From this to the blue sea, what a change! From this to the fresh and breezy harbor of Cadiz. To Spain's window on to the New World, her most romantic starting point in all her history.
It is a long journey! I prefer to go third class. It makes a tremendous difference, for the carriages are always full, always emptying, changing, filling again with Spanish humanity. The second- and first-class coaches are more or less empty; empty also that curious apartment called a "Berlin." There is a train de luxe from Madrid to Cadiz. In that, of course, you can travel in comfort and sleep at night, sleep also by day, and pass the scenery and Spain as rapidly as a millionaire could wish.
This train is called a "mixto," like the smeshanny in Russia. When it comes to a halt the engine-driver gets out. A man on an ass starts off to tell the village that the train has come and that if any one wants to catch it he had better begin packing. It doesn't matter where you get to or when you get there. I took my first day's ticket to a name of a place at random—Vadollano. The booking clerk bade me repeat it, and then sold me the ticket. I occupied myself trying to imagine what sort of a hotel I'd find there. The train commenced its uneasy retardation onward, crawling upward over Spain. Dark but gentle-looking folk filled the carriage, always saluting with a buenos dias when they entered and an adios when they got out, and never starting to eat or drink anything without offering all around to do the same. My wife and I kept a nicely filled basket and a bottle of sherry, and we joined very happily in the children's game of offering our food, knowing it would be declined. We found, however, that two invitations to a glass of sherry usually overcame the modesty of the peasants who, surprised and pleasantly shocked at finding the wine to be of Xeres, seemed, upon drinking it, to become our friends for life.
The men wore close-fitting black caps or those broad-brimmed, box-topped hats that one associates with pictures of West Indian planters. The women wore long earrings, commonly of tortoise-shell; the men and the children wore many rings; they traveled with birds, frequently bringing their canaries, of which they seemed very fond, into the train with them. In came beggars, in came singers. A blind boy sang folk-songs in a strange, wild tone, rather harsh at first hearing, but growing on the ear. His melodies went from the guttural into the minor, and touched one's heartstrings truly enough. Girls are wearing flowers in their hair, and here comes a sight that reminds me well of the Caucasus—a tight pig of wine. From out the little window we look upon many vineyards, brown, stubbly, scarce shooting green though the season is advanced. It is high land and bracing and yet also a wine country. Men come in with wooden boxes and in these boxes are bungs which they withdraw to drink from the hole.
How the people talk, as if there were springs in their mouths, and each sentence was rapidly and mechanically let loose from the lips. No one has any interest in the view from the window; the only interest is human interest. However, we pass at points through bull farms, herds of Andalusian bulls waiting for their testing for the bull ring or, having been tested, waiting for that gory last half hour of torment and red flags. The bulls always take the eyes of the people. They have an enormous interest in them. One might almost say that the Spaniard had got a reflection of the bull in his countenance now. The bull is his national animal.
It was very dark by the time Vadollano was reached, for the train was late. I got out and was followed by a half-naked beggar boy who answered no questions, being so intent on begging. Outside the station there seemed to be nobody and no town. I sought a shelter and could find none. In dismay I returned to the station and found the ticket checker of the train, and he advised me to take another ticket to Baeza. The old train was waiting, had not budged, and would wait half an hour more.
And so to Baeza and a mosquito cage bed in a hotel which smelt as hotels smell when they are the worst. Next day we went on to beautiful Cordoba. Here was a new vision of Spain, one less ascetic and fierce than that of the North. The sun had driven out the somber. In Cordoba with its white houses and fresh-blooming flowers, its beautiful gates and doors and interior courts with palms and fountains, we had a vision of beautiful living. The whole of Cordoba is like a precious work of art. I suppose every one who learns to love it must be loath to leave it.
But we are making for that window on to the New World, longing for that new way to India—the new Spain. The train goes on along the Guadalquiver valley through all the sherry vineyards growing green for miles, the town of Xeres itself, and onward to Gibraltar and the end of the world. And there at the end, far out on a loop of land on the loveliness of the sea, was Cadiz, the city of Armadas and the going and coming of the Plate Fleet, a city now of white houses, Spaniards, cats of all kinds, and innumerable parrots who out-talk humanity on its streets—of all that, but of few ships. I walk along the sea front on that street that bears the proud name Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, and I see three ships, and among them the one that is waiting for me.