“What? Prefer an old thing like that to an active young man like me?” The official guide was incredulous!
“Isn’t she a little old?” I ventured.
“Did you ever see handsomer wrinkles? They are perfectly classic,” said J.
“And the twinkle in her eye!” Patsy supported him. “Wrinkles and twinkles against stall-fed guidebookery? The old girl for me. She’s over eighty, she says; she was born in Ronda; has lived here all her life. She must know more about it than that Algerine pirate with the emerald tie. Past eighty, you said, didn’t you?”
“Ochanta dos; perro en Ronda los ombres a ochanta son pollones,” the Sibyl answered. I am eighty-two, but in Ronda men of eighty are only chickens.
“I understand her Spanish!” cried Patsy. “That settles it; sealed to the Sibyl! I’ll go bond she will let us in for something worth seeing.” As usual, Patsy and J. had their way, and the active young man, angry and chapfallen, watched us with a sinister look, as we pottered slowly along beside the Sibyl. Our guides were mostly chosen for beauty, or charm. On the whole the plan worked well enough.
The Romans showed their usual colossal common sense in choosing the site of Arunda. Rome always was the model city they kept in mind. Three things, they rightly held, were necessary to a city; a not too distant view of mountains, to uplift the soul of the citizen; a fine climate to stimulate his body; a river for boys to swim and fish in, and for men to traffic by. When they found this high, fertile plain shut in by an amphitheatre of mountains, with one lone hill in the midst, surrounded and cut in halves by a rushing river, they built their city of Arunda on the cleft, river-girt rock we call Ronda. The Moors, who cleverly dovetailed their towns and their civilization into what Rome left, built their town of Ronda with the ruins of Arunda. We found remains of both Roman and Moorish walls. The modern town, built by the “Catholic Kings,” Ferdinand and Isabel, is remarkable chiefly for the wonderful view from the alameda. You look down a sheer six hundred feet to the green vega, and the turbulent river Guadelevin fretting and fuming below. After roaring and raging through the Tajo, the deep chasm that divides Ronda, the river tumbles with a series of mad leaps and bounds to the plain beyond. Cutting a few antics with eddies and whirlpools, Guadelevin finally gets himself in hand, and goes soberly to work; turns the wheels of the old Moorish mills, makes flour for Ronda, as the Moors taught him to do; lends his strength to a new labor, for, marvel of marvels, old Moorish Ronda is lighted by electricity. In summer, when the river shrinks to a mere thread, its waning power is carefully husbanded and the water is led by pipes to do its work. Water, always water, alpha and omega of civilization! No town that could not be well supplied with water from the snowy Sierras or from some mountain lake was ever founded by Roman or Moor. Their wisdom is clearer now than ever before. What city prospers, lacking the Siamese twins of successful manufacture, water power, and electricity?
A flock of evil-looking birds hovered over a lonely thicket of tamarisks, close by the foot of the wall.
“From there,” said the Sibyl, pointing to the tamarisks, “they throw the dead horses over the walls, after the bull-fights. The vultures soon pick their bones!” Grrrr! The ugly word spoiled the lovely view.
The Sibyl lived in the old, Moorish part of the city, that is called the Ciudad. She led us through the steep, narrow streets, pointing out the show houses. Here lived the grim Moorish king, Almoneted. He drank his wine from the skulls of enemies whose heads he had cut off, made into goblets, and inlaid with splendid jewels. Patsy, in his rococo Spanish, wondered if Almoneted had hoped to inherit the courage that once flashed from the sockets he stopped with emerald and ruby. The Sibyl twinkled all over at his suggestion.