Rattling on, we burst once more into a wide, busy market-place, with town-hall, tower, and church, all elaborately sculptured, and with low, dark arcades burrowing beneath the houses. The open space was gay with the coloured awnings of merchants' stalls, and alive with buyers and sellers. The hum of many voices and the cries of water-carriers were heard all around us. In a word, the market-scene from Masaniello was before us. Here were piles of magnificent fruit and vegetables from the fertile campana around the city; there vast heaps of oranges and melons, with great bunches of yellow dates and purple grapes, were heaped upon the ground. Fish from the near Mediterranean were exposed for sale, and assortments of large earthen vases, made in the neighbourhood, were still hardening in the sun. We saw on all sides groups of stately long-eyed women, glancing out from beneath the shade of the mantilla, with classic features and luxuriant blue-black hair; others, robed in dresses of fantastic dye, pressing naked brown infants to the breast as they talked and sold at their stalls. Whole caravans, drawn by large mules dressed in trappings, and tinkling with bells, stalked past us; and strong oxen, yoked together by the head, drawing heavily-laden carts by the sheer force of their necks and horns alone, made their way slowly over the place, while some semi-wild dogs snatched at their heels as they were disturbed during their bask in the sun. There was the trim, upright torero [22] with shaved lip and short crisp whiskers, dressed in his every-day suit of braided jacket, red sash, tight trouser, pigtail, and velvet hat, while the swinging forms of the mountaineer in his goat-skin, and of the stalwart peasant, with his coloured manta sweeping from his shoulder, and his feet in sandals, passed through the midst. The everlasting cigarillo was smoking from their lips, and the gaudy kerchief hung down upon their necks from beneath the black velvet bonnet.
Beautiful fountains grace the streets, and rows of acacias wave like feathers in the breeze. Nothing, in fact, can be conceived more picturesque than the narrow streets, with church and palace, with coloured houses, with balconies and banner-like awnings; nothing more calm than the climate, nothing more brilliant than the ever-changing scenes in the plazas, nothing more interesting than the motley cigarette-smoking crowds, so different from the dingy mob of a London street; finally, nothing more Spanish than the entire picture.
We landed at the Fonda de Madrid, where we intended to take up our quarters; but before ascending the spacious marble stairs we found it necessary to make way for a troop of blind beggars who were being conducted down step by step by their friends. These poor creatures were suffering from the local disease of ophthalmia, and the cause of their assemblage on the present occasion was, that once a week a good doctor holds a levee in the hotel for the gratuitous treatment of their malady, para caridad y para el amor de Dios. Such disinterested benevolence, which is by no means uncommon among medical men in all countries, is very praiseworthy; but at the same time we are bound to confess that the sights which are sometimes brought under our eyes on such occasions are far from agreeable to casual tourists.
The train by which we had arrived was—considering that it was one of the cosas de España—naturally late. We had been altogether eighteen hours on the journey from Madrid. However, before breaking our fast, in fact immediately on our arrival at the fonda at Valencia, we naturally asked for the sea. "Three miles off at the port of El Grao," [23] was the answer. Here, acqui, tout de suite, una tartana, look sharp! and we were immediately rushing through the streets, and out of the city into the long yellow roads, with the sand and dust up to the axle of the two-wheeled gondola, in quest of our bath. We passed over a splendid bridge, spanning the waterless river Turia or Guadalaviar, and commanding a splendid view of Valencia, with all its coloured spires and domes resting against the spotless sky. We were driven through a long avenue of acacias and palms until, as we were going due east, we were naturally brought up by the sea. "A boat, a boat,"—batel, batel! we exclaimed; and in answer to our summons, about twenty almost naked fishermen with red rags round their loins immediately pulled to shore, like a swarm of minnows attracted by a piece of bread; but although we wanted a batel, we had no desire to fight. However, in a few minutes we were stripped and swimming away merrily on the buoyant wave, so deep, clear, and blue; inhaling health, strength, and delight at every stroke. The rugged outlines of the lofty mountains of the Spanish coast were gradually fading from sight in the morning haze, while, afar off, as we lay motionless on our backs floating on the calm surface of the sea, the eye caught the distant gleam of the long sail of many a felucca, softly pink in the reflection of the morning's glow.
Ah! those careless days, snatched from the serious toil of our existence, they come not again. Those sunny holidays which we enjoyed in the society of friendship, how happy, though few, they were, and how delightful it is to recall them to memory! They come but rarely, and at distant intervals, but for that reason they are only the more delightful. They pass quickly, but their memory is as green as ever, and in calling to mind our various wanderings, we feel almost as delighted as we actually did when our footsteps ranged at freedom in a strange land and under a foreign sky. Well may the desponding poet sing:—
"Count o'er the joys thy life hath seen,
Count o'er the days from anguish free,
And know whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better—not to be."