The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain / Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.

by Nathaniel Armstrong Wells

Its width is just sufficient for the passage of two vehicles abreast, and it is covered with flag-paving. The river flows sixty feet below. At the back of the tower which faces you, at the opposite end of the bridge, rises a rock, almost isolated from the rest of the cliff, and on its top the half-ruined towers and walls of a Moorish castle. On the left hand extends the valley, through which the river approaches in a broad mass. The road to Aranjuez follows the same direction, after having first disappeared round the base of the rock just mentioned, and is bordered with rose-trees, and occasional groups of limes, which separate it from the portions set apart for pedestrians. On the right hand the river (still looking from the bridge) is suddenly pressed in between precipices, becomes narrow, and at the distance of a few hundred yards, forms a noisy cascade.

Still looking in that direction, the left bank—a rocky precipice, as I mentioned before—curves round and soon hurries it out of sight. The lower part of the opposite or town bank is ornamented, close to the cascade, with a picturesque ruin, on which you look down from your position. This consists of three stories of arches, standing partly in the water. Above and behind them rise a few larger buildings, almost perpendicularly over each other, and the summit is crowned with the colossal quadrangular mass of the Alcazar.

The ruinous arches just mentioned, are the remains of a building erected by a speculator, who had conceived a plan for raising water to the Alcazar by means of wheels, furnished with jars, according to the custom of this part of Spain. The arrangement is simple; the jars, being attached round a perpendicular wheel, successively fill with water, as each arrives at the bottom, and empty themselves, on reaching the summit, into any receptacle placed so as to receive their contents. The speculator, having to operate on a colossal scale, intended probably to super-pose wheel over wheel, and to establish reservoirs at different elevations, as it would scarcely be possible to work a wheel of such dimensions as to carry jars to the height required (more than three hundred feet), even though furnished with ropes, which are made to turn round the wheel and descend below it.

Crossing the bridge, the road quits the river, or rather is left for a certain space by it, until it meets it at the distance of a mile. This road is a favourite promenade of the inhabitants, and deservedly so. On each side, for the distance of a mile, it is bordered by hedges of magnificent rose-trees. These hedges are double on both sides, enclosing walks for the promenaders on foot. Behind those on the outside, the colours are varied by the pale green of the olive-tree; and over them occasional clusters of lime-trees, mingled with the acacia and laburnum, furnish shade, in case of an excess of sunshine. This promenade, flanked on one side by the hills, and on the other, by the highly cultivated plain, in parts of which the Tagus is seen occasionally to peep through its wooded banks, is most delicious during the rose season. I should especially recommend the visitor of Toledo to repair to it during the first hour after sunrise, when thronged with birds, which are here almost tame, and fill the air with their music; and also in the evening, when frequented by the mantilla-hooded fair of the city.

There is, however, notwithstanding the beauty and gay appearance of this profusion of roses, a singular effect produced by their situation. Usually seen surrounded by other flowers or by well-kept grass or earth, they do not look quite themselves on the side on which they rest their bushy foundations on a dusty road, covered with deep ruts. The fish out of water forms a hackneyed, not to say a dried up, comparison; but we can compare the rather pallid and unnatural appearance of these plants to that of a bevy of ladies, who, tired of the monotony of a ball-room in Grosvenor Place, should resolve, precisely at the crisis when candle-light is more than ever required for their rather suffering complexions, to compel their partners to lead them, at sunrise, a galopade down Tattersall's yard. The roses, thus misplaced, are nevertheless roses, and cease not to be fair, in spite of their unusual entourage, and to contribute to the beauty and novelty of this picturesque promenade.

Amongst the variety of harmless weaknesses by which human imagination, and consequently human locomotion are influenced, I look upon one of the most irresistible (if such an epithet be applicable to a weakness) to be that fractional component part of the cravings of antiquarianism, which urges some persons in the search after, and rewards their labours on the discovery of, the locality supposed to be the birthscene of some great historical event, however insignificant in other respects, or even however loathsome its actual state may be to the outward senses. Thus, when, in Normandy, the worthy and probably waggish majordomo of the crumbling old castle of Falaise, directs your attention to the window from which Duke Robert caught the first glance of the ankle of William the Conqueror's mother,—as she pursued her professional labours, and polluted with her soapsuds the silver brook a quarter of a mile below him,—and suddenly yielded his soul to its irresistible beauty: notwithstanding the impossibility of the thing, many, and I confess myself one, are too delighted with the window, and the rivulet, and the majordomo, and the—God knows what!—perhaps with the very impossibility—to allow themselves a moment's sceptical or sarcastic feeling on the subject.

I should mention that my visit to Falaise happening to take place shortly after the passage of the King of the French on a tour through his western provinces, the aforesaid cicerone pointed out a highly suspicious-looking inscription, being the initials of the monarch, carefully engraved in the stone; which he informed me had been cut by Louis Philippe, on the occasion of his visit at midnight to the room of Duke Robert; but of which I took the liberty of suspecting himself of being the sculptor, during some idle moment,—fond as he probably was of contemplating the innocently expressive countenances of his satisfied visitors.

Actuated by the feeling I have attempted to describe, one of my first inquiries at Toledo related to the well-known story of Florinda and her bath, so fatal to the Gothic sway in Spain. I was immediately directed to the spot, on which is seen a square tower, pierced by arched openings through its two opposite sides, and on a third side by a similar but smaller aperture. The four walls alone remain, and the whole is uncovered. This symmetrical-looking edifice, well built and composed of large stones, measures about sixteen feet square, and from forty to fifty in elevation, and stands on the edge of the river, on the town side, about a hundred yards below the western bridge—that called after Saint Martin—at the precise point at which the river quits the town, and its north bank ceases to be precipitous.

The extreme point of the termination of the high ground is immediately over the building, and is covered with the ruins of King Roderick's palace, the outer walls of which descend to the water, and are terminated by a small roundtower within a few yards of the quadrangular edifice. The edifice is called the Baño de la Cava, meaning Florinda's bath, although the native popular tradition, losing sight of the events of the history, has metamorphosed the heroine of the spot into a Moorish princess.