There Was, In Fact, More
Corn Than Anything Else, Though There Were Many Orchards, Also
Endearingly Homelike, With Apples Yellow
And red showing among the
leaves still green on the trees; if there had been something more
wasteful in the
Farming it would have been still more homelike, but a
traveler cannot have everything. The hillsides were often terraced, as
in Italy, and the culture apparently close and conscientious. The
farmhouses looked friendly and comfortable; at places the landscape was
molested by some sort of manufactories which could not conceal their
tall chimneys, though they kept the secret of their industry. They were
never, really, very bad, and I would have been willing to let them pass
for fulling-mills, such as I was so familiar with in _Don Quixote,_ if I
had thought of these in time. But one ought to be honest at any cost,
and I must own that the Spain I was now for the first time seeing with
every-day eyes was so little like the Spain of my boyish vision that I
never once recurred to it. That was a Spain of cork-trees, of groves by
the green margins of mountain brooks, of habitable hills, where
shepherds might feed their flocks and mad lovers and maids forlorn might
wander and maunder; and here were fields of corn and apple orchards and
vineyards reddening and yellowing up to the doors of those comfortable
farmhouses, with nowhere the sign of a Christian cavalier or a turbaned
infidel. As a man I could not help liking what I saw, but I could also
grieve for the boy who would have been so disappointed if he had come to
the Basque provinces of Spain when he was from ten to fifteen years old,
instead of seventy-four.
It took our train nearly an hour to get by twenty miles of those
pleasant farms and the pretty hamlets which they now and then clustered
into. But that was fast for a Spanish way-train, which does not run,
but, as it were, walks with dignity and makes long stops at stations, to
rest and let the locomotive roll itself a cigarette. By the time we
reached San Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and by
the time we mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it was
storming in a fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the
curving quays and tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded
promenade. The distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid
sight of the tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands
standing out to sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with
the stony cold of the south when it is cooling off from its summer, and
we shivered in the splendid sight.
III
The inhabitants of San Sebastian will not hesitate to say that it is the
prettiest town in Spain, and I do not know that they could be hopefully
contradicted. It is very modern in its more obvious aspects, with a
noble thoroughfare called the Avenida de Libertad for its principal
street, shaded with a double row of those feathery tamarisks, and with
handsome shops glittering on both sides of it. Very easily it is first
of the fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa
there, and the court comes every summer. But they had gone by the time
we got there, and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season
summer resorts; though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine
casino at one end of the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all
along it to the other end. On the sand were still many
bathing-machines, but many others had begun to climb for greater safety
during the winter to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping
up from the surf and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they
were mostly tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their
open doors, and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat
and sewed or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and
mothers they doubtless were, but no doubt glad to be resting from the
summer pleasure of others. They had their beautiful names written up
over their doors, and were for the service of the lady visitors only;
there were other machines for gentlemen, and no doubt it was their
owners whom we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up by the storm into
the carts drawn by oxen over the sand. The oxen wore no yokes, but
pulled by a band drawn over their foreheads under their horns, and they
had the air of not liking the arrangement; though, for the matter of
that, I have never seen oxen that seemed to like being yoked.
When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated
visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves. The
dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an
average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must
double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear
the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper,
the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe,
even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of
the French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener
superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With
an American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to
learn to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as well
as the Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other
civilizations, to be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the
good native wines, often included in the inclusive rate.
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