We find a busy, crowded city, a lovely bay with mountains in the background, an old Moorish castle overlooking the city, and a beautiful alameda, with trees, and statues, and marble seats, upon which we look from the windows of our delightful hotel.
October 9.
The first thing to-day is to drive to a lovely villa, (that of the Marquis de Casa Loring,) in whose garden we see every fruit and flower and tree of the tropics. Bananas and mangoes, the coffee-tree, the magnolia and India-rubber trees, and among all these we found, and ate, ripe persimmons!—that homely fruit of old Virginia, found amidst all these oriental splendors; and sweeter were they than even the oranges which we gathered from their overladen trees. Returning, we paused to see another villa, from whence is a more extensive and beautiful view of the mountains, the city and the sea, and the fertile plateau upon which Malaga lies, and which is said to rival even the famous huertas of Valencia and Murcia in variety and luxuriance of vegetation. The cemetery gives another favorite point of view, and the old Moorish castle (Gibralfaro) has even a finer one; but the day is too warm to attempt the ascent. The castle dates from 1279, and the lower portion, (the Alcazaba,) which is connected with it, is supposed to be of Phoenician origin; Malaga having been first a Phoenician colony, and afterwards Roman. Of the remains of the Roman period, we saw two interesting bronze slabs in a pavilion of the Villa Loring this morning, one of them containing the municipal laws of Malaga under Domitian, and the other those of a city (Salpense) now unknown.
The interior of the cathedral, which rises upon the site of an ancient mosque, is not at all remarkable. It was begun in 1528. The church of "El Cristo del Victoria" is interesting, from the circumstance of its being built on the spot where stood the tents of the Catholic kings during the siege of 1487. On the right of the altar hangs the royal standard of Ferdinand, and on the left the one taken from the Moors. When the city surrendered, the former was hoisted on the castle, or alcazaba. Opposite this church is a small church, San Roque, the first Christian edifice built here by Ferdinand and Isabella. The crucifix which was formerly here was the one brought by their majesties, is highly revered, and is now over the high altar of Santa Victoria.
Malaga is famed for its climate, the best in Spain. It is considered drier, warmer, and more equable than that of Rome, Pau, Naples, or Nice, even superior to Madeira. Invalids flock here, and it will soon be as crowded as Nice. The extreme dryness of the air is its marked feature, and it is said that there are not ten days in the whole year when an invalid may not take out-door exercise. The evaporation is so great, the rain has no influence on the air. During nine years, it has rained only two hundred and sixty times. The "oldest inhabitant" does not remember to have seen snow, and the cold winds from the Sierra Nevada are kept off by the mountains immediately surrounding the city. To show the longevity of the inhabitants, in the year 1860, twenty-nine out of five thousand deaths were of people who had lived to the ages of ninety or a hundred.
Granada.
October 10
This morning we leave Malaga at an early hour by rail, the road being cut through extraordinary mountain passes to Antiquera, an old Roman and Moorish town; from thence by diligence to Loja, where we again take the railway. The journey is altogether delightful, the day being cool and bright, and the mountain scenery on either side grand and beautiful. Loja is in a narrow valley, through which runs the Genil river, on one side the Periquete Hills (Sierra Ronda) and the Hacho. The Manzanil unites here with the Genil, both rapid and clear mountain streams fertilizing a lovely valley. Soon after leaving Loja, we reach Santa Fé, (Holy Faith,) built by Queen Isabella to shelter her army in winter during the siege of Granada in 1492, and called "Santa Fé" because she looked upon the war as a struggle for the faith, and believed piously in its happy issue. This little town has been the scene of many important operations and political acts. It witnessed the signing of the capitulation of Granada, and it was to this town that Columbus was recalled by Isabella when he had already reached the bridge of Piños, behind the mountains, determining to ask aid elsewhere for his great undertaking.
Darkness now fell upon us, and except one exquisite view which the setting sun gave of the snow mountains over Granada, we saw nothing till we reached this last stronghold of the Moors in Spain, and found lodgings inside the Alhambra grounds in the Hotel Washington Irving.
October 11.