Rather Suddenly, After We Left The Church, By Way Of One Of Those
Unexpectedly Expanding Lanes, We Found Ourselves On
The shore of the
purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred
years before, and five
Centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from
their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the
Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their
own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de
Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those
acts of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength
for. The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out
his son whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew
his knife and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a
was saved. His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known
as Guzman the Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name
somehow does not seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had
not won it that way.
We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so
plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard
by, in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was
fought. From the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of
Guzman's dreadful heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion;
I succeeded somewhat better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of "Kiss
me, Hardy," as he lay dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much
triumph with either, and I was grateful when our good little policeman
comfortably questioned the deed of Guzman which he said some doubted,
though he took us to the very spot where the Moors had parleyed with
Guzman, and showed us the tablet over the castle gate affirming the
fact.
We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with
beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and
old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over
them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing
more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of
showing us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we had
seen nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and
Granada and Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get
it anywhere; and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted
one brown in color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly
conical in form; and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us to
a shop abounding solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses.
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