An old man at Bobadilla offered us some palmitos—pieces of pith from the palm-trees, tufted with a few feathery young leaves, and considered a delicacy when fresh. It had a bitter-sweet, rather vapid taste, but I hailed it as a friendly token from the semi-tropical region we were approaching. So I bought one, and my companion presented the old man with some of the lunch we had brought; whereupon the shrivelled merchant, with a courtesy often met with in Spain, insisted upon his taking a palmito as a present. Thus, bearing our victorious palm leaves, we moved forward to meet the palms themselves. The train rumbled swiftly through twelve successive tunnels, giving, between them, magnificent glimpses of deep wild gorges; fantastic rocks piled up in all conceivable shapes, like a collection of giant crystals arranged by a mad-man, amid mounds of gray and slate-colored clay pulverized by the heat, and reduced absolutely to ashes. The last barrier of the Alpujarras was passed, and we rushed out upon lower levels, immense and fertile vales, dense with plantations of orange and lemon, interspersed with high-necked, musing palms and brilliant thickets of pomegranate. Through the hot earth in which these plantations were placed ran the narrow canals, not more than two feet wide, containing those streams of milky water from the snow-fields on which all the vegetation of the region depends.
It is of this and the neighboring portions of Spain that Castelar, in one of his recent writings, says: "The wildest coasts of our peninsula—those coasts of Almeria, Alicante, Murcia, where the fruits of various zones are yielded—compensate for their great plenty by years of desolation comparable only to those described in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, and suffered in the crowded lands of the Orient.... The mountains of those districts, which breathe the incense of thyme and lavender, are carpeted with silky grasses, and full of mines, and intersected by quarries. The honduras, or valleys, present the palm beside the pomegranate, the vine next to the olive, barley and sugar-cane in abundance, orange orchards and fields of maize; in fine, all the fruits of the best zones, incomparable both as to quantity and quality. The azure waves of their sea, resembling Venetian crystals, contain store of savory fish; and the equality of the temperature, the purity of the air, the splendor of the days, and the freshness, the soothing calm of the nights, impart such enchantment that, once habituated to them, in whatever other part of the world you may be, you feel yourself, alas! overcome by irremediable nostalgia." The eloquent statesman has something to say, likewise, of the people. "Nowhere does there exist in such vitality," he declares, "the love of family and the love of labor.... Property is very much divided; the customs are exceedingly democratic; there exist few proprietors who are not workers, and few workers who are not proprietors." Democratic the country is, no doubt; too much so, perhaps, for peace under monarchical rule. These fervid, fertile coast lands, containing the gardens of Spain, are also the home of revolution.
The north was the Carlist stronghold; the south furnished in every city a little Republican volcano. Nor is the simple, patriarchal state of society which Castelar indicates quite universal. Here, as in other provinces, we found luxurious wealth flourishing in the heart of pitiable poverty. The Governor of Malaga was on our train, and a delightfully honest and amiable old gentleman in our compartment, seeing him on the platform surrounded by a ring of dapper sycophants, who laughed unreasonably at his mild jokes, began to exclaim, in great wrath, "So many cabals! so many cabals! Unfortunate nation! there is nothing but cabal and intrigue all the time. Those men have got some sugar they want to dispose of to advantage, and so they fawn on the Governor. It is dirty; it is foul," etc.
At Malaga there was a coast-guard steamer lying in the harbor, and, as we were looking at it, I asked our companion, a resident, whether they caught many smugglers.
"Oh, sometimes," was the answer. "Just enough to cover it."
"Cover what?"
"Oh, the fraud. Out of twenty smuggling vessels they will take perhaps one, to keep up appearances." And he made the usual significant movement of the fingers denoting the acceptance of bribes.
The heat at Malaga surpassed anything we had encountered before. The horses of the cabs had gay-colored awnings stretched over them on little poles fixed to the shafts, so that when they moved along the street they looked like holiday boats on four legs. The river that runs through the city was completely dry, and, as if to complete the boat similitude, the cabs drove wantonly across its bed instead of using the bridges. These equipages, however, are commonplace compared with the wagons used for the transportation of oil and water jars (tinajas) in the adjoining province of Murcia. A delightful coolness was diffused from the sea at evening, when the fashionable drive—the half-moon mole stretching out to the light-house—was crowded with stylish vehicles, and the sea-wall all along the street was lined with citizens, soldiers, priests, and pretty women, who dangled their feet from the low parapet in blissful indolence. Then, too, the lamps were lighted in the floating bath-houses moored in the harbor, and one of them close to the mouth of a city drain seemed to be particularly well patronized. The streets, almost forsaken by day, were crowded after nightfall. The shops were open late. By eight or nine o'clock life began.
The Café de la Loba (the Wolf)—an immense building, where there is a court entirely roofed over by a single grape-vine, spreading from a stem fifteen inches in diameter, and rivalling the famous vines of Hampton Court and Windsor—was well filled, and in many small tiendas de vino heavy drinking seemed to be going on. But the Malaguenese do not imbibe the rich sweet wines manufactured in their vicinity. These are too heating to be taken in such a climate, as we were able to convince ourselves on tasting some fine vintages at one of the bodegas the next day. Nevertheless, the lower class of the inhabitants find no difficulty in attaining to a maximum of drunkenness on milder beverages. Even the respectable idlers in the café under our hotel drank a great deal too much beer, if I may judge from their prolonging their obstreperous discussion of politics into the small hours, while we lay feverish in a room above listening to their voices, blended with the whistle of a boatswain on some ship at the neighboring quay; ourselves meanwhile enduring with Anglo-Saxon reserve the too effusive attentions offered by mosquitoes of the Latin race.