The undulations of the ground now began to be more marked and more frequent—in fact, we did nothing but ascend and descend. We were approaching the Sierra Morena, which forms the limits of Andalusia. Behind that line of violet-coloured mountains lay hidden the paradise of our dreams. The stones already began to change into rocks, and the hills into towering mountains: thistles, six or seven feet high, rose up on the sides of the road, like the halberds of invisible soldiers. Though I have no pretensions to being an ass, I am very fond of thistles (a taste which is common both to myself and butterflies), and those I saw here surprised me. The thistle is a superb plant, which can be most advantageously studied for the production of ornamental designs. No piece of Gothic architecture possesses cleaner or more delicately-cut arabesques or foliage. From time to time we perceived in the neighbouring fields large yellow-looking patches, as if sacks of chopped straw had been emptied there; but this straw rose up in a cloud when we approached, and noisily flew away. What we mistook for straw was shoals of locusts, and there must have been millions of them: this reminded one strongly of Egypt.
It was somewhere near this place that, for the first time in my life, I really suffered from hunger. Ugolino in his tower could not have felt more famished than I did, and I had not, like him, four sons to devour. The reader, who has seen me swallow two cups of chocolate at Val-de-Peñas, is perhaps astonished at this premature hunger; but Spanish cups are not larger than a thimble, and do not hold more than two or three spoonfuls. My melancholy was greatly augmented at the venta, where we left our escort, on seeing a magnificent omelet, intended for the soldiers' dinner, assume a golden hue beneath a sunbeam that came down the chimney. I prowled about it like a ravenous wolf, but it was too well guarded for me to carry off. Luckily, however, a lady from Granada, who was in the diligence with us, took pity on my martyrdom, and gave me a slice of La Mancha ham cured in sugar, with a piece of bread which she kept in reserve in one of the pockets of the vehicle. May this ham be returned to her an hundredfold!
Not far from this venta, on the right hand side of the road, stood some pillars, on which were seen three or four malefactors' heads—a spectacle always adapted to tranquillize your mind, and which proves that you are in a civilized country. The road kept rising, and assuming various zigzag forms. We were about to pass by the Puerto de los Perros: this is a narrow defile—a breach, in fact, made in the mountain by a torrent, which leaves just room enough for the road by its side. The Puerto de los Perros (passage of dogs) is thus named, because through it the vanquished Moors went out of Andalusia, taking with them the happiness and civilization of Spain. Spain, which stands in the same relation to Africa as Greece did to Asia, is not fitted for European manners. The genius of the East is apparent there in all its forms, and it is perhaps to be regretted that Spain is not still Moorish and Mahometan.
It would be impossible to imagine anything more picturesque or grand than this entrance to Andalusia. The defile is cut through immense rocks of red marble, the gigantic layers of which rise one above the other with a sort of architectural regularity. These enormous blocks, with their large transversal fissures—those veins of mountain marble, a sort of terrestrial subject, deprived of skin, on which to study the anatomy of the globe—are of such proportions, that they make the largest granite of Egypt appear microscopical by their side. In the interstices are palm oaks and enormous cork-trees, which do not appear larger there than do tufts of herb on an ordinary-sized wall. On reaching the bottom of the defile, you perceive that the vegetation increases in richness, and forms an impenetrable thicket, through which you see, sparkling in different places, the bright water of the torrent. The edge is so rugged on the side of the road, that it has been judged prudent to place a parapet along it, without which the diligence, which is always going very fast, and which it is very difficult to drive, on account of the frequent bends, might easily turn a somersault of some five or six hundred feet.
It was in the Sierra Morena that the knight of the rueful countenance accomplished, in imitation of Amadis on the rock, that famous act of penance which consisted in tumbling about in his shirt on the sharpest rocks, and that Sancho Panza, the positive man, the representative of vulgar reason by the side of noble madness, found Cardenio's portmanteau so well filled with ducats and fine shirts. You cannot make a step in Spain without meeting with something to remind you of Don Quixote; so truly national is the work of Cervantes, and so true is it that these two personages sum up in themselves the whole Spanish character—chivalrous exaltation of mind, and an adventurous spirit joined to great good practical sense, and a sort of goodnature full of finesse and causticity.
At Venta de Cardona where we changed mules, I saw a pretty little child with a complexion of the most dazzling whiteness, lying in his cradle, and resembling a wax Jesus in his manger. The Spaniards, when they are not burnt by the sun, are in general exceedingly fair.
As soon as the Sierra Morena is passed, the aspect of the country undergoes a total change; it is like going all at once from Europe to Africa; vipers, crawling to their nests, leave their oblique marks on the fine gravel of the roads; and the aloe begins to brandish its large thorny sabres at the sides of the ditches. These large fans of thick, brawny, bluish-grey leaves immediately throw a different appearance over the whole landscape. You feel that you are in a new country; you understand that you have really quitted Paris; but the difference in the climate, in the architecture, and in the costumes, does not astonish you so much as the presence of the large vegetables belonging to the torrid regions, and which we are only accustomed to behold in hothouses, in France. The laurels, the holm oaks, the cork, and the fig-trees, with their varnished and metallic-looking foliage, have about them something free, robust, and wild, which indicates a climate in which nature is more powerful than man, and in which she can do without him.
Before us extended the fine country of Andalusia, unfolding itself to our view, like an immense panorama. The scene possessed the grandeur and appearance of the sea: chains of mountains, which distance confounded with the sky itself, succeeded one another, with the gentlest undulations, like long rows of billows of azure. Large clouds of white vapour filled up the intervals; and here and there the rays of the sun streaked with gold some of the nearer mountain-tops, and made them sparkle with a thousand colours like a pigeon's breast. Other ridges, curiously irregular, resembled those draperies in ancient pictures which were yellow on one side and blue on the other. The whole was inundated with a most dazzling and splendid light, similar to that which must have illuminated the terrestrial paradise. It streamed through this ocean of mountains like liquid gold and silver, dashing a phosphorescent foam of spangles on every obstacle it met with. The scene before us was much more vast than the grandest perspectives of Martin, and infinitely more beautiful. The infinite in things filled with light is sublime and stupendous in a far different manner to the infinite in things smothered in darkness.
While gazing on this wonderful picture, which varied in appearance and presented us with fresh splendours at each turn of our wheels, we saw appear on the horizon the pointed roofs of Carolina's symmetrical pavilions, a sort of model village, or agricultural phalansterium, formerly founded by the Count of Florida Blanca, and peopled by him, at a great expense, with Germans and Swiss. This village, built all of a sudden, and raised at the will of one man, possesses that tedious regularity which is unknown in places which rise gradually, and in obedience to the caprice of chance and time. Everything has been done by line and rule: from the middle of the place you can see the whole town; here is the market of the Plaza de Toros; here is the church, and here is the house of the alcade. All this is certainly very nice, but I prefer the most wretched village which has taken its form at random. The colony has not, however, succeeded; the Swiss became affected with nostalgia and died off like flies, on merely hearing the bells sound; the ringing of them was therefore obliged to be discontinued. They did not all die, however, and the population of Carolina still preserves traces of its German origin. We had a solid dinner at Carolina served up with some excellent wine, and I was not obliged to take double portions: we now no longer travelled with the courier, as the roads are perfectly safe in these parts.
Aloe-trees, more and more African in size and shape, continued to rise along the sides of the road, and towards the left a long garland of flowers of the deepest rose-colour, glittering in a foliage of emeralds, marked out all the sinuosities of the bed of a dried up rivulet. Profiting by a halt made to change mules, my companion ran and gathered an enormous bouquet of these flowers; they were rose-bays of the greatest beauty and freshness. We might put to this rivulet, with the name of which I am not acquainted, and which perhaps has none, the same question that Monsieur Casimir Delavigne puts to the Greek river—