"An English engineer," was the answer.
I stopped the calesa, hailed him, and inquired was he fond of rheumatic fever. He laughed, and pronounced the single word, "Duty." A little word, but one that means much. A Spanish engineer would never have done this; they are great in offices and at draughting on paper, but they seldom tuck up their sleeves, much less their trousers, to labour out of doors as the young Englishman was doing. I made his acquaintance, and he willingly consented to show me over the works in which he was engaged, which were intended to supply Cadiz with water. In England water is to be had too easily to be estimated at its proper value. At Cadiz it is a marketable commodity. Even the parrots there squeak "agua." Every drop of rain that falls is carefully gathered in cisterns, and the conveyance of water in boatloads from Puerto across the Bay is a regular trade. An English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that will raise the liquid collected there up to the reservoirs which have been hewn out of the hills above. These reservoirs, approached by passages excavated out of the rough sandstone, are stout and solid specimens of the mason's craft directed by the engineer's skill. Here we met a second gentleman superintending the labours of the men, but he was surely a Spaniard; he spoke the language with the readiness of one born on the soil; still, he had a matter-of-fact, resolute quickness about him that was hardly Spanish. Doubts as to his nationality were soon dispelled; the engineer we had surprised in the swamp presented us to his colleague Forrest, engineer to Messrs. Barnett and Gale, of Westminster, the contractors, as thoroughbred an Englishman as ever came out of the busy town of Blackburn.
Mr. Forrest at once stood to cross-examination by the American, who had all the inquisitiveness of his race.
"We employ a couple of hundred men, on an average, here," he said, "all of whom, with but two exceptions, are Spaniards, and very fair hard-working fellows they are; in the town below we have a small colony of English, and if you don't take it amiss I shall be happy to present you to our society."
I know little of the technicalities of engineering, but I saw enough of this work to be certain that it was well and truly done, and I heard enough of the scarcity of water in Cadiz to be convinced it will be a great boon when finished. The reservoirs are constructed in colonnades, supported by ashlar pillars and roofed with rubble; for the water must be shaded from the sun in this hot climate; the pillars are buttered over with cement, and there is over a foot of cement concrete on the flooring, to guard against filtration. As we paced about the sombre aisles, echo multiplied every syllable we uttered; the repetition of sound is as distinct as in the whispering gallery of St. Paul's, and I could not help remarking, "What a splendid robber's cave this would make!"
"Too tell-tale," said the practical American; "make a better cave of harmony."
"The only pipes that are ever likely to blow here are water-pipes," smilingly put in the engineer; "we intend to lay them from this to Cadiz, some twenty-eight miles distant. Roughly speaking, we are about ninety feet above the level of the place, so that the highest building there can be supplied with ease."
The Romans were benefactors to many portions of this dry land of Spain; they built up aqueducts which are still in use, but they neglected Cadiz. The town has been dependent on these springs of La Piedad for its water supply, except such as dropped from heaven, for three hundred years, and attempts to obtain water from wells or borings in the neighbourhood have invariably failed. The water which is found in this basin, held by capillary attraction in the permeable strata through which it soaks till the hard impermeable stratum is met—retained, in short, in a natural reservoir—is excellent in quality, limpid and sparkling. Puerto has been supplied from the place for time out of mind, and Puerto has been so well supplied that it could afford to sell panting Cadiz its surplus. With English capital and enterprise putting new life into those old hills, and cajoling the precious beverage out of their bosom, which unskilled engineers let go to waste, Cadiz should shortly have reason to bless the foreign company that relieves its thirst. Clear virgin water, such as will course down the tunnels to bubble up in the Gaditanian fountains, is the greatest luxury of life here; "Agua fresca, cool as snow," is the most welcome of cries in the summer, and temperate Spain is as devoted to the colourless liquid that the temperance lecturer Gough and his compeers call Adam's ale, as ever London drayman was to Barclay's Entire. Success, then, to the Cadiz Waterworks Company: we drank the toast on the hill-side of "Piety" they were making fruitful of good, drank it in tipple of their and nature's brewing, but had latent hopes that Forrest or his colleague would help us to a bumper of the generous grape-juice for which the district is famed, when we got down to the pleasant companionship of the English colony below.
Nor were our hopes disappointed. There are innumerable bodegas, or wine-vaults, in the town, in which bottles and barrels of wine are neatly caged in labelled array, according to age, quality, and kind. Very clean and roomy these stores of vinous treasure are, with an indescribable semi-medicinal odour languidly pervading them. We visited a bodega belonging to an Englishman, who ranks as a grandee of the first-class, the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and eke of Vitoria, but who is better known as the Duke of Wellington. The natural wine of this district is too thin for insular palates. They crave something fiery, and, by my word, they get it. Like that Irish car-driver who rejected my choicest, oily, mellow "John Jameson," but thanked me after gulping a hell-glass of new spirit, violent assault liquefied, they want a drink that will catch them by the throat and assert its prerogative going down. What a beamy old imposition is that rich brown sherry of city banquets, over which the idiot of a connoisseur cunningly smacks his lips and rolls his moist eyes. If he were only told how much of it was real and how much artificial, would he not gasp and crimson! It would be unmerciful to inform him that his pet cordial is charged with sulphuric acid gas, that it is sweetened with cane-sugar, that it is flavoured with "garnacha dulce," that it is coloured with plastered must and fortified with brandy, before it is shipped. Let us leave him in blissful ignorance. We tasted many samples before we left, but I own I have no liking for sherries, simple or doctored. Among Spanish wines I far prefer the full-bodied astringent sub-acidity of the common Val de Peñas, beloved of Cervantes. But the Queen of wines is sound Bordeaux. To that Queen, however, a delicate etherous Amontillado might be admitted as Spanish maid-of-honour, preceding the royal footsteps, while the syrupy Malaga from the Doradillo grape might follow as attendant in her train.
From wine to women is an easy transition. Both are benedictions from on high, and I have no patience with the foul churl who cannot enjoy the one with proper continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar creature—kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel. With Burns—and he was no ordinary seer—I hold that the sweetest hours that e'er we spend are spent among the lasses. I will go farther and say the most profitable hours. And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas mine to spend among the fawn-orbed lasses of Puerto, with their childlike gaiety, their desire to please, and their fetching freedom from affectation. Would that the wines exported from the district were half as unsophisticated! These lasses were not learned in the "ologies" or the "isms," but they were sincere; and their locks flowed long and free, and when they laughed the coral sluices flying open gave scope to a full silvery music cascading between pales of gleaming pearl. An admixture of this strain with the fair-skinned men of the North should produce a magnificent race; and, indeed, if we paid half the attention to the improvement of the human animal which we do to that of the equine or the porcine, the experiment would not have been left untried so long. In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind. The families which take most pride in their purity are the most degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion, the coming man, the highest form of well-balanced qualities—moral, intellectual, and masculine—the nearest approach to perfection, must ultimately be developed in the United States.