ONE of the most picturesque features of natural scenery which the traveller comes upon in Southern Spain, is that of the olive orchards, especially those which cluster about Cordova. As the time of harvest draws near, the coloring of these orchards is particularly pleasing. The ripening fruit varies in tint, from vivid greens to gay reds and lovely purples, while the foliage, of willow-leaf shape, restless and quivering, is of a tender, shimmering, greenish gray, and the trunks often have a solemn and aged aspect. Many of these plantations are very ancient indeed, planted perhaps by the grandsires of the present owners. They are usually a source of much profit, as the best eating olives are those grown in Spain, and though the trees come into bearing late, there are orchards which have been known to yield fruit for centuries.
Each orchard has a guard, or watchman, who tends it the year round, for the pruning, the tillage, and the watch upon the ripening fruit, demand constant care. In the harvest season the watch is by night as well as by day, for a vigorous shake of the branches will dislodge almost every berry, and a thief, with his donkeys and his panniers, might easily and almost noiselessly strip an entire orchard in a few hours. The olive guard lives in a hut of thatch or grass in summer, and in a sort of cave, or burrow, in winter.
The crop is mainly harvested by girls and women, and the scene is like a picnic all day long, for Spanish girls turn all their labors into merry-making whenever it is possible to do so. The gray orchards are lighted up with the rainbowy colors of the peasant costumes, and the air is musical with the donkey bells, while the overseer, prone on the ground with his cigarette, “loafs and invites his soul,” evidently finding great delight in the double drudgery he controls—that of the donkeys and the damsels.
In regard to the great age of olive-trees, a recent writer says: “When raised from seed it rarely bears fruit under fifty years, and when propagated in other ways it requires at least from twenty to twenty-five years. But, on the other hand, it lives for centuries. The monster olive at Beaulieu, near Nice, is supposed by Risso to be a thousand years old. Its trunk at four feet from the ground has a circumference of twenty-three feet, and it is said to have yielded, five hundred pounds of oil in a single year.”
CORDOVA, lying in the beautiful valley of the Guadalquiver, surrounded with gardens and villas, is well named the city of Age, Mellowness, and Tranquility. It abounds with antiquities, and at every turn memories are awakened of old Roman emperors, and the Arabian caliphs; the gates, the sculptures, the towers, the mullioned windows and nail-studded doors, the galleried houses and their beautiful patios fitted for idle life in the soft Andalusian weather, the mosques and the great bridges are all of those times. Even the streets are named after the old Roman and Spanish scholars and poets.
The large bridge over the Guadalquiver was originally built by the Roman Emperor, Octavius Augustus; it was afterwards remodelled by the Arabs. The gate is very fine which leads into the gypsy quarter. The Moors had three thousand baths on the banks of the river, but in their day it was a full shining tide; now it is a muddy current, hardly in need of bridging at all.