The ride round the ramparts would be an agreeable variety to the eternal paseo on the Camino de Ercoles,[32] but for the insufferable odours that arise from the vast heaps of filth deposited on one part of it. To such an extent has this nuisance reached, that, without another river Alpheus, even the hard-working son of Jupiter (the city’s reputed founder) would find its removal no easy task.
The arsenal of the Carracas is situated on the northern bank of the Santi Petri river, about half a mile within the mouth by which that channel communicates with the bay of Cadiz, and at a distance of two leagues from the city, to which it has no access by land. Its plan is laid on a magnificent scale, and it may boast of having equipped some of the most formidable armaments that ever put to sea; but it is now one vast ruin, hardly possessing the means of fitting out a cockboat. A fire, that reduced the greater part of it to ashes some five and thirty years since, furnishes the national vanity with an agreeable excuse for its present condition.
The road from Cadiz to Port St. Mary’s is very circuitous, and offers little to interest any persons but military men and salt-refiners. I will, therefore, pass rapidly over it—which its condition enables me to do—merely observing that, from the branching off of the Chaussée to Chiclana at the Portazgo, it makes a wide sweep round the salt marshes at the head of the bay of Cadiz, to gain Puerto Real (eighteen miles from Cadiz); and then leaving the peninsula of the Trocadero on the left, in four miles reaches a long wooden bridge over the Guadalete—here called the river San Pedro. Two miles further on it crosses another stream by a similar means; and this second river, which is connected with the Guadalete by a canal, has become the principal channel of communication between Xeres and the bay of Cadiz.
A road now turns off to the right to Xeres; another, on the left, to Puerto Santa Maria; and that which continues straight on proceeds to San Lucar, on the Guadalquivír.
Puerto Real is a large but decayed town, possessing but little trade,[33] and no manufactories. Its environs, however, are fertile—enabling it to contend with Port St. Mary’s in supplying the Cadiz market with fruit and vegetables;—and a good crop of hay might even be taken from its streets after the autumnal rains!—The population is estimated at 12,000 souls.
Puerto Santa Maria is a yet larger town than Puerto Real, and is computed to contain 18,000 inhabitants. It is situated within the mouth and extending along the right bank of the river, into which the Guadalete has been partly turned. The entrance to the harbour is obstructed by a sand bank, which is impassable at low tide; and at times, when the wind is strong from the S. W., this bar interrupts altogether the water communication with Cadiz.[34]
The distance between the two places, across the bay, is but five miles; by the causeway, twenty-four.
The main street of Puerto Santa Maria is of great length, wide, and rather handsome; and the place has, altogether, a very thriving look; for which it is indebted, as well to the great share it enjoys of the Xeres wine trade,[35] as to the fruitfulness of its fields and orchards. The country, to some considerable extent round the town, is perfectly flat; and the soil (a dark alluvial deposit,) is rich, and highly cultivated; it is, in fact, the market-garden of Cadiz, the inhabitants of which place would die of scurvy, if cut off for six months from the lemon-groves of Port St. Mary.
The position of Puerto Santa Maria seems to correspond pretty well with that of the Portus Gaditanus of Antoninus, viz., 14 miles from the Puente Zuazo, (Pons;) the difference being only that between English and Roman miles. But, besides that there is every appearance of the Guadalete having altered its course, and consequently swept away all traces of the Roman port, (or yet more ancient one of Menesthes, according to Strabo,) a fertile soil is, of all things, the most inimical to the preservation of ruins; for gardeners will have no respect for old stones when they stand in the way of cabbage-plants. It would, therefore, be vain to look for any vestiges of the ancient town, in the vicinity of the modern one.
To proceed to Xeres, we must retrace our steps, along the chaussée to Cadiz, for about a mile; when, leaving the two roads branching off to Puerto Real and San Lucar on the right and left, our way continues straight on, traverses a cultivated plain for another mile, and then ascends a rather steep ridge, distinguished in this flat country by the name of Sierra de Xeres, though scarcely 500 feet high.