100 Years Ago: August 1924

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: August 1924

 

This is the 115^th entry in my series of short retellings of 100-year-old National Geographic Magazines.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Discovering the Oldest Statues in the World” and was written by Norbert Casteret, Member of the International Institute of Anthropology. Laureate of the Academy of Science of Toulouse, Laureate of the Academy of Sport.  The article has an internal subtitle: “A Daring Explorer Swims Through a Subterranean River of the Pyrenees and Finds Rock Carvings Made 20,000 Years Ago.”  It contains twenty-four black-and-white photographs, of which nine are full-page in size.  The article also contains two sketch maps.  The first, on page 126, is a map showing the entire Iberian Peninsula, with additional detail in Southern France for the first article, and in Southern Spain for the second and third articles.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

The second map, on page 150, shows the course of a subterranean stream and grotto discussed in the first article.  [Note: This small sketch map was missed by Philip Riviere.]

Forty miles from Toulouse and twelve from St. Gaudens, the village of St. Martory stretched along both banks of the Garonne, between a line of steep hills on the left and an alluvial plain to the right of the river.  Some distance to the south, the wall of the Pyrenees closed one in along a 125-mile front, stretching from Pic du Midi de Bigorre on the west to Canigou in the east.  The countryside consisted of a fertile plain dominated by arid and rock hills and, closing in the southern horizon, the Pyrenees, where forests of birch and fir bordered snowy peaks and glaciers.  While still a student, before the World War, the author spent his vacations exploring those peaks, and at evening, bent over his bicycle, weary but enrapt, he returned through the twilight, already dreaming of the next climb.  But the mountains were capricious.  Down in the plain the sun was master all summer long, but in the high valleys and on the slopes, storm clouds gathered from time to time and fierce tempests burst forth unexpectedly.  One day, driven down from the mountains by a frightful storm, the author sought refuge in the entrance of one of the numerous caverns of the region.  He had candles with him, and while waiting for the storm to pass, he explored the cave.  It was the first time he had entered a grotto.  While that subterranean excursion was not as thrilling as reaching a lofty summit, those vaults, like marble halls, made a profound impression upon the author.  He returned to explore that cavern; then others, and still others, with the result that he deserted mountaineering and surrendered to the lure of subterranean excursions.  The author did not know of an impression more absorbing than the one experienced when he entered a grotto for the first time.  He read the works of French prehistorians and visited the prehistoric gallery of the museum of Toulouse.  He learned that it was not the largest cavern that contained most of the prehistoric remains, but rather the smaller grottos near the rivers.

Having explored many of the huge caverns of the mountains, the author patiently excavated the humble caves of St. Martory, happy when he unearthed some rude object fashioned by primitive man.  But one evening in July 1914, he learned that war had come to that charming countryside.  Nine months later, upon reaching the age of 18, the author enlisted in the army of the Republic.  More than three long years, he lived, with thousands of his companions, the hard life of the trenches.  He did not dare hope that, someday, he could return to his digging, and his beloved studies.  But victory was on its way, and there came the time, when, with thanks to their Allies, especially America, they emerged victors.  Returned safe and sound to the pleasure of peace, the author took up again with ardor the study of prehistory and his excavations.  Methodically, he undertook to study the prehistoric veins of the region.  In addition to many nameless grottos, he visited such celebrated ones as that of Aurignac, Gourdan, Massoulas, Gargas, Niaux, Mas a’Azil, and the grottos of the Trois Freres and Tuc d’Audoubert.  All those sites produced a wealth of prehistoric artifacts.  His visit to the grotto of Tuc d’Audoubert included a voyage on a small boat on a subterranean river, the scaling of great rock masses using ladders, and crawling through low passages.  Those experiences served him later and allowed him to make a great discovery.  In August 1922, the author’s search led him to the little village of Montespan, 9 miles southwest of St. Martory.  Built on the slope of a hill 1,500 feet high, that village took its name from the feudal castle of Montespan, whose imposing ruins greeted the voyage from afar.  Arriving at the picturesque village after a visit to the ruins of the castle, the author began a search for cave suitable for his studies.  It was not long before it led him to a point at the base of a hill near a hole in the rock from which emerged a stream.  The locals informed him that during dry summers, one could wade in 200 feet.

That was how the author found things on August 18, 1922.  He slid into the cave through a hole the size of a man’s body and found himself in a gallery 10 to 12 feet wide and 6 to eight feet high, along which he waded over a clay and gravel bottom.  After 125 feet the gallery made a turn to the right, the ceiling suddenly became lower, and at the end of 60 feet the roof disappeared under the water.  On arriving at that discouraging spot, the author thought of his exploration of the cave of Tuc d’Audoubert.  The geologic nature of the rock caused him to suppose that this subterranean stream had carved a similar cavern, and the corridor in which he found himself was only the outlet.  A study of geologic periods showed that at the end of the Glacial Epoch, during which prehistoric man appeared in the Pyrenees, the climate was cold and dry, like Lapland in 1924.  If this subterranean stream existed then, the cavern the author imagined beyond where he stood could have sheltered the primitive troglodytes of that time.  He weighed the risks of attempting to go forward and finally decided to try.  Putting his candle on a projection of the wall, he breathed in enough air to last him two minutes under water and plunged into the stream with one hand ahead of him, the other in contact with the submerged roof.  While hurrying forward, suddenly his head emerged from the water and he could breathe.  The darkness was absolute.  Without a doubt, he had passed through a siphon tunnel.  Immediately, he turned around and dove toward the spot from which he came, for nothing was more dangerous than to lose one’s direction in such a case.  Having regained the cavern below the siphon, where the light of his candle still shone, the author was able to consider that water-filled tunnel.  Despite the rather insignificant results of that attempt, he foresaw the subsequent exploration which he hoped would be long and fruitful.  The following morning, he was once again at the entrance to the grotto with equipment to help him explore.

In his rubber bathing cap, he had placed candles and matches.  That simple case, kept well closed, permitted him to pass under water and relight his candle on the other side.  Arriving at the siphon, the author took the precaution to orient himself in order to find again the pocket of air, and, diving through the siphon a second time, he found himself on the other side, immersed up to his chin.  He shook his dripping cap before relighting his candles.  At last, the flickering flames enabled him to observe that, as far as the eye could see, the roof was parallel with the surface of the water.  He was exploring a subterranean stream hitherto unknown.  He progressed, adjusting his head to the irregularities of the ceiling, and, after 400 feet, he reached the entrance to a large room.  Here, the roof attained a height of 30 feet, and the stream half lost itself under enormous blocks fallen from the ceiling.  Above, there opened an air vent, which he then thought inaccessible, but which he subsequently explored.  Crossing that hall, encumbered with immense boulders, and beautified by slabs of stalagmite, the author entered once more the bed of the stream to continue his solitary and exciting exploration.  He felt isolated, and feared getting his matches wet could prove fatal.  Having circled an enormous pillar which rose in the bed of the stream itself, he faced a new siphon.  Had he stopped there, his chief discovery might have been made a year earlier, but the lure of the unknown drove him on up the course of that Stygian stream.  Diving through that siphon, which seemed appreciably longer than the first, he was forced to crawl for some time in a gallery, while the arced roof let fall a veritable rain which often extinguished his candle.  That groveling progress enabled the author to reach a hall much larger than the first, where there was an indescribable chaos of huge rocks.  At that point, he was forced into a course of gymnastics to warm his body a little and to stir circulation in limbs benumbed by the cold water.

The author’s supposition of the existence of that underground river was amply justified, and he asked himself how far that succession of subterranean corridors would lead him.  He judged his candles sufficient to continue and once again started across the jumbled rocks.  Traversing with difficulty that large hall, the author immersed himself again to enter to enter a gallery of varied dimensions.  At each narrow gullet he thought he had reached the end of the grotto, but always his feeble candle lit up Dantesque regions hitherto hidden from human eyes.  So, he progressed, sometimes in water, sometimes on slippery banks. He had long since lost all sense of time and distance, when he was stopped short by an impenetrable narrowing of the walls.  For some time before, the roof had been low and he was forced to crawl, but this was the end.  He had hoped to reach the origin of that subterranean stream.  His disappointment did not last long, for, having passed his head and arm through the hole he discovered a pool filled with mud and branches.  The presence of a swarm of tadpoles proved that, only a few yards farther upstream, the underground river left the light, the meadow, and the wood to burrow under the mountain through which the author painfully made his way.  The tadpoles were proof that the way out to open air was quite near, for those creatures never ventured far into underground water.  Afterwards he learned that only a few yards separated that place from the spot where the river entered the earth by an impassable fissure.  With increased weariness he retraced his way, without anything unusual happening.  Having entered the grotto in full daylight, the author emerged, chilled to the bone, into the darkness of night, having spent five hours traversing less than two miles underground.  He made several careful explorations, one after the other, in that grotto, searching for a possible prehistoric dwelling dating from when water did not fill the cave.

Unfortunately, there came a season of rain to swell the stream and to make access to the caverns impossible.  The author was obliged to put off the continuation of the exploration until the following year.  The rains of fall, winter, and spring swelled the stream.  It was only during the months of August and September when the grotto could be explored.  He had found in the underground stream a bovine tooth which seemed to be that of a prehistoric bison.  The finding of that tooth strengthened the author’s supposition that the grotto had been entered by cave dwellers.  He waited impatiently for the return of favorable conditions.  On August 23, 1923, one year after his first expedition, the author returned to Montespan to resume his investigations.  He brought with him a friend, Henri Godin, a lover of subterranean excursions.  The summer of 1923 having been unusually dry, the water was lower than the year before.  At the first siphon, the vault which formed a depressed arch, was not completely submerged, the top of the arch being some inches above the water.  That enabled them to pass without extinguishing their candles and they could reach the first hall, 400 feet from the entrance.  They advanced to an enormous pillar whose base emerged from the stream.  A few farther was the second siphon which the author had passed the year before.  By circling the pillar, they saw that it divided the grotto, which at the right terminated at the siphon entrance.  At the left they entered a gallery 650 feet long, where a sensational discovery repaid him for his pains and perseverance.  The entrance of that gallery, 16 feet wide and 13 feet high, had a fairylike appearance.  Its walls and roof were covered with trickling limestone and glistening stalactites.  The floor was formed by a succession of picturesque slabs, whose scalloped edges, honeycombed, formed a natural staircase.  Each step was a tiny basin full of limpid water.  The entire floor was made of granular limestone of a lovely bright yellow.

But that scene of enchantment ended abruptly, after turning at right angles, they found themselves in a gallery where the rocks were dark and the floor dull earth.  They made their way tandem fashion in that corridor.  They were forced to pass the last 100 feet on their bellies.  They cam again to a section where they could stand almost erect.  The author chose a nook to dig a test shaft with his pick while his friend looked on impatiently.  The author found in the clay a carved flint.  That simple bit of flint was incontestably fashioned and used by a human being, proved beyond a doubt that primitive man had once frequented this deep cavern.  The author’s anticipations of the year before, born of the finding of the bison’s tooth, were now realized, just as his first supposition concerning the subterranean stream had been confirmed in 1922.  In the study of prehistory, it was a well-established fact that the cave man lived by preference in small, shallow caves or at the very entrance of larger caverns.  But they also frequented the innermost depths of underground labyrinths, and it was usually in the most inaccessible grottos that prehistoric carvings and paintings were found.  It would seem that some magic or religious rite caused the primitive artists to carve or paint far from the light of day.  Whatever motivated the artist, it was certain that that feat involved the idea of mystery and ceremonies, the clue to which was often furnished by the prehistoric designs themselves.  Once in possession of proof of the former presence of man in that remote gallery, the author rose and inspected the walls by the light of candle, in search of such wall carvings as seemed to him should exist there.  It was then that he stopped suddenly in front of a clay statue of a bear which up to that moment had been hidden from me because of the weakness of the light.  The statue, modeled at least 20,000 years ago, which had rested there unchanged despite the passage of the centuries, stupefied the author.

The author called his friend over, but his less practiced eye could see only a shapeless form where the author pointed out to him the outlines of the animal.  Then, one after another, as fast as he could discover them, the author pointed out to him some horses modeled in relief, two large lions or tigers modeled in clay, and various sketches.  His friend submitted to the evidence, and for more than an hour one discovery followed another.  On all sides, carvings of animals, sketches, and mystic signs sprang to their gaze.  The day had been successful beyond their fondest hopes.  The following day, having notified Count Begouen, the author undertook alone a new period of research.  At the same time, an instructor from a neighboring village, impatient to see the author’s discoveries, but dreading the passage of the siphon, armed himself with a pick and cleared the outlet of the grotto, to increase the flow of the stream and lower its level.  On August 26, the work began by the teacher, Cazedessus, and continued by the author’s brother, Martial, and his friends, Dypeyron and Godin, and the Abbe Moura, cure of the village, produced a satisfactory result, for the first siphon was freed of water.  One could thenceforth pass into the grotto without diving, but by wading for nearly 200 yards.  The prehistoric remains could now be studied in greater detail.  It was found that the mural carvings and clay statues of that grotto dated from the beginning of the Magdalenian Epoch, or Age of the Reindeer, and they carried us back at least 20,000 years.  That prehistoric gallery contained 50 different carvings of animals, some of which were extinct or had left the Pyrenees, deeply cut in the limestone of the walls with flint tools.  Clay modeling was represented by 30 species, ranging between true statues, more than three feet in length, and little high relief, badly damaged by dripping water.  Those clay models formed the most important part of the discovery, for up to the time the two, clay bison found by Count Begouen in 1912, in the Grotto of Tuc d’Audoubert were the only known specimens of prehistoric clay modeling.

It was not strange to note that the similarity of those two grottos extended to their being the only two grottos known in the entire world which held statues dating from prehistoric times.  Leaving the bed of the underground stream at the huge pillar which obstructed it, one entered the dry gallery, where immediately began the long procession of tracings dating from the Reindeer Age.  Following the left wall, one found on a ledge a horse’s incisor tooth.  Beside it, in a small natural recess, there was the skeleton of a small serpent.  Some yards farther on, there was a group of lines cut in the rock whose significance was not known, but immediately afterwards was a deeply carved figure of a breaded horse with heavy features and upright mane.  Many other designs must have existed in that part of the gallery, but the walls had been sheathed in deposits left by dripping water charged with lime.  There were heavy footprints of a cave bear in the wall, however, having marked a soft wall since hardened by limestone deposits.  After passing that region, there were bare walls again.  Two horses, deeply engraved but lacking heads, showed corpulent bodies.  One had a distended belly and a human hand carved on its flank.  The exaggerated size of the animal’s body suggested a pregnant mare.  Above those two animals there was the head of a wild goat, and above, among signs resembling cuneiform, there was a human profile, round-headed, strong-nosed, with round, lidless eyes, and a short beard.  Farther on, at the left, a clutter of clay partly obstructed the gallery.  That debris had slid down through a crack in the roof.  On the slope of that pile were numerous footprints of bears and humans, as well as fragments of carved flint.  In a region where the wall was partly of clay, traces of fingers and hand prints, were covered and hardened by a film of calcite.  On the opposite wall a vertical crack in the rock had been covered over with clay, into which someone had poked holes.

All those small works had been partly spoiled by bears scratching against the walls with their claws.  The superposition of claw-marks over human traces, and vice versa, showed that there was contemporary habitation by men and those wild beasts.  The author thought of the savage battles which must have taken place in those shadowy depths.  Going still farther into the gallery, one passed before another pile of clay and a big colonnade.  On a horizontal bank of earth were some hand-molded balls, of which one was a feminine symbol, a design dating from the Reindeer Age.  Opposite, at the height of a man, a small horse head of clay had been attached to the rocky wall.  The eyes, mouth, and ears were indicated.  Above, on the ceiling, there was a mass of clay which had been squeezed into a crevice which bore many fingerprints indented like the cells of a hornet’s nest.  At a turn in the gallery there were three large statues of feline beasts – lions or tigers – once propped up on a bank of earth and now partly demolished.  They measured 5 feet 3 inches in length and 3 feet 3 inches in height, and were placed one behind the other.  The foremost specimen was the best preserved.  The head was broken off and lied between the front paws.  The second and third felines had been badly treated by time, and only the outlines appeared.  Although crudely executed, the remains of those statues left no question as to the type of animal – without a question lions or tigers.  The neck and breast of the first cat were riddled with lance trusts.  Maybe that was how the head was destroyed.  On the bank which supported the cats were molded balls, flint implements, and bits of bone.  Opposite, on the wall, amid a network of lines and cross-lines traced in clay by fingers, was a large drawing of a mammoth.  A horizontal crack many yards in length had been filled up with clay, which had been pierced with several equidistant holes.  In that niche was found a spatula of polished bone.

Advancing still farther in that corridor one arrived at the hole where the author unearthed the shaped flint which led to the discovery of the carvings and statues.  That broadened section of the gallery, now called the Hall of the Bear, was the most interesting part of the whole grotto.  Within a radius of 30 feet there was a veritable museum of prehistory whose masterpiece was the clay statue of a bear lying in the same position as the great Sphinx of Egypt.  As in the case of the cats, it faced toward the outlet of the grotto and stood about a yard away from the right-hand wall, on a small platform prepared for it.  The statue had no head, and seemed never to have one.  That bear had also suffered from numerous mutilations, for it was scarred by 30 or more blows from lance or arrow.  It also suffered from dripping water, whose only effect was to cover it with a thin armor made up of large flakes of calcite.  Between the front paws lied the skull of a bear.  A yard behind the bear a horse was deeply carved in the clayey earth.  The whole floor of that hall was embossed with 25 clay models from a foot to a foot and a half long and from 4 to 6 inches in thickness.  Many were worn by water and would not have been recognizable save for the few which had escaped damage.  Amid those remains were holes from which was taken the clay used to construct the bear and the horses.  On the very low ceiling in that little hall there were carved two horses and a bison, and two black signs were painted above the statue of the bear.  There was a carved flint hidden in a ledge of rock.  After the Hall of the Bear, the gallery extended for another 100 or more feet, but always with the ceiling nearer and nearer the floor.  Nevertheless, it was there one saw most of the carvings.  On the roof of that sloping passage had been carved the principal animals of the Reindeer Age: horse, bison, stag, reindeer, hind, hemione, hyena, chamois, and ibex.  All those animals were pictured with much skill and evidence of real talent.

Certain details were worth mentioning.  In carving a horse, the artist made use of a rocky ridge which formed a natural backbone for his sculpture.  An ibex head was carved about a small oval pebble caught in the rock, which thus became the eye of the animal.  Two horses’ heads, carved side by side, represented two widely different species.  A little clay swallow’s nest had been attached to one wall.  In a very low passage, the wall had been ribbed with small stalactites.  Finally, many of the animals were represented as wounded.  A bison was decorated with a club-shaped red mark.  The paint used was iron oxide and magnesium dioxide mixed with water or animal fat.  The author was able to collect in that gallery, bones of horse, bison, bear, reindeer, and snake.  The soil of the large gallery, which one passed through before arriving at the prehistoric gallery, contained human remains. Among which the author found an elbow bone.  A small air passage which opened in the roof of that hall contained some teeth, bones, and claw marks of bears.  It seemed that that passage was once easy to access, but landslides in the vault had made it difficult to approach.  There were many claw marks made by bears on walls beyond reach; so, it was possible that that part of the grotto contained carvings which had escaped the author’s notice.  In September 1923, when the grotto was made more accessible, the prehistoric gallery of Montespan was visited by eminent savants, to whom the author had the honor of showing it.  Those learned men when up the course of that subterranean stream with water up to their chests.  From examination of the carvings and sculptures of Montespan, it was evident that this was once one of the sacred caves where the sorcerers of the tribes gave themselves over to magic ceremonies.  In a masterly study, Count Begouen compared the clay figures of Tuc d’Audoubert with those of Montespan.  He stated that hunters sought favor in the hunt through magic ceremonies.

The author advanced the theory that our remote ancestors sought out the deepest and most inaccessible grottos in which to carve or model images of the animals which they hunted, and there, amid mysterious ceremonies, wrought wounds upon those animal forms, killing them in effigy to assure the capture of the animal such bewitched when the day of actual hunting arrived.  This explained the deep marks left on many of the animal images.  The theory seemed sound when one studied the tigers and bear which had crumbled under the impact of lances and arrows, always skillfully directed at some vital spot.  The theory was further strengthened by the interpretation of the meaning of the bear skull found at the foot of the headless clay statue.  To give more importance to the magical ceremony and in order that the double of the bear should resemble as closely as possible its living counterpart, the sorcerers had placed upon the model a natural bear’s head.  In part of the neck, a hole was made by the wooden peg supporting the actual head.  It was reasonable to think that an entire bear skin once covered the figure; and it was against this clay dummy that sham battles were staged.  It was interesting to note that only dangerous animals had thus been cursed by witchcraft at Montespan, while the clay figures of horses showed no marks of conflict. If those people believed they could exert an occult influence toward the destruction of dangerous beasts, it was reasonable to think that they also believe that they could promote fertility of their food animals, just as laid a curse against the animals they feared.  That is why the bison of Tuc d’Audoubert (both male and female) were free of marks of attack, just as were the horses of Montespan, and especially the pregnant mare, which bore upon her flank the sign of a human hand, symbol of man’s domination and will.  As for the numerous bits of clay moldings on the walls – flanges, holes, networks of lines, and cells like a hornet’s nest – no meaning was known.

The Pyrenees were a favorite region for the study of prehistory, for from the bits of quartzite crudely worked and dating from the Chellean Epoch, one could follow all the long chronology of the old Stone Age.  The discovery of the Grotto of Montespan and of the prehistoric works of art which it contained had richly rewarded the author for the difficult and at times dangerous exploration made in many caverns.  Those mountains still held unexplored caves which promised sensational and unexpected discoveries to those seekers after truth who had undertaken to wrest from the remote past those secrets of man’s origin which it so jealously guarded.

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitle “Adventurous Sons of Cadiz” and was written by Harriet Chalmers Adams, author of “A Longitudinal Journey Through Chile,” “Rio de Janeiro, in the Land of Lure,” “Volcano-Girded Salvador,” etc., in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains thirty-seven black-and-white photographs, seven of which are full-page in size.  The article references the sketch map from the first article on page 126.

From one little town alone, on the crescent shore of Algeciras Bay in southern Spain, 4,000 sturdy sons of Cadiz had emigrated to America.  Thrifty, law-abiding, and of moderate habits were those transplanted Andalusians; yet there was a dash of the adventurous spirit of Old Spain in their blood.  The ocean, lapping New World shores, lured them.  As in centuries past, its incessant voice urged the sons of Cadiz overseas.  Geographically and historically the term “adventurous” might well apply to Cadiz itself, southernmost province of Spain.  A peninsula, at the tip end of the greater Iberian Peninsula, its face was turned toward Africa and the open sea.  With right foot firmly set in the Atlantic, and left just dipping into the Mediterranean, its arms were stretched toward Morocco, whose rugged hills towered skyward across Gibraltar’s Strait.  Tarifa, its farthest south, was the most southerly point in Europe.  Its tawny shores had served as stepping-stones for those migrations, pre-Phoenician to Moslem, which had left an indelible imprint on that part of the world.  In the landlocked harbor of Old Cadiz City, high-prowed craft of Tyrian traders, the earliest voyagers into the unknown Atlantic, came to anchor.  There, Greek sculptors wrought and legions of Hannibal battled.  There, Romans and Vandals, Visigoths and Moslems ruled, each in turn.  From Cadiz waters sailed most of the Spanish conquistadors to the conquest of the Americas.  There, galleons, laden with the loot of the Incas, furled their sea-torn sails.  The author imagined making a movie of the outstanding happening in Cadiz province from hairy Celtic-Iberians clad in skins, through Phoenicians, Semitic priests, Jews, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, and Berbers.  Alfonso the Wise and Guzman the Good, Columbus and Ojeda, Ponce de Leon and Magellan would have had starring roles.  Tyrian temples and Carthaginian battling towers, Roman villas, and Moorish mosques, thirteenth century castles and crenelated walls would have been the architectural features.

Recently [in 1924], the author made a second visit to Cadiz, not only to learn more about the storied old capital of the province, but also to journey across country from the cork woods of Algeciras to the vineyards and stock farms of Jerez.  Her greatest lure was the forgotten port of San Lucar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.  She longed to stand on the shore from which had sailed so many of those valiant sixteenth century adventurers whose New World trail she had crossed.  American travelers usually entered southern Spain through the port of Algeciras, in the bay the Spaniards called “Algeciras” and the Britons “Gibraltar.”  There, they boarded the Andaluces Railway for Ronda and Granada, Seville, Cordoba, or Madrid.  To them, Cadiz province meant only that one hilly town of stone-paved streets and one- or two-story white buildings with roofs of ocher-colored tiles.  They had a splendid view across the bay of the Rock of Gibraltar, a glimpse of the tourist hotel, and, perhaps, a visit to the town hall.  British visitors more often lingered there, and, sharing the interests of their Gibraltar countrymen, came to know the alluring shore between Algeciras and the “Neutral Ground” connecting Spanish territory with the great gray “Pillar of the British Empire.”  The Gibraltar golf links, polo grounds, and race track were on Spanish soil.  So too, was the course of the Royal Calpe Hunt of Gibraltar, of which Alfonso XIII, an ardent sportsman, was patron.  La Linea de la Concepcion, the home town of the author’s New York Spaniards, adjoined the Neutral Ground.  It covered the narrow tongue of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Algeciras Bay.  Its population included more than 4,000 Gibraltarians exiled from the Rock due to scarcity of homes and high rents.  Spanish laborers who flocked there to build the dockyards had remained to work at the British coaling station.  During the July Fair, thousands from “Gib” and nearby Spanish and Moroccan towns gathered at La Lenea for the bullfights.

Young Spain, especially in the north, had taken to football.  The changing tide of interest was illustrated by a father and son the author met in Cadiz.  The father asked if she had seen his favorite bullfighter; the son inquired about football in America and proudly showed his new striped sweater.  The Madrid weeklies were filled with accounts of recent games and photographs of football teams.  Slowly but surely, the national sport of bullfighting was losing ground.  The live topic around Algeciras Bay was cork.  That one province of Cadiz produced nearly one-tenth of all the cork in the world, 90,000 acres being covered with cork oaks.  There were five distinct forests of the gnarled old trees, with their grayish-green foliage.  In Spain, Portugal, France, Algeria, and Morocco, the author had seen the cork woods.  Moroccan cork was yet little exploited.  In Spain, that was an ancient industry.  The most important of the four companies operating in Algeciras was American, with headquarters in Pittsburgh.  Another big American company operated in northeastern Spain.  The U. S. imported millions of dollars of cork annually for the manufacture of widely varied products.  Prohibition did not seem to have affected the American cork trade.  Trees yielded when about twenty years old and were barked every nine years.  The forest was divided into nine sections, the cork-cutters working in only one section during May and June of each year.  In Algeciras Harbor, the author saw American and Italian vessels loading slabs of crude cork and manufactured corkboard for the States.  The thickness of the cork slab was determined by rainfall and soil quality.  Those shipped varied from three-fourths of an inch to two and a half inches in thickness.  Corkboard used in cold-storage plants was made from slab cuttings, inferior grades, and waste from small Spanish factories.

Algeciras had a future.  The Tangier-Fez Railway was nearing completion.  That meant that within a year or two Tangier would be connected by rail with Algiers, Tunis, and the fringe of the Sahara, in southern Oran.  Eventually, the Trans-Saharan Railway would reach Dakar, in Senegal, the nearest point to South America.  The author imagined a traveler going by fast train from Buenos Aires to a Brazilian port opposite Dakar; jumping across the water; taking a fast express to Tangier; hopping a fast ferry; and connecting by train from Algeciras to Paris.  The Government was working, under Duch contractors, to lengthen the Algeciras pier to accommodate vessels of 8,000 tons.  In 1924, only the Gibraltar ferry could come alongside the pier.  There was daily steamer service between Algeciras and Ceuta, and between Algeciras and Tangier.  The fortified town of Ceuta was clearly visible from the Spanish shore, while Tangier, at the northwest corner of Africa, was only three and a half hours away.  The tall, dignified Moor, with flowing robe and turbaned head, stockingless feet thrust into heelless slippers, was not an uncommon sight in those towns across the Strait.  Ceuta used Algeciras as its link with Spain, just as Melilla, its sister fortress to the east, used Malaga.  Last spring, both ports were filled with soldiers and munitions enroute for the Moroccan front for the promised big offensive.  The author was in Algeciras the day recruits kissed the flag and swore their allegiance.  She was impressed by the ceremony.  Spaniards hated the very name Morocco.  The author saw Spanish shooting-galleries where wooden figures of Moors replaced our clay pipes, leaping deer, and diving ducks as targets.  The combat between Christian and Moslem had covered 1,200 years.

In recalling Andalusian towns, the author heard again those street sounds which were an inseparable part of Spanish life.  Sellers of lottery tickets shrilled their wares.  All the horses and mules had their tinkling bells.  Along came the street organ drawn by the patient donkey.  Donkey and music-box wore rubber blankets, but the organ-man grinded on in the rain.  To the lilting Spanish music, the children danced.  When they were not dancing, they were singing.  She had never known happier children.  One evening, from her balcony, the author saw six little girls, with arms interlocked, trudging up and down the muddy street.  They were singing at the top of their lungs.  The song finished, she called for another, and the girls complied.  The new song was about Rosa and the Fair.  One of the girls was barely six, but she knew every word of the song.  Even the uneducated Spaniard was well-mannered.  There was something about the Spanish tongue which lent grace and gentleness to the humblest.  All classes put themselves out for the stranger.  There was much poverty in southern Spain.  Around Algeciras, smuggling used to be a profitable trade, but it had been sternly suppressed.  The poor peons resented the strict customs enforcement.  Halfway around the bay curve, between Algeciras and La Linea, was the site of Carteia, one of the oldest cities in western Europe.  It was one of the first trading posts established by the Phoenicians.  To those earliest “commercial travelers” Spain owed its name.  “Span,” or “Spania,” they called it, the “remote,” or “hidden,” land.  It was around 1400 B. C. that the Phoenicians, after planting their colonies on the shores of the Mediterranean, dared at last to sail past the Pillars of Hercules, there to found Carteia, in the shadow of the great Rock, and Cadiz farther to the west.  Wheat, wine, wool, gold, silver, and lesser metals, salted eels of Tartessus, and Tyrian tunny were, in 1924, borne eastward from Spain.

It was only natural that the Jews, learning of that Land of Promise, should migrate to a country settled by peoples akin to them in race and tongue.  Through those ports of the new land they called Tarshish, the Jews spread throughout Spain.  To Carteia, some centuries later, the Carthaginians came as conquerors, and many Carteians marched with Hannibal on the long road to Italy.  The Romans came as masters for more than 600 years.  Nothing was heard of the city after A. D. 410, when the Vandals carried fire and sword through Spain.  The harbor of the ancients had been blocked by the silt of centuries.  Wheat fields waved where proud Carteia stood.  It was to a hill above old Carteia, in 1704, that the Spaniards of Gibraltar, 6,000 strong, fled after the capitulation of their fortress.  With stones from Carteia ruins they began to erect the town of San Roque.  There they preserved the archives of pre-British Gibraltar.  As late as the 1760s, Spanish coins were struck depicting the Queen of Spain holding out an olive branch toward the Rock.  A later coinage portrayed Her Majesty with the olive branch behind her back.  Beyond San Roque tower, the rugged mountains stretched through Malaga.  There, deer abounded.  Owing to conservation measures taken by the King, ibex, threatened with extinction, were increasing.  From Algeciras, there was a daily six-hour autobus service with Cadiz, on the other side of the province.  The only rail connection was an all-day trip inland to Saville, with an additional three hours back to the sea.  Links in the projected military railway, to encircle the entire coast of Spain, were slowly being forged.  This year [1924] the author came by rail along the Mediterranean shore from the French-Spanish frontier to Cartagena; but to continue to the ports of Almeria, Malaga, Algeciras, Cadiz, and Huelva meant, in each instance, a zig-zag trip into the interior and out again to the coast.

Throughout Spain, the author found autobus lines connecting each town with its neighbors.  Some were big double-deckers; some carried luggage on top.  The bus had replaced the old mule-drawn diligence.  The Malaga-Cadiz highway, via Algeciras, climbed over the hills to Tarifa and up the western shore.  Near the mountain village of Pelayo, they came to “The Place of the Wonderful View.”  The Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Strait of Gibraltar, the shores of Europe and Africa, laid at their feet.  The promontories of Gibraltar and Ceuta seemed only a stone’s throw apart.  The Strait looked like a river.  The author counted fifteen ships bound east and west.  Whales, swimming to and from their breeding grounds, braved the harpoon guns in the Strait.  The whaling industry had its base at Getares Inlet, near the western entrance to Algeciras Bay.  The whaling station was operated by a Norwegian company registered in Spain.  The company’s officers and gunners were Norsemen, the workmen mostly Spaniards.  Owing to increased shipping through the Strait, the quantity and variety of fish in those waters had greatly diminished.  In the days of sailing vessels, tunny fishing was so important an industry that sentinels were stationed in towers along the shore to signal the passing shoals.  There was a record of more than 100,000 of those big fish being taken off Gibraltar in the year 1558.  The 1924 tunny fisheries extended along the Atlantic coast from Tarifa to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, the largest canneries being at San Fernando, on Cadiz Bay.  The little town of Tarifa wore a halo of romance.  Its unique situation at the extremity of the European Continent, its Moorish aspect within its time-aged walls, its wealth of associations, combined to set it apart, even in a land were many towns had a 3000-year-old history.

It owed its name to Tarif, the African raider, who landed there in 710.  Meeting with little opposition, he returned with plunder to Morocco.  The following year, the Saracen governor of northwest Africa sent over an expedition, composed of Arabs and Berbers, under a chief named Tarik.  Landing at Gibraltar, 12,000 strong, they burned their ships and set out on foot for the camp of the Goths.  There Tarik defeated Roderic, winning Spain for the Moslems.  It required nearly eight centuries and more than 3,500 battles to drive the Mohammedans back across the Strait.  From duties levied in Tarifa on all merchandise in ships passing through the Strait in Moslem days had come our word “tariff.”  The more conservative women in Tarifa wore double petticoats, pulling the upper skirt over head and shoulders, with only one eye peeping out.  They looked not unlike the Arab women of Fez and Mekinez.  There were so many little things which linked Andalusia with the Morocco of 1924.  There, as in North Africa, donkeys, ladened pannier-wise, jogged along the country roads.  Those dark-colored Spanish asses, which came to Spain from Morocco, sailed west with the conquistadors to become the New World Burro.  Not far from Tarifa, they passed the ruins of a watchtower high up on a rock by the shore, one of a long chain of towers along the Spanish coast from Huelva to Gerona.  Leaving the sea, the road struck inland, skirting a lagoon teeming with duck and geese.  From reed fringing that lagoon, straw covers for Jerez wine bottles were made.  There was little cultivation until they reached the hill town of Vejer de la Frontera, where the cork gave way to pine.  The country from there to Cadiz was more settled.  Another highway branched north from Vejer to Medina Sidonia and Arcos de la Frontera.  Medina Sidonia was a very great name in Spain.  A duke of that family was once the sole owner of the Rock of Gibraltar; another commanded the Spanish Armada; a third saved Cadiz from the British.

Vast estates like Medina Sidonia and Medinaceli influenced the economic life of the country.  That unequal division of land had caused much misery in Spain.  Some of those great estates had their vineyards, olive groves, grain fields, and herds of cattle; others were quite undeveloped.  There was much talk about the high cost of food and clothing, and the lack of opportunity for all save the rich.  Jerez, known for its sherries and cognacs, about ten miles inland from Cadiz Bay, was the author’s favorite Andalusian town.  Jerez was a corruption of the Arab word for sherry.  That wine was made popular in England by Sir Francis Drake, which put Jerez on the map.  The author went to Jerez to visit the great wine bodegas and the stock farms where spirited Arab horses and fiery bulls for the bull ring were bred.  She remained to revel in the floods of shining lights, in bird song and the scent of orange blossoms, lilacs, and locusts.  She loved that conservative Spanish city which most travelers, eager to reach Seville, passed by.  On the gentle rolling hills outside the city were the ancient vineyards, parent vines of those brought to the Americas many centuries ago.  Sherry was a pale, sweet wine.  The cool lofty wine cellars of an old winery overlooked the most beautiful gardens, where every kind of flowering bush ran riot and all the birds in Andalusia seemed to congregate.  In Jerez, a wine train left the station between two and four every morning for the Cadiz pier.  All the big bodegas had their private railway tracks connecting with the Seville-Cadiz Railroad, and the wine train wandered about town all day gathering in its “spirited” load.  Besides sherries and cognacs, champagne and the highest grade of white wine were made in Jerez.  The lives of the city’s 60,000 inhabitants were closely linked with wine production.  That fertile region, bounded by the Guadalquivir River, the sea, and the hills, seemed particularly fitted to the growing of white grapes.

The author reached Jerez during Holy Week, where religious processions lasted far into the night.  The most distinguished men in the community walked behind the sacred images.  The processions include a company of lancers on splendid thoroughbred mounts.  All lovers of horses should come to Jerez. In this auto-mad world, there were few places where one might see perfectly matched spans.  There, gentlemen still took pride in riding and driving their own thoroughbreds.  The author was a year too early for the National Horse Fair, to be held in Jerez in the spring of 1925, so she consoled herself by visiting the largest of the horse farms.  There, she found the superb Arab horses she failed to see when crossing Morocco.  The pure Arab strain, which came into Spain with the Moslems, degenerated; for nearly a hundred years the Spanish stockmen had been building it up.  The best stock in 1924 was pure Arab and Anglo-Arab (a cross between Arab and English Thoroughbred); Hackney (English trotting stock); and Hispano-Hackney for spans.  Some of the horses were “put through their paces,” with much tossing of noble heads, arching of necks, and high stepping.  In Seville, Madrid, and Barcelona those fine animals were also bred.  The authors next visit was to one of the criaderos where bulls for the bull ring were raised.  Jerez bulls were famous.  Its struck her as remarkable that the mothers of those valiant sons were such scrawny, inoffensive-looking cows.  Not all the youngsters, however, had the fighting instinct.  Men on horseback, carrying long spikes, rode into the field to test the courage of the young bulls.  If not found wanting, the animals were eligible for the combat at the age of five.  Raising bulls for the bull ring had long been a popular occupation of Spanish country gentlemen.  The late Duke of Veragua, a descendant of Columbus, was thus engaged.

The 1924 Jerez Fair was held in May, at the close of the fair in Seville.  For a fortnight preceding it, the city underwent a general spring housecleaning, with much whitewashing of houses and repaving of streets.  For four days the town was in a whirl od excitement, with processions, fireworks, a battle of flowers, a football match, and three bullfights.  The fairgrounds, colorful by day and gorgeously illuminated at night, were thronged with pleasure-seekers.  The crowd was densest on the main avenue, lined with permanent buildings, the Fair Week homes of prominent families and clubs.  Many of the women discarded their perpetual black, looking like so many butterflies, with their gaily colored Spanish shawls and fluttering iridescent fans.  Black lace mantillas and high combs they wore habitually.  In the stock enclosures domestic animals of all kinds were on exhibition.  Spanish mules had long been noted for their excellence.  The blue-black fowl, like the merino sheep, were a distinct Spanish variety.  It was restful one afternoon to escape from the Fair din and drive out a country road to La Cartuja, a fifteenth-century monastery.  In utter ruin, the home of storks and bees, Cartuja was still one of the architectural glories of Spain.  The great pile stood on high land overlooking a wide stretch of fertile country through which the Guadalete River wound.  Those fields, as far as the eye could see, belonged to the Cartusians.  The façade of entrance gate and church within were most ornate.  The foremost architects, sculptors, and painters of their day worked there – Montanes, Zurbaran, Cano, Ribera; but the priceless paintings and wood carvings had been borne away to grace more fortunate churches.  A little remained of the work of Alonso Cano, first of his century to turn to life and joy when others depicted death.  His women had soft, Andalusian eyes.  He portrayed Mary as a smiling mother.  The cloisters were the best that was left at old Cartuja.  Above, on the crumbling turrets, stocks had built their bushy nests.

The author drove back to town at sunset to the tune of the coach horses’ bells.  The air was sweet with orange blossoms.  Through the rose-tinted sky hundreds of swallows darted.  It was a two hours’ rail journey from Jerez to Cadiz, following the horseshoe curve of Cadiz Bay.  The city of Cadiz lied at the outer end of the horseshoe, on a long, narrow peninsula between the bay and the sea.  Just opposite it, at the beginning of the curve, where the Gaudalete River entered the bay, was historic Puerto de Santa Maria.  No Spanish town, except for San Lucar, brought the period of New World discoveries and colonization as near to us.  In those romantic days, when Seville was the richest city in the world, the Puerto was its beach resort.  From Puerto de Santa Maria, San Lucar, or Cadiz, nearly all the conquistadors set sail, and the Puerto seemed richer in landmarks than its sisters.  San Fernando, at the head of the bay, lived in the present.  It was a naval base, with shipbuilding yards nearby, and the seat of several important industries.  Salt formed one of the chief exports of Cadiz.  Salt pans, many square miles in extent surrounded San Fernando.  In the intense heat of summer, evaporation was rapid and the salt left in the ponds was raked into huge conical mounds.  The effect of hundreds of those gleaming pyramids was bizarre in the extreme.  By moonlight, they resemble the desert tents of the Arabs.  Much of that high-grade salt was shipped to the Uruguayan and Argentine meat-packing plants.  As far inland as Paraguay, the author had seen “Cadiz salt” on sale.  The preserving of tunny fish, like salt-making, was an ancient industry.  The Phoenicians and Romans exported dried fish from Spain.  Tunny weighing 300 to 600 pounds were caught in the spring on their way to the Mediterranean, and in late summer as they returned to the Atlantic.  Most canned tunny from San Fernando was shipped to Italy, where it was repacked in smaller tins for reshipment with Italian labels.  Fish fertilizer, from heads, tails, and bones of the tunny was also exported.

From San Fernando the railroad and highway followed the curve around to the long peninsula, on whose extreme point white-robed Cadiz stood.  There were European cities more attractive than Cadiz, more modern, with more joy of life, but none surpassed in unique situation that sea-girt Spanish town.  It was Aphrodite rising from the deep.  To fully appreciate Cadiz, one must approach it from the sea.  It was starlight on Christmas morning when the author’s ship, bound from New York to Barcelona, neared its first Spanish port.  As day dawned, she saw a great gleaming water lily afloat on the dark tide.  In the half light of winter morning, it seemed a fairy thing.  Gradually it took shape – the seawall, the twin spires of a church silhouetted against the pale-pink sky.  When the sun rose and the waters turned blue, the city shone white as any Africa town.  Fr back in the shadowy past, when Phoenicians sailed up the coast, Cadiz was an island.  The causeway connecting it with the mainland was the work of man.  By the time the Carthaginians arrived, there was a crude wall around the settlement.  Under the Romans it became an important town, its Phoenician name of “Gadir being changed to “Gades.”  Vandals and Visigoths left no trace, but the imprint of the Moslems was on the whole of southern Spain.  The white walls, flat roofs, and narrow streets of Cadiz were part of the Arab grab.  Since 1262, it had been a purely Spanish city.  The “Gades” of the Romans and the “Kales” of the Moslems became “Cadiz.”  Its days of glory came after the discovery of the New World, when the red and gold banner waved over two continents and Spain’s fleet ruled the seas.  In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was the most renowned port in the world, treasure-house for the wealth of the Indies, estimated at $600 million yearly.  A massive seawall was built to protect the city, which was plundered by barbary corsairs and the English.  The island-peninsula bore the name “Isla de Leon.”  It once belonged to the family of Ponce de Leon.

There were three ways to enter Cadiz: by sea; by rail, over the causeway; by highway, paralleling the railroad track and through a gate in the wall called Puerta de Tierra, or Gate of the Land.  Through that ancient portal, the human tide ebbed and flowed.  Cadiz was a clean, smokeless city, freer from beggars than most Spanish towns.  Nearly all the streets were extremely narrow – just wide enough for the passage of a carriage.  There were few sidewalks where two could walk abreast with comfort.  When a carriage passed, it was safer to flatten oneself against the wall or find shelter within the nearest doorway.  Overhead were narrow iron-barred balconies brilliant with geraniums.  The walls were blindingly white, the sky vividly blue.  The buildings were three to five stories high, the homes mostly above the ground shops.  Balconies and roofs served as breathing places.  Some larger houses had patios, but spacious inner courts were hardly expected in a city where 80,000 people crowded into less than three-quarters of a square mile.  The city was not without its parks, the Parque Genoves by the seawall being especially attractive.  Walking or driving just before nightfall was a custom in nearly every Spanish city.  Dinner was served very late, 9 o’clock being the popular hour.  Cadiz was not a city for sightseers.  It had no remarkable monuments like found in Seville, Cordova, or Granada.  The cathedral was imposing, but lacked the age and beauty of countless other Spanish churches.  There were no more conservative people in the country than the natives of Cadiz.  No lady went out unaccompanied.  Black was the prevailing color of the upper class.  Outside of its matchless situation, the city’s charm to the stranger lied in its distinct individuality.  Through the land gate came the country people from beyond the causeway; their mules and donkeys ladened with produce for the town market.

There was a group of bold-eyed, barefooted gypsy women, their entire fortunes in gold and silver coins hung around their necks.  They spoke a poor Spanish.  The Romany tongue, preserved in Spain up to a century prior, was now in disuse.  A wooden-wheeled oxcart was followed by a drove of cattle for tomorrow’s beefsteaks.  Next came a big French touring car filled with handsome upper-class Andalusians.  Within the crowded city streets, charcoal and sweetmeat sellers jostled the shellfish vendor with his flat, wicker tray.  The men who fried potatoes and big, greasy crullers had their booths in the little triangular plazas.  The streets never lacked life save at midday, when shops closed and everyone relaxed.  The uniforms of soldiers, policemen, and civil guards lent color.  With its splendid harbor and modern docks, the peninsular city was Spain’s chief Atlantic port.  There were two large shipyards outside the walls.  It was while laying out those shipyards, in 1890, that an archeological discovery was made – tombs were unearthed which proved to be of the earliest Phoenician period.  One contained the marvelously carved marble casket of a priest of the temple of Hercules, which once stood on a shore of Cadiz Bay.  Either on a small island or at the base of the present peninsula stood the temple of a race of sun-worshipers, whose high priests made human sacrifices.  It was the likeness of that priest, carved in the lid of the marble sarcophagus, that the author saw at the Archeological Museum in Cadiz.  The marble probably came from Almeria, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.  The sculptor was, perhaps, Greek, who carved the figure during the priest’s lifetime.  Within the casket a skeleton was found.  In that, and many other tombs since unearthed, had been found beautifully engraved gold amulets, necklaces, bracelets, and funeral rings.  The temple still existed in the time of Augustus.

The road from Cadiz to San Lucar followed the bay curve and the seashore to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.  The author first learned of San Lucar de Barrameda when reading Spanish histories of the colonization of the New World.  It was only natural that the caravels, putting out from Seville, should cast anchor at the river’s mouth before plunging across unknown seas.  In the old walled town, built on a hill where sea and river met, the mariners came ashore to fill their water casks and offer a last prayer.  Columbus sailed from San Lucar on his third voyage to the Americas.  On those sandy beaches, Magellan stood.  Across the bar, his ships set sail for the strait which bore his name.  The author followed Magellan around the world – through Fuegian waters, across the western ocean, to the lonely Philippines where he lies.  After his death his pilot, del Cano, kept on around the world, to arrive, with one trusty little ship, off San Lucar.  Before Magellan’s day, San Lucar was a Moorish town.  It was the only place in Spain where the author had seen a little white mosque, perfectly preserved, exactly like the ones she had seen in Morocco.  Too small to be used as a Christian church, it lied forgotten.  Foreign visitors were such a novelty in San Lucar that children followed the author around, and fishermen stopped mending their nets to watch the mad lady with the picture machine running up and down the beach.  Only those who knew and loved Spanish America could fully appreciate all that one sleepy little port had meant to the Western World.  The Guadalquivir marked the western boundary of Cadiz province.  In spring the river delta teemed with myriads of waterfowl.  The author sailed from Cadiz on a day when the sea was as blue as the sky.  Like the sailors of old, her face was toward the west.  Like them, she looked back on the shores of Spain.  When all else had faded, she could still discern the gleaming white peninsular city adventuring far out into the blue.

 

 

The third item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “Moorish Spain” and has Gervais Courtellemont listed in the byline.  It is not an article, but a set of sixteen plates containing “26 Autochromes Lumiere,” true color photographs (not colorized).  Mr. Courtellemont is the photographer.  The plates also headline the cover as “Twenty-six Illustrations in Full Color.”  Of the twenty-six color photos, six are full-page in size, the other twenty are on the other ten plates, two per plate.  The plates are numbered I through XVI in Roman numerals and represent pages 163 through 178 in the issue.

The following is a list of caption headings for the photographs, with the plate number on which it appears:

• “A Lagartera Beauty in Ceremonial Costume” – Plate I
• “Peasants of Mogarraz in Holiday Costume” – Plate II
• “The Alhambra: Whose Beauty Defies Description of Unnumbered Writers” – Plate III
• “A Village Interior at Alberca, in the Province of Salamanca” – Plate III
• “A Living Rose of Old Seville” – Plate IV
• “Ready to Attend the Bullfight” – Plate IV
• “Laundry Day In Cordova” – Plate V
• “A Quaint Old Town in the Province of Salamanca” – Plate VI
• “A Fruit Merchant of Seville” – Plate VI
• “The Cathedral of Leon at Sunrise” – Plate VII
• “A Grotto Dwelling of the Gypsies at Granada” – Plate VII
• “Debutantes of Lagartera (See Also Plate I)” – Plate VIII
• “Charros, or Salamancan Peasants, Leaving Church” – Plate VIII
• “Waiting at a Church Door of Todedo” – Plate IX
• “A Shepherd from the Mountains of Old Castile” – Plate IX
• “A Cool Retreat of Sunny Spain” – Plate X
• “Andalusian Dancer of Seville” – Plate X
• “One of the Chief Treasures of Madrid’s Many Picture Gems” – Plate XI
• “The Home of a Middle-Class Family in Seville” – Plate XII
• “Where Narrow Streets are Family Living Rooms and Playgrounds” – Plate XII
• “Peasants of Mogarraz in Fiesta Costume” – Plate XIII
• “Three Young Bullfighters of Salamanca” – Plate XIV
• “A Gypsy in the Streets of Granada” – Plate XIV
• “The Patio of a House in Seville” – Plate XV
• “The Summer Palace of Moorish Kings” – Plate XV
• “A Peasant’s Costume Which a Queen Might Envy” – Plate XVI

 

 

The fourth item (third and last article) in this month’s issue is entitled “From Granada to Gibraltar – A Tour of Southern Spain” and was written by Harry A. McBride, author of “The Land of the Basques,” “The Land of the Free in Africa,” etc., in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains twenty-three black-and-white photographs, ten of which are full-page in size.

The Moors made all of Andalusia the center of a wonderful civilization.  In that, they were aided by the enormous natural wealth of the soil and the matchless lavishness of sky, sun, and moon.  Those later elements contributed, in no small degree, to the far-famed brightness of the Andalusian character of 1924.  No matter which way one travelled in southern Spain, the little station of Bobadilla would be encountered.  And thereafter it bobbed up again with persistence, because at Bobadilla, which would otherwise have no fame, the main lines cross – the railway from north to south and that from east to west.  Be it from Gibraltar to Grenada, from Malaga to Seville, from Cordova to Cadiz, everyone halted and nearly everyone changed trains at that little station.  Since Andalusian trains, as a rule, were in no rush, the traveler usually had time to dine at the station’s restaurant.  Three long tables extended down a big tiled room, each with 50 places set, with white tablecloths, vases of flowers, dishes of fruit, and spotless napkins coil in the wineglasses at each place.  A corps of waiters, in white aprons, filled the hurried wants of the guests, as the whole trainload of passengers poured out of the compartments and into the dining hall.  Hot soup, a tortilla of eggs, potatoes, ham, and sweet peppers, or fresh fish, roast chicken or veal, and a desert – a torta real of almond paste and sugar frosting.  And then the fruit dish, piled high with figs, muscatels, peaches, apples, and plums.  Then there were melons of various kinds – all that, with a half a bottle of wine for less than a dollar.  At any time, there would be a warning call in a high voice, and a train would leave among much bell-ringing, whistle-shrieking, and slamming od compartment doors.  Bobadilla itself was high on a plateau surrounded by gray mountains.  The train, heading south from Bobadilla, soon entered the valley of Guadalhorce.  The trail plunged into a short tunnel and emerged onto a bridge high over a deep ravine.

The cut, itself, was as deep as a skyscraper was high, and no wider than a narrow street.  There were 11 tunnels in all, and the views from the bridges were inspiring.  That daily mail train was due at Malaga at 5:30 p. m.  After the line passed through the last tunnel it came suddenly out upon the vega, a veritable garden of soft green luxuriance.  On every hand were oranges, palm trees, sunshine, and the deep-blue, cloudless sky of the Mediterranean countries.  An hour before, on wind-swept mountains, snow had been on the mountainsides.  Now it gave way to orange trees and oleanders.  The train passed through Alora, where many attractive villas were seen.  At the station, in early November, great piles of oranges and lemons were seen.  Around them sat many women and girls, wrapping each fruit in soft paper and packing it in boxes for shipment to London, and to the marmalade-makers of Dundee.  Then they stopped at Churriana, another settlement of summer homes, nestled on a hillside in that vast green garden.  The hill completely hid Churriana from the sea, and many people moved there in 1898, when it was rumored that Yankee gunboats were to bombard Malaga.  Suddenly a bend was rounded; broad blue waters of the Mediterranean sprang into view.  Another ten minutes and they were in Malaga, the capital of the province, the see of a bishop, and the fifth city of Spain.  It rained only 52 days a year, the other 313 being blessed by brilliant sunshine, tempered in the summer by fresh sea breezes.  They were in Andalusia, where jokes, laughter, and music abound.  That port was one of the most successful sources of supply for exacting gourmets and connoisseurs.  During the fall months every berth was occupied and steamers, loaded with boxes, crates, and barrels of choicest delicacies, awaited their turn in the outer harbor.  Ships were bound for New York, London, New Orleans, Antwerp – and there was even cargo for Wellington and Reykjavik.

The quays were crowded with huge piles of cargo.  One pile contained 12,000 boxes (200 tons) of almonds for one New York-bound steamer, all shelled.  Another mountain of boxes contained muscatel raisins as big as quarter dollars.  Little half-barrels were full of the finest Malaga grapes, packed in cork shavings; and there were thousands of crates of oranges, lemons, and tangerines; also, boxes and barrels of olive oil; and little boxes and baskets of figs, and crates of pomegranates, melons, custard apples, and sweet potatoes.  Barrels of sweet muscatel wine were marked London, Havana, and Buenos Aires, but none for Ne York.  There were bags of sweet-smelling aniseed, and extract of thyme, lavender, and rosemary.  And while that was happening on the quays, at the railway station, in November and December, crates of fresh beans and tomatoes were being packed in express cars to be rushed to Paris epicures, to be followed by strawberries in March and April.  The same train carried, nearly every day of the year, refrigerator cars full of fresh fish for the Madrid market.  The fishing industry was justly famous.  The Phoenicians named the place Malaca, from their word malac, which meant “to salt,” because it was their depot for salt fish.  The fishermen were extremely picturesque, trotting gracefully down the narrow streets crying their wares.  Their methods of fishing were medieval, but efficient.  They went out in small sailing vessels for sole, whiting, and mackerel, and still farther afloat in steam trawlers for the larger tunny.  The greatest number of fishermen, however, devoted themselves to the smaller fish – sardines and the delicious anchovies, near shore.  Two rowboats pulled out from the beach and spread a large net, in the shape of a gigantic U, with the two ends pointing shoreward.  The net was marked with inflated goatskin.  Then they brought ashore the two ropes attached to each end of the net – 1,600 fathoms of rope and 120 fathoms of net.

Ten or twelve men pulled at each rope.  Gradually, their far-away net began to answer their combined strength, and slowly it was pulled in.  Every boat was fancifully colored and had an eye painted on each side of the bow; for those simple folk were superstitious – how could a boat see a school of fish if it had no eyes?  The Virgen del Carmen was the patroness of the sea, and to her a prayer was always offered before a boat was launched.  When the net was drawn to the shore full of little silvery fish, the men blessed the Virgin; when the net was empty, they cursed.  Malaga and its neighborhood were likened to southern California for its natural beauty, its flowers and sunshine.  Its finely laid out Parque along the harbor, with a wide avenue of palms and towering plane trees running through it, was the center of festivities at carnival time.  Then it became knee-deep in confetti, flowers, and serpentines thrown from motor cars by joyous masqueraders bedecked in gay Spanish shawls and other costumes befitting the occasion, amid shouts of laughter and songs of revelers mad with joy.  Then there was the Calle de Larios, Malaga’s one wide modern business thoroughfare, and the Alameda, lined with little iron tables and chairs, the whole street a year-round outdoor café under the plane trees.  Through the Calle de Larios passed all the religious processions of Holy Week.  Those were held at night, and closely rivaled those of Seville.  Those processions dated from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were started by religious brotherhoods, who undertook to safeguard images in various churches.  In 1924, each church had its famous Virgen or Cristo, and in Holy Week it was carried through the streets in solemn procession, the most solemn taking place on Friday, representing the funeral of Christ, and was held at midnight.  Aside from the Calle de Larios, Malaga’s other business streets were narrow and winding, and many of them were none too clean.

They were crowded with Andalusian types: servant girls with market baskets on their arms, porters carrying anything from a trunk to a wardrobe on their backs, farmers in straight-brimmed, tall felt hats, girls in bright shawls, with the invariable flower in their hair, on the way to work in the almond and raisin stores.  Then there were milkmen, leading herds of goats about the streets and generally appropriating the sidewalks for their own exclusive use.  The donkey was the chief beast of burden.  Compared with American standards, the Andalusian workman was undersized, but amazingly strong.  He thought nothing of carrying from his cart into a warehouse sack after sack of flour, each weighing 220 pounds.  From Malaga to Granada there were two ways to go by motor car, both routes over the mountains.  The shorter road led directly above the city zigzagging and winding ever up and along frightening precipices until, in 45 minutes, one had ascended 3,000 feet and saw Malaga far below and, across the broad blue Mediterranean, the shores of Africa.  But usually, the traveler was dependent upon the railway, in which case he retraced his steps through the 11 tunnels to Bobadilla, dine again at the station restaurant, and change onto another train for Granada.  Sone after leaving Bobadilla they began to pass freight trains hauling car after car loaded with big brown sugar beets.  There were huge piles at each station, and cart after cart full of beets, drawn by oxen, moving slowly along the country roads.  There were a dozen or more flourishing sugar factories in the province of Granada employing the sugar beet as raw material, whereas next door, in Malaga province, there were several sugar factories where sugar cane was used.  Yet, with all that, Spain imported sugar from Cuba.  The vast fertile plateau from Antequera to Granada was picturesque in the extreme – rolling hills, with here and there an abrupt precipice, a deep cut, or a towering mass of bald gray rock to add to its rugged appearance.

The hills were, really, small mountains, as they formed the lower reaches of the Sierra Nevada.  Nearing Granada, the snowcapped Sierra Nevada were ever in view, glistening like silver and cut crystal in bright sunshine.  An hour outside the town a tramway began to parallel the railway and soon a little tram car moved by. Upon entering Granada, they saw those same trams pulling about the streets freight cars full of sugar beets, and in the Granada station, they counted 57 cars full of them.  They crowded out of the station and climbed into the bus of one of the hotels upon the steep Alhambra hill, a bus drawn by four powerful, gaily-bedecked mules.  The whip cracked and they were off.  Granada’s thoroughfares were paved and clean, and there was a prosperous appearance about everything.  Streets were crowded and there were many automobiles, fine new buildings, modern shops, all lending a Madrid-like atmosphere unfamiliar in most Andalusian towns.  But the pavement was of stone blocks and their bus was not rubber-tired; the noise was terrific.  Soon, they turned into a narrow street and started the ascent, which was very steep.  Although the main avenues were wide and modern, it was like entering another world to turn down one of the narrow streets, with lovely patios full of flowers, palm, and orange trees, all guarded by beautiful wrought-iron doors.  The trace of the Moors was strong.  Here and there, in shops and out on the sidewalks, were girls making the justly-famed Granada lace.  They wove elaborate designs in making handkerchiefs, tablecloths, and curtains.  One large piece represented the fall of Grenada, with details of the battle.  Their chief work was the manufacture of Spanish mantillas.  Early next morning they started out to see the Alhambra.  They took a guide.  First, they were escorted to the wonderful gardens of the Generalife, where the fountains were playing in the bright sunshine.   Then, down shady paths, they were led to the old Moorish Gate of Justice, with its large horseshoe portal – the entrance to Alhambra.

One paid the uniformed guard an entrance fee, and a small “kodak fee,” and was then shown to a small door.  He entered a veritable scene from the Arabian Nights!  The Court of the Myrtles dazzled one’s eyes in its beauty.  Its long quadrangular pool of crystal-clear water, where 200 slave girls used to bathe, was surrounded by a low, squared-cut hedge of myrtles.  The big, heavy tower of Comares in the background was reflected in the water.  Around the court were delicate arches, walls, and balconies ran riot in intricate arabesques, blending geometrical figures and simple foliage in an endless variety of designs in stone, plaster, marble, and wood.  In all that lacelike work there was never a reproduction of a living creature, though there were often inscriptions in Arabic.  From the Hall of the Ambassadors, one obtained an idea of the massiveness of the walls of that venerable place, where the window recesses were so deep as themselves to form small rooms.  Those windows afforded an entrancing view far down upon the housetops of Granada, the old Albaicin quarters, and the valley of the Darro.  In the Hall of the Abencerrages, their guide showed them the little fountain beside which 36 members of that strong Moorish family were beheaded.  The myth that bloodstains could still be seen was shown to be rust on the marble from iron in the water.  They went through the tiny little garden of Washington Irving’s imaginary Moorish beauty, Lindaraja, and down into the ancient baths.  First, there was a tiny one in stone and marble for the children of the sultan; then a larger one for the sultana; and lastly a huge one, almost a swimming pool, for the sultan himself, with three faucets – hot, cold, and one for perfume.  In an adjoining room, one rested after the bath on a silk-covered divan.  There was a latticed balcony just above that part of the baths.  After they had seen the exquisitely graceful Court of the Lions, the guide took them through corridors into a patio piled high with bricks – the entrance to the palace was being reconstructed.

One side of the doorway had been uncovered and showed a long slab of marble extending from top to bottom, about two feet wide and three inches thick.  The weight of the arch rested on the top of the slab.  There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Gypsy folk in and around Granada.  Just outside of town there was a large settlement living in caves dug in the mountainside and presided over by a “king.”  The women dressed in gaily-colored calicoes.  The unwary tourist was lured there to see them dance, and then made to pay $10 for the pleasure.  From Granada, they retraced their steps and were again in Bobadilla, having lunch and changing trains.  In a few hours they arrived at Ronda, a little Spanish country town situated in the middle of one of the most magnificent amphitheaters of mountains to be seen anywhere in the world.  The floor of that amphitheater was a perfectly flat plain, upon one side of which rose an almost perpendicular precipice, and forming a chasm 530 feet deep.  The town was built on both sides of that gorge.  Ronda was once famous for its horse-trainers, but little remained in 1924 to suggest that fact – a few shops where gay trappings for horses and donkeys were made.  Over the deep gorge, called the Tajo, there were three bridges, at different elevations – one Roman, one Moorish, and the Spanish Puente Nuevo.  They went down the rough stone pavement to see the Mina, an underground staircase of 365 steps, hewn out by the Moors, and descending to the river.  Ronda, because of its lofty situation, enjoyed a fresh climate and was a favorite center for tourists.  To Anglo-Saxons residing in southern Spain, occasional visits to “Gib,” as Gibraltar was called, were almost necessities.  There, one laid in supplies of English and American cigarettes, magazines, books, bacon, tea, and other things that became luxuries, once one left the beaten track. 

From Malaga, there was a train via, of course, Bobadilla, and there was also an autobus daily, which made the trip in five hours, as compared with twelve by rail.  The road had much to offer for it wound along the sea and through many small villages.  The bus gave good service, but they were unfortunate.  To cross the Rio Guadiaro, a ferry had been rigged up big enough to carry the bus.  Instead of driving the bus onto the ferry, the driver went into the river and got stuck.  They got across on the ferry with their suitcases.  There was no telephone for miles around.  A mile from the river there was a forlorn little village, where, they persuaded a resident to furnish the party with three horses and a mule for the baggage.  They mounted and were off, over rough paths and down deep gullies, for they were taking advantage of short cuts.  As it grew dark, they entered a solitary forest of cork oaks.  A lone eagle soared over a nearby pile of rocks.  After two hours, they rode into San Roque, paid off the steeds’ owner, who had accompanied them, hired a motor car, and arrived at their Gibraltar hotel very tired and stiff.  The Yankee tourist was rather surprised to find quite a city on the rocky slopes, the houses built of the same gray stone as the Rock itself.  To get anywhere, aside from the one long Main Street, one must go either up or down steps.  After Spain, the tall, straight policemen, dressed like London “bobbies,” were a welcome sight.  The slopes above the town were overgrown with cactus and harbored a considerable number of Barbary apes, the only wild monkey found in Europe.  The Rock was united with Spain by a low, flat plain only half a mile wide, the central portion of which was known as Neutral Ground, between the British possession and Spain.  Gibraltar, which came from Jebel Tarik (Hill of Tarik) of the Moors, was in antiquity called Calpe.  On the African shore opposite was the promontory Abyla, in 1924 the Sierra Bullones, and those two were named the “Pillars of Hercules.”

Rarely was such a cosmopolitan throng to be seen as in Gibraltar’s Main Street, which wound gradually up from the landing place – Moors from Tangier, British “tommies,” American sailors, Indian merchants, Syrians, blacks, an occasional Oriental, and always some tourists from vessels in port.  Upon looking up over the town at that mass of gaunt stone, one saw where it was honeycombed with mysterious galleries and tunnels for military purposes.  Big gray warships lied in port with steam up, at every step one saw soldiers, and was reminded that this was a mighty fortress guarding the gates of the Mediterranean.  It was in 1704 that a British fleet under Admiral Rooke surprised the weak Spanish garrison.  There followed many attempts to wrest it from British hands, the last great siege extended from 1779 to 1783.  An idea of what a grim old stronghold Gibraltar was in those days was gathered from the orders which appeared in the old records.  Some of them were quite amusing.  Little steamers ran across the quiet, blue bay to the Spanish town of Algeciras.  Gibraltar was the center of excursions across the Strait to Tangier.  Tangier, of course, was entirely oriental – narrow, roughly paved, its dirty streets crowded with noisy throngs of Moors and Barbar blacks, all busy as a swarm of bees.  The Moorish houses were one-storied, overtopped here and there by graceful minarets, and presented to the street a bare and windowless wall.  It reminded one of stories of Bagdad.  Ut Tangier was not in southern Spain.  It was a totally different atmosphere, a different continent.  Tangier was another story.

 

At the bottom of the last page of the last article in this issue (Page 232) there is a notice regarding change of address.  If a member wanted the magazine to be mailed somewhere else, the Society needed a month’s notice in advance, starting on the first of the month.  If a member wanted the September issue redirected, the Society needed to know by August first.

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Juan Carlos Herrera del Castillo]

This is one of my favourite numbers in all the history of the Magazine. I was born in Algeciras, studied in Seville, worked in Ceuta and currently live in Cádiz, so all the places described in the articles are completely familiar to me, even after one century. It's fascinating to see what has changed and what remains the same in these 100 years.