Nearly the last sound that greets our ears, as we walk over the irregular pavements and through the narrow lanes toward the pier whence we are to embark, is the rude music of the snake-charmer; and the last sight is that of a public story-teller in one of the little squares, earnestly gesticulating before a score of eager listeners while he recites a chapter from the "Thousand and One Nights."
The sultan of Morocco is supreme, and holds the lives and fortunes of his subjects at his will. He is judge and executioner of the laws, which emanate from himself. Taxation is so heavy as to amount to prohibition, in many departments of enterprise; exportation is hampered, agriculture so heavily loaded with taxes that it is only pursued so far as to supply the bare necessities of life; manufacture is just where it was centuries ago, and is performed with the same primitive tools; the printing-press is unknown; there are no books, save the Koran; and the language is such a mixture of tongues, and is so corrupted, as to hardly have a distinctive existence. The people obey the local sheikhs (pronounced shāk); above them are the cadis, who control provinces; and still higher, are the pashas, who are accountable only to the sultan.
Returning to Gibraltar we take a coasting steamer along the shore of Spain eastward to Malaga, the city of raisins and sweet wine. It is commercially one of the most important cities of the country, and was once the capital of an independent state. It was a large and prosperous Phœnician metropolis centuries before the time of Christ upon earth. The older portions of the city have all the Moorish peculiarities of construction,—narrow streets, crooked passages, small barred windows, and heavy doors; but the modern part of Malaga is characterized by broad, straight thoroughfares and elegantly built houses of stone. This is especially the case with the Alameda, which has a central walk ornamented by flowers and shrubs, and which is bordered with handsome almond-trees. On either side of this broad promenade is a good roadway, flanked by houses of pleasing architectural effect, lofty and well relieved.
There are several fine open squares in Malaga, some of which contain statues and ornamental trees, together with well-kept flower-beds. The discovery not long since of Roman antiquities in the environs has created a warm interest among archæologists. The trade of the city in wine and dried fruits is large. Four-fifths of the forty thousand butts of sweet wine shipped from here are exported to the United States. The present population is about a hundred and twenty-five thousand, made up of a community of more than average respectability, though beggars are found to be very annoying in the public streets. The old Moorish castle crowning the seaward heights has been converted into a modern fortress, affording a charming view from its battlements. In the squares and streets, as well as in the market-place, women sit each morning weaving fresh-cut flowers of rose-buds, mignonette, pansies, violets, and geraniums into pretty little clusters, of which they sell many as button-hole bouquets. One may be sure there is always a refined element in the locality, whether otherwise visible or not, where such an appreciation is manifested. The bull-fight may thrive, the populace may be riotous, education at a very low ebb, and art almost entirely neglected; but when a love of nature is evinced in the appreciation of beautiful flowers, there is still extant on the popular heart the half-effaced image of its Maker.
It is an interesting fact that Spain, in the time of Julius Cæsar, contained nearly eighty million inhabitants, but to-day it has less than eighteen million. By glancing at the map it will be perceived that Spain is a large country, comprising nearly the whole of the southern peninsula of Europe, Portugal being confined to a very small space. It is about double the size of Great Britain, and is rich in every known mineral, though poor enough in the necessary energy and enterprise requisite to improve such possibilities. In many sections of the country great natural fertility is apparent, but nature has to perform the lion's share of the work in producing crops. In the environs of Malaga, and the southern provinces generally, there are orange, lemon, and olive groves miles in extent. The Moors had a poetical saying that this favored region was dropped from paradise, but there is more of poetry than truth in the legend. What is really required is good cultivation and skilled agricultural enterprise. These would develop a very different condition of affairs and give to legitimate effort a rich reward. The sugar-cane, the grape-vine, the fig-tree, and the productive olive, mingling with the myrtle and the laurel, gratify the eye in and about the district of Malaga; but as one advances inland, the products become natural or wild, cultivation primitive and only partial, grain-fields being scarce and universal neglect the prominent feature.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ALHAMBRA.
Granada is situated about seventy miles north of Malaga, where set the sun of Moorish glory, but where still exists that embodiment of romance, the Alhambra. This palace-fortress is the one attraction of the district. It is difficult to realize that the Moors possessed such architectural skill, and that they produced such splendid palaces centuries ago. It is also quite as remarkable that Time, the great destroyer, should have spared for our admiration such minute, lace-like carvings, and such brilliant mosaics. The marvel of the architecture is its perfect harmony; there are no jarring elements in this superb structure, no false notes in the grand anthem which it articulates. In visiting the Alhambra one must be assisted by both history and the imagination; he must know something of the people who built and beautified it; he must be able to summon back the brave warriors and beautiful ladies from the dim past to people again these glorious halls. He must call to life the orange, the myrtle, and the myriads of fragrant flowers that bloomed of old in these now silent marble courts. As we pass from one section to another, from hall to hall, chamber to chamber, lingering with busy thoughts amid the faded glory, the very atmosphere teems with historical reminiscences of that most romantic period, the mediæval days, when the Moors held regal court in Andalusia. A lurking sympathy steals over us for that exiled people who could create and give life to such a terrestrial paradise.