These laborers wore huge straw hats, on the crown of which was fitted a birreta, the small ordinary blue cap of the country. They had a queer air of carrying this superfluous cap around on top of the head as a sort of solemn ceremony. The wharf was alive, too, with small wagons, roofed over by a cover of heavy matting made of esparto grass, and furnished with a long, rough-barked pole at the side, to be used as a brake. Above this busy scene towered a luminous sienna-tinted cliff, sustaining the castle of Santa Barbara poised in the white air like a dream-edifice; though a rift high up in the hill marks the spot where the French exploded a mine during the Peninsular war. All these Mediterranean towns are guarded by some such eagle's eyry overlooking the sea, and the old monarchs showed a fine poetic sense in granting them for municipal arms their local castle resting on a wave. Close to the lapping waters lay the serried houses, bordered by an esplanade planted with rows of short palms. When the carbineers had looked vaguely into our trunks, and shut them again, the porters tossed them into a little cart, and plunged into the town at a pace with which we could compete only so far as to keep them in sight while they twisted first around one corner and then another, and then up a long chalky street to the Fonda Bossio, which has the name of being the best hotel in Spain. It has excellent cookery, and some furlongs of tile-floored corridor, which the servants apparently believe to be streets, for they water them every day, just as the thoroughfares are watered, out of tin basins. We were overwhelmed with courtesy. For instance, I would call the waiter.
"Command me, your grace," was his reply.
"Can you bring me some fresh water?" ("Fresh" always means cold.)
"With all the will in the world."
When he came with it I tried to rise to his standard by saying, "Thanks—a thousand thanks."
"They do not merit themselves, señor," said he, not to be outdone.
I asked if I could have a garspacho for breakfast. The garspacho is an Andalusian soup-salad, very cooling, made of stewed and strained tomato, water, vinegar, sliced cucumber, boiled green peppers, a dash of garlic, and some bits of bread; the whole served frost-cold.
"I don't know—it is not in the list. I feel it, señor. It weighs upon my soul. But I will see, and will return in an Ave Maria to let you know."