I Could Have
Done Better Before We Got So Far From Aranjuez; There Were Gardens And
Orchards And A Very
Suitable river there, and those elm trees
overhanging it; but the prospect in La Mancha had only here and there
A
white-availed white farmhouse to vary its lonely simplicity, its desert
fertility; and I could do nothing with the strips and patches of
vineyard. It was all strangely African, strangely Mexican, and not at
all American, not Ohioan, enough to be anything like the real La Mancha
of my invention. To be sure, the doors and windows of the nearer houses
were visibly netted against mosquitoes and that was something, but even
that did not begin to be noticeable till we were drawing near the Sierra
Morena. Then, so long before we reached the mighty chain of mountains
which nature has stretched between the gravity of New Castile and the
gaiety of Andalusia, as if they could not bear immediate contact, I
experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape as
really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision.
Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha,
there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther
distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had
known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their
vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us glad
welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of
Cervantes who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly
companionship they were offering.
II
Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for them;
it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they
belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don Quixote
careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly
imploring him, and then in his rage and despair, "giving himself to the
devil," as he had so often to do in that master's service; I do not know
now that I would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the
desolate plains where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily,
or at least leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks.
Here and there the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water;
and we were at first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as
these pools, of a certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours
could prevail with to yield up the secret of its name or nature. It was
one of the anomalies of this desert country that it was apparently
prosperous, if one might guess from the comfortable-looking farmsteads
scattered over it, inclosing house and stables in the courtyard framed
by their white walls. The houses stood at no great distances from one
another, but were nowhere grouped in villages. There were commonly no
towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes
there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me.
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