Women are, of course, conspicuous by their absence. Here we have another illustration of the utterly false ideas Englishmen usually entertain concerning Latins. To judge from novels written fifty or even thirty years ago, John Bull appears to have regarded the foreigner with pitying contempt as a mere philanderer, always running after a petticoat; yet no one can be in Spain a fortnight without noticing the Spaniard's disinclination for female society, or at any rate how perfectly content he is without it.
I do not fancy the ladies of Malaga care very much for society either, in our acceptation of the word. Looking out of the window appears to be their favourite recreation. They do not inherit the habit from the Moors, for that people, as I have said, were nearly all expelled at the Reconquest, and the town was resettled. All the Andalusian towns were wholly or in part emptied of their Mohammedan population when taken by the Christians, and repeopled with Castilians and others from Northern Spain. This fact is forgotten by those who recognize in every trait of the Andalusian a heritage from the Moor. We might as well think we derive our chief national characteristics from the Britons or the Normans.
East of Malaga lie several coast towns of importance, within whose gates the traveller rarely sets foot. Motril, Adra, Almeria—what is there in them to reward the fatigue of a journey in a diligence along the parched shore, or in some crazy coasting craft, with timbers straining and creaking before the lightest breeze? Almeria is now connected directly by rail with Madrid and Granada. The prosperity of the whole district is bound to be greatly increased by the construction of the line so long promised from Guadix to Baza. This short link in the railway system would save the traveller from Malaga to Valencia nearly 180 miles, or its alternative—a long and exhausting diligence journey. It would also bring the southern parts of Andalusia into direct communication with the great commercial centres of eastern Spain and with Marseilles. It would supply us with a new route to Gibraltar, moreover. This, with a line from Jaca across the Pyrenees into France, and another from Huelva to connect with the Portuguese system Villa Real de São Antonio, are links of which Spain stands vitally in need.
CHAPTER VI
THE WAY SOUTH
AT Bobadilla—the Clapham Junction of Andalusia—the Spanish railway system is joined by the line of that purely British undertaking, the Algeciras Railway Company. A Spaniard told me that this line would never have been built by one of his countrymen, as no one in Spain had any desire to facilitate Gibraltar's communication with England, and the country it traversed had been sufficiently opened up. I do not think it would be difficult to demonstrate that the line may prove of very substantial benefit to Spain, but I will confine myself to thanking the promoters for having rendered accessible certainly the most beautiful part of Andalusia, and in my opinion one of the most wildly picturesque regions of Europe. The country between Ronda and Algeciras is the Andalusia dreamt of by the romancers. It is a savage, silent country, of warmer browns and greens than the rest of Spain. Here the train takes you no longer across the scorched sky-rimmed plains, but along the very edge of dizzy ravines, at the foot of which, hundreds of feet below, angry white torrents foam and froth. Now you are climbing with obvious effort the steep shoulder of a mountain, now you are racing headlong down into a valley which seems to lie almost vertically beneath you. Now you plunge into the bowels of the Sierra and emerge with a shriek of triumph in a cauldron-shaped valley, from which Nature has provided no egress. There is no want of verdure; the cork-woods, vineyards, and olives dot the lower slopes of the tawny hills. And far up against the sky-line loom shattered towers and crumbling castles, whence you seem to see trains of steel-clad knights issuing forth to do battle with the Moor.
The country is reminiscent essentially of the days of chivalry. Perhaps the ruined strongholds and the dark gorges are still haunted by the knights, who have driven away all other ghosts and will not let us think of anyone but them. The Romans were once here, and at Munda, as every schoolboy knows, Cæsar defeated with great slaughter the army led by the sons of Pompey. That town has now been identified with Ronda, the romantic capital of this most romantic region. Here the people have not forgotten Rome. They will show you a cave where in the semi-darkness you descry awful forms in stone, seeming like a ghostly and gigantic choir of monks. These are the Roman priests turned to stone upon the downfall of their gods, those of the people who cherish tradition will tell you.