TRAVELLERS should deny themselves Spain during December, January and February. The heating apparatus of the American and the English house is unknown in Spanish dwellings—fireplace, stove, nor furnace. The peasant draws his cloak up to his nose and shivers and cowers, while the middle-class family lights a single brazier, and the household, gathering in one room, hovers over the charcoal smouldering away in its brass cage, and the cats sit and purr on the broad wooden rim. These braziers are expensive—constructed of brass and copper—and few families afford more than one, making winter comfort out of the question, as the floors, of marble or stone, never get well warmed.
With the coming of pleasant weather Spanish families usually forsake the blinded, draperied, balconied rooms of the gallery for the secluded and garden-like patio. This court is often fifty feet square, and in its enclosure there is generally a fountain; the floor is tiled with marble, there are stately tropic plants in tubs, and orange and palm-trees are growing. Should the sunshine become too fierce there are smoothly-running screens and awnings to roof the whole court in an instant. Some of the old Moorish patios contain quaint wells, dry at some seasons, but often affording water sufficient for housekeeping needs.
The water-jars come from the famous potteries of Seville, and, made of a rude red clay, are similar in hue to our plant pots. They are brought in high loads by oxen—and these pottery carts are often an enlivening feature of the dull country roads.
The water cellar is not a cellar at all, but a stone-paved room off the patio, delightfully cool and sloppy of a fiery July day, with the water-carriers unloading, and filling the array of dripping red jars with the day’s supply from the public fountain.
Every Spanish peasant wears a knife in his sash. These knives are usually about eighteen inches long, with a broad, sharp, murderous blade. The handles are of tortoise or ivory, often carved richly, or inlaid with figures of the Virgin, the Saviour, or the crucifix. The knife is kept open by a curious little wheel, between blade and handle, and is used indiscriminately, to slice a melon or lay bare a quarrelsome neighbor’s heart.
SEVILLE is celebrated for its oranges and its pottery. Nearly the whole Spanish supply of water-jars comes from this city; and the outlying country is agreeably dotted with orange orchards, as olive oases enliven the vicinity of Cordova. The export of the fruit is a considerable business. The most delicious orange in the world may be bought in the streets of Seville for a cent, and the ordinary rate for the ordinary fruit is four for a cent. In the Christmas season large and selected oranges are sold in the outdoor booths. They are carefully brought, and temptingly hung in nets, along with melons cased in straw, fine bunches of garlic, chestnuts, assorted lengths of sugar-cane, tambourines, zambombas, and such other sweet and noisy objects as delight the Spanish youngster.