We looked about us for specimens of the famous breed of Cordova horses, of whom poets have sung and kings were covetous. There were a few animals to be seen with fine manes and tails, with arching necks and lustrous coats, but their forms would not compare with some neglected creatures whose blood showed through dirt and hard usage, at the Slave Market in Tangier. There may have been noble ancestors to these Cordova animals a thousand years ago, but they must have been crossed with mongrel races too many times to show good traces to-day.
This is one of the most ancient cities in the country, having been the capital of Moorish Spain a thousand years ago. The walls which still surround it are flanked by octagonal and square towers of Saracenic origin. From the ninth to the twelfth century it boasted a million inhabitants, and we read of its public library which contained six hundred thousand volumes. The present population cannot exceed forty or fifty thousand. Is it possible that this was once the largest city in the western world,—once the centre of European civilization? So at least history informs us. Not even one foundation of its three hundred mosques can be found to-day. Seneca and Lucan were born here before the time of Christ, and the guide rehearsed with voluble facility some other high-sounding names of historic fame who were natives of the place, but who were quite unfamiliar to us. When we pointed, however, to the broad, pale-yellow river crossed by the old Roman bridge, and asked its name, he replied: "The Guadalquivir," and the name rang softly on the ear like a strain of half-forgotten music. The old stone bridge, with its broad, irregular arches, was an object of much interest, and is, undoubtedly, with its two flanking towers, the oldest visible object in Cordova, though it was an important city in Cæsar's time. The bridge is about the sixteenth of a mile in length, and after two thousand years of battling with the elements is firm and substantial still. Romans, Moors, and Spaniards have fiercely battled at its entrances, the tide of victory and of defeat sweeping again and again across its roadway, which has many times been made slippery with human blood. How often has it witnessed royal pageants, ecclesiastical parades, murderous personal conflicts, and how often been the rendezvous of lovers and of whispering groups of conspirators. Here have been enacted many vivid scenes in the long line of centuries. What a volume might that old bridge furnish of history and of romance! During our brief stay this spot was a favorite resort, usually supplementing our visits to the cathedral, which is near at hand. Leaning over its stone barriers, we watched the rapid stream which doubtless flows on just as it has done for twenty centuries. Palaces temples, towers, and shrines crumble, nations rise and fall, but the Guadalquivir still flows on. Just below the bridge, perhaps fifty yards away, are the ruins of an ancient Moorish grist-mill of stone, forming a strikingly picturesque object, in its shattered condition, amid the foaming rapids.
We visited a museum of antiquities, but it was in a dark, inappropriate building, gloomy and cobwebby, smothered in dust and obscurity; so out of the way, indeed, that it was difficult to find, and our guide was obliged to inquire where the institution was! The traveler may conscientiously omit a visit to the blind alley which contains the Museum of Antiquities at Cordova. The guide, by the way, we found much more intent upon selling us Spanish lace than anxious to impart desirable local information. To be a good guide, as Izaak Walton says of anglers and poets, a man must be born so.
The one great and nearly unrivaled interest of Cordova is its cathedral, an architectural wonder, erected some sixteen centuries since, and hallowed by age and historical associations. Beautiful are its still remaining thousand and one interior supporting columns, composed of porphyry, jasper, granite, alabaster, verd-antique, and marble of various colors. Think of that vandal Charles V. destroying two hundred of them: he who was capable of tearing down a portion of the Alhambra to make room for his barrack of a palace! Each of the columns upholds a small pilaster, and between them is a horse-shoe arch, no two columns being precisely alike,—as they came from Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Damascus, Africa, and some are said to have come from the Temple at Jerusalem, as also from Pæstum and Cumæ. All the then known world was put under contribution to furnish this wonderful temple. The great mosque was changed into a cathedral after the expulsion of the Arabs; but a large portion of the interior is untouched, and remains as it was when the caliphs worshiped here. We felt oppressed by a sensation of gloom wandering amid the dark forest of pillars. It is, and always will be, a mosque, as characteristic and typical as the most marked shrine in the East. The Holy of Holies, as sacred to the Spanish Arabians as Mecca to those of the East, has been preserved intact, and is by far the most interesting portion of the structure. Here all the original lace-like ornamentation is entirely undisturbed, and looks as though it were a hall taken bodily out of the Alhambra. The Moslem pilgrims from far and near came to this spot, and walked seven times round it, the marble pavement being visibly worn by the bare knees of devout Mussulmans.
Just outside of this large alcove, which is very similar to a side chapel in a modern cathedral, there was pointed out to us the finest piece of mosaic in the world. It originally came from Constantinople, and was the gift of the Emperor Romanus II. It contains, in accordance with the Moslem faith, no representation of any living thing; but is perfection in its graceful vines, leaves, and scroll work. The deep glowing colors, crimson and green dominating, are as bright to-day as when it first came, perhaps two thousand years ago, from the artist's hand. It recalled the contemporary productions exhumed at Pompeii, and now to be seen in the Museum at Naples. These latter however, as we remember them, are neither so large nor so choice as this masterpiece in the Cordova Mosque. The cathedral, as a whole, has been pronounced by experienced travelers to be the greatest architectural curiosity in Europe. It is a strange conglomerate and jumble of incongruities, half-Christian, half-Saracenic, reminding one strongly of the Church of St. Mark at Venice,—having, like that remarkable structure, borrowed many of its columns and ornaments from the far East. Inside and out it is gloomy, massive, and frowning, forming the most remarkable link between the remote past and the present existing in Spain. It appears to be nearly as large upon the ground as St. Peter's at Rome, and contains fifty separate chapels within its capacious walls. It has, in its passage through the several dynasties of Roman, Moorish, and Spanish rule, received distinctive architectural marks from each. Its large, cool court of orange-trees, centuries old; its battlemented wall and huge gateway; its famous fountains and its mingled palms and tall cypresses, all combine to perfect a picture suggestive of the dead and buried races connected with its history.
This famous court-yard is of scarcely less interest than the interior of the great Cathedral-Mosque itself. It has at each end a colonnade of marble pillars supporting circular arches, and the grounds are broad and spacious. Here a battalion of professional beggars were drawn up in battle array as we entered, numbering fifty or sixty of both sexes, and of all ages. The poor creatures formed both a pitiable and a picturesque group, composed of the lame, the halt, and the blind. On the greensward just back of them, under the shade of the dark-leaved orange-trees, played troops of careless children, who had been sent here by their parents to beg, but had forgotten their vocation. Sitting on the stone bench, which surrounds the outside walls of the mosque, were little groups of hale and hearty men, playing cards and smoking; while others, stretched at full length upon the ground, slept just where the dancing sunlight pierced the leaves and branches of the trees and mottled their faces with its shimmering rays. Idleness is the general business of Cordova. What a strange, weird aspect the deep shades assumed beneath the graceful palms and slender cypresses. The Babel of pleading tongues from the beggars, the merry voices of the laughing children, the angry dispute of some card players, and the cool business-like aspect of the priests shuffling about the corridors, while a little confusing was still impressive.
The best dwelling-houses in Cordova are built upon the Moorish model; that is, they have a central court or garden, visible from the street entrance, which is adorned with trees, flowers, and fountains, usually guarded by an iron gate and an inner glass door. The domestic life of the family centres here, where in summer a broad canvas is drawn over the top, and the meals are taken underneath in the open air. We saw, late in March, orange and lemon-trees blooming in these areas, as well as Bengal monthly and common white roses, tea-roses, verbenas, tiger-lilies, carnations, and scarlet geraniums. Neither the palm nor the orange will grow without shelter in this part of Spain,—the north winds being too cold and piercing,—except by artificial culture. Spain is almost a treeless country, her immense olive orchards serving but partially to redeem the barren aspect of the southern and middle districts. In the orange court of the Grand Mosque, the lofty old Moorish wall forms a protecting screen. The Alameda of Cordova must be quite denuded of foliage in winter, exposed as it is to the north winds and frosty nights. It is a short but very broad thoroughfare, with a tree-lined promenade through its centre, like that at Malaga, but it seemed singularly out of place in a city so utterly void of life and animation.
Spain is a country of beggars, but in this ancient town one is actually beset by them. Travelers, stopping at the same hotel with us, abbreviated their stay in the city on account of this great annoyance. As far as one can judge, these people have no pressing reason for begging. It has become a habit, and strangers are importuned as a matter of course. Cannot the priests do something to mitigate this great evil? In Spain evidence is not lacking to show that the Roman Catholic faith inspires deep religious sentiment, but without religious principle. The more blindly ignorant the masses of the people are, the greater is the influence of the priesthood. Not one of the famous Spanish cathedrals but has within its vaults so-called sacred treasures of great amount, in gold and silver plate and other material, the intrinsic value of which in each instance large, being aggregated, would furnish a sum nearly large enough to liquidate the national debt. At Toledo, for instance, the mantle called the Robe of the Virgin is covered with precious stones, so large and choice that its value has been estimated at a million of Spanish dollars; and this is but one item of value stored in that rich church. So at Malaga, Seville, Cordova, and Burgos, not to name other places of which we can speak with less personal knowledge, each is a small Golconda of riches, yet the common people starve. A horde of priests, altogether out of proportion to the necessities of the case from any point of view, are kept up, the most useless of non-producers, and whence comes their support but from this very poverty-burdened mass of the common people? When Philip II. was told of the destruction of the great Spanish Armada, which had cost a hundred million ducats, he only said: "I thank God for having given me the means of bearing such a loss without embarrassment, and power to fit out another fleet of equal size!" And yet there were starving millions in Spain at that time as there are to-day.
From Cordova to Madrid is nearly three hundred miles, the first half of which distance we passed over in the daytime, lightening the journey by enjoyment of the pleasing scenery and local peculiarities. Though it was quite early in the spring, still the fields were verdant and full of promise. More than once a gypsy camp was passed by the side of some cross-road, presenting the usual domestic group, mingled with animals, covered carts, lazy men stretched on the greensward, and busy women cooking the evening meal. Long strings of mules, with wide-spread panniers, came winding across the plain, sometimes in charge of a woman clad in gaudy colors, while her lazy husband thrummed a guitar, lying across one of the mules. Towards evening groups of peasants, male and female, with farming tools in their hands, were seen wending their steps towards some hamlet after the day's labor. Arched stone bridges, old and moss-grown, came into view, spanning small water-courses, on their way from the mountains to join more pretentious streams. Elevated spots often showed the ruins of the old stone towers, once a part of some feudal stronghold, but the eye sought in vain for well-wooded slopes or thrifty groves; and yet, strange to say, the song-birds which we had missed further south, in Andalusia and at Granada, put in an appearance as we came north, cheering us with their soft trilling notes in the amber sunshine that radiated about the small railroad stations. Some of these depots were rendered attractive and pretty by nicely arranged flower-beds and a few trees, imparting a home-like appearance. The ever-varying scenery kept mind and eyes busy, until by and by Night dropped her mantle over the face of nature, and with the darkness came a cool and nipping air. Then followed two hundred miles of tedious night travel, with no convenience for sleeping, except such as one could obtain sitting bolt upright, so that when daylight and Madrid arrived together, we were ready to welcome them both.