CHAPTER IV.
GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA.
The small cars on the railroad which carried us from Algeciras to Granada were divided into compartments with doors opening from the sides. Each compartment comfortably seated eight persons, four facing the front and four the rear. This arrangement of seating allows general conversation among the group, and, if the occupants are congenial, promotes sociability.
A traveler speeding through the United States in a "Chicago Limited," at the rate of sixty miles an hour, can merely catch glimpses of objects on the way and receive only blurred and indistinct impressions of the scenery; but when traveling in the "Spanish Express," at the more moderate speed of twenty-five miles an hour, he can enjoy clear and vivid pictures of the unfolding panorama. Let me try to describe some of these pictures just as they appeared to us during the trip.
Looking back after leaving Algeciras, we saw the huge rock of Gibraltar, almost an island, connected with the main land by a narrow, flat, sandy isthmus. Across the "neutral ground," as the strip between the English and Spanish possessions is called, a line of sentry boxes extended, and red-coated British sentinels paced back and forth. Parallel to the British line there was another line of sentry boxes, where the soldiers of Alfonzo were on guard to prevent the smuggling of tobacco and other forbidden wares into Spain.
TWELVE WEATHER BEATEN MARBLE LIONS UPHOLD AN ALABASTER BASIN.
"See those miserable little white plastered huts with roofs made of straw," said one of our party. "I did not know that the people were so poor."
This picture of poverty was our first impression of Spain. For some distance the train had been running through a region apparently unfertile, where fences of sharp spined cacti enclosed small fields. The people were shabbily dressed, the houses straw-thatched and dilapidated, and the little patches of land poorly cultivated. It seemed that Sunday was a common wash-day; for at almost every cottage the family wash was hanging in the sun on trees, shrubs, or cacti.