Cards help out the conversation at the Tertulias of the first circle. Dancing, forfeits, and other puerile games, are the resources of the rest. Balls and suppers are funciones reserved for great occasions, and dinner parties are of equally rare occurrence.
In the entertainments of the nobility, the French style prevails even to the wines, but the national dish, the olla, generally serves as a prelude, and may be considered the “piece de resistance” of the interminable dinner. Toothpicks (!!) and coffee are handed round, and the party breaks up, to seek in the siesta renewed powers of digestion.
To those, however, who think exercise more conducive to health, the environs of Seville hold out plenty of attractions; and, if the weather be too hot for either walking or riding, the city contains hackney coaches and calesas without number, by means of which (most of the roads in the vicinity being level) the various interesting points may be reached without difficulty or inconvenience.
The places most deserving of a visit in the immediate environs of Seville, are the villages of San Juan de Alfarache and Santi Ponce; near the latter of which are the ruins of Italica.
Both these places are situated on the right bank of the Guadalquivír; the former, about three miles below Seville, the latter a little more distant, up the stream. The road to both traverses the long town of Triana, which contains nothing worthy of observation but a sombre gothic edifice, where the high altar of Popish bigotry, the Inquisition, was first raised in the Spanish dominions. It has long, however, been converted to another purpose, never, let us hope, to be again applied to that which for so many ages disgraced Christianity.
By many Triana is supposed to be the Osset of Pliny, but I think without sufficient reason, as it does not seem probable that a place merely divided from Seville by a narrow river should have been distinguished by him as a distinct city. The words of Pliny, “ex adverso oppidum Osset,” imply certainly that Osset stood on the opposite bank of the river to Hispalis, but not that it was situated immediately opposite, as some authors have translated it. It is yet more evident that Alcalà de Guadaira cannot be Osset, as supposed by Harduin, since that town is on the same side of the Guadalquivír as Seville.
Florez imagines Osset to have been where San Juan de Alfarache now stands,[53] near which village traces of an ancient city have been discovered; and the position occupied by an old Moorish castle, on the edge of a high cliff, impending over the river, and commanding its navigation, seems clearly to indicate the site of a Roman station, since the Saracens usually erected their castles upon the foundations of the dilapidated fortresses of their predecessors. The village of San Juan de Alfarache stands at the foot of the before-mentioned cliff, compressed between it and the Guadalquivír; which river, making a wide sweep to the north on leaving Seville, here first reaches the roots of the chain of hills bounding the extensive plain through which it winds its way to the sea, and is by them turned back into its original direction.
Of the Moorish fortress little now remains but the foundation walls; the stones of the superstructure having probably been used to build the church and convent that now occupy the plateau of the hill. The view from thence is quite enchanting, embracing a long perspective of the meandering Guadalquivír and its verdant plain, the whole extent of the shining city, and the distant blue outline of the Ronda mountains.
The hills rising at the back of the convent are thickly covered with olive trees, the fruit of which is the most esteemed of all Spain: and, indeed, those who have eaten them on the spot, if they like the flavour of olive rather than of salt and water, would say they are the best in the world. The fruit is suffered to hang upon the tree until it has attained its full size, and consequently will not bear a long journey. For the same reason, it will not keep any length of time, as the salt in which it is preserved cannot penetrate to a sufficient depth in its oily flesh to secure it from decay. Let no one say, however, that he dislikes olives, until he has been to San Juan de Alfarache.
Retracing our steps some way towards Seville, we reach the great road leading from that city into Portugal by way of Badajoz; and, continuing along the plain for about five miles, we arrive at the priory of Santi Ponce, situated on the margin of the Guadalquivír, and close to the ruins of Italica. So complete has been the destruction of this once celebrated city, the birth-place of three Roman Emperors, that, but for the vestiges of its spacious amphitheatre, one would be inclined to doubt whether any town could possibly have stood upon the spot; the more so as the vicinity of Seville seems, at first sight, to render it improbable that two such large cities would have been built within so short a distance of each other.