The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

The Spanish portal acquired a dignity rather Chinese than Moorish, from the escutcheon. At Valez Malaga I was shown the built-up door in the mansion of a noble, who, being ordered to take down his arms from his door, built up the entrance, leaving the arms, and struck out a hole in the wall beside it.

The cathedral is a graceful and original modern building. There is a great falling off in the parts recently completed. From its top there is a splendid view of the sea-girt city, the bay, and the surrounding lands. It is all marble, and the roof shelves off from the cupola to the edge without parapet, so that you look out on the sea. In winter the spray passes over the building, so that it well merits its arms,—a cross standing on the water.

In the sacristy there were five large marble reservoirs, with the syphon of a fountain over them, for the priests to wash at. My gratification in recognising this relic will be intelligible only to those among Eastern travellers, who have conformed to the manners of the country, and known the secret of washing with running water; and the disgust and aversion that are inspired by our dabbling in a basin full of dirty water. Yet the practice can only have disappeared within two generations.[73] The Russians still wash in this way. This usage, however interesting as a relic, is not fruitful as a practice. The Spaniards are not a cleanly people: in their struggle of seven centuries with their washing and bathing foes, they placed their patriotism on the side of filth.

From the top of the cathedral I had observed some old ruins, and a circular tower, that looked Roman. It was the Moorish castle, and afforded me the opportunity of verifying a point which previously had been to me doubtful. These ruins are so built on, and so covered up, that it is difficult to trace them; but I made out Moorish walls, with square stones joined with lime. It has been a small castle standing by itself, opposite the water-gate of the town, and not part of a circuit of walls. One round tower still stands, about forty feet high. There is a portion of wall exposed, of between thirty and forty feet in thickness, in stone and lime. The chamber in the principal tower is, like all those in Moorish towers, neatly arched and ornamented. The staircase is in the substance of the wall, not in the centre of the tower.

At Porta St. Maria, opposite Cadiz, I found a similar Moorish ruin. This is the point of embarkation of Xeres, or the Port of Sherry. It is the place for tasting wines,—the Pacharete, Montillado, and most noble Mansanilla. The cellars are worth seeing—if spacious and lofty edifices can be so called.

The people of Cadiz neither put their bodies in graves nor their wines in cellars: the dead are built up in walls, resembling bins of a wine-cellar; their wines are deposited in structures like cathedrals. The niches are like the dwellings of the living, some for ever and a day, others for a term of years; after which the fragments of the former tenant are ejected, and the place swept clean for another.

I observed, on a placard, the two following signs of progress and civilization, in titles of new works: “The defender of the fair sex,” and “The Ass, a beastly periodical.” The words were, “Il Burro, periodico bestial.”

You may see a long row of boys, very small at one end and full grown at the other, dressed out in the sprucest and gayest uniforms—blue coat, single breasted, with standing collar and large flaps; gold buttons and lace; white trousers most mathematically cut, and strapped down on very camp-like boots; and, on inquiring what military institution this belongs to, you are answered, “It is a boarding-school!”

They have, in connection with schools, a practice which might suit “Modern Athens”—I mean the hyperborean one. A person from each school goes the round of the town, calling for the boys in the morning, and dropping them in the evening; just as sheep, goats, or cows are collected by a common herd.

The “Hospicio” is at once a Poor-house, a house of Industry, a School, a Foundling Hospital, a Hospital, and a Mad-house;—that is, it supplies the places of all these Institutions. It is imposing in its form, embellished in its interior, and as unlike, in all its attributes and effects, as anything can be, to the edifices consecrated to the remedying of human misery, by our own charity and wisdom.