Southern Spain Part 9

THE KINGDOM OF MURCIA

[Ill.u.s.tration: RONDA--ROMAN BRIDGES]

The province of Murcia resembles the home of the Arab race more closely than does any other part of Europe. It is a wild, fierce region, hot and tawny like a lion's hide, furrowed by deep winding ravines, intersected by serrated mountains, on whose flanks, for the heat of the sun, no green thing can grow. Much of the land is occupied by plateaux, bare and rocky like great altars on which all that lives is offered to and consumed by the sun. From these uplands you survey vast expanses of sheer desert--fulvid, rocky, and scorching. Your gaze may travel far before you descry any fitting resting-place for man. The mountains afford no shade, even in the deepest canons the streams are often traceable only by a narrow path of sand and pebbles, yet here and there has man successfully wrested from harsh Nature a secure foothold, an oasis kept ever green by some more constant rivulet. The waters of the Segura and the Sangonera are the life-blood of the province. Wayward and Arethusa-like, the rivers have with infinite pains been coaxed into conformity with the needs of man. To the science of irrigation the province owes its existence. Water here is above all things prized and sold like treasure to the highest bidder. Mr. Jean Brunhes in a lately published work gives some most curious and interesting particulars relating to the system of irrigation in force in Murcia and the adjoining province of Alicante. The volume of the Monegre is divided into old water and new water, the former belonging of right to the ancient riparian proprietors, the latter to the owners of the locks and reservoirs. A very vicious system prevails at Lorca. There a private company is the owner of all the water of the Guadalentin, subject to the condition of supplying the old proprietors of the adjoining lands with 500 litres per second every day. In consequence, in times of drought the company is mistress of the situation and can force up prices to a figure absolutely ruinous to the cultivators. Only in this way can it make good the losses incurred in rainy seasons. The precious fluid being sold, too, by public auction, the rich farmer is in a position to deprive his poorer rivals of their means of subsistence. To palliate this evil to some extent, the rule now obtains that the bidder who has bought the first lot can buy as many of the lots following as he may desire at the same figure. The price therefore is not forced up too rapidly. Moreover, if the company's barrage at a certain point is swept away or broken through by the current, the water which thus escapes becomes public property. This accident occurs five or six times a year, and the company is not allowed to make the barrage any stronger when it is rebuilt. Notwithstanding these concessions, it seems that the principle of private enterprise has been pushed too far in this part of the world.

Mr. Brunhes described the sale of water at Lorca in the following words:

"The sale takes place in a badly-lit hall with naked walls, on a level with the street, with which it communicates by an immense door almost its own breadth. This door remains open during the sale and the crowd of bidders stand partly in the street. The hall has no floor--you stand on the bare ground. Opposite the door at the end of the hall is a railed-off dais entered by a side door, and without any direct communication with the public side. On the dais the secretaries are seated at a large table covered by a threadbare green cloth. Behind the table are five arm-chairs. In one is seated the presiding officer (a civil engineer who must own no land in the 'Vega'). On a stool is stationed the crier.

"At eight o'clock in the morning, at a sign from the presiding officer, the crier p.r.o.nounces these words in a singing monotonous voice and without any pause between the two phrases: 'In honour of the Holy Sacrament of the altar, who buys the first lot of Sotellana?'

Immediately shouts go up 'Eight, nine, ten reals!' One voice overpowers the other, wide-open mouths vociferate loudly, necks are strained, muscles grow tense with excitement. The bidders press and crush each other against the iron railing, for the one nearest has the best chance of being heard. The presiding officer listens, and follows the frantic shouting with sovereign calm. Suddenly, with a quick gesture, he designates the highest bidder. At once the clamour ceases. Amid absolute silence the man indicated calls out his name, which the clerks write down.

"The men are hatless. Some wear black or dark-coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads, but all hold their broad-brimmed hats in their hands. No one smokes or talks till the bidding recommences, and even those in the street are silent and bare-headed. It is easy to see that all are peasants. Heads are closely cropped; here are no beards or moustaches, no one wears a collar, and most carry a cloak other than the aristocratic 'Capa' on the shoulders or arm. It is a curious and impressive sight enough, these bronzed physiognomies animated by one desire to obtain possession as cheaply as may be of the supreme good, water."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RONDA--AT THE FOUNTAIN]

Before the industry of man had harnessed the wayward streams this hot land must have been little better than an arid wilderness, yet it has been inhabited from the remotest times, and its possession was keenly contested between the great powers of antiquity. The natives were known to the ancients as the Mastiani, and are credited with the virtues which were so long supposed to have been characteristic of primitive man. This simple, blameless race fell an easy victim to the wily Phnicians, who scented the precious metals within these barren hills. Elche, Guadix, and Jijona betray in their etymology a Semitic origin. Next came the Greek Vikings from Samos and Rhodes and Phokaia, establis.h.i.+ng themselves at many points along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Iberian land.

The rivalry between the Phnician and h.e.l.lenic colonies precipitated a contest between their respective allies, the Carthaginians and the Romans. Hasdrubal founded the port of New Carthage, the name of which is still preserved in Cartagena, whence, with a host of 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse, Hannibal started on his famous march to Rome. The fall of the city, which was bravely defended by Mago against Scipio, entailed the destruction of the Punic power in Spain.

Under the Roman yoke Carthago Nova became the capital of the vast province of Tarraconensis, and the adjoining district in consequence felt the full force of all the attacks made by rebels and barbarians on the tottering empire. Under the Visigoths it was erected into a duchy by the name of Aurariola. The Duke Theodomir, unlike most of his peers, offered a strenuous resistance to the Moslem arms, and when defeated in battle and besieged in Orihuela, succeeded by a stratagem in preserving his territory. By disguising all the women as warriors and parading them on the walls, he so deceived the Moors as to the strength of the garrison as to obtain from them a recognition of the independence of the duchy, subject to the suzerainty of the khalifa.

The province became known after its chief by the name of Todmir. It endured as an autonomous state for some sixty-eight years, its final absorption in the Moslem empire being brought about by the last dukes espousing the cause of Charlemagne or his Moorish allies. Arabic colonists poured in and soon out-numbered the Christian inhabitants. The last province of Spain to bow before the Crescent became rapidly the most Moorish of any.

Cartagena and Orihuela, the old Visigothic centres, declined, and Murcia, practically a Mohammedan foundation, took their place. The city rivalled Toledo and Cordova as a manufactory of arms and munitions of war. It underwent the usual vicissitudes of Moorish states, forming now part of one kingdom, now of another, at times independent, more often subject to Valencia, Granada, or Cordova. Finally, in 1243, Abu Bekr, the t.i.tular amir of Murcia, acknowledged the suzerainty of Castile, only to repudiate it in 1252. The war lasted some time, but the desertion of Al Ahmar of Granada left Abu Bekr at the mercy of the Christians. Murcia was taken in 1266 by Don Jaime of Aragon, who immediately handed over his conquest to his son-in-law, Alfonso of Castile. The step, though probably not dictated by motives of policy, was a wise one, for it left a sort of buffer state between Aragon and Granada, and preserved the frontiers of the former kingdom from molestation by the Moors for the next two centuries.

The town of Murcia has completely rid itself of all outward evidences of its erstwhile subjection to Islam. Gone is the Alcazar, where the amirs mimicked the state of Cordova and Toledo, gone is the wall which kept the Christian out, gone is the mosque wherein thousands of turbaned heads were bowed daily towards Mecca. Yet in the narrow dark streets like the Sierpes of Seville, across which awnings are stretched, we might recognize something of the East, were not such thoroughfares equally characteristic of the Christian South. The Calles de la Traperia and de la Plateria, however, irresistibly recall Smyrna. They lead into one of those dazzling white, dusty squares which every Southern and Eastern city boasts, and which is always named in Spain after the Const.i.tution, in Italy after Victor Emmanuel, and in France after the Republic. Murcia is hotter than Seville, and the pa.s.sage of this plaza between eleven in the forenoon and five in the afternoon requires the courage of a Mutius Scaevola. In the evening you may join the citizens in their promenade upon the Malecon, which affords a charming view of the rich "huerta" or vale of the Segura. This is described by Mr. Brunhes as "an admirable zone of model agricultural establishments. The soil is levelled and prepared for irrigation with geometrical precision. To each particular crop corresponds a design with little shelving beds of special forms." Not an inch of ground is wasted; on the summit of the slopes, for instance, sweet potatoes are planted at regular intervals. The cereals and vegetables are tended with special care, almost individually. The melons are protected by coverings. No one can visit the environs of Murcia without being impressed by the extraordinary industry and thriftiness of its people. And field labour in this climate must be arduous in the extreme. But no doubt the mythical "dolce far niente" Spaniard will continue for many years to haunt the back streets of literature in company with the big-toothed English girl, her red-whiskered parent, and other creations of ignorance and prejudice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RONDA--A MOORISH GATEWAY]

Murcia cannot be called an interesting town. It has only one "sight"--and that not of first-cla.s.s interest--the Cathedral. This occupies, as usual, the site of the mosque, and dates in its oldest part from 1368. The west front was restored in the seventeenth century, fortunately before the decay of Spanish art had become too conspicuous.

The interior produces a good effect, though robbed of much of its interest by a fire some sixty years ago. The choir stalls are good, as they generally are in this country of clever wood-carvers, and came from a suppressed monastery in the neighbourhood. The reredos is modern and poor. With a glance at the urn containing the internal organs of Alfonso the Learned, we pa.s.s on to the beautiful and interesting Junteron Chapel. This was founded in 1515 by the Archdeacon of Lorca, Don Gil Junteron, and is in the most exuberant Renaissance style. It is astonis.h.i.+ng that where the figures and designs are so numerous, so intermingled, and so complicated, each should be sculptured with such exquisite skill and correctness. The Velez Chapel is a little earlier, and was evidently modelled on the Constable's Chapel at Burgos. The style, as might be expected, reminds one also of the Chapel Royal at Granada. Parts of it, says Don Rodrigo Amador de los Rios, evidence the painful caprices and aberrations which announce the death agony of a powerful art in its decline. It would be dangerous to express such an opinion in Murcia, where the chapel is accounted the eighth and greatest wonder of the world. In somewhat more restrained terms the sacristan will call your attention to the panelling and lockers in the Sacristy, which occupies the centre of the graceful steeple, and certainly deserves the epithet of sumptuous, so liberally bestowed in Spain.

Much older than Murcia, Cartagena has preserved even fewer monuments of antiquity, though it has not lost the military character first impressed upon it by its founder Hasdrubal. For this is the first a.r.s.enal of Spain, and perhaps its strongest fortress. Its splendid sheltered harbour is defended by powerful forts and formidable batteries. Their fire has not always been directed upon the enemies of Spain. For many months in the year 1873 over them waved the red flag of the "Intransigentes," the extreme communistic republicans, who, simultaneously with the Carlists of the north, threatened ruin to Castelar's government at Madrid. The acquisition of the great national a.r.s.enal without firing a shot was, of course, of the utmost advantage to these determined revolutionaries. They disposed of 583 pieces of ordnance, including twenty-eight Krupp guns, with 180,000 sh.e.l.ls and 4,332 quintals of powder. In addition they were supported by the ironclad frigates Numancia, Vittoria, Tetuan, and Mendez Nunez. The garrison, in addition to the enthusiastic population, included several revolted battalions of regular troops under the command of General Contreras. The communist Junta was presided over by Don Antonio Galvez.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RONDA--A STREET SCENE]

Against this terrible stronghold of the revolution, General Martinez Campos advanced with an army from Madrid with orders to reduce the place with the utmost despatch. This was easier said than done. Supplies were lacking; the advantage in artillery lay entirely with the besieged. The Carlists effected diversions in favour of the Intransigentes--an odd coalition. Meantime, three of the revolutionary vessels were seized by the Prussian squadron as pirates--an utterly unjustifiable interference with the domestic affairs of another State. We might as reasonably have seized the vessels of the Confederate States in 1864. The Prussians and Italians exacted, moreover, a war indemnity of 50,000 pesetas from the Cantonal Junta, which body became a prey to internal dissensions. One of its members was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Taking advantage of these embarra.s.sments of the besieged, the republican troops redoubled their efforts. Senor Castelar came down from Madrid to a.s.sume the supreme command, and Martinez Campos was superseded by General Lopez Dominguez. An incessant bombardment was kept up, the besieged responding sh.e.l.l by sh.e.l.l. In January the frigate Tetuan was burnt to the water's edge, and a day or two later the explosion of the gun park destroyed hundreds of the garrison. The end was near. The city had for half a year defied almost the whole kingdom, and withstood the covert attacks of foreign Powers.

Among the revolutionaries were men who burned to emulate the Numantians, and to make of themselves, the whole population, and the city, one vast blazing hecatomb. Before this desperate resolution could be executed, the Government troops forced their way into wretched, blood-drenched Cartagena. Galvez, Contreras, and the leaders of the cantonal movement escaped by sea in the ironclad Numancia, which far exceeded the Government vessels in speed, and took refuge in Algeria. Thus collapsed a movement which was, after the Commune of Paris, the most determined organized attempt ever made to subvert the existing const.i.tution of European society.

I have given at some length this chapter in the history of Cartagena, partly because the town has little interest in itself, and partly because these events, though so recent and so significant, are never so much as alluded to by most writers of travel books. Out of so much evil good came at last, for these wellnigh fatal disorders opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the instability of the Madrid Government, and formed the prelude to the reign of peace inaugurated by the accession to the throne of King Alfonso XII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RONDA--THE MARKET]

Apart from its historical a.s.sociations, Murcia repays the attention of the traveller less than any other province of Spain. Fortunately, almost the only places of interest it contains--the ones I have mentioned--lie on or close to the direct route from Granada into the old kingdom of Valencia.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE OLD KINGDOM OF VALENCIA

The southernmost position of the ancient kingdom of Valencia belongs geographically and historically to Murcia. The huerta in which Orihuela stands is a continuation of the huerta of Murcia, and in the town itself we recognize the Aurariola which was the capital of the latter kingdom.

I did not stop at Orihuela, but I understand that it remains distinct from all other towns in Valencia, in that its people speak pure Castilian. For that variety of the Romance tongue which I may denominate Catalan is spoken with local modifications all along the eastern coast of Spain, from the mouth of the Segura to the frontier of Rousillon. It is not, of course, a mere dialect of Castilian. It is a distinct language, believed by most authorities to have been the language of those Romanized Spaniards who were driven north of the Pyrenees by the Arabic invasion, and who reintroduced it on their reconquest of this portion of their old territory. Before Valencia was recovered by James I. of Aragon--Jaime lo Conqueridor--the Christians of the province probably spoke Castilian or a tongue akin to it. Catalan was simply the language of the new rulers, which the people soon acquired. In the province of Aragon itself Catalan, or Limousin as some call it, was never spoken. This circ.u.mstance no doubt powerfully contributed to the adoption of Castilian, in preference to the sister tongue, upon the unification of the two kingdoms. But for some reason unknown to us--unless it was merely the proximity of Murcia--Orihuela resisted the Catalanizing influence of its conqueror.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORIHUELA--ON THE RIVER SEGURA]

Elche, our first stopping-place, famous in its way, is very often described and compared to half-a-dozen localities in Asia and Africa. I also will venture on a comparison, and say that from certain points of view it reminded me of Ismailia. It is completely surrounded by magnificent date-palms, the number of which a French author estimates at 80,000. In the shade of the avenues formed by these majestic trees flourish the laurel, the rose, and the geranium; beyond extend crops of lucerne and wheat, watered by the carefully regulated Vinalapo. For all the shade dispersed by the palms, Elche merits its sobriquet, "the frying-pan"! The temperature completes the resemblance with Africa. From the summit of the hill on which it is built, the town is seen to be situated in a real oasis. Beyond the outer ring of cultivation extends a desert as white and as saline as that which borders the Suez Ca.n.a.l. The eye rests lovingly on the not far distant sea.

Elche makes an agreeable impression on most travellers. Gustave Dore has left us his impressions of it--over-imaginative as usual. Mr. Frank Barrett, that entertaining novelist, introduces the town into English fiction. In Spain it is not more celebrated for its palms (which are exported for religious uses) than for its Pa.s.sion or Mystery Play, the only one of the kind in the kingdom. This inst.i.tution is explained by the following legend. On the night of December 29, 1370, a mounted coastguard named Francisco Canto, while patrolling the sh.o.r.e, encountered a man seated on a huge coffer. This stranger entreated the guard to carry his burden to Elche, and to deposit it at the first house where he saw a light, and having obtained his reluctant consent, abruptly disappeared. Canto, in accordance with the mysterious man's instructions, left the chest at the Hermitage of San Sebastian. On opening it, it was found to contain an image of the Virgin and the words and music of the play as now performed. The image was regarded as miraculous, and resisted all attempts to remove it from the hermitage.

It was not my good fortune to see the play, which takes place every year in the Iglesia Mayor, transformed for the purpose into a theatre. The representation lasts two days, the subject being the a.s.sumption of the Virgin. The words, in the old Valencian dialect, are wedded to old Gregorian music. I understand that with a navete characteristic of medieval inst.i.tutions, the Supreme Being Himself is personified on the stage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELCHE--A STREET]

A spectacle equally curious but not so picturesque is the daily sale of water, which takes place here as at Lorca, but with official calm and with none of the excitement to be remarked at the latter place.

From this sweltering climate we hasten to the sea-sh.o.r.e, where at rare intervals a refres.h.i.+ng breeze may be felt. Alicante, the second town in the kingdom of Valencia, is modern, commercial, and thriving. The land-locked harbour is bordered by broad white quays, glistering in the sun's rays, with heaps of tarry cordage, and canvas distilling characteristically marine odours. Trains of mules pa.s.s by dragging enormous loads of oranges. In the harbour women are busy loading an English craft which flies the Blue Peter; they swarm up and down the side like ants, or rather like the colliers so familiar to pa.s.sengers through the Suez Ca.n.a.l. The background to this scene of light and animation is formed by the enormous rock, comparable to Gibraltar, which is crowned by the ancient castle of Santa Barbara--so called after the saint on whose festival, in the year 1248, it was taken by the Castilians. Four years later it was stormed by the Aragonese, King Alfonso the Battler being the third to enter the fortress. The Castilian governor, with his sword in one hand and his keys in the other, fell pierced with wounds at the conqueror's feet. The possession of the town, as of Orihuela, was afterwards confirmed to Aragon by treaty.

Alicante is resorted to for sea-bathing during the summer. The water, I am told, is then lukewarm--hot enough, according to one account, to shave with! The thought of the place in August makes the Northerner reach for a cooling drink. But I am a.s.sured that the heat is tempered by refres.h.i.+ng breezes from the sea, and that in the long shadow of the castle rock delicious evenings may be enjoyed.

So we journey northward. The country reveals the results of the most systematic and intensive culture. We are told that the Valencians are lazy, but if so it must be because the most cleverly devised schemes of irrigation and cultivation have set them free of labour.

The province of Alicante--the southernmost of the three into which the ancient kingdom is divided--contains several important towns. There is the beautifully-named Villajoyosa, Benidorm--so Provencal in sound--and Alcoy, a busy, industrial centre, situated in a blooming orchard country. Here is celebrated every April the festival of St. George, when a sort of sham fight takes place between peasants arrayed respectively as Moors and Christians. From Alcoy a short line runs to Gandia on the coast, the cradle of the famous house of Borgia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FISHER GIRL (COAST OF MALAGA)]

Every town and village in this thickly peopled region has its historical memories. Villena recalls the famous family to which it gave the t.i.tle of marquis; Jativa, a desperate struggle during the War of the Spanish Succession, in which much English blood was spilled. This latter town was the birthplace of Ribera, and, as some say, of Alexander Borgia. It is situated in a country which might be described as a veritable Mahomet's paradise. The cottages in the neighbourhood are almost suffocated by the palm and orange trees. Beneath the golden fruit we find our way to the castle, or rather castles--the new and the old--built side by side upon a hill. Part of the fabric dates from the time of the Moors. Later, the stronghold served as a state prison.

Within its walls languished and died the unhappy Count of Urgel, a pretender to the throne of Aragon, and here pa.s.sed a ten years'

captivity (1512-22) the Duke of Calabria, the rightful heir to the throne of Naples, to leave his prison on his appointment to the viceroyalty of the fair province he surveyed from its windows!

The custodian of the castle shows the usual underground chambers, which may have been, as he alleges, dungeons, but were quite as likely (as they generally were with us) store-rooms and wine cellars.

At Alcira we cross the Jucar, after the Ebro the most important Spanish river running into the Mediterranean Sea. It rises within a few miles of the source of the Tagus, in the Montes Universales, on the borders of Aragon and New Castile, and flows south through the plains of La Mancha till it enters the province of Albacete, when it takes an easterly course. In the same province of Valencia it has excavated some magnificent gorges. It is indeed a strong, impetuous stream, bursting its banks again and again and levying a heavy tribute on the surrounding country. Each time it makes for itself a new channel, sweeping away whole villages. The village of Alcocer stood on its banks, near its confluence with the Albaida. After countless harvests had been devastated and inestimable damage to some extent repaired, the two streams swelled with fury and in one day reduced a vast extent of country to a flat stretch of mud. Then, by another s.h.i.+fting of its bed, the terrible Jucar laid bare the foundations of the homes it had ruined.

There is no security of tenure within its valley! Where your house stands to-day, s.h.i.+ps may ride to-morrow. Yet here as everywhere else along the prolific sh.o.r.e, the waters form the great source of wealth, fertilizing vast rice-fields and heavy-laden orchards. The marshy and unhealthy lagoon of the Albufera, from which one of Napoleon's marshals took his t.i.tle, is being gradually filled up by the debris brought down from the mountains by the rivers, and will ultimately form a "huerta" of untold fertility. Meanwhile every effort is made to encourage the afforesting of the rugged hill-sides, in order to check the violence of the floods and the denuding of the arid, desiccated soil. As a result of these wise measures, the kingdom of Valencia will within a short period become one of the two or three richest agricultural districts in all Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WATER CARRIER]

The history of the land is that of its capital. Valencia is first mentioned as having been granted by the consul Junius Brutus to the warriors of Viriathus upon the death of their chief, and their consequent surrender. The history of few Roman colonies, as it has reached us, is of interest. The province had the usual martyrs under the persecutions of Diocletian and Decius, and was the place of banishment of the zealot Ermengild. It remained under the Moorish yoke for over five hundred years, at one time forming part of the khalifate, at other times const.i.tuting one or more petty kingdoms.

Don Teodoro Llorente speaks of "The slave kings" of Valencia, and thus describes the rulers of uncertain and various origin who, like the Janissaries of Turkey, had begun as slaves in the palace of the khalifa and won power for themselves with their swords. One of these princes added the Balearic Isles to his realms, and unsuccessfully attempted the conquest of Sardinia.

The kingdom thus founded by military adventurers was overthrown by the most famous of that warlike brood.

The history of the events which brought about the conquest of Valencia by the Cid is extremely complex. The king or amir, Kadir, was the puppet of the rival powers which aspired to the possession of his dominions, and was alternately upheld on his tottering throne by one and the other.

Weary of this dishonourable tutelage, the people arose under the leaders.h.i.+p of Ibn Jahhaf. Kadir fled disguised as a woman, but was detected and beheaded. That strange anomaly, a Mohammedan republic, was formed. In other words, Valencia was governed by an a.s.sembly of notables called the Al Jama, of which Ibn Jahhaf was the president.