Some
Of The Elder Women Wore Mantillas, But These Wore Flowers Too, And Were
Less Pleasing Than Pathetic For It; One Very Massive Matron Was Less
Pleasing And More Pathetic Than The Rest.
Peasant women carried bunches
of chickens by the legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a
narrow neck to put its head out of for its greater convenience in
gobbling.
At the door of the station a donkey tried to bite a fly on its
back; but even a Spanish donkey cannot do everything. There was no
attempt to cheat us in the weight of our trunks, as there often is in
Italy, and the _mozo_ who put us and our hand-bags into the train was
content with his reasonable fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who
were to go with us, they were of an insurpassable beauty and propriety,
and we felt it a peculiar honor when one of them got into the
compartment beside ours.
We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the _correo_ is
next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of
Peninsular railroading. Our _correo_ had been up all night on the way
from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a
bedchamber, with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied
by a whole family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of
the seats, and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, and
the cigarette ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various
liquids, as well as some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But
when it was dried and aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather,
it was by no means a bad compartment. The broad cushions were certainly
cleaner than the carpet; and it was something - it was a great deal - to
be getting out of Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this
distance so bad as it seemed on the ground. If we could have had the
bright Monday of our departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay
there we might have wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours'
run to Seville was delightful, largely because it Was the run from
Cordova.
We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank
in larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us
all the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains
always walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark,
and the scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of the
afternoon before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately
realized more and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked
so old, so world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of
Italy. They were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle
life; where they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were
young trees, apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely
waiting for others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to
their first fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic
superstition that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger
of the goats, till we were told that it was to save their roots from
being loosened by the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds
and the hilly backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous
perspectives; but when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide
expanses of pasturage, where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves for
the feasts throughout Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy
beyond others in supplying. With their devoted families they paraded the
meadows, black against the green, or stood in sharp arrest, the most
characteristic accent of the scene. In the farther rather than the
nearer distance there were towns, very white, very African, keeping
jealously away from the stations, as the custom of most towns is in
Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed the landscape with the
olive orchards.
One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow
Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its
painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The
railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with
cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical
uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright sun,
which we had already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields for
wheat. Other men were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the
long nap to follow, would last till three o'clock, and perhaps be rashly
accounted to them for sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know
that their work had begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence
may be a vice of the towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the
country, if I may believe the conclusions of my note-book. The fields
often looked barren enough, and large spaces of their surface were
covered by a sort of ground palm, as it seemed to be, though whether it
was really a ground palm or not I know no more than I know the name or
nature of the wild flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with
other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was
especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward
learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All
Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of
buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve
flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos
Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten
our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the weather
continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville.
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