At Bobadilla, Where
Again We Had Tea With Hot Goat's Milk In It, We Changed Cars, And From
That On We Had The Company Of A Rock-Scorpion Pair Whose Name Was
Beautifully Italian And Whose Speech Was Beautifully English, As The
Speech Of Those Born At Gibraltar Should Rightfully Be.
I
It was quite dark at Ronda when our omnibus drove into the gardened
grounds of one of those
Admirable inns which an English company is
building in Spain, and put us down at the door of the office, where a
typical English manageress and her assistant appointed us pleasant rooms
and had fires kindled in them while we dined. There were already fires
in the pleasant reading-room, which did not diffuse a heat too great for
health but imparted to the eye a sense of warmth such as we had
experienced nowhere else in Spain. Over all was spread a quiet and
quieting British influence; outside of the office the nature of the
service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish
waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner;
superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her
in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely
and instinctively a Spanish _camerera_ as any in a hotel of Madrid or
Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests were
scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group of
magnificent girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like
correctness of their mother, looked with their exaggerated hair and eyes
like Spanish ladies made up for English parts in a play.
We had our breakfast in the reading-room where all the rest were
breakfasting and trying not to see that they were keeping one another
from the fire. It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains
which hem it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first
glimpse of their summits from our own windows, but it was from the
terrace outside the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after
we had drunk our coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In
their presence, we could not realize at once that Ronda itself was a
mountain, a mere mighty mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal
depths where we saw pygmy men and mules creeping out upon the valley
that stretched upward to the foot of the Sierra. Why there should ever
have been a town built there in the prehistoric beginning, except that
the rock was so impossible to take, and why it should have therefore
been taken by that series of invaders who pervaded all Spain - by the
Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the Romans, by the Goths, by the
Moors, by the Christians, and after many centuries by the French, and
finally by the Spaniards again - it would not be easy to say. Among its
many conquerors, the Moors left their impress upon it, though here as
often as elsewhere in Spain their impress is sometimes merely a
decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a Roman bridge which the
Moors did not make over into the likeness of their architecture, but
built a bridge of their own which also remains and may be seen from the
magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have arched the abyss
where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the gorge three
hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the brink, the eye
of pity may still see the files of Christian captives bringing water up
to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them now, even by the
wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the architect of
the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, and then
push on to the market hard by.
II
You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your
guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in
Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits
whose names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the
abundance you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness
of the season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the
world, for Ronda is not less noted for its _toreros_ and _aficionados_
than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the season will have
been before you with the glory of those _corridas_ which you have still
hoped not to witness but to turn from as an example to the natives
before the first horse is disemboweled or the first bull slain, or even
the first _banderillero_ tossed over the barrier.
The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, but
we found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly
mother in charge. She made us free of the whole vast place, where eight
thousand people could witness in perfect comfort the dying agonies of
beasts and men, but especially she showed us the chamber over the gate,
full of bullfighting properties: the pikes, the little barbed pennons,
the long sword by which the bull suffers and dies, as well as the
cumbrous saddles and bridles and spears for the unhappy horses and their
riders. She was especially compassionate of the horses, and she had
apparently no pleasure in any of the cruel things, though she was not
critical of the sport. The King of Spain is president of the Ronda
bull-fighting association, and she took us into the royal box, which is
the worthier to be seen because under it the bulls are shunted and
shouted into the ring from the pen where they have been kept in the
dark. Before we escaped her husband sold us some very vivid postal cards
representing the sport; so that with the help of a large black cat
holding the center of the ring, we felt that we had seen as much of a
bull-fight as we could reasonably wish.
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