertaking. At the edge of the plain to thenorthward of the city a highway began to wind itsway upward along the bank of a young river, notlaboriously, but steadily rising. Habitations wererare. Late in the morning a spot above whirlingrapids in shaded solitude suggested a plunge; but asI pulled off my coat a sound fell on my ear and,looking across the stream, I saw a half-dozen womenkneeling on the bank and staring curiously across at me.When I retreated, they laughed heartily and fell oncemore to pounding away at their laundry-work on thestones.

Some distance higher I found another pool inwhich, by rolling over and over, I won the afterglowof a real swim. Sharper ascents succeeded, thoughstill none steep. I was soon surrounded by a Tyrolianscenery of forest and deep-cut valleys, and amongup-to-date people--the farming implements being ofmodern type and the smallest villages having electriclights run by power from the mountain streams.Every fellow-mortal, young or old, as is usual inmountain regions, gave me greeting, not with thefamiliar "Vaya!" nor the "Buenos!" of Galicia,but with "Adiós!" which seemed here to mean muchmore than the grammatical "Good-by." In theplace of guardias civiles were carabineros in aprovincial uniform, whose advances, if less warm andcompanionable, were none the less kindly.

Toward evening the road flowed up into a broad,oblong meadow, ankle-deep in greenest grass, musicalwith the sound of cow-bells, across which it drifted asif content to rest for a time on its oars before takingthe final climb. The sun was setting when I reachedBurguete at forty-four kilometers, station of thetrans-Pyrenean diligence and the point that I hadbeen assured I should do well to reach in a two-day'swalk. But I felt as unwearied as at the outset; thetowers of Roncesvalles stood plainly visible fivekilometers ahead across the green tableland. I rambledon in the cool of evening and by dark was housed ina good inn of the mountain village.

When the supper hour arrived, the landlord steppedacross to me to ask whether I would eat as a guestor as a member of the family. I inquired what thedistinction might be.

"No difference," he answered, "except that as amember of the family you pay a peseta upon leaving,and as a guest you pay two."

It was of course en famille that I supped, andright royally, at a board merry with good-humoredpeasants and arrieros rather than in the silent,gloomy company of a half-dozen convention-riddentravelers in an adjoining room.

Roncesvalles would have been an unequaled spotin which to pass an autumn week, roaming in theforest glens of the mountains, dreaming of the heroicdays of Roland. But the hour of reckoning and ofNew York was near at hand. Of all sensations Imost abhor the feeling that I must be in a givenplace at a given time.

A short climb through wooded hillsides strewn withgigantic rocks and I found myself all at once andunexpectedly on the very summit of the Pyrenees. Inno sense had the ascent been toilsome, vastly less sothan several scrambles of two or three hours'duration between Lugo and Oviedo. From the Frenchside, no doubt, it would have been far more of a task.Gazing northward I recognized for the first time thatI stood high indeed above the common level of theearth. Miles below, blue as the sea, lay France, theforested mountains at my feet rolling themselves outinto hills, the hills growing lower and lower andspreading away into the far, far distance likeanother world. The modern world--and I was all atonce assailed with a desire to ask what it had beendoing in all the days I had been gone. Then thehighway seized me in its grasp and hurried me awaydown, racing, rushing, almost stumbling, so fast Iwas forced to break away from it and clamber downat my own pace through dense unpeopled forests, tofall upon it again far below and stalk with it atlunch-time into the village of Val Carlos. Yet anotherhour's descent and I crossed a small stream into thelittle hamlet of Arneguy; the long-forgotten figure ofa French gendarme slouched forth from a hut toshout as I passed, "Anything dutiable, monsieur?"and my Spanish journey was among the things thathave been.

CHAPTER XV

EMIGRATING HOMEWARD

In reality almost as much as in fancy I hadentered another world. It is chiefly in retrospectthat a journey through Spain, as through Palestine,brings home to the traveler the full differencebetween those gaunt regions of the earth and the worldto which he is accustomed. Here the change waslike that from a squatter's cabin, a bachelor's quartersto a residence of opulence.

Arrived while the day was still in its prime atSt. Jean Pied de Port, I found myself undecided how tocontinue. The rescuing forty dollars awaitedme--postal errors precluded--in Bordeaux; butBaedeker having now become mere lumber, I had no meansof knowing which of two routes to follow to that city.I halted to make inquiries of an old Spaniarddrowsing before his shop--so like one of mine ownpeople he seemed amid this babble of French. Butthough he received me with Castilian courtesy hecould give me no real information. Under theawning of a café a hundred paces beyond, twowell-dressed men were sipping cooling drinks. Theirtouring-car stood before the building, and not faraway, in the shade of an overhanging shoulder of thePyrenees, loitered a chauffeur, in all the accustomedaccoutrements of that genus. He had the appearanceof an obliging fellow. I strolled across to him,hastily summoning up my dormant French.

"Monsieur," I began, "vous me pardonnerez,mais pour aller d'ici à Bordeaux vaut il mieux passerpar Bayonne ou bien par Mont de--"

He was grinning at me sheepishly and shiftingfrom one leg to the other. As I paused he blurtedout:

"Aw, I don't talk no French!"

"Then I suppose it 'll have to be English," Ianswered, in the first words of that language I hadspoken in ninety-six days--and in truth they camewith difficulty.

"Go' bly' me!" burst out the astounded knight ofthe steering-wheel. "'Ow ever 'd you get in thiscorner o' the world? Say, I ayn't said more 'n 'yes,sir' or 'no, sir' to their lordships--" with a slightjerk of the head toward the men under the awning--"inso long I 've bally near forgot 'ow. 'Ere itis Sunday an'--"

"Saturday," I interrupted.

"Sunday, I say," repeated the chauffeur, drawingout a card on which were penciled many crudecrosses. "Ere 's 'ow I keep track--"

"Señora," I asked, turning to a woman who wasfilling a pitcher at a hydrant behind me, "qué díatenemos hoy?"

Her lip curled disdainfully as she answered:

"Tiens! Vous me croyez un de ces barbares-là?"--tossingher head toward the mountain range behind us.

"Mille pardons," I laughed. "Force of habit.This monsieur and I are disputing whether to-day isSaturday or Sunday."

"Out again without your nurses!" she criedsarcastically. "Saturday, of course."

"Now 'ear that!" said the chauffeur, almost tearfully,when I interpreted. "'Ow ever can a man keeptrack of anything in this bally country? Say, whatwas that question you was tryin' to ask me?"

"I 'm walking from Gib to Bordeaux," I remarkedcasually, and repeated my former inquiry. Hisexpression changed slowly from incredulity tocommiseration. Suddenly he thrust a hand into hispocket.

"I say, won't you 'ave a mite of a lift? Why,we took near all yesterday to come from that place.You couldn't walk there in a month."

"No, thanks, I 'm fairly well heeled," I answered.

"Better 'ave a yellow-boy," he persisted, drawingout several English sovereigns. "Lord, you 'remore 'n welcome, y' know. They ayn't no bloomin'use to me 'ere!"

At that moment I noted that the milords under theawning had spread out before them a large touringmap, and I left the chauffeur gasping at my audacityas I stepped across to them. The older wasstruggling to give an order to the waiter, who crouchedtowel on arm over them. There is a strangesimilarity between a full-grown Briton attempting tospeak French and a strong man playing with a doll.

"Beg pawdon, gentlemen," I said, when I hadhelped them out of the difficulty, "but would youmind my glancing at your map? I want to find--"

"Ah--why, certainly," gasped one of the startlednobles.

But even with the chart before me I was no nearera decision, for the two roads appeared of almostequal length. As I turned away, however, a posteron a nearby wall quickly settled my plans. Itannounced a great bullfight in Bayonne the nextafternoon, with Quinito, Mazzatinito, and Regaterm,among the most famous of Spain's matadores--farmore so than any it had been my fortune to see inthat country.

I sped away at once along a macadamed highwayat the base of the Pyrenees beside a clear river--amere "rivière" to the French, but one that wouldhave been a mighty stream in Spain. Its bankswere thickly grown with willows. On the other handthe mountain wall, no less green, rose sheer aboveme, bringing an unusually early sunset. Along theway I met several old men, all Basques, who notingthat I also wore the boína greeted me in their native"Eúscarra." Not a word of any other tonguecould they speak; and when I shook my headhopelessly at their hermetical language, they halted togaze after me with expressions of deep perplexity.So, too, in the mountain-top village of Bidarry towhich I climbed long after dark after a dip in theriver, all speech was Basque; though some of theyounger inhabitants, finding I was of their race onlyfrom the cap upward, fell to talking to me in fluentFrench or Spanish.

The first hours of the following clay were in thehighest degree pleasant. Thereafter the countrygrew hilly, the sun torrid, and as I was forced toset the sharpest pace to reach the bullring by four.I put in as dripping a half-day as at any timeduring the summer; and I have yet to be more nearlyincinerated in this life than in the sol of the great"Place des Taureaux" of Bayonne, crushed betweena workman in corduroys and a Zouave in thethickest woolen uniform the loom weaves.

The fight, like the ring, was Spanish in everyparticular, though the programmes were printed inFrench. It was by all odds the greatest córrida Iwas privileged to attend during the summer, for thethree matadores stand in the front rank of theirprofession. Yet it was somehow far less exhilaratingthan those I had seen in Spain. One had a feelingthat these past masters were running far lessrisk than their younger colleagues; one enjoyed theirdexterity as one enjoys a seasoned public speaker,yet the performance lacked just the thrill ofamateurishness.

Here, too, I saw Spain's greatest picador, the onlyone indeed I ever saw accomplish what the picadoris supposed to do,--to hold off the bull with hisgarrocha. This he did repeatedly, placing his lanceso unerringly that he stopped the animal's mostfurious charges and forced him to retire bellowingwith rage and with blood trickling down over hisshoulders. In all the afternoon this king of thepike-pole had but one horse killed under him. It was inconnection with this one fall that Quinito, theboldest of the matadores, won by his daring such applauseas seemed to shake the Pyrenees behind us. Morenolay half buried under his dead horse, in more thanimminent danger of being gored to death by the bullraging above him. In vain the anxious caudrillaflaunted their cloaks. All at once Quinito steppedempty handed into the ring and caught the animalby the tail. Away the brute dashed across the plaza,twisting this way and that, but unable to bring hishorns nearer than an inch or two of his tormentorwho, biding his time, let go and vaulted lightly overthe barrier.

I quitted Bayonne with the dawn and for four daysfollowing marched steadily on across the greatLandes of France. Miles upon miles the broadhighway stretched unswerving before me throughan ultra-flat country between endless forests of pine.On the trunk of every tree hung a sort of flowerpotto catch the dripping pitch. There was almost noagriculture, nothing but pine-trees stretching awayin regular rows in every direction, a solitude brokenonly by the sighing of the wind sweeping across theflatlands, where one could shout to the full capacityof one's lungs without awakening other response thanlong rolling echoes. Once in a while a pitch-gathererflitted among the trees; less often the highwaycrossed a rusty and apparently trainless railroad atthe solitary stations of which were tumbled hundredsof barrels of pitch.

My shoes wore out, those very oxfords "custom-made"in America and honestly tapped in Toledo,and I was forced to continue the tramp inalpargatas, or what had here changed their name tosandales. As my twenty-franc piece melted away awondering began to grow upon me whether I wasreally homeward bound after all; so myriad are themishaps that may befall a mere letter.

Still the unswerving road continued, the endlessforests stretched ahead. Such few persons as I metscowled at me in the approved French fashion, neveronce imitating the cheery greeting of the Spaniard.Now and again a man-slaughtering automobile toreby like some messenger to or from, the infernalregions, recalling by contrast one of the chief charmsof the land I had left behind. Hardly one of thosedestroyers of peace and tranquillity had I seen orheard in all Spain.

Four months afoot had not improved my outwardappearance. It was not strange that the post-officeofficials of Bordeaux stared at me long and suspiciouslywhen I arrived at length one afternoon witha single franc in my pocket. The letter was there.When I had, after the unwinding of endless red tape,collected the amount of the order, my journey seemedover indeed.

The "Agents Maritimes" to whom I appliedaccepted me readily enough as an emigrant to America,agreeing to pick me up in Bordeaux and set me downunstarved in New York for the net sum of twohundred and three francs. But there came a hitch in theproceedings. The agent was firing at me withGaelic speed the questions prescribed by ourexacting government--"Name?" "Age?" "Profession?"--andsetting down the answers almost beforeI gave them, when:

"Have you contracted to work in the United States?"

"Oui, monsieur."

He stopped like a canvas canoe that has strucka snag.

"C'est impossible," he announced, closing his bookof blanks with a thump. "We cannot of course sellyou a ticket."

I plunged at once into an explanation. Iadvanced the information that the contract labor lawwas not framed to shut out American citizens.I protested that I had already toiled a yearunder the contract in question, and for my sinsmust return to toil another. I made no headwaywhatever.

"It is the law of the United States," he snapped."Voilà! C'est assez."

Luckily I had a day to spare. By dint ofappealing to every maritime authority in the city Iconvinced the agent at last of his error. But it wasnone too soon. With my bundle and ticket in onehand and a sort of meal-sack tag to tie in my lapel--ifI so chose--in the other, I tumbled into the nighttrain for Paris just as its wheels began to turn.Emigrant tickets are not good in France by day. Therewas one other tagged passenger in the compartment,a heavy-mannered young peasant likewise wearing aboína. Being thus drawn together we fell gradually;into conversation. He was at first exceeding chary,with the two-fold canniness of the Basque and of theuntraveled rustic whose native village has warnedhim for weeks to beware wily strangers. When Idisplayed my ticket, however, he lost at once hissuspicion and, drawing out his own, proposed that wemake the journey as partners. He was bound forIdaho. We did not, however, exchange ideas withpartner-like ease, for though he had passed histwenty-five years in the province of Guipuzcoa hespoke little Spanish.

Near midnight a few passengers alighted and I fellinto a cramped and restless sort of dog-sleep fromwhich I awoke as we screamed into Versailles. Whenwe descended at the Montparnasse station we werejoined by three more Basques from anothercompartment. They, too, wore boínas and, like mycompanion, in lieu of coats, smocks reaching almost tothe knees. They were from near Pamplona and hadtickets from Bordeaux to Fresno, California, havingtaken this route to avoid the difficulties of leavingSpain by sea.

The Paris agent of the "American Line" did notmeet us in silk hat and with open arms; but whenwe had shivered about the station something over anhour an unshaven Italian of forty, with lettered capand a remarkable assortment of unlearned tonguespicked us up and bore us away by omnibus to his"Cucina Italiana" in the Passage Moulin. Breakfastover, I invited my fellow-emigrants to viewParis under my leadership. They accepted, afterlong consultation, and we marched away along theRue de Lyon to the site of the Bastille, then on intothe roar of the city, the Spaniards so helplesslyoverwhelmed by the surrounding sights and sounds thatI was called upon times without number to save thembeing run down. At length we crossed to the islandand, the morgue being closed, entered Notre Dame.I had hitherto credited Catholic churches with beingthe most democratic of institutions. Hardly were weinside, however, when a priest steamed down upon mycompanions.

"Sortez de suite!" he commanded. "Get out!How dare you enter the sacred cathedral in blouses!"

The Basques stared at him open-mouthed, now andthen nervously wiping their hands on the offendingsmocks. I passed on and they followed, pausingwhere I paused, to gape at whatever I looked upon.The priest danced shouting about them. They smiledat him gratefully, as if they fancied he wereexplaining to them the wonders of the edifice. Hiscommands grew vociferous.

"Ces messieurs, sir," I remarked at last, "areSpaniards and do not understand a word of French."

"You then, tell them to get out at once!" he criedangrily.

"You must pardon me, monsieur," I protested, "ifI do not presume to appoint myself interpreter toyour cathedral."

We continued our way, strolling down one naveto the altar, sauntering back along the other towardthe entrance, the priest still prancing about us. Inthe doorway the Basques turned to thank him bysigns for his kindness and backed away devoutedlycrossing themselves.

At the Louvre, however, the smock-wearers werehalted at the door by two stocky officials, and wewandered on into the Tuileries Gardens. There thequartet balked. These hardy mountaineers, accustomedto trudge all day on steep hillsides behind theirburros, were worn out by a few miles of strolling oncity pavements. For an hour they sat doggedly ina bench before I could cajole them a few yardsfurther to the Place de la Concorde to board a Seinesteamer and return to the Cucina. I left them thereand returned alone to while away the afternoonamong my old haunts in the Latin Quarter.

Soon after dark the razorless son of Italy tookus once more in tow and, climbing to the imperial ofan omnibus, we rolled away through the brilliantboulevards to the gare St. Lazare. Here wasassembled an army of emigrants male and female, of allages and various distances from their last soaping.In due time we were admitted to the platform. Athird-class coach marked "Cherbourg" stood near athand. I stepped upon the running-board to open adoor. A station official caught me by the coat-tailwith an oath and a violence that would have landedme on the back of my head but for my grip on thedoor handle. Being untrained to such treatment, Ithrust out an alpargata-shod foot mule-fashionbehind me. The official went to sit down dejectedly onthe further edge of the platform. By and by hecame back to shake his fist in my face. I spoke tohim in his own tongue and he at once subsided, crying:

"Tiens! I thought you were one of those animals there."

We were finally stuffed into four cars, so closewe were obliged to lie all night with our legs in oneanother's laps. The weather was arctic, and we sleptnot a wink. Early in the morning we disentangledmoody and silent in Cherbourg. Another unshavenagent took charge of my companions' baggage withthe rest, promising it should be returned the momentthey were aboard ship. I clung skeptically to mybundle. We were herded together in a tavern andserved coffee and bread, during the administrationof which the agent collected our tickets and anyproof that we had ever possessed them, anddisappeared. The day was wintry cold. All themorning we marched shivering back and forth betweenthe statue of Napoleon and the edge of the beach,the teeth of the south-born Basques chatteringaudibly. At noon we jammed our way into the tavernagain for soup, beef and poor cider, and were givenrendezvous at two at one of the wharves.

By that hour all were gathered. It was afterfour, however, when a tender tied up alongside. Aman stepped forth with an armful of tickets andbegan croaking strange imitations of the namesthereon. I heard at last a noise that sounded notaltogether unlike my own name and, no one elsechancing to forestall me, marched on board toreclaim my credentials. A muscular arm thrust meon through a passageway in which a Frenchman inuniform caught me suddenly by the head and turnedup my eyelids with a sort of stiletto. Before I coulddouble a fist in protest another arm pushed me on.At six a signal ran up, we steamed out through thebreakwater, and were soon tumbling up the gangwayof the steamer New York. At the top anotherdoctor lay in wait, but forewarned, I flung open mypassport, and flaunting it in his face, steppedunmolested on deck.

Some four hundred third-class passengers hadboarded the steamer in England, and no smallpercentage of the berths were already occupied.Unlike the nests of the Prinzessin, however, they mightreasonably be called berths, for though they offeredno luxury, or indeed privacy, being two hundred in asection, the quarters were ventilated, well-lighted,and to a certain extent clean. I stepped to thenearest unoccupied bunk and was about to toss my bundleinto it when a young steward in shirt-sleeves andapron sprang at me.

"No good, John," he shouted, in co*ckney accentsand striving to add force to his remarks by a clumsypantomime. "Berth take. No more. No good,John. All gone. But--" jerking his headsidewise--"Pst! John! I know one good berth. Onedollar--" holding up a hand with forefinger andthumb in the form of that over-popular object--"Alltake, Joh--"

"Say, what t'ell's the game, anyhow, mate?" Iinterrupted.

His legs all but wilted under him.

"Sye, ol' man," he cried, patting me on theshoulder. "S'elp me, I took you for one o' thesewaps, as why shouldn't I, in that there sky-piecean' make-up? Of course you can 'ave the berth.Or sye, over 'ere by the port'ole's a far 'an'somerone. There y' are. Now, mite, if ever I can 'elpyou out--" and he was still chattering when Iclimbed again on deck.

Unfortunately, in the rough and tumble ofembarking I had lost sight of the Spaniards. When Ifound them again every berth was really taken, forthere was a shortage--or rather considerably morethan the legal number of tickets had been sold; andthe quartet, having withstood the blackmail, wereamong those unprovided. That night they slept, ifat all, on the bare deck. Next day I protested tothe third-class steward and he spread for them twosacks of straw on a lower hatch. There, too, the icysea air circulated freely. Worst of all, in spite ofthe solemn promises of the agent, their bags, in whichthey had packed not only blankets and heaviergarments, but meat, bread, fruit, cheese, and botas ofwine sufficient to supply them royally during all thejourney, had been stowed away in the hold. Fortwo days they showed, after the fashion ofemigrants, no interest in gastronomic matters. Whenappetite returned they could not eat American--orrather English food. "No hay ajos!--It hasno garlic!" they complained. Once or twice I actedas agent between them and an under cook whosneaked out of the galley with a roast chicken underhis jacket, but they grew visibly leaner day by day.

On the whole steerage life on the New York wasendurable. The third-class fare was on a par withmost English cooking,--well-meant but otherwiseuncommendable. The tables and dishes were moderatelyclean, the waiters, expecting a sixpence tip atthe end of the passage, were almost obliging. Inthe steerage dining-room, large and airy, was a pianoaround which we gathered of an evening to chat, orto croak old-fashioned songs. Here it was that Ifelt the full force of my long total abstinence fromEnglish. It was days before I could talk fluently;many a time my tongue clattered about a fullhalf-minute in quest of some quite everyday word.

On the fourth day out the oldest of the Spaniardsappealed to me for the twentieth time to intercedefor them with the third-class steward.

"Hombre," I answered, "it is useless; I havetalked myself hoarse. Go to him yourself and itmay have some effect."

"But he understands neither Castilian norEúscarra!" cried the Basque.

"No matter," I replied. "He is a man in suchand such a uniform. When you run across himtouch him on the sleeve and lay your head sidewiseon your hand--the pantomime for sleep the worldover--and he will remember your case."

An hour or more afterward I was aroused fromreading a book in an alleyway aft by the third-classsteward.

"I say," he cried, "will you come and see whatthe bloomin' saints is biting these Spanish chaps?They ayn't no one else can chin their lingo."

I followed him forward. Before the dispensarystood a wondering and sympathetic group, in thecenter of which was the Basque making wry facesand groaning, and the ship's surgeon lookingalmost frightened.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Blow me if I know!" cried the medicine-man."This chap comes and touches me on the arm andholds his hand against his cheek. I gave him a dosefor toothache, and the beggar 's been howling eversince. Funny sort of creatures."

The Spaniards got no berth during the voyage,though I carried their appeal in person to thecaptain. They were still encamped on the lowerhatch on the morning when the land-fever drew uson deck at dawn. Soon appeared a light-ship, thenland, a view of the charred ruins of Coney Island,then a gasp of wonder from the emigrants as thesky-scrapers burst on their sight. We steamedslowly up the harbor, checked by mail, custom, anddoctor's boats, and tied up at a wharf early in theafternoon. Rain was pouring. I appeared beforea commissioner in the second cabin to establish mynationality, bade the Basques farewell as they wereleaving for Ellis Island, and scudded away throughthe deluge. In my pocket was exactly six cents.I caught up an evening paper and with the last coinin hand dived down into the Subway.

The Summer's Expense Account:Transportation ................... $90.Food and Lodging ................. 55.Bullfights, sights, souvenirs .... 10.Miscellaneous .................... 17. ----- $172

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN ***