Suddenly, Or If Not Suddenly, Then Startlingly, We Were
In A Pass Of The Sierra Called (For Some Reason Which
I will leave
picturesquely unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks
and spears of rock started into the
Air, and the faces of the cliffs
glared down upon us like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and
orange and crimson, and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples
of moderation I cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must
leave it to the reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate it,
while I employ myself in noting that already on this awful summit we
began to feel ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain
stream that slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were
oleanders in bloom, such as we had left in Bermuda the April before.
Already, north of the Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned
soil had warmed from gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with
sprouting wheat; and there were wide spaces of those purple flowers,
like crocuses, which women were gathering in large baskets. Probably
they were not crocuses; but there could be no doubt of the vineyards
increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without
windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to the
passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical
illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the
offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old
Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha
than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable
as the scene of even Don Quixote's first adventures.
But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the
Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene
which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to
rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first
station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in
front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back.
It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with us
after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course,
everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, went
forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it;
others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way
back what was the matter. Now and then our locomotive whistled as if to
scare the wandering engine back to the rails. At moments the
station-master gloomily returned to the station from somewhere and
diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to let our
locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off the
track to keep its engine company.
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